Wisdom that Leads to 700 Wives

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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Welcome to Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan, where we are growing in faith, community, and service.

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You are listening to a message in Proverbs by Elder Zach Lloyd. If you'd like more information about Recast Church, check us out at recastchurch .com,

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or you can find us on Facebook. Here's Zach. I'll go ahead and get started.

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I'm Zach Lloyd, one of the elders here. One of the elders here at Recast, and Don was away this past week attending a

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Bible conference. He and his wife at Moody, and it was sort of beneficial to him to not have to worry about preparing.

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So I get the opportunity to prepare this week, and it's definitely my privilege and to my benefit to have to, not have to, but to be able to share with you this morning.

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But I thought we'd go over a couple quick details. I know a lot of you guys are regulars, but if you're visiting, we try and keep it somewhat casual.

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If you want to get up and move around at any time, you're welcome to. We have coffee and donuts. Have as much as you like. Restrooms are out the hallway and back to the right at the end of that hallway.

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So that's just if you're visiting, and if anybody would like, we try to pray for our church here, the members, and if anybody would like prayer, please fill out that card that you got in your worship folder and drop it in the black box over there.

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So, I'm also the treasurer, and I've been the treasurer at Recast for, since we started, and we try to get in front of you periodically to kind of give you a brief update of how things are going financially, and thought since I'm already preaching, maybe

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I'll just do that today. So I think we have like two brief slides that I'll ask the gentleman to bring up just to kind of highlight where we're at with our finances, and just to highlight that our main way that we communicate these things is through the e -cast.

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So we try and keep a link there to the left, like where we're tracking on that, and some of this information was in fact emailed this week.

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So the first slide is going to show us, if you want to go ahead and toggle that, where we're at this year, year -to -date, which

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I mean up through last Sunday. You guys ready? All right. So that gives the two columns there, budget and actual.

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So we budgeted $277 ,000 in offerings, and year -to -date we've received $317 ,000, a little bit more, in actual offerings, plus an additional $38 ,000 towards the expansion fund.

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So it's certainly exceeding anything, and that seems to be the song that I sing each time I get up here, that God just continues to do more than we ask, and we certainly thank

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Him. Our expenses, as you see there, the budget and actual are just sort of uncannily right on. In fact, that's not entirely accurate in that we have a 10 % of our budget that we hand out each year towards missions.

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We haven't spent in the majority of that, so there's going to be a big expense upcoming in the next few weeks as we sort of tithe on our offerings.

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But, so we've overspent, and the overspent that we didn't budget for would primarily be towards our property. So we have a property on McGillan, if you head out of town, just over the railroad tracks that we're trying to save money, but there's been some, we did some landscaping there, we redid the barn there, so we've spent some more money there outside of what we had planned on at the beginning of the year on that property.

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So then, I'll move to that conversation. Many of you might be wanting to know where we at with the new construction.

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So we're planning on starting a building. We've been in here for maybe two, three months now.

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Ultimately, we would like to be in a facility of our own. So we think that that building is going to cost 1 .7 million dollars.

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We want to have 25 % of that down as a down payment. We want to have two months of operating cash in the bank, and we want to have another hundred thousand just sort of for things that we're not thinking of, that we can't think of everything ahead of time.

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So we're thinking we need like five hundred eighty nine thousand dollars before we can pull the trigger on that new building. So currently what we have in the bank is two hundred thirty two thousand.

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So you can see we're about a third of the way, a little more than a third of the way there. And that might seem sort of overwhelming, but when

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I presented last in January, we had 165 ,000 in the bank. So it's 70 ,000 in, you know, maybe six months, and you can annualize that, you know, probably inside of three years.

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And that's kind of our mindset, maybe be here for two or three years unless, as the Lord wills, maybe He wants to do it sooner or later.

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So that's it with the finances. Just wanted to give you a brief update of where we are with that. So to get why we're gathered here, we're here as Christians to hear from God's Word and to interact.

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And one of the most encouraging things to me as a Christian is how He's influencing other people, and how

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He's influencing how He came to know, they came to know Jesus Christ as their Savior. And our small group has been meeting for a number of years, but recently we added a couple of families.

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And as a way to kind of get to know each other and make sure we're all on the same ground, we had each of us share our personal testimonies.

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And in so sharing, Christy Buss shared a testimony that was, I thought, kind of tied in with what

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I was going to be preaching. So I'm gonna ask Christy Buss to come up and share her testimony. So primarily for your encouragement, we like to have people sharing what

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Christ has done for them, but also kind of to set up my sermon a little bit. So Christy, if you want to grab that, I think there's a...

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Am I on? Sounds like it. Okay, good. Hi, I'm Christy Buss.

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I was raised in a loving Catholic home. My father always read the Bible daily, prayed, and attended church regularly.

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I went to Catholic school from kindergarten through 12th grade, and I prided myself on being a great student who mastered things easily.

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One thing I mastered easily was my religion. In high school, I even wrote a 10 -page analysis of the

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Apostles Creed, line by line. I arrogantly considered myself highly knowledgeable of all things

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Christianity, but like a lot of modern people who claim Christianity, I regarded the

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Bible, particularly the Old Testament, as similar to Aesop's fables. Great stories to tell you how to live, but not stories you were expected to actually believe.

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I believed in the concept of the Trinity and in Jesus's death and resurrection, but honestly, it had no impact on my day -to -day life.

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My faith was all head and little heart. Throughout my 20s, my life in the

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Bible didn't really seem to mesh. I still thought of myself as a Christian, though the

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Bible seemed rather outdated to my modern life. I was a good person, but basically

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I did whatever I wanted. I remember at one point actually remarking that it was pretty neat that we lived in a modern era, where we weren't expected to do all those things that the

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Apostles did. To me, God was kind of like an ancient college professor who once won a

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Nobel Prize. Everyone thought he was pretty amazing for all he had accomplished, but behind his back we all kind of remarked how he was a little bit senile now.

