Joshua Boyd: Well, we're continuing our series on the journey of faith.
Joshua Boyd: And today is part four of that series.
Joshua Boyd: And I'm calling this one the straight path.
Joshua Boyd: So let's look at our kind of key verse here.
Joshua Boyd: Matthew 7 13.
Joshua Boyd: It says, Enter in at the straight gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.
Joshua Boyd: Verse 14, because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way which leads to life, and few there be that find it.
Joshua Boyd: You know, growing up, how many of you have moms or dads that said, hey, don't just do what the crowd's doing.
Joshua Boyd: Don't grow with the majority.
Joshua Boyd: Don't go with the crowd because sometimes the crowd is wrong, and sometimes just because everybody else is doing it doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
Joshua Boyd: You know, I know my dad.
Joshua Boyd: But as a kid, and honestly, it doesn't really stop as a kid, but you have to learn to overcome it as a kid.
Joshua Boyd: Peer pressure, that pressure of doing what everybody else is doing is high.
Joshua Boyd: And I think even today's society with social media, the perception of that that's the majority of what everybody's doing, because that's all you see either in the media or social media, becomes a pressure of, well, that must be what's right, or that must be what everybody else is doing.
Joshua Boyd: You know, it and it takes dedication, it takes discipline as parents to train our kids and as adults to train ourselves to learn to understand our individuality and to learn how to walk that straight and narrow way when the wide way is a lot more populated and a lot more crowd.
Joshua Boyd: I mean, gosh, we do everything by what's the most popular.
Joshua Boyd: Hey, let's look, let's watch a movie tonight.
Joshua Boyd: Well, what's what's popular right now?
Joshua Boyd: What's what's trending, or what's what's good on Rotten Tomatoes, what's got a good score, what's what's everybody else saying about this?
Joshua Boyd: Not just what am I looking at?
Joshua Boyd: Let's go to Amazon.
Joshua Boyd: I've got to buy a product on Amazon.
Joshua Boyd: Let me see which has the most reviews.
Joshua Boyd: Because I've got three products I can pick.
Joshua Boyd: Let me just pick what the majority of the people are picking because it must be right.
Joshua Boyd: We just we make a lot of decisions by that.
Joshua Boyd: I'm not saying don't do that with Amazon, but I'm saying it's something that we just have built into our psyche that we just tend to go with, let's just see what everybody else is doing, and we'll go that way as well.
Joshua Boyd: You know, we've all we've all observed a group of kids, sometimes our own, uh, you know, just one starts a little disruption or a little, you know, getting off, and then all of a sudden everybody else is doing it, and the more and this it kind of grows and grows and grows.
Joshua Boyd: So we have to be trained out of that nature.
Joshua Boyd: We have to be trained out of that.
Joshua Boyd: Uh and as mature adults, it really comes down to having good judgment and an understanding of our individuality to make the right decision even when others are not.
Joshua Boyd: If we look at these verses in the in the New Living, it says, You can enter God's kingdom only through the narrow gate.
Joshua Boyd: The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way.
Joshua Boyd: Verse 14 says, But the gateway to life is very narrow, and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.
Joshua Boyd: You know, I think it's become kind of popular in Christendom to be a lot more tolerant, to be a lot more, yeah, well, God's really not gonna do, he's not really gonna send people to hell.
Joshua Boyd: God's really more, yeah, you can get to God in a number of ways.
Joshua Boyd: And not not every religion is is wrong.
Joshua Boyd: So it's be kind of become a a way of, well, yeah, it's not quite as narrow to how to get to God as as what has been taught in the past.
Joshua Boyd: But that's not the case.
Joshua Boyd: That's not what the word says.
Joshua Boyd: The words here in the original language describe the kingdom path as narrow.
Joshua Boyd: And that that word straight or narrow, both of those actually are translated the same or from the same word, it's it really kind of indicates a closely confined path.
Joshua Boyd: In other words, I picture I'm walking through the woods, and there's, you know, I have to kind of I have to kind of move around to get there.
