In the sermon 'The Wrong Way', Peter Allison delves into Proverbs 30:17-20, highlighting the consequences of mocking parental authority and disobedience. He describes how disrespect towards parents is indicative of a deeper heart issue, reflecting attitudes that lead to destructive paths. Allison explains the metaphorical and literal implications of the biblical text, emphasizing the need for respectful communication and obedience as a foundation for a righteous life. The sermon also explores the 'four ways' mentioned in Proverbs, drawing analogies to human behavior, particularly focusing on the adulterous woman who conceals her sin and justifies her actions. Allison warns against manipulation, disrespect, and the allure of sinful paths, urging adherence to 'the way of Christ', which leads to life and joy. He uses biblical examples such as Absalom's rebellion to illustrate the peril of disregarding divine and parental authority, underscoring that true wisdom and life are found in following Christ's path.

Proverbs chapter 30 Verses 17 to 20. The eye that mocks his father and scorns obedience to his mother, the ravens of the valley will pick it out and the young eagles will eat it. There are three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, for which I do not understand, the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea and the way of a man with a virgin. This is the way of an adulterous woman. She eats and wipes her mouth and says, I have done no wickedness.

May His commandments ever be with us to make us wiser than our enemies. Heavenly Father, Your Word is true and it abides forever. Please instruct us out of your word that we may have wisdom. Please open our hearts Lord where there is any area that we have closed to you. May you open it to the light of your word this morning.

And I ask that you would sanctify my sinful lips to speak what is true and holy and edifying and faithful to your word through Jesus Christ. Amen. Three things that are too wonderful. Too wonderful. Agour sets before us.

But he sandwiches these things between a very shocking statement about the result or the outcome of people who Do not respect their mother and their father. I say it is shocking because it involves cannibalism, people, animals eating people. The eye that mocks his father, the young eagles will eat it. The ravens will pluck it out and the young eagles will eat it. He had spoken earlier of a generation that curses its father and doesn't bless its mother.

But now he says what happens to that generation of people who mock, even mock father and mother. And it's not pretty. Whether this is speaking of a literal picking of the eyes by ravens and eagles, or it's speaking metaphorically of disaster and destruction that come upon them. I don't know, I think both could be true. The eye that mocks is a window into the heart.

And so this is speaking certainly of the eye, the rolling of the eyes and so on, but it's also speaking about the attitudes of the heart that are reflected through the eyes. And so to mock is to treat with contempt. It's to talk back to them. It's to interrupt them when they are speaking as a way of disrespecting parents. This passage this morning is speaking especially to you children that are still living with your mothers and fathers, where they are still providing for you.

But it doesn't say especially or only those children. It is any I that mocks its father or scorns obedience to its mother. But as, though we have a duty, though all sons and daughters have a duty to honor fathers and mothers, there is no longer the requirement to obey them and to do what they say once we have left their home and their authority in that way. And so I think this is especially addressing this morning those who have a duty to obey, those who are still living in the home of their father and mother. So this I then is speaking to a heart that is disrespectful in any way toward mother and father.

Like I said, interrupting when they're talking is a form of disrespect, it's a form of mocking. Or not communicating when they are wanting to speak with you. Not answering back, simply ignoring them, or simply refusing to cooperate. Communication involves cooperation and it involves respect. If you say hello to somebody and they ignore you and walk on, when they saw it, that's a blatant disrespect toward them and their person.

And of course, that's bad. As brothers and sisters, that's bad, but it's especially bad, A Guru says, when that's the way a child treats a mother and father, to not communicate, not answer, or to provide non-helpful responses. Answers that are not responsive to what is being said or asked. Or name calling. There are lots of names that children have for their parents that are not respectful.

That are a form of mocking. Like the word old man, to refer to your parents that way. Now, some people do it and they'll say, well, I mean no disrespect by it. That's just a term. But it is a disrespectful term.

And it is a term that mocks. It comes of a heart that is mocking. Scorning. Fathers and mothers. We're not to speak evil of one another as brothers.

If we do that, the Bible says we are judging our brother. And when we judge our brother and judge the law, we are not a doer of the law, but a judge. Or becoming angry, or raising our voice at them is a way of mocking them. And especially the rolling of the eyes. I think that is particularly in view in earlier, in 13, that says there is a generation, oh how lofty are their eyes and their eyelids are lifted up.

This generation that mocks its mother and father. The rolling of the eyes. We all do it. And sometimes there are things that are foolish. But this is speaking of children who roll their eyes at what their parents want them to do.