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The world had passed him by and he didn't even know it. I spent my time with smart, worldly people who were far too intellectual to use the

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Bible as any sort of authority on anything other than social justice and being nice.

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After my oldest son was born, I joined a Bible study put together for my mom's group at church.

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These wonderful, godly women started me on a long journey of truly digging into the

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Word of God. Then one day, years into my seeking, I was driving down the road while listening to a sermon on the radio.

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The pastor was preaching on Psalm 119, 160. All your words are true.

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At that very moment, my cerebral, head -filled faith became a very heart -filled faith.

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It was truly a light switch event, my road to Damascus moment.

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The scales fell off and I began to see how vain I was in thinking I actually had the answers myself.

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God held all the answers and he gave me insight into these answers through his

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Word. It was as though I was instantaneously able to understand a language I had never been able to speak before.

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I had grown up speaking my own language, a language focused on what I thought and what

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I believed. And now I was learning to speak God's language.

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I finally understood how vain and self -absorbed I was to think that I could possibly find the answers myself.

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The creator of the universe had already given me all the answers. It wasn't enough to simply believe in Jesus.

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I actually had to believe him. And that meant believing his

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Word. Thank you,

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Christy. Certainly, to God's glory, I really appreciate her being willing to do that and to share. And I honestly, the elders we hear, we desire for any of you guys, we'd like to hear testimonies and that is really encouraging.

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I hope it encourages your soul. So if you want to share, please, please come see us. We would love to have more people sharing.

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And I don't know if you caught it, but the part that I really resonated with me that evening when she shared was this idea that every word of God's Word is true.

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This entirety is true and how that should be informing our lives. So what

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I want to talk about this morning is just pushing into this idea first that this is God's Word and he has in it

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God's wisdom. Wisdom from God for our lives and every word is true. And we're going to look specifically at Proverbs, the book of Proverbs, which is

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God's wisdom. Proverbs 27. And it's going to talk about how our relationships, how we interact, and I'm going to lump them into negative and positive interactions.

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So if you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn with me to 1 Kings chapter 3. It's page 243 in the

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Bible. Mark's going around here with Bibles. If anybody needs one, go ahead and raise your hand.

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Page 243 is where we're going to go. So again, that's not the text that I'm going to be going through, but I think it's going to set the framework or the background for what

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I want to talk about, and that is Godly wisdom. And I expect that even if you are not a

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Christian, you would recognize that we need wisdom. I don't think any of us, we all recognize that we're finite human beings.

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We don't know every answer. We need wisdom. And along these lines, I read a blog recently where he asked the question, he's like, if you were going to write the

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Bible, what would you have done differently? And I know that's sort of not a helpful question.

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You'd feel like that's going to go wrong. But as sort of an inherent legalist that I am, I would want more detail.

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I would want a lot more things spelled out clearly for me. And I think that's kind of what he was getting at with that blog.

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There's a lot of decisions that we make in our lives that really the Ten Commandments or the commandments that we have, they don't seem to have a moral component.

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These decisions that we make, they don't have a moral component. But we have access to God's wisdom, and we also have access to God Himself through prayer.

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And James 1 .5 says, if any of us lacks wisdom, it marries the two, we can ask God and He gives it freely.

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So while we may often be praying for wisdom, I think sometimes we can have a mindset that, just in the big things,

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I've got a big decision awaiting me that I need God's wisdom. And that's right, but I think primarily what we see in the

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Proverbs is not necessarily prophecy. It's not like He's going to reveal to you, this is what you should do.

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And so this morning, I'm not going to try and delve into that topic of discerning God's will. I'm focused on God's wisdom, which there is,

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I'll admit, some overlap. But what I want to talk about is not so much about how you have to interpret

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God's signs. In fact, Don mentioned a couple weeks ago in his sermon on Genesis 29 about how we, and I encourage any of you to go to our website and listen to that, he talked about discerning

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God's will. And a little bit of a spoiler alert, he mentioned it was in the rear view mirror that we see that. So as I stated a moment ago, my goal is for us to recognize that God's is the source of wisdom and we all need it.

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So here is what God's Word does say, we need wisdom and He gives it freely. But the wisdom that God provides is largely about our relationships here and how we interact.

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So before we go to worship, we're going to read this passage. And this is going to be a description of the wisest man that ever lived.

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That's going to be sort of our basis. So we are in 1 Kings 3, and I haven't turned there yet, so let me get there.

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1 Kings 3, verses 3 through 14. Solomon loved the

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Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father. Only he sacrificed and made offerings at the high places, and the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place.

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Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, ask what

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I shall give you. And Solomon said, you have shown great and steadfast love to your servant David my father, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you.

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And you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne this day.

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And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king to place in place of David my father, although I am but a little child.

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I do not know how to go in or come out or go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude.

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Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil.

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For who is able to govern this? Your great people. And it pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this.

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And God said to him, because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right.

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Behold, I now do according to your word. Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has ever been before, and none like you shall arise after you.

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I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that no other king shall compare with you all your days.

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And if you walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then

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I will lengthen your days. Let's pray. Our Father, God in heaven, we come to you this evening, this morning desiring to be used by you in worship.

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We desire that our hearts would be focused on you, that the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart,

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Lord, that they would be acceptable in your eyes. You are our Savior and our Redeemer. And we submit to you this morning and desire that we would be encouraged by your word and that your

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Holy Spirit would be active. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen.

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Thanks, Josh. So, we're talking about wisdom, and before we went to singing,

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I gave the scripture where we talked about Solomon, and how we see Solomon was given wisdom from God unlike any other human.

