You’re Invited

Sermon Transcript

I get invited to a decent number of weddings. Most of the time anymore that’s because I’m officiating them, but I also enjoy the rarer times someone is getting married, I’m not officiating the wedding, but they still invite me. I count it an honor every time, and unless it’s really far away, I generally try to do what I can to attend. On the other hand, I sometimes get invitations by which I feel less honored. We usually call these less desirable types of invitations “advertisements”. While I was writing this sermon I got a phone call that my phone said was from Jamaica. I’m thinking, “Ok; Jamaica; interesting. Colton’s from the Bahamas but his girlfriend is from Jamaica; could he be calling me from there and need something?” 10 more seconds of reflection probably would have resulted in my concluding that was very unlikely, but the phone was already ringing, so I picked it up, and guess what? It wasn’t Colton. Instead it was someone from some kind of worldwide lottery, and while I hung up pretty much immediately, I’m guessing he had some kind of invitation for me: To enter the lottery, or maybe even to come collect the lottery prize I’d already won!

 

As we get into Proverbs 9 today, we are going to see that however many weddings you happen to get invited to, and whether you’re wiser than I about which calls you answer, you are in fact being invited to two different houses for two different meals that yield two very different results. Throughout chapters 1-9 Solomon, the author of Proverbs, has been inviting his son into a life of wisdom, and through him, God has been inviting all of us into a life of wisdom. But he’s also warned us that there are other voices out there that want to lure us from the path of wisdom. In chapter 9, that all comes to a head with the personification of wisdom and folly as two women, and guess what? They both want you. Whose invitation will you accept? You will not be undecided forever. The older you get, the more your life will take a certain direction; in fact, you’re already moving in a certain direction. And today, wisdom and folly are both still inviting you. So accept the invitation of wisdom because it’s an invitation to life, not all are invited, and the only alternative is death.

 

It’s an invitation to life

 

Our passage begins in verse 1 with a description of wisdom. Chapter 8 began using this poetic device of personifying wisdom as a woman, and it continues here. Now we read she has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts, she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table. A few things we learn about wisdom already: Wisdom works hard, wisdom is stable, and wisdom is pleasurable. Wisdom is personified here as one woman, and she has built her own house! I doubt most of us in this room put together, men and women, could build one house; wisdom built it by herself. Not only that, but she erected seven pillars. Pillars beautify buildings, but they also stabilize them. Seven in the Bible is the number of completeness, so this house is fully stabilized. It’s not going anywhere. We continue to see her hard work in that she has slaughtered beasts, mixed wine, and set the table. She is not just trying to feed people to meet their basic needs; she is working hard to host people, to delight people. And so wisdom is also pleasurable. She could have filled the stomachs of guests with plain bread; instead, she’s serving meat, a rare treat in the ancient world, as well as mixed wine. In chapter 8 the forbidden woman tempts the simple by appealing to the simple’s senses, but that doesn’t make the senses inherently evil. Wisdom also offers sensible pleasures, and by the end of the passage we’ll see they are of an even better sort than those offered by folly.

 

We can continue to see the fruits of wisdom’s hard work in that she has young women to send out in verse 3. These young women would be servants, and you only have servants typically if you’ve first worked hard enough yourself to hire others. Wisdom has built her house, she’s stabilized it, she’s prepared a rich feast, and now she’s sent out her young women to invite people to the feast, and look who she invites: “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here.” You don’t have to already be wise to get wisdom; you just have to be simple. The simple in Proverbs are the untaught; fools are those who have been taught, but have despised the wisdom they’ve been taught. So what does it sound like to be simple? It’s to admit that when it comes to living in God’s world, you don’t have a clue, and that can be scary to admit. How many of you would be eager to go to your boss at work and say, “Hey I’ve gotta tell you, I have no idea how to do this job I was hired to do”? Well this is telling us that to those who look to God and say, “Hey I’ve gotta tell you, I have no idea how to do this job you created me to do,” God says, “You’re just the kind of person I’m looking for! Turn in here! Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.” As Tim Keller has put it, to come to God all you need is need; all you need is nothing.

