Proverbs Review Continued

Okay, so we've been looking at Proverbs. Why do

I have so much trouble with this? Yes, all right, here we go.

We've been looking at Proverbs for a couple of weeks now, and these are some of the topics that we looked at.

What is wisdom? What kind of book is Proverbs? The purpose of Proverbs. The beginning of what is the beginning of wisdom.

And then how to use Proverbs. All right, today we're looking at the title is

Fool's Rush In. Made popular by this guy. Something changed.

You give me a little bit of technical knowledge and I go crazy with it. That was actually

Alexander Pope who originated that title. But it does have a biblical warrant,

Fool's Rush In, because if you look at Proverbs 110, all right, the whole first part of this next section, verses 10 to 19,

I've divided it into two parts, and it's very important. Now notice it begins with the admonition.

My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. Very short, very concise, but pregnant with meaning, okay?

And then the next several verses are hyperbolic language.

If they say, come with us, let us lie in wait for blood, let us ambush the innocent without cause, let us swallow them alive like Sheol, even whole as those who go down to the pit.

We find all kinds of precious wealth. We will fill our houses with spoil.

Now, obviously, you're not going to hear somebody who is enticing somebody else to come using that language.

Solomon is using this language on purpose, all right, to prove a point, all right?

Throw in your lot with us, we shall have one purse, okay? So verse 10 is a warning, sage advice, okay?

Do not be enticed by sinners, all right? What is a sinner? Well, firstly, both the

Greek and Hebrew words for sin means to miss the mark, all right? In fact, even our view of sin, our doctrine of sin is called parmateia, which is the

Greek word for sin, okay?

All right, so a sinner is the one who misses the mark, all right? They have the wrong goals.

Sin is a way of life with them, all right? And so the admonition is do not be enticed.

Notice the word enticed, all right? Sin is always seductive.

There's an enticement to it, okay? Then that word enticed is important, all right?

They will attempt to persuade you to join with them in their sin. They will make you an offer you can't refuse, if we can put it in our modern context, okay?

And it will seem too good to be true. And what's the rule of thumb when something seems too good to be true, all right?

It is too good to be true, all right? It will be enticing.

The advice is don't listen, don't consent. The best thing, you know, the first thing he starts right off by saying, you know, just walk away, you know?

That's the best way to handle those things. Now many people say, well, this is rather simplistic, all right?

And you would expect more from Solomon, all right? And they would say something like this, look,

I know right from wrong, all right? What else do I need to know? I mean, I know this is right,

I know this is wrong, and I will make the right decision, all right? That's humanistic thinking.

You know who originated that type of thinking? Good bet.

That was a safe one. Plato.

That was Plato's thought. Plato's thought was if we can just educate people as to what is right and what is wrong, then that's all they need, then they will do the right thing, okay?

This is one of the things that our whole public school educational system is based on. All we have to do is educate people and people will be better.

All right? All right? So if we just educate people, then they'll do the right thing, all right?

Obviously the Bible teaches that even though men know what is right and wrong, they will opt for wrong, all right?

So merely knowing right from wrong is not enough. That's why we need the Book of Proverbs.

Proverbs gives us wisdom on how to apply the law of God to life.

Look, everybody basically knows and understands the Ten Commandments, even those who have never been brought up in a

Christian home, even those who may have never, even those who don't necessarily know what the Ten Commandments is, but they know the principles and they know what's wrong, okay?

All right? So you need wisdom and you need the Holy Spirit. That's the Word and the

Spirit working together. That's the only way that you're going to solve any problems.

Why? Because evil's enticing, it's alluring, there's an air of mystery and intrigue to it.

All right? Do you think that David forgot the law of God said you shall not commit adultery?

I mean, here you have the King of Israel. Did he somehow have a lapse and said, Oh, I didn't know what I was doing was wrong.

No, of course not. Yes. We know from Romans it's written on the cross, right? Of course.