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And he used it, too. He was given this wisdom, and he used it. It was not like he was this sort of little Yoda dropping pearls of wisdom, and if you were sharp enough, you would catch those and you could apply those to your life.

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No, he was impacting the people around him, and he was a blessing to those around him.

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In fact, his fame grew far and wide, such that the queen of Sheba heard of him and came to test him to see how wise he was with some tough questions.

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And in fact, we see that in 1 Kings 10, verses 6 -9, if you want to turn to page 250, you can see this account of how wise

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Solomon was. So, 1 Kings 10, verses 6 -9 say,

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And she said to the king, that you may execute justice and righteousness.

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So, we'll stop there. So, we clearly see that God gave this wisdom to Solomon, and then it was a blessing.

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It benefited others, and it came from God. And it's not that Solomon had grown old, or he had studied abundantly, and now he was wise.

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It's that God gave him this wisdom. So, I think it might be important for us to identify what wisdom we're talking about.

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We're talking about godly wisdom. Like, what's different about this wisdom that Solomon got than an atheist might have, or a

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Muslim, somebody that is not getting wisdom from the one and true God? And I would argue that there is something different.

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The wisdom that God gives starts with the fear of God. Proverbs really can be boiled down to a single line, that is, the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That really is the theme of the entire book of Proverbs. Proverbs 1 -7 says the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Proverbs 9 -10 also says the same thing. So, wisdom starts with the fear of God.

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Now, fear of the Lord might be difficult to comprehend, but just to clarify, fearing God is this openness to Him.

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It's a humbleness. It's rightly viewing who He is in light of who you are.

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And that should identify, He's infinite, we're finite. He's holy, we're not.

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He's sovereign. He declares the ends from the beginning. We don't. We are subject to Him. So, when rightly viewed, that's a fear of God.

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And that is the beginning of wisdom. So, that's kind of where we're going. But let's contrast that a little bit with the wisdom that the world might provide, to maybe get a little more clarity.

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Because I think that there are definitely some overlapping there. I think of, like, maybe parenting tips or things along those lines.

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Like, before you have your first child, you might read all there is out there about how to raise a child, what to expect and what you're expecting, and those types of things.

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To the extent that those are consistent with what God tells us in His Word about training a child in the way it should go, and to be loving and to be a good steward, that does reflect

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God's wisdom. And I think that, oftentimes, wisdom does, in fact, produce prosperity in our lives.

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We can become wealthy. If we are godly wise, we will benefit from it. It might help us advance our career, but largely what we see is

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God's wisdom and man's wisdom clashing and colliding. And I think of the example of, like, in the business world, where if you've got a business degree and you are familiar with sort of that world and that realm, bankruptcy is a viable option.

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That's a legitimate practice to maintain your business. And I think of the example of Gerard Arpe.

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He was the CEO of American Airlines. And he thought it was wise to not file for bankruptcy.

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He thought it would be a compromise of character to not pay back the loans that he had received, that their company had received, to default on his employees' pensions.

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To him, that would have been unwise. And it became a part or a crisis for him because his board was pressuring because all the other airlines,

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Continental, United, Delta, Northwest, everybody but Southwest, had filed for bankruptcy. And by 2011, they were all now making money because they had shed all their debt.

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They were functioning with man's wisdom. They were running their business to make money as their primary goal.

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And he was operating under God's wisdom and he lost his job as a result of that. So you might argue, well, that doesn't seem like that was very wise.

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He lost his job. The point being, God's wisdom and man's wisdom don't always line up. And I can't overlook the classic example that many are probably familiar with of what

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God's wisdom looks like in this realm. And that is from Solomon himself, who you see in 1

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Kings 3. Right after... Anyways, he gets wisdom.

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He begins... He gets the opportunity to exercise that wisdom. And it's the story of these two prostitutes.

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They're living in the same house. They both have male sons around the same time. And one of them rolls over on the other, kills her son in her sleep.

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So she takes the other woman's son. So now there's a dispute and no one's able to discern who is this child's mother.

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So these two women come to Solomon and he says, well, get me my sword. I'll cut the baby in half. And of course, that revealed who the son's true mother was because she would rather see the child live and go with someone else than to be put to death.

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So that's an example of godly wisdom. It's practical for our everyday relationships.

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That's godly wisdom. It's more than just obeying commandments. Godly wisdom connects these larger purposes.

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So what I'm going to argue is that God's wisdom, God's overall purpose in this creating everything, his number one priority is to glorify himself.

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I'm not going to try and build up that argument. I hope you can take that at face value. That's his number one goal. And how that gets fleshed out in our day -to -day lives, that activity, that's godly wisdom.

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So those actions, those activities that are pointing to God's glory, that is godly wisdom. And so when we see in Proverbs, as we talk about this, these are examples of how this gets played out.

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And we see that in Solomon's life and how God's glory gets worked out in those details.

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Ray Ortlund wrote this devotional book accompanying Proverbs and walking through them, and I'll just give you this quote.

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I thought it was very helpful. It says, Wisdom is when we outgrow our misconceptions about how life should work.

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So we see things in a certain way and how they should work and we learn how God actually built things to work and work well.

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That's that understanding. It takes us beyond petty rule -keeping. Something deeper happens.

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God enters our hearts and he changes us within so that as we grow, what works out is that, is what to do and what,

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I'm sorry, we know intuitively as a result of God's wisdom working through us, we know intuitively what to do and what not to do.

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We just know it intuitively. That is what the book of Proverbs is really given for. It's gospel wisdom for our complicated lives.

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So we're going to go to Proverbs chapter 27, finally, and we're going to look at this specific example and how it pertains to relationships.

