SERMON: The Feet of Wisdom

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day sermon. And we pray that as we declare the word of God, that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's word and may the Lord be with you. Well, over the last couple sermons in our Proverbs mini series, we took a break last week, but over our Proverbs mini series, we've been looking at the concept of wisdom.

Wisdom Requires God to Open Our Blind Eyes

And so far, we've seen three different angles of what wisdom is. In week one, we learned that the eyes are incapable of seeing the way that we ought to and the way that we desperately need to without God opening up our spiritually blinded eyes through the regeneration of the Holy Spirit.

And if we're going to see, we need him to do his work first because we're blind. Then week two, we saw that like our eyes, we actually can't trust our heart as well because our heart is so sick and so polluted by sin that we can't even feel correctly.

We can't trust our heart. It's beyond us even understanding, Jeremiah says. We saw even how our feelings and our perceptions deceive us. And then what seems right to a man, Solomon says, usually leads in death.

Human Untrustworthiness and the Need for Wise Counsel

And then in week three, we learned that just in the same way we can't trust our eyes and in the same way we can't trust our heart, we can't even trust ourselves because we're untrustworthy people. And on top of that, because we dare not even trust ourselves, we can't trust our ideas, our opinions, our preferences or our judgment.

And we learned that if we are not trustworthy, then we must actually seek trustworthy counsel outside of ourselves and to surround ourselves with inputs for wisdom that will lead us in the right way, that will correct us from going in the wrong way.

Because if we lean in our own understanding, we will be wrecked. Now, sadly, we all lean into our own understanding all the time by isolating ourselves from truth, by surrounding ourself with yes-men, by listening only to the kind of people who affirm whatever we want to hear.

And because we know that we have this tendency inside of us, we have to become the kind of people who surround ourselves with the kind of people who actually give it to us straight. And yet, when we look around, we see people who are just like us, don't we?

If I can't trust myself and you can't trust you, how can I trust you and how can you trust me? And therein lies the problem that all of us are like the blind leading the blind, if it were not for Jesus Christ leading us into all truth.

He's the one who opens our eyes. He's the one who regenerates our heart. And he's the one who gives us through his spirit, the counselor who leads us into all wisdom. So in that we've seen in three ways, we cannot trust ourself, we must trust him.

Wisdom Must Reach the Feet

Well, today, now we're going to be looking past the eyes and the heart and the ears. There's developing in the series an anatomical feature to these ideas of wisdom. And today we're going to continue that practice by going to the feet, which is going to show us actually how do we put wisdom into practice?

Because it's not enough to simply say that, that we are seeking after wisdom and we see wisdom, but we do nothing about it. We can't just see it and not do anything for it. It's also not enough to love wisdom in a kind of generic hallmark sense, but to not actually trickle down into our behavior.

It's not enough to hear wisdom from the spirit of God and from spirit indwelled people and then do nothing about it. Like James says, we must be both a hearer of the word and a doer of the word. Because if we don't, then we're like the foolish person who sees our reflection and we walk away forgetting who we are.

None of that is acceptable to God, seeing and not doing, hearing and not doing, listening and not doing. And because of that, our goal is not merely to see, feel and hear, but it's to put our bodies into proper motion or to say that differently, the telos or the end of wisdom is that we would do something, that we would obey God in all of our life.

Now, that doesn't mean, again, walking in any old way we want to. We must learn how to put our feet on the right path, walking in the right direction so that, so that our end is not the wrong destination.

If you think about this, a man has 360 degrees of direction that he could choose at any time and only one of them is correct. 359 of them are wrong and will lead you to the wrong outcome. And if you're in the military, that's in mils, which is, how many is it, Patrick?

3 ,600 mils. So there you go. 3 ,599 different wrong ways for you to go and only one of them is right. Today, I want to talk about that. I want to talk about what the Proverbs gives us as a, or how do we walk?

How do we go on the right path? How do we use our feet to follow God? And instead of doing that in a kind of encyclopedic way today, I want to go with how Proverbs talks about it and it talks about it in general ways.

It actually gives us three basic principles that we are to adhere to when we think about how do we implement wisdom? Once we've seen it, once we felt it, once we've heard it, how do we implement it? Well, the Proverbs are going to give us three or four actually specific ways to do that.