That is an especially egregious, especially wicked, and especially bad form of mocking because it communicates a disrespect, a disregard, a disbelief in what is being said or manipulation. Children can be, even little children, can master this art of manipulation. And I think though they learn it from us as parents when we interact with them in manipulative ways. And Manipulation is simply any way that we try to get somebody to do something by an indirect way. Where we try to put pressure on them to do something.

That's manipulation. If we are an authority and we need them to do something, then we ought to exercise that authority. Authority which is given to those who have it, to us as fathers or mothers, it's given for edification. And we should use that authority without manipulation. We should expect that what we want to be done is for their good.

And we should expect that they do it simply because we have told them to do it. Not because we have been adept at manipulating them to do it. Sometimes we call that bribing them. Well children are very good at that, And when we do that with them, they do that back to us. Manipulating.

It's a way of getting their own way. Getting their parents to do what they want them to do. And they might try to do that by making them feel guilty if they don't do what they want them to do. They might make them feel guilty that they're not loving them or that they're not being a good parent to them. Or that they're harder than other parents who who are well that their children do what they want to do all these are just what forms of manipulation some more subtle than others but they are all examples of the eye that mocks the father or mother sulking or pouting.

Remember Ahab didn't like the answer that he got when he was told that he couldn't buy Naboth's field, and So he went back to his bed and just sulked on his bed. And he was like a little kid who couldn't get his way. That's a form of mocking. Or just being angry, having an angry countenance is another way of, another form of mocking our fathers and mothers when we get upset with what they tell us to do or some rule or process or some way of the home. When it crosses what we want to do, it's not what we had in mind to become angry and upset.

Anger in that sense is coming from a desire to control, and so it is mocking the authority of fathers and mothers. You can mock fathers and mothers by simply being inattentive. A fool has no delight in understanding but in expressing his own heart, the proverb says. And when the wicked comes, contempt comes, and with dishonor comes reproach. Inattentive is someone who has no interest, no delight in understanding what he's being told or what she is being told.

And they simply want to express what's in their own heart, and that is wicked. There are many forms of Words, many ways of expressing this kind of mocking, or this kind of manipulation. For example, one common thing that's heard today is, well, that's not fair. Mother says something, well, that's not fair. Instead of recognizing that life is not always fair, but God is always just in what He does.

And that we can commit our case to Him. Or maybe if there is a true injustice being worked or something that is not fair, a respectful appeal. Respecting that what has been said is what has been said, and asking if there is maybe information that was lacking. There's a way to appeal respectfully, and there's a way to mock father and mother by a disrespectful appeal. Or somebody saying of their mother, she never lets me do what I want to do.

It's a way of mocking their mother. It's probably not true on top of it. It's also an expression of their own will. They want their own will to be done and not the will of their parents. But see as believers we want to pray like Jesus said, not my will but your will be done.

That's That should be our prayer. And as children, that should be your desire for your parents. Because you see, learning to obey your parents is a training ground for learning to obey the Lord. You know, the Bible says that if we say that we love God, but we don't love our brother, then we're a liar. Because how can we not love our brother who we can't see?

If we can't love our brother who we can see, then we can't love God whom we can't see. And the same is true of obedience. See, as parents, we are teaching our children to obey us because it's a training ground to teach them to obey the Lord. If they can't obey us whom they can see, then they won't be able to obey the Lord whom they can't see. So the, she never lets me do what I want is a mocking of the authority that God has given to fathers and mothers.

And the right thing to say is I need to submit my will to the will of my mother and father. And as parents, This is important for us to teach our children this. Children who mock their parents have parents who don't love them. If those parents haven't taught their children to obey. See, the Bible says that if we as parents aren't faithful in teaching our children, in correcting our children, in rebuking them, in chastening them.

The Bible says that we don't love them. We don't love them because we're setting them up to have their eyes plucked out by the ravens and eaten by the eagles. You see, parents who allow their children to mock them with their eyes are endangering their children. It should be child abuse, if you don't spank your child when he's disobedient. Child abuse.

An abuse of your authority to save your child, to save your children from this ignominious end. Robert Surgener was a policeman in Ohio who worked with juvenile criminals. And he wrote a book about his observations. He has a number of interesting stories in there. He called the book, No Fear.

Because The single overriding characteristic of all of these children was a lack of fear. There was no fear of God in them. There was no fear of their parents in the biblical use of that word when it says that we are to fear the Lord. There was no carefulness not to do unrighteousness. There was no respect for authority.

He talks about this one case that was well known in the community, in the police precinct there, when he was a rookie on the force and they got a 911 call from this mother. And I don't know what the word for it is, but the policemen have a word for it when they go somewhere slowly with their lights on. They knew what this house was. They knew exactly what they were going to get when they got there. Of course, Robert Surgener, being a rookie, didn't know about that yet, so He's rushing there thinking there's some great emergency.