Joshua Boyd: It's not that it's um narrow because I'm walking on a you know a tight precipice.
Joshua Boyd: It's narrow because I'm I'm I'm crowded in, I'm pressed in.
Joshua Boyd: Um in fact, the word it kind of has that connotation of being pressed.
Joshua Boyd: Um in fact, that same word of narrow is translated a few different ways.
Joshua Boyd: In Mark 3.9, it says, So he told his disciples that a small boat should be kept ready for him because of the multitude, lest they should crush him, lest they should press him in, lest they should make him a lot more narrow, his way narrow is that same word.
Joshua Boyd: In 1 Corinthians or 2 Corinthians 4 8, it says, we are pressed.
Joshua Boyd: We are made narrow, we are made straight, we are pressed in on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed.
Joshua Boyd: We are perplexed, but not driven to despair.
Joshua Boyd: So even Paul saying, I'm on this straight and narrow, this pressed pathway, but yet we're not crushed by it.
Joshua Boyd: We're kind of having to cut our way through this narrow path and the pressures of life and the pressures of the enemy and the pressures of being on a path that not everybody else is on is making it a little bit more difficult, but yet we have the ability to overcome it.
Joshua Boyd: So when we talk about the straight path, this is what we're talking about.
Joshua Boyd: A path that is more um more narrow, more pressed in, a little bit more difficult to navigate.
Joshua Boyd: So where are we going with this?
Joshua Boyd: Throughout Scripture, the the imagery of that straight path means being on the right path, and the crooked path means you're on the wrong path.
Joshua Boyd: Um Hebrews 12, 13 says, Mark out a straight path for your feet, so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong.
Joshua Boyd: But contrast that with Isaiah 59, verse 8.
Joshua Boyd: It says, the way of peace they have not known, and there is no justice in their ways.
Joshua Boyd: They have made themselves crooked paths.
Joshua Boyd: Whoever takes that way shall not know peace.
Joshua Boyd: There's a number I I've almost kept all the verses that talk about the crooked path, because Proverbs has a lot to say about it.
Joshua Boyd: Um, but I decided to condense the number of scriptures I was using.
Joshua Boyd: But throughout Scripture, the straight path is the one that's in indicating this is the right path, this is the just path.
Joshua Boyd: And the crooked path meant that it's the path of the wicked, the path that is not uh the right one to go.
Joshua Boyd: One of the first things that uh um John the Baptist did when he was proclaiming before Jesus came, he quoted a verse in Isaiah that said, make straight the path, declare the way of the Lord, make straight his what you know, make straight the path for him.
Joshua Boyd: In other words, let's let's make this path the right path.
Joshua Boyd: Let's get off this crooked path and make the right path.
Joshua Boyd: The journey of faith is the straightest, narrowest path that we can follow.
Joshua Boyd: But it requires focus, very deliberate steps.
Joshua Boyd: How many of you have been hiking before?
Joshua Boyd: And if you've been hiking on a trail that's well worn or even paved, I can say I've been hiking and I was on the swamp rabbit, and well, that's a five-foot paved walkway.
Joshua Boyd: I'm not really having to navigate it very difficult, I just walk on it.
Joshua Boyd: But I've been on trails before up in the Smoky Mountains where, you know, every step I'm having to really watch where I go.
Joshua Boyd: Not because I'm about to fall off a cliff, but the path is uneven and I have to watch my feet.
Joshua Boyd: I have to watch where I'm going.
Joshua Boyd: I have to watch every little, every little move lest I fall or lest I get pressed on by something that might be in my way.
Joshua Boyd: I can't keep my head down because there could be a tree branch right in the way.
Joshua Boyd: Those are the that's what we're talking about when we're talking about that, those deliberate steps that we have to take on the journey of faith.
Joshua Boyd: And as we read in Matthew, the majority of people don't find this path.
Joshua Boyd: The majority of people are following the broader path, the easier path, the seemingly easier path.