The first is when you're thinking about walking with God, obeying God, don't do it hastily. That's the first thing. The second thing is we must do it prudently. The third thing is we must do it discerningly.

And then the fourth thing is we must walk accordingly. So if you will, I'm going to read some passages of scripture to you. We're going to pray and then we're going to jump in and look at what does it mean to walk with God?

What does it actually mean to use our feet in obedience and obey him in all things? So here's our passages. Proverbs 14, 8. The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way, but the folly of the fool is deceit.

Proverbs 19, 2. It is not good for a soul to be without knowledge and he sins who hastens with his feet. Proverbs 20, 25. It is a snare for a man to devote rashly something as holy and afterward to reconsider his vows.

Proverbs 21, 5. The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, but those of everyone who is hasty will lead surely to poverty. Proverbs 21, 22. A wise man scales the city of the mighty and brings down the trusted stronghold.

Proverbs 22, 3. A prudent man foresees evil and hides himself, but the simple pass on and are punished. And then Proverbs 22, 5. Thorns and snares are in the way of the perverse, but he who guards his soul will be far from them.

Let us pray. For there's so much in the Bible about the way or the path that we're supposed to be walking on. Where we're supposed to be, where our life is supposed to be heading towards or how we're supposed to be following.

We even read in Psalm 1 today that the way of the scoffer and the sinner is abhorrent to you. There's a way, Solomon said last week, that seems right or two weeks ago, that seems right to a man, but it ends in death.

There's all these passages about the way. And yet, Lord, there are few that find it. Lord, help us today to see what it is that you would have us do with our life. After we've seen wisdom, after we felt wisdom come into our heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, after we have heard it through the counsel of his word and through the counsel of his Holy Spirit, through the counsel of other believers.

Now, what are we supposed to do about it? Lord, help us today to learn how to walk faithfully before you and for a lifetime. And Lord, it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Proverbs 4 .26 -27 is a passage that we've looked at before in the past, maybe a year ago, and it introduces this idea of the feet being synonymous with faithfulness and how we should use our feet to propel us into biblical obedience to God in a very important way.

Proverbs 4 .26 -27 says this,. What Solomon is telling us is that walking the path of wisdom is not a happy accident. You don't wake up one day and you're accidentally faithful to God. You don't somehow bumble into obedience and then God's like, huh, look at that.

In the same way, you don't come into obedience with one dramatic leap. I remember back in the days of my youth, the cartoon of Superman where he's faster than a bullet, faster than a speeding train, you know, and talked about his leaping.

It's not like that with obedience. Obedience is not one dramatic action that gets you into obedience. It's actually a long obedience in the same direction. It's being consistent for years and even for decades of faithfully walking, faithful steps made by a man who continually ponders his way, examines his way, makes sure that the way he is going is right, make sure that he never turns aside into the evil way.

And by continuing along the same path for a lifetime. And in that vein, Solomon gives us four principles that we are to live by, general rules that are supposed to help us understand how we can keep our feet on the right path, how we can walk in wisdom and honor God over a lifetime instead of falling into the deep ditches that the enemy has set for us.

Rejecting Haste in Walking With God

The first of these three principles is that we must not walk hastily. Proverbs 19, 2 says,. Also, it is not good for a soul to be without knowledge, and he sins who hastens his feet. This is a repeated theme in Proverbs, to not be hasty.

And that means if you want to know how to faithfully walk with God, you need to learn how to use your feet to serve and honor him, to walk into obedience. And you can't be hasty because hastiness displeases God and it will end up destroying you.

Notice the kind of man that Solomon is referring to here. He's the kind of man without knowledge whose feet are already moving. This is the man who has skipped the steps that we've been going through in this series.

He skipped the eyes so he doesn't see wisdom. He skipped the heart so he doesn't feel the weight of wisdom. He skipped the counsel where he would learn what it means to actually have wisdom. And in his ignorance, he went right into running.

It was kind of like, this is a silly example. In seminary, I woke up one day. I had been exercising at that point for about five weeks. So just getting started, I woke up and I said, you know what? I think I'm going to run a half marathon today.

Because I wanted to do something awesome that day, apparently. I called my friend and said, hey, we're doing this running a half marathon. He said, no, we're not. And I said, well, I'm doing it without you.