When he got there, he had found that this 16-year-old son had beaten up his mother, basically, throwing the furniture around, threw stuff through the front window, and the mother called 911. And of course, he looked at this whole thing and he said to the mother at one point, he asked her, did you ever spank him? And She looked at him with a horrified look and said, oh no, that would just breed violence. Not even at that point realizing the folly of her opinion. You know, Absalom's death came because he got his hair.

Well, first of all, he rebelled against his father. He tried to become the king in place of his father and actually take the throne from his father. That's an extreme form of mocking. An extreme form to actually mount an insurrection, an armed insurrection against your own father and seek to take the kingdom away. A kingdom that God had not given to Absalom, but had given to David.

Well, you know the story in the course of that fight. He lost. God thwarted the good counsel of Ahithophel with the bad counsel of Fushai. And Ahithophel recognizing that his wise counsel had been thwarted and that his days were numbered went home and hung himself put his house in order and hung himself he didn't even wait for the end of the war he knew what was going to happen. Absalom got caught fleeing His hair got caught in a terebinth tree.

It's a tree that we originally got turpentine from. And that donkey went out from underneath him and left him hanging there in the tree by his hair, which was a point of vanity with him anyways. And he's dangling there helpless, and he is killed by Joab. And they cast him into a large pit in the woods and laid a very large heap of stones over him, and then all Israel fled that had joined him. That's what happened to him.

But many criminals will testify to the fact that their Life in crime, their life as criminals began with eyes that mocked their parents, and with parents who didn't teach them to obey. That is the very first turning away from the ways of the Lord. Just to reject the authority of their parents and to begin to mock them. And so where does that life lead to? Well, oftentimes it leads to them committing worse and worse crimes until they commit murder or rape or some other crime that's worthy of death and are executed for it.

And you see then what does happen? Bodies that hang, dead bodies that hang. Well, the ravens are carrion birds. They eat dead corpses. And so I think in a very literal sense, What a Guru is saying here about eyes that mock their father often does come true in a literal sense.

When these children grow up and are given to lives of crime, that gets worse and worse, resulting in capital crimes and resulting in their execution and resulting in dead bodies that are hanging for the birds of the air to pick their eyes out. Guru goes on to talk about three things that are too wonderful for him, yea, four which he doesn't understand. Now there are three or four things here that are amazing. And then it ends with the comment about the adulterous woman. There's a connection between these verses and that verse 20, and that's the use of the word way.

Way. There's the way of an eagle, the way of a serpent, the way of a ship, the way of a man, and this is the way of an adulterous woman. So what are these? So I think there's a connection there. Exactly what it is, I won't be that dogmatic, but what are the way these four ways the way of a serpent sorry the way of an eagle in the air well an eagle is one of the largest birds that fly and I've seen I've heard it said that they actually only flap their wings a small percentage of the time that they are in the air.

Certainly if they're diving and getting prey, and they're coming up out of that dive, then they would be flapping. But many times when you see them in the air, they're not flapping. Or they might flap once every second or two out of a minute. They are riding the thermals, like a glider going higher and higher. They can actually go higher and higher just with their massive wingspan, one of the largest wingspans.

And simply stretching out their wings, they can, like a glider, just soar higher and higher. And when they get enough height, then they can glide to the next thermal and use their, convert their height into speed and distance over ground to go to another thermal to do the same thing. And they can actually go quite far like that. And if you ever watch them, you can see them going up in a thermal like that. That's an eagle gliding.

There's no trace of their path. They're not following any road that you can see, and they're not leaving any track. The way of a serpent on a rock. Now why is it on a rock? I think it may be because what we're seeing in each of these ways is that there is no evidence of their passing.

And if a snake was walking on earth, walking, moving on dirt, they would leave a path. You would see it. But a snake, a serpent moving on a rock doesn't leave any path. It's also a bit of, each of these things is also a bit mysterious, right? How does a bird fly without flapping their wings?

That's an amazing thing. And we can understand it, but it still doesn't take away from the beauty and the wonder of it, that birds can be out there and never flap their wings and still stay aloft for very long periods of time. And so a serpent, how does a serpent move? It's a puzzling thing. They don't have any feet.

How do they move? If you've ever watched them, it's not something you can easily understand how they're able to move so smoothly across the ground. And I think, you know, the people that study these things, you know, have figured out how they do it, but it's still a bit of a marvel to see a snake able to make its way across the ground. It has to do, I guess, apparently with the friction between the bottom of the bottom and what they're on. But they're still able to go across very smooth surfaces without problem.