 

But in verse 6 wisdom does make clear that you must leave your simple ways behind to turn to it. Wisdom didn’t build her house on Simple St. To get to it, you have to turn off the familiar road of simplicity that you have known. The ESV footnote there indicates that could also be translated “the company of the simple”; accepting the invitation of wisdom will also mean there will be people with whom you won’t spend as much time. There is a certain way you’ve been accustomed to living and a group of people who you lived that way with who cheered you on in your simplicity, and who insist on remaining simple themselves. So if you want to enjoy the meat, the bread, and the wine that wisdom offers, you have to be willing to leave behind your former way of life, both the things you did and the people with whom you did them.

 

Why would you do such a thing? Maybe you’d do such a thing because you’re finally ready to be honest that the way you’ve been living isn’t working. But in many cases, we live the way we live and keep the company we keep because on some level, we like it. Why leave it? Because what wisdom is offering to us is life: Leave your simple ways, and live, verse 6 says. You say, “Pretty sure I’m already alive,” but do you see what wisdom is saying here? It’s saying you don’t really know what it’s like to live. Granted you do exist in your simplicity, but you aren’t really living until you accept the invitation of wisdom. That used to be a saying people would use: “You haven’t really lived until you’ve…” tried a certain food, traveled to a certain place, enjoyed a certain experience, and that’s what wisdom is saying here: You haven’t really lived until you’ve come to my house, with its seven pillars and its carefully prepared meat and wine. Come, simple ones, get a taste of real life.

 

And what would that actually look like? Verse 6 finally demystifies the poetry for us: Walk in the way of insight. You’ve been walking in the way of simplicity, the way of “Who can really say what’s good or evil?” and “How can we know whether the Bible is true?” and “How could there be just one true religion?” always asking questions, never landing on answers, and so remaining aimless in life. Now wisdom is saying, “Come, get answers. They aren’t only true; they’re good. You haven’t really lived until you’ve tried them. Don’t get me wrong: You’ll have to leave everything behind to walk in this new way, but if you do, you will truly live.”

 

Don’t miss in what part of Proverbs this invitation comes either. We’re in the last chapter of a major section of Proverbs that takes up all of chapters 1-9. In chapter 10, the proverbs themselves begin, those short, pithy sayings that distill wisdom down into a way that can be remembered and passed on. The hard work has been done; the simple do not have to navigate the world and write their own proverbs! Wisdom herself, personified in chapter 8, was there like a master workman when God made all things through her. There is a reality outside of us that was made in wisdom, and wisdom has now done the work through Solomon and the other authors we will meet in the coming chapters to reveal that reality and how you can live in accordance with it through the proverbs. So come to the feast. Accept the invitation. Walk in the way of insight revealed in the Proverbs and really in the entire Bible, and live. What simple ways do you need to leave behind to do that? What simple company do you need to get some distance from to do that?

 

Accept the invitation of wisdom because it’s an invitation to life, and accept the invitation because not all are invited.

 

Not all are invited

 

On the one hand, the invitation of wisdom is incredibly broad and inclusive: Whoever is simple, let him turn in here! You don’t need to be a certain gender, a certain ethnicity, a certain educational level, a certain income level, a certain level of moral goodness, a certain age—there’s an open invitation to whoever is simple to come to wisdom’s feast. All you need is need, all you need is nothing, but in verse 7 we begin to see that there are some who don’t have nothing. In other words, if you think you have something, you’ve ruled yourself out of the invitation, and the scoffers are exhibit A of those who think they have something. You can see that when you try to correct a scoffer, verse 7 says: Whoever corrects a scoffer gets abuse. Why? Because the scoffer doesn’t need wisdom, the scoffer thinks. But not only does the scoffer think he doesn’t need wisdom; he mocks wisdom! So he doesn’t just say to the one who corrects him, “No thanks; I’ll pass”—he abuses the one who corrects him! If you reprove such a man, you won’t be just wasting your time; you will be actively incurring injury, verse 7 goes on to say.

 

Remember we said that the simple are the uninstructed, whereas the foolish are those who have rejected instruction. Well, in Proverbs, the only character type that is worse than a fool is a scoffer. The fool is the one who rejects correction, but the scoffer goes further and shoots the messenger. The fool despises instruction; the scoffer mocks it. The scoffer, to use another phrase from Proverbs, is wise in his own eyes. He thinks he’s got this all figured out, and so exalts himself to the position of actually standing in judgment on wisdom. He looks down on it, and so dismissively mocks it. To use modern terms, we might say the scoffer is the cynic. The scoffer thinks he’s seen through everything, and so from a smug position of superiority can look down on it and mock it.