So I ran. I did it. I almost died. I was at the bottom of my three story apartment building. And I called Shannon and said, I can't come up the stairs. I need you to help me. That was hasty. I didn't put in the work.

I didn't do the long obedience necessary for me to even think about running a half marathon, and yet I did it foolishly, ignorantly, even. Haste is not the same thing as speed. Haste is doing what it takes in order to qualify you for it.

Or faithfulness, excuse me, is that. There are moments, however, that where obedience must be immediate, where obedience must be instant, where it must be an all out sprint. There are moments like that.

Think about Potiphar's wife and Joseph standing there with her, tempting him, seducing him, telling him to come into her own bed. Joseph did not say, well, I think we need to set up a study committee to make sure that this is not an inappropriate action before God.

He doesn't. He runs from sexual sin. He flees from it. And that was obedience to him. So haste does not mean the lack of speed or instantaneous obedience. It doesn't mean that. Think about when Christ called Peter and Andrew.

They didn't say, that sounds like a great idea, Jesus, but I need to check your credentials first. I need to run a criminal background check. You need to make sure that you do a Corey because you're not going to prohibit the little children from coming to you.

So we need to make sure you're OK with children. Let me check your references. Make sure you got the right three letters before your name. We'll get back to you in a couple of weeks. They didn't do that.

They left everything and followed him in a hot second because that was the only righteous thing that they could have done. So the point is simple. When God has spoken clearly, delayed obedience is disobedience.

But when God has not spoken specifically, when the situation is complex and the Bible doesn't give you a thou shout, when the consequences are going to be meted out over years, the wise man refuses to let his feet outpace his head and his heart and his ears.

He refuses to let impulsivity drag him down the road far out in front of where the light of God has shown him. Haste in that way is movement without sufficient knowledge. It's a foot prematurely striking the ground before the eye has fully examined the road.

It's deciding to go somewhere when you don't even know where that somewhere is. It's like getting your feet out over your skis or getting the cart before the horse. We have all sorts of colloquialisms for this phenomenon.

And there are a million ways that all of us have been hasty. This sermon is really convicting to me because I'm a super spontaneous person. I'm like, oh, my goodness. I have story after story after story of me being hasty.

And I'm like, Lord, please tease this out of me. For instance, how many of us have gotten angry and sent that 14 page text? The one that Apple can't even send the whole thing. You have to hit the arrow button to open it before we should have prayed and thought about it.

I'm sure no one's done that, right? And then you end up regretting it later. That's hastiness. Or how about this? We see one side of a story and then we form the judgment before we ask questions or we go talk to the other person.

That's being hasty. We get excited about a particular man or woman and we rush into a relationship and rush into marriage before their character has been fully tested. Perhaps you even hate your job and you want to actively make plans to leave it before you've learned the kind of perseverance that it takes to succeed.

What about those times we see something we really want? We really want it. And we fill out the finance application before asking our inner fund police, hey, dummy, can you afford that? We've all done these things and we've done them in every area of life.

We do it in the church. Men and women get offended so quickly and then they leave the church, leave their community, all because they didn't actually take the time to pray and to seek the Lord. We get frustrated with our spouse and we say things that we can't take back.

We do it with our kids, with our family, with our friends, with our career, with our money, with our habits, with our homes. We do this everywhere. And what Solomon would have us remember is that hasty people do not walk in the path of wisdom.

And it's true because they don't affix their eyes intently enough to what God has commanded. They don't see their hearts warmed enough, sufficiently enough over the things that God has commanded. They don't stop and listen long enough to the things that God has commanded.

And then their feet get directed in improper and unwise places. They simply get moving first and then they see, think, feel later. That's haste. And because of that, hasty people routinely make long-term decisions under short-term emotions, which surprisingly enough is why haste is so difficult to understand and diagnose.

Because the person who's being hasty rarely actually knows that they're being hasty or they wouldn't have done it. They say to themselves, they dress up their impulsivity as a virtue. They say to themselves, I'm just being decisive.

I'm being bold. I'm being a leader. I'm taking charge. Solomon does not praise that sort of behavior, that impetuous decision flexing. Solomon says that this man is just not wise. In fact, he's a fool because he sins against the entire rest of his body.