Joshua Boyd: Peter describes this kind of faith, the faith that follows this path as precious, as rare.
Joshua Boyd: And you've heard me, you know, if you've been on Bible study, I may have even mentioned it last time I taught.
Joshua Boyd: But in recent church studies, the numbers are just showing that even in America, the majority of people are not following that straight and narrow path.
Joshua Boyd: Um right now it says 5% of Americans attend church regularly, and regularly means at least three times a month.
Joshua Boyd: So 5%, five out of a hundred people are attending church regularly.
Joshua Boyd: Um and that doesn't mean, well, I'll just I'll leave it at that.
Joshua Boyd: I mean, that just shows that whatever we say we're we're doing as a as a Christian nation or as we we believe in God, we're not even going to God's house as a majority.
Joshua Boyd: 95% are saying, nah, I got better things to do on a Sunday morning or a Saturday.
Joshua Boyd: I mean, and that's actually, I mean, that stat is actually all church, all religions, synagogues, mosques, everything.
Joshua Boyd: So attendance of any religion is actually 5%.
Joshua Boyd: So if you look at Bible-believing Christians, it's even a subset of that percentage.
Joshua Boyd: 60% of Americans, this one was so interesting, I put it on this, I put it on the screen.
Joshua Boyd: 60 cent of Americans, this is a study this year, don't even believe God exists.
Joshua Boyd: 60% and the majority of Americans don't believe God exists or that he has any impact in people's lives.
Joshua Boyd: So when we say we're a Christian nation, or we historically have thought that, I think our I think our I think what we see going on in the nation, and when we see a stat like this, it kind of goes, ah.
Joshua Boyd: So our because of the 40% who are who do believe that God exists, so of this 40% blue, only 38% of that 40% says God is the most important thing in their life.
Joshua Boyd: So even if I say in America that I believe that God exists, I'm more likely to not even do anything about it.
Joshua Boyd: I just know that God exists.
Joshua Boyd: And of the people that believe God exists, only 34% believe that there's a responsibility that I have toward God.
Joshua Boyd: And that there's things that I can, that there's things I need to do because God exists.
Joshua Boyd: There's things I need to, I need to be serving God, I need to be doing things.
Joshua Boyd: And I put so I put these numbers here.
Joshua Boyd: That means 13, so the the percentages works out to 13.6 people out of a hundred feel a responsibility toward God in America, and 15.2 people out of a hundred feel like God is the most important thing in their life.
Joshua Boyd: And we've already seen that 60%, only 5% attend church.
Joshua Boyd: So why am I saying that?
Joshua Boyd: The straight and narrow, the few there be that find it.
Joshua Boyd: The journey of faith isn't just saying I believe in God.
Joshua Boyd: The journey of faith is I believe in God.
Joshua Boyd: God is the most important.
Joshua Boyd: I have a responsibility, I talk to God, God talks to me.
Joshua Boyd: There's all parts of that that have to go into what this journey is.
Joshua Boyd: Because if I'm on that straight and narrow path, that path that feels pressed in, and I have to watch every step and be deliberate about it, I need to be listening to the Lord to go, am I on the right path?
Joshua Boyd: Number one, and are there things I need to watch out for, Lord?
Joshua Boyd: What are what are what do you want me to do on this path?
Joshua Boyd: I gotta check my map, make sure I'm going on the right way.
Joshua Boyd: I gotta, you know, um, you know, I've I've done when I used to live in Tennessee, I used to do a lot of hiking in the mountains.
Joshua Boyd: And you know, I'd just pick a trail on a Saturday and I'd go hike a trail, um, you know, young, single, not much, nothing else to do.
Joshua Boyd: Um and regularly I'd I'd find myself one time, or I was with actually a group of friends in this one, and we found ourselves we had taken the wrong turn, you know, because you know, this is we're not using GPS, we're not using anything else, and we've realized we are on the wrong path.
Joshua Boyd: We had to backtrack a whole lot to get back onto the right path.