Of course. So everybody basically knows what's right and what's wrong, but it's not enough.

Do you think David forgot you shall not kill when he sent Uriah into the heart of the battle? No, of course not.

He knew right from wrong, but he was not walking in wisdom. Okay? So look at verses 11 and 12, all right?

If they say come with us, let us lie in wait for blood, let us ambush the innocent without cause, this is hyperbolic language.

Okay? And it's meant for you to look at it and say, wait a minute, what?

Because the criminal will not come and say those words. In fact, they'll say just the opposite.

But this is the essence of what they're saying. In other words, if somebody wants to, let's use an extreme example.

If somebody says, come on, listen, I want you to rob a bank with me. All right? Don't worry, nobody will get hurt. But what do they know going in?

If a push comes to shove, who's going to get hurt? Well, they don't want to be the ones that get hurt, so that's, why do they bring guns to bank robberies?

All right? Because they're anticipating somebody's going to get hurt, even though they try to minimize it.

All right? So usually, though, the inducement to sin is sugar -coated. Oh, come with us.

Nobody's going to get hurt. This is easy. What's the expression now? It's easy peasy, you know?

All right? No one will know. It's a piece of cake. I never met a criminal who thought he was going to get caught.

20 years in the police department, arrested literally hundreds of people over that course of that 20 years, maybe even upwards of 1 ,000.

Okay? And I never met anybody who says, yeah, I knew I was going to get caught. It's just the opposite.

You know, I never thought I'd get caught. I thought I could get away with this. I'm still having trouble with this.

The one enticing another to evil is shrewd. All right? They know what to say.

All right? And in verses 11 and 12, Solomon gives the real insight into what they are saying.

All right? This is what they are saying that's shrouded beneath all the sugar -coating, the candy -coating.

This is what it really boils down to. All right? That's why Solomon phrases it in that way.

Then in verse 13, we actually get insight into the criminal mind. Okay?

We will find all kinds of precious wealth. We will fill our houses with spoil. What is the inducement to crime?

What's the inducement to crime? Some sort of gain. Usually money, but it doesn't have to be money.

It can be power. It can be wealth. All crime is not necessarily pointing a gun at somebody and taking their wallet.

All right? It can be stealing. In fact, what's one of the big crimes now?

We see it in the entertainment industry, people stealing songs, plagiarizing songs and making it big.

Now we have lawsuits going back and forth. That was my thought, and he stole it from me.

But the principle is the same. Intellectual property. Sure. But he is not willing to make the sacrifices to obtain it honestly.

That's the problem. They want what they want, but they're not willing to put the effort and the time into getting it.

All right? The criminal is looking for shortcuts, and usually at somebody else's expense.

Okay? In fact, there's that old saying you've heard me say it a couple of times. There's two ways to have the tallest building in town.

All right? First way is to build it. But that's a lot of hard work. What's the other way?

Tear everybody else's down. Okay. And that's what some people are willing to do.

All right? So here we see the folly of evil. Okay? The evil person wants what is promised to the wise.

Look at this. Look at wisdom promises in Proverbs 8. This is

Proverbs 8. Riches and honor are with me, enduring wealth and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold, even pure gold, and my yield than choice is silver.

I walk in the way of righteousness in the midst of the paths of justice to endow those who love me with wealth that I may fill their treasures.

When we get to Proverbs 8, you'll see this is one of the major promises of wisdom to the person who is wise, who is walking after Christ.

All right? But notice, these are the very things that the evil person seeks, but they don't want the discipline that comes with wisdom.

Because as we go through the book of Proverbs and we look at all the various aspects, what is wisdom, you'll find out what are the attributes of wisdom.

Hard work, discipline, toil, you know, and you start putting this whole list together.

It's hard work to be a Christian, you know. It's hard work to run a company.

It's hard work, but if you want to be successful, you put the time, the effort, and the discipline into it.

