Proverbs: Where Is Jesus?

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Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, we are going to talk about one of the most popular books in the

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Old Testament most people read, Proverbs, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, the wisdom literature of the

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Old Testament. We try to explain what is the purpose of these books and how we often use them inappropriately and bring law into our life and actually ignore the gospel.

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We explain the three uses of the law, law gospel distinction, and a redemptive historic understanding of scripture as it relates to Proverbs.

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If you have no idea what those are, this podcast is definitely for you. And then our membership section, we then continue this conversation into the

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Proverbs 31 woman and what is the purpose of this book of Psalms, Solomon.

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We hope you enjoy. A simple way for you to help support Theocast and join their information is by shopping at Amazon.

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Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed perspective. Your hosts today are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

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And I'm John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Justin, it's good to be back on the microphone with you today.

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My friend, what's been going on in your life recently? Hey, John. Good to be on the mic with you, too.

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We may or may not be on take seven on this intro. We are coming out of the gate strong this morning.

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Two days in a row. Yeah, both of us are a little tired. Yeah, two days in a row recording, trying to make up for not recording last week.

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Yeah, there's been a lot going on in my world, and I know we touched on this yesterday morning.

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This would be the podcast that released last week for the listeners. Nashville recently experienced a natural disaster, a tornado ripping through the city, and there are a number of people who have lost their lives in that.

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And last week, the reason that we couldn't record Theocast was I was engaged with the death and a funeral of one of our members, who, a young lady, died of cancer, survived by her husband and two children.

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And so it's a sobering time at CBC, and I know a sober time for you guys there in Nashville.

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And yeah, just mindful of the fleeting nature of life and our frailty and things like that and the horror of death, but then the hope and the triumph of Christ in the face of that.

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And yeah, I just had a really, really heavy week last week, but a really good week, if that makes sense.

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Those things aren't mutually exclusive. Doing a funeral of a younger saint is sober.

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And at the same time, I was just really struck by how sweet the gospel is and how the hope of the resurrection and what

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Jesus has accomplished for us is the only thing that allows us to really stare death in the face and call it what it is and consider the horror of it and not go insane.

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And even with the hope of Christ, death tramples on so many of the things that we hold dear in this life.

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And yeah, it was a really good time of grieving, and we were not grieving for the sake of the departed.

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Her suffering is over, but we were grieving for all of us who no longer have this woman in our lives.

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And we're able to look to Christ together in a way that was good and gripping, so I'm grateful for that.

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As we sung and as I was able to preach the gospel, as her husband was able to extol the grace and the mercy and the love of the

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God who had saved his wife, it was just really a good time in that regard and hard.

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Unfortunately, I've had to do quite a few funerals and work with people who've lost their loved ones.

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As someone who lost my dad at an early young age, you have to work through that.

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This is my encouragement, one, to those who are going to encourage or be there to care for someone who's lost a loved one, and then this is for the person who's lost it.

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Unfortunately, people say they try their best and they say things they've seen on TV, which is not helpful.

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And when someone says, we like to get through pain as fast as possible, why painkillers exist and why all kinds of things exist so that we can get through.

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But suffering is not necessarily a bad thing, and to go through suffering is not necessarily bad. So when you walk up to somebody who's suffering the loss of a death and you know they're a believer and you say, but aren't you excited they're in heaven?

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No, I'm not. Otherwise, I wouldn't be grieving. The reality of heaven is not real for us because we don't experience it and we don't see it.

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And this is why Paul says to grieve with those who are grieving, and he doesn't say to push them through their grieving because the loss of life is still the effect of sin, and it's really sad and sorrowful.

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No, you're exactly right, and we were not made to die. We were made physical and spiritual, and both of those aspects of our nature are important.

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And to be human as God has made us is to be material and immaterial, right?

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And so when those two parts of our nature are ripped apart from each other, it's devastating, and you're exactly right that people in certain times will say, with the best of intentions, will say very stupid things.

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And when we discussed this last week, just being ready and willing to overlook the ridiculous things that people say, trying to comfort those who are hurting, and also remembering too, this is important pastorally and important for all of us in the church, there are good and bad times to correct bad theology and bad thinking.

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And in the throes of grief and heartbreak is not the time.

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There will be opportunities, we trust, in the months and years ahead to be able to address bad theology and bad thinking.

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And people say things in moments of pain that as they have time to reflect themselves, they would recant.

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And so, as people will say that the hospital room is just a bad time, or the funeral home is just a really bad time.

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The graveside is a bad time to try to correct somebody in what they have just said, even if what they have said is absolutely patently false.