Joshua Boyd: And again, we're young and energetic, so it didn't really cost much other than time.
Joshua Boyd: You know, but as us, as Christians, as people who are believing God exists and that God is the most important and that we're responsible, we don't have time to be getting off track and then having to backtrack just to get back on the right path.
Joshua Boyd: But if we look at what the majority of people are doing, the majority of people don't believe in God.
Joshua Boyd: Because largely because they don't want responsibility.
Joshua Boyd: If I believe in God, then I have to start thinking, well, do I have a responsibility to a God that I believe in?
Joshua Boyd: And that's an easy easy out for most people, is I'll just not believe there is a God, and therefore I'm not responsible.
Joshua Boyd: And we see a lot of fruits of not being responsible in the world today, not just America.
Joshua Boyd: We are pressed in by the pressures of those who don't believe.
Joshua Boyd: Because that now that's the majority.
Joshua Boyd: The world is more and more heading toward ungodliness, just like the days of Noah, just like Peter and the apostles experienced in the in the book of Acts, just like Jesus experienced with when he came on the scene.
Joshua Boyd: When Jesus came on the scene, one, there hadn't been any prophets or any word from God for 400 years, so tradition had really taken over the nation.
Joshua Boyd: And that's why the religious leaders had really become the people that the rest of the people looked to.
Joshua Boyd: So when Jesus came in going, hey, what you're saying and doing is wrong, they didn't like it because now all of a sudden their little power struggle is truly a struggle.
Joshua Boyd: And someone's coming in, walking that straight and narrow path, saying, this isn't the right way.
Joshua Boyd: You've all been going this wide way.
Joshua Boyd: Now you're gonna have to start following a different, very narrow way.
Joshua Boyd: Very straightway, very pressed in way, because it's gonna be a different way than you've been going before.
Joshua Boyd: You know, as in Noah, both both Jesus and Peter referred to Noah, and it's a it's a good analogy for what we're seeing today.
Joshua Boyd: Uh 2 Peter 2, 4, it says, For if God did not save, or excuse me, for if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them to chains of darkness to be reserved for judgment, and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly.
Joshua Boyd: And Jesus likened the end times to the times of Noah.
Joshua Boyd: He said, As in the days of Noah, people are gonna be going about their business, they're gonna be marrying and giving and marrying, they're gonna be doing the things that they normally do, and all of a sudden it's gonna come to the end.
Joshua Boyd: It's gonna be just like that.
Joshua Boyd: And just like the days of Noah, it's gonna be a few that get saved.
Joshua Boyd: Noah was one of eight people on the entire planet that got saved.
Joshua Boyd: That's a few.
Joshua Boyd: Because he was the only few that believed in God that had enough faith and humility to believe God and to be obedient to what God said.
Joshua Boyd: Noah, I'm gonna send a flood.
Joshua Boyd: Go build a boat out in the middle of a desert.
Joshua Boyd: You're gonna look crazy, people are gonna laugh at you and scoff at you.
Joshua Boyd: If you read Genesis, it looks like it took about 120 years for him to build that ark, which makes sense for the tools they would have had back then and the size that he built it.
Joshua Boyd: So for 120 years, he preached righteousness.
Joshua Boyd: He tried to get people to say, hey, there's a flood coming.
Joshua Boyd: It's gonna rain.
Joshua Boyd: I know it's never rained before on this in the world, but it's gonna rain, and you got you guys gonna get in the boat, and not one person listened.
Joshua Boyd: Not one person believed had the same amount of faith that he did to say, okay, let's do this.
Joshua Boyd: Let's let's let's take action on what I hear, which is what faith is doing.
Joshua Boyd: Now this all sounds very depressing to say the world's going to hell in a handbasket.
Joshua Boyd: It kind of is, but in the sense that we have the ability like Noah to be saved.
Joshua Boyd: And I'm this is not a we're the only right ones, everybody else is wrong message.
Joshua Boyd: There are churches everywhere preaching the gospel, preaching the true faith.