But the criminal, he doesn't want any of that, but he wants the results.

So that's why he takes shortcuts, okay? And the enticing doesn't end until they've pulled the person into their conspiracy.

Some of these people are very, very persuasive, all right, and can actually convince people that there's nothing wrong with what they're doing.

Anybody, how many people there remember when Patty Hearst was kidnapped? Okay, we've got a number of people who remember.

Remember Patty Hearst's son, daughter, granddaughter, I think, of Randolph Hearst, and she was captured by the

Black Liberation Army, and it was major news to hear this wealthy young girl captured.

And what happened to her? She converted. Yeah. After being with them for a period of time, she actually started pulling robberies and whatnot with them, carrying a gun and everything else.

She was brainwashed, so to speak, all right? But what they did was they convinced her, and she wound up from being a victim to being a perfect one in many of their crimes.

Misery loves company. Why do they entice other people? Because then I'm not so bad, okay?

So look again at Proverbs 1, all right? Verse 14, throw in your lot with us, we shall all have one purse.

See? And you see this constantly. This is the gang principle at play.

You know, if you're in a certain neighborhood, you better be part of our gang. You know, you don't want to not be part.

We'll offer you protection. You'll share in our wealth. You see the money we have, and that's what they do.

It's the gang mentality. Yeah. Wouldn't that be anarchy and socialism? Sure.

Well, socialism is a form of that. You know, taking away from those who earned it to give it to those who did not.

Certainly socialism is a form of that. Sure. Oh, of course.

Okay. And in typical proverbial fashion, the concept is repeated.

Later on in Proverbs 16, verse 29, look at, it's basically the same concept. A man of violence entices his neighbor and leads him in a way that is not good.

What do we know when something is repeated in scripture? Means pay special heed to it because it's something that you need to know and need to be cautious of.

So somebody says, well, you know, there's no danger of me in that. You have no idea of the pressure that people can exert on you, you know?

And again, I'm using a criminal, but this is even for minor sins.

Okay. Why do they entice others? It helps them to justify their own needs.

All right. We see this with kids. All right. A lot.

Yeah. I'm talking to you guys now. All right. You approach them and say, you know, why did you do that?

Well, everybody else was doing it. How many times have we heard that phrase? How many times did we use it when we were kids?

All right. And then what does your parents say? Well, if everybody else is jumping off a bridge, would you jump off the bridge?

They did it too. All right. It's the trademark of the sinful mindset.

Justify your own sin by the fact that other people sin.

Okay. All right. So verse 15 now. So that's that whole first section.

This is verses 10 to 19 of Proverbs 1. All right.

Now verse 15 begins the new section with another warning.

Proverbs 115. My son, do not walk in the way with them. It's the same warning, just phrased in a slightly different way.

And that's what Proverbs does a lot. It'll give you the same warning over again, just rephrasing it.

And, again, Proverbs does this specifically to peak your mind, to show you just how important this is.

Okay. Keep your feet from the path. All right. So, again, that's just a renewed warning.

Same thing that verse 10 started with and that we saw even earlier. All right.

Then verse 16 to 19, we get a commentary on the reality of the consequences of the criminal mind.

And, again, this is given to us in hyperbolic and very symbolic language.

All right. One of the things that you're going to see through Proverbs, as we know through all of scripture, the scriptures are highly symbolic.

All right. That doesn't mitigate the fact that we take them literally. In fact, let me just pause and mention this.

A lot of people who are critics of Reformed theology say, well, you don't take, you spiritualize the scriptures.

You don't take them literally. That's not true. We do take the

Bible literally. What does that mean when we say we take it literally?

Go ahead, Jerry. I read Bible as you would read literature. Yes. Properly. You read literature.

How else can you interpret it but literary? All right. And the whole idea is we take poetry to be poetry, symbols to be symbols.

But when it comes to the didactic, its teaching, we take that literally because it's meant to teach.