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I think that's beneficial to us because a lot of things are sort of black and white.

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Things that are not relational. I think of problems in our everyday lives like for me, something like changing my transmission fluid on my van, it's black and white.

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That doesn't overwhelm me with just anxiety because there are YouTube clips available.

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There's man's wisdom available. I have a father -in -law who's really adept at those types of things. He's a reference. The way

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I do it today is going to be the same way in two weeks from now. The bolts are still going to be lefty -loosey, righty -tighty. But people, we interact with people and there's not many maxims, not many truths that, because people change over time.

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They said something yesterday and the next day they could feel totally different. And how we interact with people is, we need wisdom.

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So if you could think of some kind of truth that you could say about people in general, they're far and few between.

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And I think that's where we need to rely on God's wisdom, this eternal Father who knows these things to give us insight in how those things work.

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I mean, I think of, you know, turning to Proverbs here, but we think of in a relationship, like the husband's wife should always do what the male's wife or his mother says.

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Like that example, that might be a great maxim. That always works out. But we know that in reality that's not reality.

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That doesn't work. That might work in one specific situation but not across the board. So Proverbs 27. I'm actually going to get there sooner or later.

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Sorry. We're going to go through this. And I ask that you guys would bear with me because Proverbs are this collection of wisdom.

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I know, I'm actually going to get there. Don't worry. Proverbs is this book of God's wisdom given to us.

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And if you read through it, it kind of was a struggle for me. It's never been my favorite book to go through because it just seems to not have any cohesion.

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It's just bullet point, bullet point, bullet point. And I can't... So that's kind of why I felt it would be a challenge to me to be able to preach this because maybe

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God would do something in spite of my ineptitude. But the idea is that it's not just Solomon's download of his

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Twitter account. Not just a collection of his sayings. There really is some cohesion to it.

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And when we look in Proverbs 27, we're going to look at 22 verses. And those 22 verses are really an acrostic.

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Meaning that each verse starts with the next Hebrew letter. I know that's not obvious in our translation.

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But that's where we're going. But what I'm asking you guys is for a little bit of leeway in that I've organized it to kind of pick and choose verses and organize them by negative interactions and positive interactions in our day.

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So it might look like I'm leveraging the scripture to say what I want or pulling it out of context.

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But bear with me. But test me. That is the role of the Bereans is that we would be testing every word that's said.

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So page 466, Proverbs 27. We're actually there. We're going to start with, again, the characteristics of negative relationships.

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This is God's wisdom for us on this horizontal plane. We're going to look at verses 3 and 4 to start. And we see it says,

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A stone is heavy, and sand is weighty. But a fool's provocation is heavier than both.

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And in the imagery there is the idea of work, of labor, grimy, like it's not enjoyable, it's not the satisfaction that you get from accomplishing a job.

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It's just sort of this in the dirt, in the grime, and it's not that great. And we see that a fool's provocation is heavier than both.

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So it's this qualitative language, and I think we'll see that a lot. But we need to understand what the fool is.

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The fool is referenced throughout scripture, and it's in contrast to wisdom. A wise person and a fool.

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A fool is defined in Psalm 14 1 as someone who says in their heart that there's no God. That's a fool.

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A wise person is fearing God. A fool acts like there is no God. Their God is their self. So we see that here, a fool is provoking you, or provoking someone, and that situation is burdensome.

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So this text is helpful in that it helps us identify when you're interacting with a fool, because you should feel sort of this emotional baggage, this burden.

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It's like you'd rather go out and move the yard of sand and you're driving with your bare hands than interact with this person.

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That's a fool's provocation. That's the qualitative sort of identifier. That's what it looks like in that relationship.

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And perhaps some of you in your mind are thinking of these relationships. You can think of, yeah, I know that situation. That's just coming to mind.

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That person is a fool. Maybe you might be thinking of ways that you can interact with them better, and that's great, but I don't want us to overlook certainly the application of how we are acting like fools.

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How we can put burdens on people by acting selfishly, acting like we are God. That's how a fool acts.

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They behave like they are God, or that there is no God. I think of examples like at work, you know, someone's lazy and you have to pick up their share again, or even a defiant child.

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Just things along those lines. It's just this burden. But Proverbs 29 .9

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gives us a little bit helpful dimension to it. It says provides additional insight. It says how to interact in that situation.

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If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool only rages and laughs.

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There is no quiet. So I think we can all recognize that when you are in that interaction with someone, there is no benefit to continuing to argue with them.

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They are just going to rage, get mad, or laugh, and brush you off. In verse 4, and these really are organized in couples.

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Verse 4 says, wrath is cruel, anger is overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?

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So it's clearly saying, you know, it's assuming. Cruelty, anger, those are overwhelming.

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Those are bad things, but jealousy is worse. I don't think I need to spend a lot of time telling you how that, you know, jealousy is, there's no, it's not virtuous to be jealous.

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But I think it can be hard for us to identify jealousy in our own hearts and our lives.

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It's certainly easy to identify in someone else, I think. You're interacting with them and you can just spot it, and I think we can all recognize that if you say to them, perhaps your problem is that you're just jealous of me?

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Isn't going to go well, right? So I think we can all at least get there, but it's funny how our human nature identifies that easily in others, but not so much in our own hearts.

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So I don't want you to dismiss it, and I think we'll just spend a little bit of time here trying to connect to these emotions about how jealousy and anger and wrath are mixed.

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Specifically, I don't think that, I don't find myself, and maybe you're that way, or you're different than me, that we don't struggle with like a billionaire, a

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Bill Gates, and just jealousy. I read the Forbes 500 list of these wealthiest people, and I'm not turning to my spouse, that Bill Gates is driving me mad,

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I'm so jealous. That doesn't happen, and maybe it does for you, and that's another situation.