Joshua Boyd: But if we look at the stats again and say, yes, there are churches everywhere preaching the right, but at the same time, only 40% of all of people in America believe God even exists, let alone take any action on it.
Joshua Boyd: And 95% of America doesn't even go to church on three times a month.
Joshua Boyd: Well, then even if a church is preaching the gospel, there's not enough people showing up to hear it.
Joshua Boyd: So why am I saying all this?
Joshua Boyd: That when we talk about a journey of faith, this is not, we're not talking about this giant crowd of people that we're taking this journey with.
Joshua Boyd: It's gonna feel sometimes like we're lonely, like we're the only ones, that we're out on our own, which is why we need to be so encouraging to each other.
Joshua Boyd: Because that path will feel pressed in.
Joshua Boyd: I feel like I'm on this path.
Joshua Boyd: I'm trusting God for my kids.
Joshua Boyd: I'm trusting God for healing.
Joshua Boyd: I'm trusting God to meet my needs.
Joshua Boyd: And it just feels like I'm being bounced around all the time.
Joshua Boyd: Because I feel like I'm being pressed in.
Joshua Boyd: You know, the American, I mentioned this earlier, but the American Christian mindset has really turned from repentance to tolerance.
Joshua Boyd: Eh, it's okay.
Joshua Boyd: God will forgive me, or God's grace is sufficient, or there's not even a God to be responsible to, even if I believe in God.
Joshua Boyd: It's turned from compassion to divisiveness.
Joshua Boyd: But not here, not us.
Joshua Boyd: Just as Noah was just and walked with God in his day, we can be just and walk with God in our day, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of what the majority is doing.
Joshua Boyd: What Jesus taught and lived while he was on this earth was heard by a lot of people, but only a few actually followed him.
Joshua Boyd: You know, at the time, at times a path of doing right will seem like the lonely path.
Joshua Boyd: But don't fear.
Joshua Boyd: One of the verses I love to hear, in fact, in light of what we're talking about today, Hebrews 12, 1, it says, Therefore, since we are surrounded now by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, other people who have gone before us who have walked that same path, walked that narrow path, gone through that straight gate, and said, okay, I'm going to do this path.
Joshua Boyd: I'm not going to go with the crowd.
Joshua Boyd: They're all cheering for us.
Joshua Boyd: They're all going, come on, you can do it.
Joshua Boyd: We did it.
Joshua Boyd: We pressed through.
Joshua Boyd: You can do it.
Joshua Boyd: There's a crowd of witnesses saying, Let's do this.
Joshua Boyd: Let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that easily trips us up, and let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us.
Joshua Boyd: You know, in Hebrews 12 comes after Hebrews 11, where they talk about all the people who, by faith, Noah built an ark, by faith, Abraham left his country, by faith, all these other people did these things.
Joshua Boyd: And there's a whole lot more, in fact, the writer of Hebrews says, you know, there's there's so much more, too many to be named.
Joshua Boyd: And this is that cloud, that the crowd of witnesses that went before us.
Joshua Boyd: So yeah, it may seem like you're out on your own sometimes in this life of faith, in this journey of faith, but there's a whole bunch of people cheering us on to get there.
Joshua Boyd: So our part, as this verse says, is to we have to get rid of all the weights that slow us down, and especially the sin that so easily trips us up.
Joshua Boyd: We do this.
Joshua Boyd: We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.
Joshua Boyd: Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame.
Joshua Boyd: Now he is seated in the place of honor besides God's throne.
Joshua Boyd: But I love this first part.
Joshua Boyd: We do this.
Joshua Boyd: We get on this narrow path.
Joshua Boyd: We get to our end by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the one who initiates, who gave us the faith in the first place, and the one who perfects it or matures it as we go.
Joshua Boyd: You know, but I started thinking about keeping our eyes on Jesus.
Joshua Boyd: We can sing about it, turn your eyes upon Jesus.
Joshua Boyd: And we can tell, you know, we can say, I think about a question Louisa asked one time.