But other times when they're using analogies and all, we don't take it. For example,

Paul explains this in the New Testament when he says, don't muzzle the ox when it's threshing.

It's an Old Testament verse. Now what's the intent of that verse? Was that to teach the

Hebrew farmers don't feed your ox while he's working?

Don't you think they knew that? That's the whole purpose. The whole purpose of that verse is the farmer knew, no, if I'm going to have my ox out working,

I've got to feed him. Otherwise he's not going to have the strength to work. He knew that. The whole idea and what

Paul says is do you think God gave that for the oxen? No.

In other words, and the main one that Paul uses it for is make sure that you're paying your pastor.

I didn't choose that for personal reasons, but it's just a good expression.

So we need to understand that there is symbolism that is meant to represent something, a biblical principle, and not take it.

For example, the trees of the field should clap their hands. Do we believe that trees are all of a sudden going to sprout hands and when

God comes and Christ comes that they're going to clap? Only if they're palm trees, right?

But I'm pumped. So what we're going to look at next is how

Solomon uses some of this symbolism. They believe they have found a shortcut to success and happiness, but verse 16 tells us of their actual destination.

For their feet run to evil and they hasten to shed blood. Now notice, what will the criminal really say?

Oh, what we're doing is not bad. All right. And nobody's going to get hurt. All right.

Most, even most bank robbers, all right, who are going in armed never intend to hurt anybody.

And I can tell you this because I have arrested and interviewed dozens and dozens of bank robbers.

None of them said, you know what, I'm going into somebody. No. In fact, they'll justify it this way.

You know what, the reason we carried the guns because we didn't want anybody to get hurt. We wanted to intimidate people so they just comply so we can take the money and get out.

Nobody, because they recognize that, you know, felony murder. That's a stiff sentence.

Okay. Usually a life sentence. All right.

So notice they just don't simply, but notice what Proverbs says. They don't just stumble into evil. They don't even just walk to evil.

They run to evil. They hasten to shed blood. And this is consistent with the entire description of mankind.

Isaiah 59 verses two. All right.

But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God. You've hidden your sins, his face from you so that he does not hear.

For your hands are defiled with blood, your fingers with iniquity, your lips have spoken falsehood. Your tongue butters wickedness.

No one sues righteously. No one pleads honestly. They trust in confusion and speak lies.

They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity. Well, it sounds like our society, doesn't it? They hatch atter's eggs and weave the spider's web.

He who eats their eggs dies, and from that which is crushed, a snake breaks forth. All right.

And then there's the rest of that verse. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but you get the idea. This is what, this is a description of depraved man.

In fact, these could have been posted at our conference under total depravity. But the point is, look how many scriptures

Anthony used to show total depravity. The Bible is rife with them. Every time you turn a page, you're seeing total depravity.

All right. Then Romans three. I'm just going to go through because we, this is one that Anthony did go through.

Another description of total depravity. All right.

So the next three verses demonstrates the foolishness of the criminal mind.

Look at Proverbs one 17 to 19. Indeed, it is useless to spread the net in the eyes of any bird, but they lie in wait for their own blood.

They ambush their own lives. So are the ways of everyone who gains by, that's supposed to be violence there.

They are more foolish than the birds. Even a dumb bird knows that if they see you spreading the net, they're not going to walk on it.

All right. That's the, that's the message. But the criminal mind sees all of this.

They know what's ahead of them. If you think about it, think of how many, how many unsolved major crimes are there?

You know, it's not a percentage wise. It's not a lot. You know, there's always a percentage that go unsolved, but most people, especially like bank robbers in the history of this country, how many banks have been robbed?

Then that nobody knows. Very few. They always, they always get caught yet.

They go into a thinking I'm, I'm smarter than everybody else. I can get away with it.

It's like spreading the net in front of the bird and expecting the bird to walk in.

Doesn't make sense, but that's the criminal mindset. But these men don't see things as they really are.