He sins against the eyes that he did not take long enough to have him see. He sins against the heart that he didn't cultivate and plow. He sins against his ears that he didn't listen to counsel. He sins against his feet for directing them too early.

Instead of soaking in all of the means of grace, even that God has afforded to him, like the word and prayer and others, he simply leaped out like a moving jet plane, forgetting that he had not strapped in his parachute yet.

And in much the same way, there are innumerable ways that we can be hasty with our feet. There are also plenty of reasons why we end up doing it. We have good reasons for being hasty, don't we? For instance, we can't bear the uncertainty.

We act in haste because we would rather walk down the wrong road today than stand long enough to walk down the right road tomorrow. I remember in basic training, I was told a quote from the Spartans, attack today and wait later.

An attack today is better than waiting for something later. I used to live by that. All right, I need to do something right now. That's haste. We also do it because we pre-choose the outcome before it.

We move hastily because we've already made up our minds before we even come to the moment of decision and no amount of thinking or self-control is going to persuade us away from it. We want something so badly that we don't stop and ask the question, is this wise?

We ask the question, how do I have it? How do I get it? How do I procure it? And when nothing stands in our way and not even reason or counsel, we end up falling into ditches and traps all over the place.

We also do it because we're afraid. We move hastily because fear is chasing us. The fear of missing the opportunity, the fear of losing the deal, the fear of disappointing someone, the fear of looking weak, the fear that we're going to be told no, the fear that we're going to be exposed.

All of these things propel our feet forward in the wrong direction because we're actually making decisions motivated out of fear. There's so many others, but as I'm sure you can guess, the road that the hasty man runs down ends in all sorts of consequences.

It's exhilarating for a moment, but it's potholes, ditches, and snares for a lifetime, if not repented of. For instance, Proverbs 20, 25 shows us what this actually looks like in the realm of worship.

It gives us an example. It says it's a snare for a man to devote himself rashly or devote something rashly as wholly and then afterward to reconsider his vows. This is a man who comes up and he says, you know what?

I want to give this over to God. I want to I want to dedicate this part of my life or part of my income or part of my property. I want to give it over to the Lord. And then after a half a second of thinking about how hard it's going to be, he says, I don't know if I want to do that.

I've done that. I'm going to I'm going to commit to waking up at five o 'clock in the morning every morning. I'm going to read the Bible every single day and like four days into it. Why did I dedicate that to the Lord if I wasn't going to be obedient to it?

We all do that. We make a vow before God. And we don't obey the words even come out of our mouth. That's hastiness. That's not considering the cost before we say the words. We live in a culture of cheap words.

I know I feel bad right now, so I'm going to say something to make myself feel better. Haven't thought about it, haven't considered it, have no idea what it's going to cost me, but it made me feel better.

That's haste. We do it to our spouse. They're angry at us. I'm sorry. What are you sorry for? Well, I don't really quite know yet, but I want you to feel better because if you feel better, I feel better and we all feel better.

Don't we want that? That's haste. And notice what this verse calls hastiness, it calls it a snare, which is a in Hebrew, it's a baited trap. It's a trap that closes around an animal's neck. As its foot touches the spring.

For instance, a rushed marriage, isn't that a trap? That you totally could have avoided if you took time to learn and know that person. It ends in a lifetime of snares, if not repented of and surrendered to the Lord.

What about a rushed purchase? In haste, we spend, we live in a market that flies, houses go in and off the market quickly, and then you can feel like, well, if I don't jump on this, I'm not going to have it.

And then all of a sudden interest rates go up and you can't make the payment. It's like a noose around your neck because you didn't consider the cost. What about a rushed resignation? You leave your job too early because you're disappointed or you're frustrated with the situation and you end up because the market is so bad and because the the job market is unstable.

You end up without a job, regretting the fact that you quit too soon. The wise man understands that one step in the wrong direction, one step of haste can fasten him to a snare that will leave him with bitter consequences.

So instead of indulging his sense of spontaneity, he does not move until his eyes, his heart and his ears have fully considered the path of wisdom. That's when his feet move. Now, I want you to hear me abundantly clear here, because haste is not a lack of diligence.