Joshua Boyd: You know, she said, how do you how do you look to God?
Joshua Boyd: Or how do you something to this effect of how do I see Jesus or God when I can't see Jesus or God?
Joshua Boyd: You know, I think I think a lot of adults and even Christians, we say, yeah, I'm keeping my eyes on Jesus.
Joshua Boyd: What is that, practically, what does that mean?
Joshua Boyd: You know, what do we what are we doing?
Joshua Boyd: We can say, yeah, Jesus is the word.
Joshua Boyd: Um, but I wanted to look at some some practical actions that we can take.
Joshua Boyd: All the all and all this comes from Proverbs.
Joshua Boyd: So turn to Proverbs 2.
Joshua Boyd: We're going to read a few verses here.
Joshua Boyd: This will be kind of our this is a how to stay on the straight and narrow path chapter in Proverbs.
Joshua Boyd: We don't want to be on the crooked path, we want to be on the on the on the straight path.
Joshua Boyd: Proverbs 2, we'll start with verse 1.
Joshua Boyd: I'm reading from New Living.
Joshua Boyd: It says, My child, listen to what I say and treasure my commands.
Joshua Boyd: Tune your ears to wisdom and concentrate on understanding.
Joshua Boyd: Cry out for insight and ask for understanding.
Joshua Boyd: Search for them as you would for silver.
Joshua Boyd: Seek them like hidden treasures.
Joshua Boyd: Verse 5 starts with the word then.
Joshua Boyd: So those first four verses are all, if you do these things, then something else will come into and happen.
Joshua Boyd: So let's go back and look at what we should be doing.
Joshua Boyd: Listen, verse one.
Joshua Boyd: Treasure.
Joshua Boyd: Regard as highly valuable, which is what treasure means.
Joshua Boyd: Verse two, tune, tune your ears, concentrate.
Joshua Boyd: This takes effort.
Joshua Boyd: This takes some dedication to tune in and tune out.
Joshua Boyd: Verse three, cry out for insight and ask for understanding.
Joshua Boyd: Verse four, search and seek.
Joshua Boyd: Listen, treasure, tune, concentrate, cry out, ask, search and seek.
Joshua Boyd: Verse five, then you will understand what it means to fear the Lord.
Joshua Boyd: Then you will gain the knowledge of God.
Joshua Boyd: I'll keep reading.
Joshua Boyd: Verse six, for the Lord grants wisdom.
Joshua Boyd: From his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
Joshua Boyd: He grants a treasure of common sense to the honest.
Joshua Boyd: I love that translation.
Joshua Boyd: He grants a treasure of common sense to the honest.
Joshua Boyd: That's one thing that really feels like it's missing these days in society is common sense.
Joshua Boyd: It's like, really?
Joshua Boyd: Really?
Joshua Boyd: You think that from this, or you, I mean, it's like, really?
Joshua Boyd: He grants a treasure of common sense to the honest.
Joshua Boyd: He is a shield to those who walk with integrity.
Joshua Boyd: He guards the paths of the just and protects those who are faithful to him.
Joshua Boyd: So we've got four verses of things for us to do, and then it turns around and gives us four verses of things that God will do.
Joshua Boyd: God will give you a gain in knowledge.
Joshua Boyd: God will grant wisdom.
Joshua Boyd: He'll grant you a treasure of common sense.
Joshua Boyd: He's a shield.
Joshua Boyd: He guards your path, and he protects those who are faithful to him.
Joshua Boyd: So there's things for us to do.
Joshua Boyd: We have to be responsible.
Joshua Boyd: And then there's things that God is responsible for once we do those things.
Joshua Boyd: Because notice, he doesn't say he's going to guard everyone's path.
Joshua Boyd: He doesn't guard the wide path that everybody's going on that's not the right path.
Joshua Boyd: He doesn't guard that path.
Joshua Boyd: He guards the straight and narrow path.
Joshua Boyd: He protects those not who are on the path that everybody else is going on, the wide gate.