 

And man, we live in a cynical age. It’s the spirit of the modern age to be suspicious of all claims to truth, goodness, and beauty, and in the West to be especially suspicious of the Bible and Christian truth. Not that our unbelieving flesh needed the help, but to the degree we are conformed to the pattern of the world in this way, it can lead us to see someone raising their hands and expressing joy in song, and instead of following their lead, to pull back and question their motives. It can lead us to hear someone say something like, “God is good” and think, “Oh come on; you’re just saying that because you know it’s what you’re supposed to say.” It can lead us to see the tears of joy in someone reflecting on their salvation, or the tears of sorrow in someone grieving their sin, and think, “Ok that’s a bit much now isn’t it?” It can lead us to hear that we may eat of every tree of the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and think, “Oh really? God’s probably just saying that because he knows that if we eat of it, our eyes will be opened, and we will become like him, knowing good and evil.” Brothers and sisters, that was a lie the first time Satan spoke it, and it still is. That attitude of cynicism toward the things of God is not a muscle you want to strengthen; it’s a muscle you want to kill. Let it grow to full strength and it will turn you into a scoffer.

 

And what do scoffers do when you try to correct them? They abuse you. There are people you correct who listen, prayerfully consider it, and, if convinced that the correction is valid, repent (that’s wise), there are people you correct who don’t receive it and kinda just start distancing themselves from you (that’s foolish), and then there are people you correct who lash out at you and start uttering all kinds of evil about you to anyone who will listen (that’s the scoffer). So what’s the wise response to that reality? Verse 8: Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you. Of course, it is hard to know ahead of time who is a scoffer and who is not, so typically the way you find out is you try to share wisdom with them and see how they respond. Consider your unbelieving co-workers, neighbors, family, or friends. If you go to share the gospel with one of them and the person responds by lashing out at you and uttering all kinds of evil about you to others, you must continue loving them, but it is generally not wise to keep forcing the gospel into your conversations with that person. Jesus told his disciples when he sent them out that if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town (Matt 10:14). Even within the church, we are told with someone who stirs up division: After warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him (Titus 3:10). This is why we should even go so far as to remove someone from the membership of our church as an act of church discipline: At some point we have to acknowledge that this person refuses to be corrected, though we should be patient in reaching that conclusion.

 

On the other hand, you should reprove a wise man. It’s interesting here that not only is the scoffer not invited to wisdom’s house, but the wise also are not. Why is that? Well, the wise are already there. I don’t invite my wife and kids to thanksgiving dinner; they live in my house. But lest that leave you to think the wise don’t have anything to learn from proverbs, or have no room to be corrected, Solomon tells us here to reprove a wise man, and he will love you for it! One thing the wisest people know is just how much wisdom they still lack, and so they are characterized by a thirst for more wisdom, and a love even of being told they are wrong. The wise don’t love being wrong, and that’s precisely why they love being told they are wrong, because then they can actually change their beliefs or behavior and grow in wisdom!

 

The obvious difference between the scoffer and the wise, then, is how they respond to correction. But the root of that different response is in verse 10: The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. A similar statement appeared at the very beginning of Proverbs, and here he comes back to it at the end of this section. This is really the heart of the matter. The one who fears the LORD is the one who fears the consequences of rejecting his wisdom, yes, but it’s also the one who loves the LORD, who believes that the LORD is the ultimate reality outside of himself, that not only exists, but is good, and so trusts what he says about the reality of the world he made and how to live in it. The scoffer wants to see through everything, and so even tries to see through the LORD, and sits over him as a mocker. The wise recognize that the LORD is the one reality beneath all reality, the bottom on which everything else rests, and once you see him, there is no more seeing through. As C.S. Lewis has written, “You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.”

 

And not only can you not see through the LORD once you see him; you don’t need to. He is good. Look at verse 11: By him, by his wisdom, your days will be multiplied, and years will be added to your life. The earlier invitation of wisdom called us to a certain quality of life; here we see that wisdom also brings a certain quantity to life. That’s life in the fullest sense: Solids joys and lasting treasures. And if you believe that’s what a better perception of reality offers, you’ll love correction. Unlike the scoffer, the wise actually believe there is a good reality outside them, and so it is less important to them to be affirmed in what they already believe and how they are already living, and more important to them to rightly perceive that reality outside them and live in accordance with it.