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But I don't know, I think where it does show up, and we don't recognize it, is in these relationships that we have.

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I think of situations where, you know, this is, I made this up, and I hope none of you have, and I wasn't thinking of anybody specifically, but this past winter was particularly cold and sort of rough, and if you knew somebody that had gone on a number of vacations, they went like every month, it seemed like they were going somewhere tropical.

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And that, I could find myself in that situation maybe commenting to my spouse like, another one? Another Facebook post?

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While they're scuba diving or something like that? All of a sudden, there's something off with me and my heart towards them.

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And I would, I think that I could identify that, that there's some jealousy there. Why else would I be mad? Or I think of certainly as a guy, like technology is certainly something that I enjoy, and I like it.

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And if somebody, some guy comes up and they got the iPhone 7, and I'm like, man, they can't even handle email.

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Why are they getting all this technology? What do I care? Why am I, why do I have a hardness of heart towards them?

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And I would argue that there are ways that jealousy infects us, and it poisons us.

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In fact, this is saying it's better that you're angry or cruel to them. You're better picking up, to have picked up that phone and thrown it in the pool, than let jealousy fester in your heart towards that person.

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Where once you would have gone, and this person visited the church, and you saw them as a stranger across the room.

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You went up to them, you wanted to show them the love of Christ, and you had a soft heart towards them. Now because of all these vacations, you think in the back of your mind,

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I don't want to go ask them about how Paris was. I'm sure it was super terrific. I'm going to go talk to somebody that's, you know, something struggling, or somebody that I might be able to help.

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So jealousy, I think we need to be mindful of how it can poison us towards people, and certainly acting like there is no

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God. Acting like a fool. We're not loving that person. Now jump down to verse 13 and 14.

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Again, I'm jumping around. I hope you guys can stay with me. It says, take a man's garment when he has put up security for a stranger, and hold it in pledge when he puts up security for an adulteress.

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We'll just stop there. That didn't make much sense to me, and it takes a little bit of understanding.

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Exodus 22, 26 kind of gives this law of how you were to give pledges. The idea being like, somebody wants to borrow a tool of yours.

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You take their coat, and as security, as a pledge, as security for that, and then at the end of the day, even

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Exodus says, even if you didn't return it, give him his coat back so he doesn't have to sleep in the cold. So you just kind of have this goodness towards them.

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But this is saying you're nicer to an adulteress than you are to your friends or somebody. You're treating your friends worse than you treat your enemies.

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And that's like, what? But then you think about it, and in fact, surprisingly, Scripture seems to be accurate again.

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Like, how are we, who do I usually, who am I most evil to? Who am I most mean to? The people

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I'm closest to. I'm probably the worst to my spouse. I thank God for her, but that's probably the person

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I lash out at the most. And I think this is kind of identifying that. And then to go to verse 14, whoever blesses his neighbor with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, will be counted as cursing.

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And this isn't really talking about trying to preserve the peace and quiet. This is the idea that you're actually cursing the person with a blessing.

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The idea of a sort of passive -aggressive, backhanded compliment. You're making it look on the exterior like you're blessing them, but you are actually cursing them.

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So again, it's this idea when we couple these verses together, the idea that we are doing something nice to our enemies and treating our friends, the people closest to us, like enemies.

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So again, that's another example of a man that fears God does not treat his friends like enemies.

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In verses 15 and 16, I'm just going to be running through these kind of quickly. Another example of negative or destructive relationship, and it actually is pretty strong.

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I haven't grown in my appreciation to this day of poetry. I don't sit around reading a lot of poetry, but one thing

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I really value about it is that it seems to be able to, in very few words, just communicate this massive, just sort of devastating emotion or concept.

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Just in a few words, you're like, wow, I felt that. And that's exactly what we see here. Verse 15.

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A continual dripping on a rainy day and a quarrelsome wife are alike.

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Ouch. That just seemed to punch me a little bit like, you didn't just say that, right? That is, in fact, what we see here.

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We'll couple that with verse 16. To restrain her is to restrain the wind or to grasp oil in one's right hand.

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So, I'm actually glad. I've been in churches where there's a lot of amen and preach it, that kind of interaction.

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It's not our culture because I think this one may have been falsely amen or falsely yeah, preach it.

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But that's not really, I think, I don't think any of us, I think we would all agree that a quarrelsome husband, a quarrelsome man is not ideal either.

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So this, the point here is you know, that someone is wearing you down bit by bit in their quarrelsome.

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This interaction, this person that you're with. And I think we can relate to that as something that's just perpetual and every time you interact with them.

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And I can certainly see that in my own nature where I know I'm right. And I can see what they're doing is wrong and I bring it up.

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I can't cover it in love. I have to. I just, so that's quarrelsome. If you do that repeatedly over and over you're making yourself, you're serving yourself in identifying how you're right and how they're wrong.

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No matter what the situation is. And honestly, there are some bigger issues in life. But for the most part, most things you can just dwell with your wife with understanding.

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And the worst thing is you can't change them. Verse 16 seems to indicate that you can't restrain it. And that's why this is, it's, this person that is really just slowly wearing you down.

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And it's not with a single strike, but it's little by little. So lastly, on the topic of just sort of this negative relationships, go jump down to me.

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The end of where I'm going to go is verse 22. It says, Crush a fool in a mortar and with a pestle, along with crushed grain.

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Yet his folly will not depart from him. That might not seem super helpful. Like, well, that's what

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I shouldn't do. But it really is. I think it is insightful, and it points to the sort of divine nature of this wisdom.

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Because as a parent, I'm under the understanding, the way I see things, is that I can correct,

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I can drive the fool out of my child. I can. Right? Like, but that's what this text is saying.

