Proverbs 4 - Influence and Direction

Well, Ahoyo Gozai Masu. That is my greeting for today. Ahoyo Gozai Masu.

And I said it faster. You did. I tried to practice this.

And that is Japanese for good morning, not for hello. I think that's konnichiwa. That's hello.

So I looked that up. And so Ahoyo Gozai... No, I already got it once.

So we'll just go with that. I got it.

If you missed it the first time, go back, re-watch.

Yes, yeah. Go back and you can find the greeting from the very first time. Well, good morning to everybody getting on.

Good morning to Terry and others that are getting on right now. And I've got an itch on my nose. So give me a second.

That's really bad. Are you supposed to say that on camera? That you have an itching nose?

It just started itching.

You're real.

I'm just trying to...

Real people.

Just trying to help you.

Real podcasts.

Real people, real podcasts, real nosy itches. All right. Hello to Andra.

Hello to Terry and others getting on. And hopefully you can hear us okay. Maybe somebody just put in the comments that you can hear us all right this morning, doing a little bit of a different setup.

And so maybe somebody can type in, we can hear you. Oh, salutations. Carlos, can you hear me okay?

If you can, that'd be great to know. If you can't, then type no, I can't hear you.

We've got thumbs up.

Okay, there's, does that mean those are all good?

Those are all good.

Okay, in the social media world, Bryon is our local social media expert and he knows all of the...

Tricks of the trade?

Tricks of the trade, yes. He knows it all. So anyway, well, good morning to you and I hope you're doing well on this Tuesday morning, beautiful day here in Moses Lake.

And I know it's probably already in the sixties and gonna be up near the eighties, supposed to be in the eighties today, tomorrow and Thursday. So looking forward to some warmer weather and Bryon's wearing his warm weather t-shirt, Batman t-shirt.

I'm in my golf polo, even though I'm not golfing today. That's okay. But anyway, we appreciate Bryon filling in yesterday.

He did a great job yesterday. Where is that? Yesterday we learned, take an inventory on where we're investing our life and our thoughts and our finances.

And I was encouraged by that. So thanks for filling in. I was celebrating Hannah's birthday.

And so I want to say happy birthday to my wife. It was yesterday, but this is my most favorite week of the year to be able to invest and tell her happy birthday every day. And so happy birthday to Hannah again.

So you can go tell her happy birthday every day this week. Just pick a day, tell her happy birthday on it. It's okay.

And it's a good week. So happy birthday to Hannah. If you're watching this morning, we got to spend some time with her parents came in yesterday.

And so that's why Bryon filled in and then, let's see. And then we went to dinner last night. We got to take her on a date, a dinner date, birthday date, came home and the kids had decorated the house and threw her a surprise birthday party.

So that was really cool. And then we roasted marshmallows out behind the house with our little, she got me a little campfire fire pit.

Nice.

So we did that, so that was good last night. But anyway, hope your week's going well, hope your day's going good. Let's go to Proverbs 4 this morning.

That's where we're going to be.

And the entire, really the entire chapter of Proverbs, the entire book of Proverbs, we've gone through this, is addressing those four individuals, the wise, the foolish, the simple, the scorner, and of course the instruction from Solomon to his son,

which I believe Solomon inherited a lot of this from his own father. I think David instilled a lot of these things in him.

Of course, we know that God gave him, Solomon, some wisdom and he would go on to write, I think it's, I think 4,000 Proverbs through, not only the book of Proverbs, but Ecclesiastes and there's something else that he is... Son of Solomon?

Yes, Son of Solomon. Thank you.

Duh.

It has his name in it. And anyway, I was going to say Lamentations, but that's Jeremiah. So anyway, they all are just, again, principles to live by.

And I want to preface the study, and I know we've been trying to do this, not necessarily every day, but a little bit.

But you can't look at the book of Proverbs and say, well, that's a rule, that's 100% guarantee, because it's not the book of Proverbs. A Proverb is a saying, an influencer, and something to live by.

And so it's principles that God gave Solomon that are kind of the more often than not, the large percentage of these things take place.