Joshua Boyd: He protects those who are faithful to him.
Joshua Boyd: I'm on the straight and narrow.
Joshua Boyd: There's a responsibility that we have to do first, and then God is obligated to fulfill his word and to be true to his word.
Joshua Boyd: He will protect us, he will guard us when we're on the right path.
Joshua Boyd: He's not obligated to protect the people who don't even want to listen to him and reject him while they're following that other path.
Joshua Boyd: The good news is that we can change paths anytime.
Joshua Boyd: We can turn around and say, Lord, I'm sorry, forgive me.
Joshua Boyd: I've been walking down that wide path because it seemed like it was the easy one, seemed like that was the way everybody else was going.
Joshua Boyd: I need to get back on the path that you have for me.
Joshua Boyd: As lonely as it may feel sometimes.
Joshua Boyd: Verse 9, still in Proverbs 2, then you will understand what is right, just and fair, and you will find the right way to go.
Joshua Boyd: So if you listen, treasure, tune in, concentrate, seek, search, God's going to do some things, but then it says, then you, you're going to understand what's right and just and fair.
Joshua Boyd: You're going to be able to find that right way.
Joshua Boyd: You're going to know what the right way is, even when it may not seem that clear or may not seem that easy to do and make that decision.
Joshua Boyd: For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will fill you with joy.
Joshua Boyd: Wise choices will watch over you.
Joshua Boyd: Understanding will keep you safe.
Joshua Boyd: Wisdom will save you from evil people, from those whose words are twisted.
Joshua Boyd: And it for time's sake, I won't go into the uh, well, actually, let me look at this real quick.
Joshua Boyd: Verse 13.
Joshua Boyd: Because it starts to talk, it gives two different examples of things that it will save you from.
Joshua Boyd: One of it's men, these men turn from the right way to walk down dark paths.
Joshua Boyd: In other words, there are people who were walking down the right path, that narrow one, then they said, nope, let's go down this other one.
Joshua Boyd: It may seem darker, but yeah, there's a whole lot more people on it.
Joshua Boyd: It's a lot wider.
Joshua Boyd: I don't have to, I don't have to watch my step as much.
Joshua Boyd: I don't have to worry about branches in the way, or I I it's a little bit, I can just follow the person in front of me, or the person next to me.
Joshua Boyd: They take pleasure in doing wrong and they enjoy the twisted ways of evil.
Joshua Boyd: Their actions are crooked, and their ways are wrong.
Joshua Boyd: And then the second example, verse 16, wisdom will save you from the immoral woman, from the seductive words of the promiscuous woman.
Joshua Boyd: She has abandoned her husband and ignores the covenant she made before God.
Joshua Boyd: Entering her house leads to death.
Joshua Boyd: It is the road to the grave.
Joshua Boyd: The man who visits her is doomed, and he will never reach the paths of life.
Joshua Boyd: So it gives us the example of men who have turned from the right path to wickedness, and women who are also trying to lead people down the right path.
Joshua Boyd: So, verse 20, it concludes, it says, So follow the steps of the good, and stay on the path of the right the paths of the righteous.
Joshua Boyd: The journey of faith is the right path, but it's also the path that feels like it's the hardest one sometimes.
Joshua Boyd: But in the end, it becomes the one that has less pain, less heartache, less frustration.
Joshua Boyd: But in order for us, in order to listen, in order for us to get there, we have to listen, treasure, tune, and concentrate.
Joshua Boyd: And to do that, we have to put distractions aside.
Joshua Boyd: And for us in today's society, that's a big part of that pressure that we face is well, if I don't touch my device for a while, I might miss something.
Joshua Boyd: That fear of missing out, FOMO.
Joshua Boyd: Um we have to just turn it off sometimes.
Joshua Boyd: And we have to stay off that broader, the broader path of the unbeliever.
Joshua Boyd: It might look easier, and it might look easier because the majority of people are doing it.
Joshua Boyd: And the majority of people are voicing it.