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No, that's not actually the case. You can, we can manipulate the variables. We can train our children and mold their exterior behavior.

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We can give them ice cream for cleaning their room, or punishment for disrespecting their mother.

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But that's just molding the outside. Just like a mortar and pestle is sort of this grinding of a crystalline substance down to a finer powder.

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We're not changing the molecular, the essence, the being there. We're just changing the exterior appearance. And that's what it's talking about here.

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We are, we're just molding something. We're not driving the folly out of the fool.

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And that, and that can be, that can be helpful, but I think we need to hold that in, in, in tension here.

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We can train our kids. We should be training our kids. We should be examples of love and grace to our kids.

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But we can't change who they are. They are their own moral agents. We need God to change their hearts.

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We can't do it. And, and just to say, you know, Proverbs 29, 15, the same book says that the rod and reproof, punishment, give wisdom.

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But a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. That's, Proverbs says that. So we need to hold both of those. We can't just take one, one verse and just, that's it,

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I'm gonna, that's what I'm gonna do. We need to be aware that we can't beat the foolishness out of someone.

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And I think maybe a stark example of this is, is how this verse corrects the notion of, of that punishment creates rehabilitation or it changes somebody.

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And maybe in the broader context it clarifies the point of punishment often is justice. It's pointing your child, or it's pointing someone that there really is, there is sin.

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There is right and wrong in this world. And the idea of justice gets ingrained in us so when we, it helps us point us to that we need a

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Savior. But the, the extreme case of that would be the, the case of Anders Breivik.

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You may or may not remember he was the Norwegian man that was convicted of premeditating and killing over 77 people, most of them teens in Oslo in the summer of 2011.

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In Norway's maximum penalty was he got sentenced to 21 years in jail, 10 of which had to be served in prison for killing 77 people premeditated.

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Because at the pinnacle of man's wisdom, all their reading of the literature, you know, the white paper, the legitimate man's wisdom said, you can't drive the folly out of the fool.

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So that's what man's wisdom was, but they are, they're missing the whole other chunk about how punishment is also about justice, and primarily

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I would argue about justice. That's really another sermon, so we're not going to spend a lot of time on that, but the point being you can't just take one verse and just push it.

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You have to keep things in tension, and there is balance in Scripture. So now we're going to go into maybe the more fun parts, the positives.

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That's all the negatives. Versions 5 and 6 are examples of sort of this helpful interaction.

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5 says, So an open rebuke, that's this sort of not mincing words, it's a clear, clearly stated correction.

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It's face to face, it's not they heard it through a grapevine, it's not them sending an email, it's sort of an open rebuke.

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And that's better than hidden love, and you might be thinking, well, hidden love, that seems, I don't know, like, you know, he's sort of shy and smitten and doesn't, you know, but I would argue that hidden love is no love at all.

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It's better that someone tells you your fault to your face than to know somebody loves you, or to not know that somebody's loving you somewhere, because if you're not, love has actions, and if you're not demonstrating that, that's not love.

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You might be a crush or something, I don't know what else you could call it, but it's worse than an open rebuke, is what this proverb is saying. And then we couple that with verse 6, are the wounds of a friend, are the kisses of an enemy.

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So there's, again, these sort of dichotomies. Faithful are the wounds, these wounds that can be trusted, so there's this infliction, there's this, a person that cares about you is harming you, but for good.

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You can trust these wounds, but profuse are the kisses of an enemy. So, kisses seem alright, but what we're seeing here, an enemy is using the kisses as this display of affection to deceive you.

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They're using it to benefit themselves. So while we might like kisses, we need to be mindful of them.

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Someone that is correcting you, it kind of hurts, but in fact that is better for you.

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It's better than these flattery with kisses, these empty praises that are so easy to give. It's easy to give empty praises.

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I mean, there's no, there's a chance I might get a compliment in return if I give a praise. There's no chance of losing that friendship.

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That's easy to give those. To confront somebody on something is hard. And that's where this verse is talking about that.

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We should be mindful of the praises that we receive from friends. As we're going to jump, as we're going to see here in a minute, this idea of praising is,

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I think, a theme throughout this text. So I'll jump down to verses 17 through 20.

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We'll take those all as a chunk, again, on this positive interaction. It says, Iron sharpens iron as one man sharpens another.

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Whoever tends a fig tree will eat its fruit, and he who guards his master will be honored. As in water, face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man.

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Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man.

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So, maybe you've heard this verse before, or used it before, verse 17. Iron sharpens iron.

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This is really the idea, kind of going along what I was just mentioning about correction, where iron is sharpening iron.

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So, men living in authentic relationship with one another, they are going to be sharpening one another. They're going to be refining.

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And just so we're clear, sharpening iron with iron is different than polishing it with a cloth, and that's not sharpening iron.

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That's not, that's just flattery kisses. Sharpening should be painful. It should be removing the pieces, the jagged edges.

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That sharpening, when you're interacting with somebody in a real way, you know, you should, and it shouldn't always be just painful, but there should be like this refinement occurring.

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And so, a conversation, so you're, so watching the final four together, not that there's anything wrong with it, but that should be considered iron sharpening iron, right?

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But, a conversation about how I gossip, or how I talk negatively about somebody behind their back, that's an example of iron sharpening iron.

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So then, in verse 18, we see sort of the same idea portrayed in the employer -employee relationship.

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It says, whoever tends a fig tree will eat its fruit, and he who guards his master will be honored. We see this understanding that the gardener is tending the garden, and he's going to reap the fruits.

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But also, the servant obtains honor by guarding. So this idea that we are, we are to display, so again,

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I'm arguing that the, God's number one purpose is to glorify himself, and how we accomplish that in our lives is godly wisdom.