And so, of course, we've been in Proverbs 1, 2, and 3, and today we're gonna go to Proverbs chapter number 4, and we're gonna actually do the entire chapter.

And the entire chapter has to do with two words, influence and direction, influence and direction. And we're not gonna read the whole chapter, really just wanna highlight a few verses going through it and catch a couple of words to help us with this.

But I wanna start with the end of the chapter, all right? So we're gonna just gonna read verses, not even talk about them. We're gonna start at the end and go back to the beginning.

So Proverbs chapter four, and you can go to verse number 23, a well-known verse, all right? It says this, keep thy heart with all diligence for, or for, we would use the word because, because out of it are the issues of life.

Keep, protect, guard thy heart with all diligence because out of it are the issues of life. And then notice verse number 26. Solomon wrote this, ponder the path of thy feet and let all thy ways be established.

Ponder, think about, think about the path of your feet and let all your ways be established. Let it be a direction that you know you're going. All right, so those two verses, we're gonna end on those.

Let's go back to verse number one. All right, verse number one, it says this, it says, hear ye children the instruction of a father and attend to understanding, attend to understanding.

The word attend, you think about attending something, attend, you mean you're there, it means you're present, maybe that would be a word, attendance.

But the definition of the word attend in this passage, it means to turn your ear up to, it means to tune in. And so here's Solomon, he's writing, hey, I want you to tune in to what I'm about to give you.

All right, now, skip down to verse number, let's see, verse number four. Verse number four, it's this, he taught me also, so saying I've learned some things, here's what I've learned.

He taught me also and said unto me, let thine heart retain my words, keep my commandments and live. So retain my words to hold to and hold closely, keep to guard.

So basically Solomon's saying, hey, the principles I'm giving you, the principles that were given to me, turn your ear up to them, keep them, attend unto them.

All right, now skip down to verse number 10, it says this, Here, O my son, and receive my sayings, and the years of thy life shall be many. I have taught thee in the way of wisdom, I have led thee in right paths.

Notice verse 12, When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straightened, and when thou runnest, thou shall not stumble. Take fast hold of instruction, let her not go, keep her, for she is thy life.

You could go through a lot of the verses in Proverbs chapter number four, and really Solomon's just hitting on this. What's the main influence in your life? Hey, let wisdom, let God's wisdom be the biggest influence into your life.

Let it be the thing that gives you direction, let it be the thing that gives you instruction, let God's wisdom be that which determines your direction.

And I think if you and I are honest, there's a lot of things that we allow to direct our lives or to influence our lives that shouldn't be. I know that we live in a day and age when a lot of people are driven.

I think about politically, you know, everybody letting politics influence their life and direct their life. I think about a lot of people who allow media and popular things that are coming on to influence a life and to direct a life.

But here's God saying through Solomon, let wisdom, let her be the thing that influences your life or directs your life. What do you think about that?

Yeah, I think even the term influencer as a title or as a job description for people has really popped up. I don't think they had any influencers when you were a kid.

There are literally tens of thousands of people who would call themselves influencers as their job title nowadays. I think of one of these in particular that was as an early teen, built up a huge social media following.

Now, she has really influenced a lot of people because she's not following God. Her parents didn't encourage her in God's way at all and she's not pursuing that. So now, she's leading tons of people in ways contrary to God's law.

And I think with so many things in both Hollywood and then nowadays with social media, there are so many people that can influence us of, man, I want to be just like, you know, name whatever person you will.

I want to be just like Tom Brady on the sports side of things. I want to be just like Hugh Jackman on the either musical side of things or acting side of things. People can have so many things that they want to follow.

They want to pursue. They'll do their hair like the person. They will do the actions of the person.

But we need to, just as Solomon's telling his son here, make wisdom the thing that you're following, that you're pursuing.

You know, if ever a social media influencer is doing a live, kind of like our podcast, if they're doing a live, their fans want to tune in. They want to hear everything they say on every topic.

Why don't we do that with the word of God and let wisdom be our influence?

Yeah, and that's that. You said tune in. That's that word attend.

That's what it is, attend, tune in to this. And then, you know, so the first part, and again, we don't have time to dig in to all of these verses, but go read chapter 4, go read Proverbs 4.