Haste is not inactivity. Haste is not slothfulness and laziness. Haste is not a removal or a kind of hatred of movement. In fact, look at what Solomon compares the hasty man to. He compares him to the diligent man.

The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, but those of everyone who is hasty surely to poverty. You could think to yourself, well, why did he compare the hasty man to the diligent man? Why did he compare him to the slothful man or the fool?

Because the hasty man and the diligent man both work really hard. They both end up exhausted at the end of the day. But only one of them is actually going in the right direction. Only one of them is committed to proper motion.

The hasty man, he's moving like a drag car, burning its wheels out and not even moving an inch forward. The diligent man, on the other hand, is committed to direction, even if he starts out slower than the hasty man, kind of like the tortoise in Aesop's fable who eventually beats the hare.

The hasty man wants results immediately. The diligent man is willing to walk the road of faithfulness over decades in order to have it. A hasty man wants a mature and thriving marriage after a single counseling session.

And one good week of changed behavior. Honey, I've changed. You just changed two days ago. Show me some consistency, bucko. The diligent man realizes that the kind of marriage that he wants today actually is going to take years to build and he's not going to see the fruit of it for months, if not years.

He wants mature and obedient Christian children. So what does he do? He punishes them severely one time. And he said, all right, good problem solved. Well, if you have children, you know, that's not the case.

If you have children, you probably like how many times do I have to say this thing before they submit and obey to this thing? Well, a diligent man realizes that it's going to take years of consistent faithful discipleship in order for his children to begin to live the path and walk the path of wisdom.

A diligent man realizes that ongoing teach teaching, consistent discipline, a culture in his home of forgiveness and grace, prayer, worship, love and a million other things are going to have to be peppered into his child's life over the long haul before he sees these things bearing fruit in them.

The hasty man wants a strong and a growing church. We see this all the time in pastors. They want a strong and growing church after what? After one mailer that they send out or hang on people's doorknobs or after one invite to one program.

Maybe it's a Christmas service. Now we're going to have a strong and faithful church and no one shows up and you just spent a thousand dollars on your mailer. It's haste. The diligent pastor puts his hand to the plow, worships with the saints of God every Lord's day, visits people in their weakness and in the hospital, trains officers over months of training and sometimes even years of training men and helping them to rise up into the office.

Disciples, God's people walks with them through their pains and toils and intercedes with them in their marriages that are struggling. And sometimes a single counseling session, most times a single counseling session is not enough.

We have to be patient. We have to be faithful in the long road of obedience. You know, the phrase Rome wasn't built in a day. Well, you think about Jerusalem, it was burned down in one. You can burn down something faithful instantly, but it takes decades to build it.

So what must we do? We must repent of our hastiness. How do you repent of hastiness? Well, the first thing you should ask yourself is whether God has spoken clearly about a thing. And if he has, do it.

That's the easiest one. If God's spoken clearly in his word, do it. If it says in the scriptures, do not commit adultery, don't. If it says do not murder, don't. If it says you should observe the Sabbath, do it.

Those are clear and objection or clear objective truths that we must obey. But if the scripture has not named a particular choice, like, should I take this job or should I go to move to this particular state?

Should I marry this person? If it does not say thou shalt marry Rebecca Smith or Taylor or Josephine or I don't know, making up names. And it just so happens that they have two people I know because I'm not creative enough to make up names on the fly, apparently.

When you face a decision like that, it's important to slow down for a moment and to be patient. It's important not to make the rash decision. Until your knowledge base has caught up with your trigger finger.

Pray before you commit to something. Ask questions about that thing in order to make a good decision. Seek counsel from wiser men and women before you uproot you and your household in a decision that was half-baked and not well thought out.

Count the cost before you begin building something that you're going to regret later. Look beyond the first exciting mile and the novelty of it to the grinding marathon that lies ahead. Here's another example.

I'm really weighting it down here so you can be like, I really need to pray for my pastor. He is very hasty. One of the things that I'm thankful that I did, but I did not consider the cost of starting a podcast.

I said, you know what? We need a podcast. We need a podcast that speaks to men. We need a podcast that talks about frank Christian truth in a bold way. We need this. What do I do? I go online and buy all the equipment week one.