I suppose there would be some interesting experiments for you people if you have one you can see how Slippery that it has to be before they're not able to move like on ice I don't know kind of snake go across ice that's very very smooth I suspect they can because we're able to skate on it and that's based on friction too but still this is a wonder and it and a snake across the rock doesn't leave a path Then the third way is the way of a ship in the midst of the sea. This one's maybe a little less common or well known to us today because we have airplanes and so when we need to fly to another continent we don't have to take a ship and go across the sea and it has ceased to be a way of travel for passengers. It's certainly a way for getting freight across the ocean. But unless you've been in the merchant marine and sailed out in the ocean, what this is talking about here may be a little less familiar. The way of a ship in the midst of a sea.

Well, what the marvel is there is if you've ever been to sea, you know there are no landmarks of any kind. Every direction you look, it looks the same. And if there's no sun, then you may not even know which basic direction. If it's somewhat cloudy, you can't see the sun. Or if it's nighttime, it's very hard to know which is even north, east and west.

Just imagine, I remember when we first moved to the woodlands, you know, all the, it's still true to some extent, but not as much as it was 20 years ago. You know, all the buildings, all the signs had to be really low like they couldn't be above four feet and And all the roads were lined with trees And so it didn't matter what road you were on there were all tree lined roads And it was could be very hard just to know where you were going But that's not that doesn't even begin to describe what it's like for a boat in the midst of the ocean. There, there's nothing. At least there were some trees and the road would bend and you could figure out a little bit of a landmark. But in the ocean, there are no landmarks at all.

It's clear look to the horizon any way you look. How do you know how to go somewhere? How do you get somewhere? Well, we can talk all about navigation with the stars, that's basically how you do it when you're at sea. You have to navigate with spherical drigonometry and figure out where you're at on the surface of the earth based on position of the stars.

But there's something else that the ancient mariners also knew about and used that we more recently came to map and that is the paths in the sea. Matthew Maury mapped the paths of the sea. Where I went to college, he was a naval officer who was injured and had to leave active duty. But there's a building where I went to college named for him because of his work in mapping the paths of the sea. He devoted himself to studying the winds and the clouds and the weather and these ocean features and also the Bible.

He was a strong Christian. And he loved reading his Bible. And in the words of Psalm 8, stuck in his mind that whatsoever passes through the paths of the sea, he started thinking, paths of the sea, Right? Where are the paths of the sea? If you just look, you don't see any obvious paths through the sea.

Well, he studied ships logs. The Navy had a lot of them. And he compiled charts of ocean wind and sea currents because those are things that were marked in logs. When I was at sea, we would mark our position every 15 minutes or every three minutes if we're in restricted waters. And so he also set out bottles that were weighted so they floated below the surface and he put instructions in there to anybody who retrieved the bottle to contact him because he wanted to know where the bottle went and So by using these weighted bottles He was able to chart out the paths that are in the ocean.

And he wrote in 1855, he wrote his first textbook on oceanography, the physical geography of the sea and its meteorology. And he presented oceanography from a Christian view. So Job says that Job 18.25 refers to God's making the weight for the wind. He said that though the fact that air has weight is here so distinctly announced in Job, philosophers never recognized the fact until within a comparatively recent period it was proclaimed by them a great discovery. He says, nevertheless, this fact was set forth as distinctly in the book of nature as it is in the book of Revelation.

And so he mapped out these paths of the sea. And so the ancient mariners, and even today, there was a guy by the name of this Contiki Raft, where they followed these paths of the sea. And they're very predictable. And you can get to where you're going. But it's an amazing thing that you should take an ocean that has absolutely no landmarks, absolutely no path on it that you can see and there are paths in it that that you can follow.

They're just not visible. But they're very much there and if you put a raft on them and you get on them you will go to a very you'll get to the general area that you're trying to get to if you know which path to get on which current to follow. It's been proven several times I think this Contiki build a raft just to prove it that he could get on a raft, and I think it was South America somewhere, and get over to the South Pacific just following these ocean currents. And they were real out there. In the video that they took of it, they would go swimming, and one time, one of them started to get left behind just because of the current was carrying the raft faster than it was carrying him.

They were able to throw him a line I believe and got him back on. But it was a close call. He was almost, because being in a raft they didn't have power to be able to go back and pick him up like a boat would have. But those are the paths of the sea And so the way of the ship in the midst of the sea is another marvel. And then the third thing, the fourth thing is the way of a man with a maid.