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So godly wisdom in your employer - employer relationship, you want to bring honor and glory to your boss, because all authority is given by God.

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So to the extent that you can do well with his garden, you can persevere and do well in the little things. That is, in fact, glorifying to God.

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And then verse 19 and 20 seem a little bit opposite of what I would have expected if you read it in the sense that water, so face is reflecting face, so the heart of man reflects the man, like the idea that you can look at your heart and kind of know yourself.

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Because, again, holding all of scripture together, 1 Corinthians 13 says that even now we look through a glass dimly, but then we're going to be known, that then being when

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Christ returns, we're going to know even as we are known. And also Jeremiah 17, 9 says the human heart is deceitful above all things.

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Who can know it? So clearly, this passage isn't about you just need to know your own heart.

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It's not talking about that. Rather, if you look at the symmetry between face to face and iron to iron with verse 17,

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I think those are meant to be next to each other. That over time, it's highlighting the idea that over time, those people that we're around, we become like them.

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Hearts begin to mimic each other. And maybe you've experienced this where you interact with somebody that just seems to be godly and spiritually mature, and over time, you start adapting some of their perspective.

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You start changing. And that's really the example of ironing sharpening iron where we then become given towards this ultimate purpose of glorifying

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God, as those people we hang out with. And verse 20 is kind of giving you the flip side of that coin, saying

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Sheol and Abaddon, those are like, that's the grave. That's an example of the abode of the dead.

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So, that's never satisfied. Likewise, the eyes of men, like things like money, pride, fame, those types of things, those desires that are natural in us, those are never satisfied.

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So the extent that you're hanging out with somebody that they prize those things, that's going to be a stumbling block.

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That's going to lead you more in that direction. Proverbs 13 20 says, Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.

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So that's the idea that we are going to be becoming more and more like the people that we hang out with, and we need to be mindful of that.

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Verses 7 and 8 give us another example of positive interactions. So verse 7 says,

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One who is full loathes honey, but to the one who is hungry, everything bitter is sweet.

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So, under what circumstance would you loathe honey? And I think in the West we can probably, in this location, this geography of abundance, like peanut butter pie is my favorite, and I can certainly overeat and I can have three pieces of peanut butter pie, and to the extent that someone brings me another slice and they set it before me, just the thought of it,

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I become nauseous. And I think that's what this is talking about. And likewise, the one who is hungry, everything bitter is sweet, would be,

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I can think of certainly diets that I've gone on where I've given them gluten and sugar and fat and all those things. And after a season on those,

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I start trying some, you know, legal or things that fit the diet plan that are a little bit better tasting.

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This tastes pretty good. But you give it to me prior to the diet or someone that isn't on the diet, like, this is terrible. Why would you like this?

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So that's the idea that's being presented here. And then we look in verse 8, Like a bird that strays from its nest is a man who strays from his home.

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So why would a bird leave its nest, its place of security, its comfort? Why would a man leave his home?

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And it's this idea coupling it with things aren't sweet. So I'm completely satisfied in my wife.

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I have everything I need there. It's like honey. So more honey, more what the world can offer makes me sick.

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Likewise, everything seems to be bitter at home. Well, that gluten -free stuff over there looks better now because things are not going well in the home.

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So before you hear me say, well, my wife is always quarrelsome. She's a dripping faucet. I need to flee the nest.

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We need to hold these things in context, right? That's not what I'm saying. And hopefully you can hear that.

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That's not a good idea. That's not what this passage is talking about. This is wisdom literature. We shouldn't be, just because your wife is a dripping faucet doesn't mean that you are justified to go look for a faucet that you don't think is not dripping.

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I'm sure it probably is. But the point is that we should be focused on how we can make our home sweet.

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So rather than look at the flaws and failures and be argumentative with our spouse, we can think of ways to make it more sweet.

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We can become fully satisfied in the one that we're dwelling with. And then to keep moving on in verse 9 and 10 it says, do oil and perfume make the heart glad?

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So again, it's pointing to things that are good. They make the heart glad. And the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel.

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Again, pointing back to the idea that we can benefit from earnest counsel from wisdom.

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It's better than just these flattery kisses, these insincere compliments.

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This earnest counsel, this godly wisdom. And then verse 10 talks about do not forsake your friend or your father's friend and do not go to your brother's house in the day of your calamity.

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Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away. So if in the day of your calamity, and it is coming for all of us, we all have trouble.

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Things are going to be worse today than somewhere down the line. We can count on that. So if you're a true friend, if you're going to be someone that is going to speak godly wisdom into someone's life, the place to be when someone gets diagnosed with cancer is with them.

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It's not to be afar. So even though you've been with them your whole life, you are a biological brother. You have no value if you're distant.

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And that's really what this is pointing to. Don't forsake your friends when things go bad. And I know

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I struggle with that. When somebody gets diagnosed with cancer, something really bad happens, I don't have the words.

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And it's hard to enter into that situation, but that's what a real friend does. Is enter right into that situation with them.

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That's the day of calamity. And that kind of points us back to verse 1 where we see that do not boast about tomorrow, because you don't know what boasting is.

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It gives you the clear reason why not to, because boasting, you don't know what tomorrow holds. But also it could be the day of your calamity.

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Right? So you shouldn't boast of how things are going to go tomorrow. And I think Scripture repeatedly talks, that's not a novel concept that we shouldn't be boasting in our own abilities.

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Paul says specifically in 2 Corinthians 12 .9 he says, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

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Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. So this idea of praise, we shouldn't be praising ourself with our own mouths.

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And in fact, praising from others isn't even what this text says. It says better is praise, in verse 2, from a stranger.

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It might not be obvious, but a stranger would be more objective. They have nothing to gain. I think a praise coming from someone close to you might be more along the lines of flattering kisses.

