Words about the Word - Neil Bennett - First Baptist Church
CHOOSING THE
RIGHT WAY
The baseball great, Yogi Berra, had a number of famous quotes about choosing your path in life:
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it!”
“You gotta be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”
“I know we’re lost, but we’re making great time!”
That last quote seems to perfectly describe people in our modern world who are without God in their lives today. They are lost but making great time as they hurtle toward their eternal destiny, unaware that they are on the wrong path! But God loves us and wants to help us find our way. In the biblical book of Proverbs, God offers us wisdom about choosing the right way and avoiding the wrong ways in our lives. Proverbs 14 speaks of three ways we can choose.
THE DEVIOUS WAY
“Whoever walks in uprightness fears the Lord, but he who is devious in his ways despises him.” (Proverbs 14:2, ESV)
To walk in uprightness means to stay on the the right path. This is the person who knows what the Lord wants him to do, and he does it. As the Lord told Joshua: “Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:7, ESV) We would do well to remember the words of the old song, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back…”
Proverbs 14:2 also declares that the person who is devious in his ways despises the Lord. The word translated “devious” means crooked or twisted. It means diverting from the right path. It’s when someone deliberately says, “I know God wants me to go this way, but I’m going to go another way.” You may remember the story of Jonah. When the Lord commanded him to go and preach to the wicked city of Ninevah, Jonah instead tried to hop on a boat headed in the opposite direction. The Bible says he tried to flee “away from the presence of the Lord.” If you know the story, you know how that turned out for him!
The way you take will lead you to love and fear the Lord or to utterly despise him. The ‘despising’ may be unconscious, but it is real. Every departure from God’s path is pitting your will against God’s will, exalting your judgment over his, ultimately despising him and rejecting his way. The devious way will lead you far from God. But there is a way back. It is the discerning way.
THE DISCERNING
WAY
“The wisdom of the prudent is to discern his way, but the folly of fools is deceiving.” (Proverbs 14:8, ESV)
When this verse speaks of a wise person discerning his way, it means that this is a person who takes stock of their own life choices. To discern your way means that you look at where you have been and you think about where you are going.
Dr. Emil Turner, who was formerly the Director of the Arkansas Baptist Convention tells of stopping in a coffee shop with Dr. Cal Guy, who was then a professor at Southwestern Baptist Seminary. These two preachers order their breakfast and they noticed that their waitress had a name tag with the name, “Jerusha.” As she poured their coffee, Dr. Guy said, “You must be a preacher’s daughter!” The waitress looked startled, and she suddenly ran out. She came back in a few minutes with tears streaming down her face. She said, “How did you know?” Dr. Guy said, “Your name is Jerusha. She was a queen of Judah in the Old Testament. That was also the name of the great preacher, Jonathan Edwards’ daughter. Your name “Jerusha” means “cherished possession,” and only a preacher would know that. I bet your Daddy named you that because you were the apple of his eye, and he wanted you to remember that you are God’s cherished possession.”
Before they left the coffee shop, this girl who had for a long time been living in rebellion against God and her family and everything she had ever believed in, was on the phone calling her parents, saying, “I want to come home!”
What happened to her? She remembered who she was! She looked at where she had been, and she thought about where she was going, and she made a course correction. “The wisdom of the prudent is to discern his way, but the folly of fools is deceiving.”
A foolish person lies to himself. We deceive ourselves by sidestepping and passing over the truth. We often know the right way, but we choose to ignore it and convince ourselves that our way is better than God’s way. We are only deceiving ourselves! The humorist Josh Billings said, “The trouble with people is not that they don’t know, but that they know so much that just ain’t so.” It is a dangerous thing to know the truth and turn away from it. Are you doing that?
THE DEADLY WAY
“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” (Proverbs 14:12, ESV)
This verse declares that taking the wrong way leads to certain destruction. Choosing the right way is ultimately a matter of life and death. This truth is echoed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:13–14, ESV)
Choosing the right way matters! In the famous words of the poet, Robert Frost, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” God’s way is narrow, so narrow that it comes down to one person! “Jesus said…, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” (John 14:6, ESV)
When it comes to choosing your way, your life is on the line! The wrong path leads to certain destruction. The right path leads to eternal life. Following Jesus means that you will never walk alone. You can trust him to save you and guide you each day. I have decided to follow Jesus! What about you?