 

If you are wise then, you will benefit yourself, verse 12 says, and if you scoff, you alone will bear it. God is God; he doesn’t need you to be wise, and you cannot hurt him through your scoffing. He doesn’t need your wisdom, but you do. You can’t injure him by scoffing, but you will injure yourself through it. Don’t uninvite yourself to wisdom’s feast by scoffing at it. Don’t shoot the messenger who tries to tell you you’re wrong. Learn to love wise correction. Accept the invitation of wisdom to a lifetime of continuing to grow in wisdom. And, finally, accept the invitation of wisdom because the only alternative is death.

 

The only alternative is death

 

In Proverbs we’ve met a couple different female personifications: Obviously in this passage there is lady wisdom, but in past chapters, especially chapters 5-7, there was the “forbidden woman”. And we saw there that while the forbidden woman has a specifically sexual connotation, she also represents temptation in general. Well here in verse 13 the sexual connotation fades almost entirely away and the woman represents folly in general: Her name is even woman folly. I’ll just note in passing, then, that the female gender is not meant in Proverbs to necessarily connote folly. These personified women are poetic devices anyway, and wisdom is just as feminine as folly. No doubt Solomon wants his son to marry a wise woman rather than a foolish woman and that women should strive to be wise and not foolish, but the bigger point of these images is to depict wisdom and folly.

 

With that said, let’s look at woman folly. Interestingly, though wisdom gave a speech in chapter 8, we don’t hear of her talking in chapter 9. The image we get is she’s too busy building her house, erecting her pillars, and preparing the feast. But the woman folly is not a hard worker. Instead, she’s a talker. 1 Timothy 5 in the New Testament talks about actual female widows, and it describes the wise ones as those who have set their hope on God and continue in supplications and prayers night and day, who have a reputation for good works, who have brought up children, shown hospitality, washed the feet of the saints, cared for the afflicted, and devoted themselves to every good work (1 Tim 5:5, 10). Sounds wise, right? Listen to how it describes the foolish widows: They learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not (1 Tim 5:13). Instead of working, they spend their days talking. That’s the image we’re getting here of folly. Not only does she talk a lot, but she knows nothing the text tells us! She’s not spreading wisdom with her words; it’s just a lot of hot air.

 

She doesn’t work, so of course she has no female servants. We read nothing of her slaughtering animals or mixing wine. She’s a full-time marketer of herself. And she too issues a nice, broad invitation, that begins almost identically to wisdom’s: Whoever is simple, let him turn in here! She’s inclusive; doesn’t that sound nice? And what does she offer? No meat, no wine. All she’s got is water and bread, which might not sound very appealing on the surface, but notice what is appealing about it in verse 17: It’s not just any water; it’s stolen water. And it’s not just any bread; it’s secret bread. She can’t offer the solid joys and lasting treasure of wisdom. Her house isn’t built on seven pillars, and she has no meat or wine. So what can she offer? Only the thrill of transgression.

 

Augustine was a fourth century Christian who wrote a book called Confessions, and in the Oxford World’s Classics publication of it, there is a picture of a man on the cover, ostensibly Augustine, weeping, ostensibly over his sins, and behind him there is a pear tree. The pear tree appears on the cover because one of the most famous stories in the book is the story Augustine tells of a time when he was sixteen and on break from school. Here is his confession, translated from the original Latin by Henry Chadwick: “I stole something which I had in plenty and of much better quality. My desire was to enjoy not what I sought by stealing but merely the excitement of thieving and the doing of what was wrong. There was a pear tree near our vineyard laden with fruit, though attractive in neither color nor taste. To shake the fruit off the tree and carry off the pears, I and a gang of naughty adolescents set off late at night after (in our usual pestilential way) we had continued our game in the streets. We carried off a huge load of pears. But they were not for our feasts but merely to throw at pigs. Even if we ate a few, nevertheless our pleasure lay in doing what was not allowed.”