This isn't speaking of a married couple here. This is speaking of what we might call that chemistry right the chemistry that everybody knows about but nobody can really replicate at will it's just something that seems to happen the way of a man with a maid that brings these two together. It's not anything that you can predict generally, often. It happens, just happens. And in a good sense, it leads to a marriage.

And so there are these four ways, and what they have in common is that they are all wonderful, they are all somewhat mysterious, but they are also all not readily visible. They are not readily visible, they are not like a path through the forest where it's very clear. There's the path and there's where it's going. And I think that's the sense in which then it says in verse 20, this is the way of the adulterous woman. She eats and wipes her mouth and says, I have done no wickedness.

The adulterous woman eats and wipes her mouth. She removes any sign, any vestige of what she has done. This is here a figure obviously for eating being the adultery that's being committed. She eats and when you eat, there's maybe some trace of it. If you go to the dentist after you ate, they will see what you ate in your mouth.

You might see when a child eats, drinks milk, you have the milk mustache. This is the evidence of what you've eaten, the evidence of the fact that you've eaten. And the significance of this adulterer wiping her mouth is to remove any evidence of her adultery. And so we see then that the two aspects of this adulterous woman is first that it's secret. She doesn't leave a trace of where she's been.

That's why, this is why fornication is so closely linked to abortion. See, abortion is not a woman's problem, it's a man's problem. And it always has been a man's problem. We have abortion today because men want it. They want to be able to wipe their mouth and remove all traces of their fornication.

An abortion is how the adulteress wipes her mouth in a vain attempt to remove all the evidence and trace of her guilt. And That's why abortion is always connected with fornication. That's the driver for it. Nobody just wants to kill people. They need a way to cover, to wipe their mouth, and remove the evidence.

Of course, that's one of the characteristics of an affair, of an adulterous affair, is that it's done in secrecy, it's hidden. But the second thing that we see is the attempt to justify. They wipe their mouth, she says, and says, I have done no wickedness. She lies about her guilt. That's the nature of sinners.

We want to justify or excuse our sin. We might say, well, it's not wrong. There's nothing wrong with it. Or if we might say, well, it wasn't the best, and then give some excuse as to why we had to do it. But Jesus is clear that there is never an excuse for sin.

There is never no way out. There is never a time when we have to choose between two wrong things. No temptation, Paul said, has overtaken you except such as is common to man. But God is faithful, who will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to bear it. God will provide the way of escape.

Whenever we face a situation, there is never a time that we have to justify something that's wrong because we had no other choice. Elihu was upset with Job because Job justified himself and not God. And Job was a righteous man. Job was a man in whom God was pleased. He pointed him out to Satan, have you not seen my servant Job?

He said. He's an upright man. And yet Job fell into this pattern of justifying himself and not God. And Eli who was angry at Job because of that. Certainly if Job, this great and righteous man, a king, a ruler, would fall into this, any one of us could easily fall into this trap of seeking to justify ourselves when we have committed sin.

I think the obvious application to Jesus Christ in this passage that speaks of the way, the way, the way of an eagle, the way of a serpent, the way of a ship, the way of a man, is to remember that Jesus Christ is the way. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by Me. There is no other way to salvation. There is no other way that leads to everlasting life.

Jesus talked a lot about the way, talked about the narrow way and the wide way that led to destruction, the narrow way that led to life. You see there are two ways that are before us. The way of truth and righteousness, the way of life, and then there is our way, which is the way of death. There's His way And there's our way. In Hebrews 3, God was upset with Israel because they did not follow His way.

His way. God had delivered the children of Israel. He'd redeemed them out of the burning oven, out of the land of Egypt. And yet they quickly rejected his ways. And Psalm 95 calls us to not be that way.

It describes Israel as, Don't harden your hearts as in the rebellion, in the days of trial in the wilderness where your fathers tested me and tried me. They saw my works for forty years there, God says. He provided food for them, shoes that didn't wear out, path through the wilderness. And I was angry with them. They go astray in their heart and they have not known my ways.

So I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest." Jesus Christ, brothers and sisters, is the only way. His word is the only truth. And there is life only in Him. The way of the eye that mocks its parents leads to death. It leads to ignominious death.

The way of the adulteress that justifies itself leads to death as well. But the way of Christ and His ways lead to life. They lead to joy. They lead to righteousness. And they lead to His blessing.

May God give us eyes that see Christ and can follow his way. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word that is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path that does direct our ways as we are like a ship on the ocean. Lord, you have given us your word as a guide, as a path. And we ask that we may day by day prize your word remembering to read it, remembering to meditate upon it, remembering to study it, remembering to lay it up in our hearts, and remembering to speak. Lord, may your praise and your glory be in our mouth all the day.

In Jesus name we ask, amen.