Week two, I'm making the podcast. And there are weeks where it is such a heavy burden for me to research it and to do it that I'm like, man, I did not think very clearly into that or I might not have done it.

Now, sometimes that's helpful, but sometimes it's hurtful. And then after you've considered the cost, if you've looked at it, felt it, observed it, sought counsel, after you've done the hard work of evaluating that thing, when the road is finally clear and you have the vision that it's required for you, then you know what the obedience is going to cost, then walk in it faithfully and do it with all your heart.

That's the first general principle of how do we walk in the way of wisdom. We must not do it with haste. The second thing that we need to understand is that we must walk. Now, it's the positive command.

It was the negative command. Do not. Now it's the positive command. Do. We must walk prudently before our God. The wisdom, Proverbs 14, 8 says, of the prudent is to understand his way. But the folly of the fool is deceit.

Walking Prudently and Considering the Road Ahead

I want you to notice what Solomon is saying here. After you've refused haste, your job's not done. You must also embrace prudence. Because if you're ever going to walk with God, you must be a prudent man or woman.

If you're ever going to be faithful, it's not enough for you to just reject, rash, uninformed, rushing into things. Because as Elvis said, only fools rush in, right? You must also take the time to cultivate prudence.

What is prudence? Here's a simple definition. Prudence is the wisdom to see where your next step will take you. Prudence is the wisdom to see where your next step will take you. The prudent man actually looks down the road and he looks long enough down the road to understand the way that he is thinking that he might be called to travel.

He examines it. He surveys the potholes. He finds all of the potential ditches that he could fall into. He discovers where there aren't any guardrails over the cliff's edge, like at Pike's Peak, when you ride up the mountain and there's literally no guardrails for your 1996 Ford Escort to fall to your death, hypothetically.

In the same way, the prudent man does not merely examine isolated decisions either. He studies the road that those decisions are going to be forming. He games out where those decisions that are made today are going to take him next year and even the next decade.

And that's one of the great differences between the wise man and the fool. The fool judges the world one step at a time based off whatever inspiration is leading him into that step in the moment, merely enjoying where the next step is going to take him.

But the wise man plots the journey beforehand, before taking a single step, so that he begins taking steps when a specific plan is in place and he doesn't deviate from it. He starts with the end where the fool starts with the beginning.

The fool looks at the world in millimeters. The wise man looks at it in miles. And that's why the fool never actually realizes where he is ultimately going, because every decision that he makes is isolated from the rest of them.

Now, he may say, I just skipped one day of prayer because I wanted to do something else. I just didn't do family worship today. It's just one purchase. It's not going to add up to anything significant.

This is how the fool lives. The fool lives from one situation, one second to a time, and he doesn't realize how they add up into a whole. Whereas the wise man says, for instance, when it comes to going to church, I made the decision to go to church a long time ago.

So now every week I don't have to make that decision again. I wake up and I do what I've already decided to do. I made a decision a long time ago that I'm going to tithe. I don't have to decide, hey, we got a lot of bills this month.

Should we tithe? Sorry, we decided that 20 years ago. Now, every day we're just living in the decision. That's what wisdom does. It makes the decision and lives in it. The foolish man lives by making new decisions.

To the fool, destinations are nothing more than the accumulation of a million steps that he did not plan, did not foresee, and did not intentionally direct. The wise man considers everything in light of the destination.

Also, prudence doesn't just look at you and your actions. Prudence looks at who you're becoming. The prudent man doesn't just consider where the road is going to take him. The prudent man is interested in who he's going to become on the journey.

By walking down the road, by every step that he takes, who is he now becoming in light of the path? For instance, walking obediently, walking repeatedly in obedience will actually make obedience seem natural to you because now you are becoming an obedient person by being obedient on a daily basis.

Repeated lust, on the other hand, will train your eyes to instinctively wander. Repeated sloth will train you to accept weakness and excuses. Repeated outrage will train you to become easily offended like a Karen.

Repeated dishonesty will make lying advantageous to you. You'll have situational ethics. Well, I need to lie in this situation because it gets me something. In that situation, it doesn't. So it must be good here, bad there.

That's what being dishonest over time does to you. It makes you question reality and to live with a morality that God did not give you. On the other hand, repeated prayer causes you actually to have a trust in who owns the world.