 

The simple aren’t hungry; they don’t need bread and water. In fact, they’re being offered meat, bread, and wine at the house of wisdom. But the one thing woman Folly offers that wisdom doesn’t is transgression, or what Augustine calls the pleasure in doing what was not allowed. He had plenty of pears; he had better pears, and yet he stole these pears. Why? Because he wasn’t allowed to. Why is stolen water sweet? Because it isn’t yours. Augustine and the Bible recognized what we all must recognize: We don’t sin to get what we genuinely need, and we don’t sin because we’ve been sinned against; we sin because we’re sinners. Why else would stolen water have any appeal? I’ve got news for you: The water itself tastes just like every other kind of water. There is no such thing as sweet water! Water contains zero sugar, no matter where you get it from. But this water will taste sweet, woman folly says, because it was stolen.

 

That’s what she says, but don’t miss what she doesn’t say. Remember that she makes the same invitation as wisdom in verse 16: Whoever is simple, let him turn in here. But she never says, “Leave your simple ways.” What’s the message? You can have it all! Sure, you have to turn in here, but you don’t have to leave anything behind! You see how that can’t be true? You can’t turn off a path and stay on it at the same time, but one of Satan’s devices is to hide that fact from you. God advertises the cost up front: Leave your simple ways. Jesus told everyone who followed him to count the cost before doing so and made that cost very clear, but that’s exactly what Satan does not want you to do! He’s a false advertiser. He’s got no real product; all he has is the same water and bread you can get anywhere else with the added thrill of transgression, and he makes it sound like it will cost you nothing! At woman Folly’s house, you can have your cake and eat it too.

 

Except, of course, you can’t. Wisdom has the last word in our passage as it reveals the reality of the situation: The dead are there; her guests are in the depths of Sheol. Her house is nothing special; a stiff wind would knock it over. But man, she markets it well. So she gets the simple in, and there’s no real feast prepared. All she has is some bread and water, but guess what? She stole it. It’s all quite the thrill, and then she opens the door to the basement, takes you down, and guess what’s down there? Corpse after corpse after corpse, and guess who’s next? You are. That’s the alternative to the invitation of wisdom. She’s not advertising that part; Satan never tell you that part of the story, drug dealers never advertise addiction, poverty, hospitalization, and broken families, but make no mistake about it: That’s where it leads.

 

Maybe you feel simple today; be aware that you cannot stay simple forever. You will not stay simple forever; it’s just a fact. Especially the older you get, the more your life will take a certain direction. Kids, right now you live in your parents’ house and for the most part probably have to live by your parents’ rules, but as you grow, and especially as you transition out of your parents’ house, you will have to choose your path, and all of us here today have only two real options: Wisdom or folly, life or death. And the problem we have is that stolen water is in fact sweet to our taste buds, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. Who here today cannot join Augustine in his confession that we sin because we are sinners? And who, then, can rescue us from the house of folly and bring us into the house of wisdom?

 

When Jesus Christ was on earth, as he was preparing to die, he said, “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.” 5 Thomas [one of his disciples] said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Do you see what God has done? He’s built a new road. He’s made a new road from the house of folly to the house of wisdom, and Jesus is the road! Jesus didn’t simply remain in heaven and say, “Come to the house of wisdom”; we never would have come if that’s all he did! Instead he came to us, walked in the way of insight that we’d abandoned, and then went down into death, bearing the penalty for our sins, and from death, from the depths of Sheol, he rose to new life, and ascended into heaven, into the house of wisdom, thus paving the new path from death to life for all who would come to him. He has prepared a place for us there, and he promises to come again to take us there. Jesus is the only way any of us can get to the house of wisdom.

 

And so he too has sent out his messengers, first his apostles, and now all his disciples, to issue his call: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rives of living water’” (John 7:37-38). Jesus offers something so much better than the artificial sweeteners of stolen water. Jesus offers living water, real life, in a heavenly home that cannot be shaken. Turn from your folly, turn from your simple ways, and accept his invitation today. Get off the fence; you can’t stay on it forever. Then go from here and issue his invitation to your neighbors, co-workers, friends, and family. Pray, send, support, and consider going yourself to the end of the earth with this invitation. It’s an invitation to life, real life, lasting life, and its only alternative is death. As John Newton put it in one of his hymns:

“Vain indeed the worldling’s treasure

All his boasted pomp and show

Solid joys and lasting treasure

None but Zion’s children know.”