Joshua Boyd: And the majority of people are now saying it's not the cool thing to be the church-going Christian.
Joshua Boyd: It's the uncool thing.
Joshua Boyd: And I, you know, I'm just from scripture and reading the word, I don't think that's going to get any better in the world.
Joshua Boyd: I think it's going to get more and more antagonistic against Christians.
Joshua Boyd: But that shouldn't be something for us to fear.
Joshua Boyd: That's what the apostles faced, that's what the disciples faced in the book of Acts, but yet at the same time, the Word of God grew more and more because people saw more and more of the difference of the light and the dark.
Joshua Boyd: Right now it feels like there's a lot of gray, but that light and dark is going to become more obvious because the path of the just and the path of the broad and wide way is going to become a lot more distinct, I believe, throughout not just the United States, but through the world.
Joshua Boyd: But our responsibility isn't to kind of go, well, what's going to happen in the future?
Joshua Boyd: Our responsibility right now for us is to not be, is to first of all believe God exists and trust that he is with us and for us, and that he will do the things that we just read in Proverbs when we do the things that we have to do in Proverbs, when we set aside the time to listen and treasure and concentrate.
Joshua Boyd: The path of the unbeliever is full of harm.
Joshua Boyd: It leads to death, spiritual death initially, and then ultimately physical death.
Joshua Boyd: The path of faith is narrow.
Joshua Boyd: But I love the scripture.
Joshua Boyd: That's one reason I sang this song this morning.
Joshua Boyd: Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
Joshua Boyd: When that path may seem kind of the way that you have to really watch every step that you're going on, the Bible says his word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.
Joshua Boyd: I remember one time I was asking the Lord, Lord, what is why why are the two different words, lamp and light?
Joshua Boyd: And not too long afterward, I was taking, I was walking at night.
Joshua Boyd: Um, this is a long time ago when I lived in Tennessee, and I was on the side of the road, um, and for a little bit there wasn't a sidewalk.
Joshua Boyd: So I was walking in the grass, and it was dark.
Joshua Boyd: And I realized that every time I got underneath a street lamp, um I could see that it was, it was it was removing the shadows because I could see where the pits were, the rocks were, but the car lights that were coming were shining the way forward for me.
Joshua Boyd: So the street lamp was shining down so I could see the terrain and get that that you know, get a bit of all the shadows.
Joshua Boyd: Because if I just had the car lights going forward, I was getting a lot of shadow.
Joshua Boyd: Couldn't tell the terra and unevenness.
Joshua Boyd: But that was telling me, that was kind of giving me what was coming ahead.
Joshua Boyd: That's what the word does.
Joshua Boyd: It shows you what's coming ahead, but it also shows you what's here right now.
Joshua Boyd: The word is a lamp unto your feet, shows you what's going on right now, so that you know where exactly to take that next step, but it also shows you where the path is going and where you need to turn next.
Joshua Boyd: Your word is a lamp unto your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.
Joshua Boyd: It is a word for now and a word for where I'm going.
Joshua Boyd: That's keeping your eyes on Jesus.
Joshua Boyd: Amen?
Joshua Boyd: Keeping your eyes on the word and trusting in him that he is going to lead you on every step of the way.
Joshua Boyd: That is the path that is protected.
Joshua Boyd: That is the path that is safe.
Joshua Boyd: That is the path, as Proverbs says too, it grows brighter and brighter.
Joshua Boyd: The path of the just goes brighter and brighter until the end, the full day, when we just we end up in heaven.
Joshua Boyd: And we either end up in heaven through death or we end up in heaven through Jesus coming back.
Joshua Boyd: It doesn't matter.
Joshua Boyd: As soon as we get there, that path becomes super bright.
Joshua Boyd: We're on streets of gold.
Joshua Boyd: We're on a place that there is no darkness, there is no shadow, there is no sun or moon because God Himself is the light.
Joshua Boyd: That is the path we are aiming for.
Joshua Boyd: Amen.