God's (True) Two-Step

Brandon J. Ray

Graduate Sunday • Sermon • Submitted 6 years ago

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Presentation of the Graduates

Brittany Boggs

Keaton Currey

Jacob Pruett

Lauren Hambright

Audra Kennedy

Kaylie McCarty

Jacob Pruett

Prayer over the Graduates

Father,

Student Read

Proverbs 4:20–27 ESV

20 My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. 21 Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart. 22 For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh. 23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. 24 Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. 25 Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. 26 Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. 27 Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.

There is a proverb that goes “Make the bad people good, and the good people nice.” It is supposed to be a prayer for children that makes the point that there are details of our actual character that are small enough that slip through the cracks of God’s law and his prophets. When you pick up the book of Proverbs, like we are doing this Graduate Sunday, you are swimming in this realm - the realm of details. Proverbs deals with how a person manages their time, money, affairs, and themselves. It deals with what it is like to live with a person or work with someone.

Proverbs asks things like “hey dude, you with great character, do you talk too much?” Or, “hey, happy camper - why are you so unbearable in the morning? Just stop singing and dancing - you’re making that racket while I’m trying to sleep!”

The main aim of Proverbs, the question that Proverbs serves up is this: “Is this wisdom or folly?”

That’s the shape of the book. It’s meant to rummage around and step on your toes. It’s meant to get up in your business and convict your heart because how you actually live. Proverbs is your dentist telling you to floss. It’s your doctor telling you you’ve put on some pounds and you need to lay off sweets. It’s your teacher telling you that your reading level is a three grades behind or that you subtracted when you should have divided. It’s your wife telling you that you’ve lost that fire for her. Proverbs is your coach calling for sweat to prove your effort. It’s your financial advisor telling you that the new Jet Ski you bought was not the best move.

In particular, graduates, this passage in caught my heart because in its structure it tells of a simple plan for your spiritual health, constitution, and vitality. Truth is the people who make real differences in this world are not people who become proficient and master many, many things, rather it is those who’ve been mastered by one thing.

I love how John Piper puts this idea, “[Student] If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on into eternity, you don’t need to have a high IQ. You don’t have to have good looks or riches or come from a fine family or a fine school. Instead you have to know a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things - or one great all-embracing thing - and be set on fire by them.”

My hope as we look at this passage is that the Holy Spirit would set this simple truth on fire deep within you - and He would sling you into the this world like David slung that pebble into Goliath. That you would be used of God to impact, for His glory, your friends, professors, family, and this church or another that you will join wherever God may take you.

Transition: so this sermon is entitled ________________ and it only has two points (1) Listen and (2) Obey. :

Proverbs 4:20–22 ESV

(v20) -

1:8 Listening to parents is one aspect of honoring them, which is an abiding principle (; ). Within the church we are now to have specifically Christian instruction of children (). The archetype for this obedient listening is found in the relation of the Son of God to the Father ().

(v22) -

Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume Proverbs 4:20–27

Food: For they are life unto those that find them, v. 22. As the spiritual life was begun by the word as the instrument of it, so by the same word it is still nourished and maintained. We could not live without it; we may by faith live upon it.

Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume Proverbs 4:20–27

They are a medicine to all their flesh (so the word is), to all their corruptions, for they are called flesh, to all their grievances, which are as thorns in the flesh. There is in the word of God a proper remedy for all our spiritual maladies.

(v23) -

Deuteronomy 4:9 ESV

9 “Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children—

deu 4:9

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Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume Proverbs 4:20–27

We must maintain a holy jealousy of ourselves, and set a strict guard, accordingly, upon all the avenues of the soul; keep our hearts from doing hurt and getting hurt, from being defiled by sin and disturbed by trouble; keep them as our jewel, as our vineyard; keep a conscience void of offence; keep out bad thoughts; keep up good thoughts; keep the affections upon right objects and in due bounds. Keep them with all keepings (so the word is); there are many ways of keeping things—by care, by strength, by calling in help, and we must use them all in keeping our hearts; and all little enough, so deceitful are they, Jer. 17:9.

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Jeremiah 17:9 ESV

9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

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Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume Proverbs 4:20–27

in general, all the actions of the life flow from the heart, and therefore keeping that is making the tree good and healing the springs. Our lives will be regular or irregular, comfortable or uncomfortable, according as our hearts are kept or neglected.

‘the issues of life flow from the heart’

(v26-27)

2:13 The path of righteousness is ultimately that of Jesus Christ, the perfectly Righteous One (). All other ways lead to destruction (; ).

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