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We need to be mindful of that. And I'm not saying that you should never encourage one another, so don't hear that. But we need to be careful when we hear praises.

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And that's where I'm going to sort of end on verse 21. And that's really kind of how I got to Proverbs is reading 21, which doesn't seem to be obvious to me.

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21 says, The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold. And a man is tested by his praise.

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So the crucible, so these man -made devices to test, to purify, to refine silver and gold.

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They're getting rid of the impurities. It's this testing. It's this separation process. So then

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I'm familiar with the idea of testing that, you know, what we see in James 1 and 1 Peter 1, where the testing of our faith produces faith, or these trials.

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We meet trials of various kinds, and I'm picturing things like cancer, like losing a child, those types of trials.

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What we see here in verse 21, it says a man is tested by his praise.

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How is that a test, right? Now, there really are two ways to read this, and that's what, you know,

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I wasn't as excited when I read the commentators because I was seeing it one way, but I'll yield to them, because the word tested apparently isn't even in the

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Hebrew. I don't know Hebrew, so I'm taking their word at it. It's not there, but in the context, it's not really a contentious point.

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It's obviously there's testing, there's refining going on based on the text there. But, there's two different commentaries.

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The one was Bruce Waltke's commentary on Proverbs, and his is the consensus universally defined, like this is the definitive work on commentaries, and he says it could be this idea that a man is tested or judged based on the praise of others.

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Consistent with Proverbs 12, 8, that says a man is commended according to his good sense. Like your reputation is a testimony to your character.

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Like what people say about you when you're not there, that's the testing of your character. And that,

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I would agree, that seems, that's a legit interpretation, that's good. But the one I liked a little bit better was from Paul Coptic's NIV application commentary.

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I think it fits a little bit more with this idea of testing in this passage, and it's when we receive praise, it really is a trial.

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Why is it a trial? God's wisdom, again, is His eternal purpose of glorifying Himself and us acting it out.

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Those activities, when we receive praise, it is difficult to praise God. In fact, who do we, who are we inclined to praise when we receive praise?

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It puffs us up. And I don't want to discourage anyone from praising me, but in fact, don't lay that snare out for me after this sermon.

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But the praise, it can lead to poor motives, because I want to be liked.

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I think we all, we want to be liked. We like the praise of others. And it's easy to start making decisions and making choices, looking over our shoulder, who's going to notice this?

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How can I get praise? Start making more jokes. Start doing this or that. It's a snare.

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And not the least of those forms, I would argue, is Facebook. I post something that I think is witty and that I monitor.

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How many likes am I getting? How many comments am I getting? So does receiving praise result in God being glorified or us?

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And we need God's wisdom to navigate that. So, in conclusion, all of God's Word is true.

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We need wisdom in this life. Everything we hear, going back to Christi's testimony, this is true.

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These are not man's suggestions. These are not what man observed over the course of time. This seemed to be the way things are. No, these are from God.

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They're not also, it may come across that these are tips on how to improve your life. How to improve your life from a four to a seven.

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If you do these things, things are going to go better for you. That's really not what I'm talking about. The wisdom of Christ that's presented here is a matter of life and death.

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And you think I'm overstating that. Proverbs 13, 14 literally says, "...the teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, that one may turn away from the snares of death."

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So, we saw Solomon. He was the wisest man ever. And if you want to turn with me as we close, page 251, 1

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Kings 11. He just was described as the wisest man ever in chapter 10. So, page 251, 1

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Kings 11. This is how Solomon, the wisest man ever, in fact

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Don referenced Proverbs 7 last week. He's the same guy that wrote about women and sexual immorality and that it leads to death.

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We chase after women and it leads to death. Now, here's the account of Solomon. We're going to read.

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It says, "...Now Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the

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Lord had said to the people of Israel, You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.

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Solomon clung to these in love. He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines.

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And his wives turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods.

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And his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father.

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So Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites.

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So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. And he did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done.

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Solomon, the wisest man ever, he had all wisdom, he had all knowledge, and he was just as vulnerable to temptation as we are.

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Wisdom is a gift, and we need to seek it continually. This really is not a message about how to fix yourself up.

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I'm going to go back to Ray Ortland, who says, We do not change for the better by turning inward.

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We change as we turn outward, as we look to who God is, and we humble ourselves, and we see who God is and who we are, and how finite we are, and how infinitely eternal

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He is. Our true Christ is not informational. It's not that we don't have enough information, it's relational.

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It's how we acknowledge who He is in relationship to us. He is risen, our

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Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we must pay close attention. If we are ever going to learn anything, that means we must forsake the fool within.

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That fool is named self, decisively and endlessly. A change of being is not brought about by straining and willpower, but by a long, deep process of unselfing, putting that flesh to death.

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That's wisdom. Proverbs 3 .13 says, Blessed is the one who finds wisdom.

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That's what I want for us. We would find wisdom in who God is, and who we are, and how we can glorify

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Him and how we act. So we're going to close by having communion. We have crackers set up in the corners.

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In fact, gluten -free ones are in the back. But we're doing this as a symbolic remembrance of who

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Jesus is to us. He is our Savior. He gave His body and His blood for us. The crackers and the juice.

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So when we're doing this, I invite anybody that's acknowledged Jesus Christ, trusting in Him for their salvation, to celebrate with us.

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This is a celebration for us to acknowledge who Christ is to us.

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So, let's close with prayer, and then we'll have communion. Father, God in heaven, we desire this morning, my desire for Your people is that they would be wise.

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God, that Your word would inform us that we would be just changed by an acknowledgement of who

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You are, how glorious You are, and who we are. And that would inform our day -to -day interactions and our relationships.