They believe they're setting a trap for someone else. All right. They believe harm will always come upon the other guy.

They don't see that their actions will have consequences for them. This is one of the biggest things. People are short -sighted and they never see the results of their action.

You ever seen the movie Bonnie and Clyde? Perfect example. They're going out and, and look at, look at the end of that, of that couple.

Pitiful, pitiful. They never thought it would end that way, but they lie and wait for their own blood.

They ambush their own lives while they're lying in wait. They think that if anybody gets hurt, it's going to be the other guy.

They never figured that it's themselves. You know, so are the ways of everyone who gains by violence.

It takes away the life of its possess. The violent person will lead a violent death.

There are more foolish than the birds. And yet they think they're so smart.

Even a bird will walk into a net if it sees you lay it out. But these men see, don't see things as they really are.

They believe they are setting a trap for someone else. In the end, they will lose their own life.

And remember the words of our Lord. For what will the profit of man gains the whole world and forfeits his own soul?

Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? Their lives are folly.

Okay. It's funny. Just this past week. I met

Rich Romano. Ray Romano's brother. Everybody loves

Raymond. When Ray got his, Rich is a Christian.

When Ray signed a job out where he had to leave and go to Hollywood, have to leave

New York, and his show was making it big. Ray, Rich gave his brother a note with that verse on it.

And he carried around in his wallet, but his brother didn't even know it until he appeared on Oprah and took it out of his wallet.

He'd been carrying around for nine years. And so, and I just recently saw an interview with him.

He says, maybe it's time I started working on my soul. Keep him in prayer. Their reasoning is foolish.

Their end is destruction. So how does the wise son obey the instruction of his father?

And by the way, the wise son, that son there includes everybody, no matter how old you are.

In one sense, the entire book of Proverbs was written for that very purpose. So I'm going to leave you with four practical ways.

I'm just going to leave you with the four ways. And then next month, we're going to pick up on how to do this.

First, these are practical steps. How do you heed some of the advice? Now remember, this whole first section is a warning.

All right. So how do you not fall into the trap? If just merely knowing the word is not enough.

First is to develop an ethic of consequences. In other words, think before you act, because every action you take has certain consequences.

And we'll get into that next month. Second, develop a biblical faith. Remember, faith is meant to grow.

Okay. The faith you have at the moment of your conversion is small. It's like a seed and it's meant to grow just like the whole kingdom of God, the parable of the mustard seed.

You know, the kingdom is meant to grow. All right. It starts small, started with 11 men, you know, after when

Christ was crucified and look at the size of the kingdom. Okay. Third, avoid unrighteous associates.

All right. And we'll look into that. That's that. And maybe I even should have put that number one, because that's where most people fail is thinking that I can hang out with unrighteous people and it's not going to rub off on them.

Remember when a white coat comes in contact with a mud puddle, the mud puddle doesn't get cleaner.

Okay. And fourth, learn to resist temptation biblically.

But those are just four practical applications from what we looked at this morning. And we'll close with that.

Any final thoughts or questions on this section may seem simplistic, but we need to be reminded.

And then we need to put it into practice because we are still, no matter how old we get or how young we are, we're always the enticement to sin is always there.

And there's always somebody who is looking to take you down. I can. I came to faith about the middle of my career as a police officer.

And one of the guys that worked with me in homicide and God bless him. He was one of my closest friends, not a believer.

All right. In fact, he grew up Roman Catholic, but he was basically, didn't even believe in that. All right.

And he knew me before I was saved and he knew a little of my reputation before I was saved.

And now he's working for me as a Christian. And I remember one day he was walking by and he looked at me.

He had a face of a bulldog and he used to talk between his teeth like this, you know? And he said, you know,

Jensen, you still got it in you. You could fall and I'll be here when you do.

And he said it with love in his heart. Cause he didn't think it was bad, you know, but you always have people who will even try to drag you down.