You're going to discover Solomon saying, hey, what is your biggest influence? What is influencing you? All right, now skip down to verse number 18.

He says, but the path of the just is as a shining light that shineth more and more into the perfect day. The way of the wicked is as darkness. They know not at what they stumble.

My son, attend, there's that word again, attend to my words, incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine heart. Keep them in the midst of thine heart, for they are life unto those that find them and health to all their flesh.

And then we find the two verses where we started. Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. That keep thy heart is guard, protect what is influencing your heart.

Why? Because from out of your heart flows the direction of your life. So, here's a question I would have, and I'll let you answer it, and you might answer it contradictory to what I'm about to say, but I don't know.

Here's the question I have. How do we tell, how do we tell, how do we take inventory, like you were talking about yesterday, how do we take inventory as to what is the influencer, the biggest influencer of my life? What do you think?

How does a person do that?

First thought was first John, by your fruits ye shall know them. So we would know as we examine our own lives, okay, what's showing up in my life?

Is it the Galatians 5 list of all of these things that works in the flesh, or is it the latter part of Galatians 5 is the fruit of the spirit showing up in my life? Kind of looking at that, okay, what are the things that are manifesting in my life?

That would give me an indication of what path I'm on.

Yeah, so that's basically, you didn't contradict me, good job. That's what I'm gonna tell you, is here's how we can determine the direction of our, or the influence of our life. We have to look at what's the direction of my life.

Now, we all know where we want to be, right? I mean, and Bryon here, I'll use Bryon as an example, because he's here this morning, married a year and we're almost two years, right?

Almost two years, brand new baby, you know, so a baby who's a year and a month old, year and two months old about right now. And so his direction, he can think, all right, my direction is I wanna, you know, we're gonna have more kids eventually.

My direction is, I know Bryon's heart is in church planting someday. My direction, so here's my direction that we can, I'm not talking about that direction of vision for the future.

I'm talking about, if you look back over the last, let's say 18 months, what decisions have you made that have determined the direction of your life? What direction have you gone over the last 18 months? Are you growing closer to the Lord?

Or is your relationship with the Lord becoming something that's a little distant? Is there hindrances in it?

That's what I mean by judging the direction, because if we can assess the direction of our life, we can be able to tell what's the biggest influence in our life. That's where these verses go together, verse 23 and verse 27.

Keep your heart with all diligence, because out of it are the issues of life. Ponder the path of your feet. Ponder the path of your feet.

And then that last part, it says, and let all thy ways be established. Established is let it be chosen, let it be known, let it be a direction that you choose.

And so the entire challenge today, and again, I hate jumping through an entire chapter like this. I hate doing that, but we would be in Proverbs literally for the entire year if we didn't do something like this.

The challenge I want to give you this morning is a very simple thought. Today, assess what is influencing your life and what is the direction of your life.

And if you look and the direction is a direction of some, again, not talking about the futuristic direction, but if it's a direction of, you know what, I look back at my decisions and the line of my decisions over the last few months and I have to

admit I'm not growing closer to the Lord, then I need to look and say, well, what's influencing my life? What is the main influence of my life?

And influence and direction should be important to us because, and I should have that desire to guard my heart. Why? Because my heart determines the direction.

Out of it are the issues of life, the direction, the decisions of life. So ponder the path of thy feet and let all thy ways be established, let it be something that you truly choose. Influence and direction.

And so I want to encourage you today just to assess where you're at and ask the Lord, God help me. Help me to let you be the biggest influence in my life. And God help me to go the direction every day that you want.

Help today's direction to be influenced by the wisdom of God. Any last thoughts?

No, just encouragement. Really, every time we go into Proverbs, the blessings that come from this.

It isn't like a shame thing of if you've been on the wrong path, you're a terrible person, but it's hey, God wants to bring you back into this healthy, fruitful relationship with him and not on some other path that'll lead to, in other chapters, all

this destruction and everything that takes place. He wants you to be in a healthy, fruitful relationship.

Yep, so true. So today, evaluate influence and evaluate your direction. And I think it'll be a help to us.

So look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning at 9.30. Have a wonderful day.