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Anyway, that's a thought. And like you were talking about too, man, suffering. Go ahead, go ahead. I was going to say, and there's even passages of scripture that are true, but at the time, when someone says, well,

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God works all things together for good. Well, in their mind at the moment, the grieving mind can't comprehend that.

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Have you ever read the Psalms? The Psalms has a lot of grieving, bad theology, really bad theology.

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And listen, and here's my encouragement, the two things that you should say to anybody who's grieving loss, loss of a child, loss of a loved one, whatever.

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Two things is, I cannot imagine how painful this is for you right now.

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And I love you, and I am here for whatever you need. And then you stop talking.

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You just stop. Brother, yeah, that's my almost verbatim, what I counsel people towards as well.

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And even to acknowledge that you don't know what to say other than that is sometimes just a good way to let the air out of the room.

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Like, I am so sorry for what you're going through. I can't imagine how much you're hurting. I'm here.

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And I, you know, basically that's all I have for you. And yeah, exactly.

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You're not alone. You do not have to go through this alone. That's right. And one last comment before we transition to our topic for today.

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I think this is worth stating. You were talking about how suffering is not necessarily a bad thing, and that's obviously true biblically.

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Suffering in and of itself is not good, right? But the way that the

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Lord uses it in a fallen world is good, and He uses it for our refining, our sanctification, our maturation, our growth.

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He creates in us more longing for heaven. He does a lot with it. And I'm mindful of Ecclesiastes when

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Solomon says that it is better to go to the house of mourning than the house of feasting in that regard because it gives us perspective and the promises, bro, of like Romans 8 28 that you referenced, we could do a podcast sometime on how absurdly abused that verse is.

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Because people in the face of cancer and in the face of death and all these things will throw that out.

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Well, God works all things together for good as though they have answered and solved the problem of pain. And it's just absolutely absurd.

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We realize that in the context of what Paul is writing, he has been writing about the fact that the creation has been cursed along with humanity.

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It's been plunged into ruin and it along with us is groaning to be liberated from the curse.

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And the creation itself is eagerly awaiting the revealing of the sons of God, which is the redemption of our bodies.

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He's talking about the consummation of our redemption and our resurrection. And so the promise of Romans 8 28 is clearly an eternal promise.

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It is not circumstantial that, oh, well, God works all your circumstances for good. No, that's not what it means.

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It means that he works all things for the eternal good of his people. And those are things that we just can't, we can't wrap our minds around right now, but we're looking to the hope of the resurrection and the hope that Christ has provided as the only thing to hold on to, but that does not take the pain away.

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Well, go take Romans 8 28 to two scenarios in Jesus's life. One, when

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Lazarus dies, clearly he grieves loss. And then number two in the garden, hey, hey,

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Jesus, Romans 8 28, why are you over here mourning unto death in the garden before you were to die?

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Yeah. Don't you know, don't you know that God works all things for good? Yeah, that's right. The point is it's part of the human process to grieve loss and to tell someone to stop grieving is just not appropriate.

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So anyways, we'll have to do a podcast on that. Seriously, last comment. Think about the book of Job.

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We know chapters one and two of Job really well. We know chapters 38 and following really well. There are like 36 chapters of wrestling in the middle that sometimes we sort of just gloss over because Job is an upright man.

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And at the same time, wrestles like crazy with the loss and the grief and everything that he is facing and his friends are of no help and all those kinds of things, but it's not like we just fast forward from chapter two to chapter 38 and that's all there is to it.

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We struggle and wrestle as human beings. Well, that was a long intro, but I hope in some ways helpful and maybe encouraging.

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And it's not unrelated to what we're going to talk about today, John. So go ahead and set us up. It's not. Well, today we are going to be covering, we like to go through the scripture once in a while and pull out different books or passages and bring some helpful insight where there's possibly been confusion, and we do a series called

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Dazed and Confused where people read particularly Romans 8 .28 would be a great Dazed and Confused that we could do. We'll do it soon, but we'll do it some more.

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Yeah, today we are covering probably the most read, if not the second most read book in the

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Bible. And if I'm going to, well, I guess you've already seen the title of the podcast, you already know. So it's already a giveaway, but we're going to talk about Proverbs and actually connected with Proverbs.

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We'll explain how Ecclesiastes goes with it, but the wisdom literature of the

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Old Testament. And if someone has grown up in the Christianity, they probably have read

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Proverbs and Psalms in rotation more than any other book, to the tune of probably 50 times more than any other that they have, because they're simple.

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You can read two to three, five, you know, you could read, you don't have to read an entire chapter of Proverbs. You could read four or five

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Proverbs in the day and have enough wisdom in there for you to try and apply and fail and come back the next day.

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So there's quite a few of them. And the same thing with the Psalms until you hit Psalm 119 and then everybody kind of freaks out and then they're like, oh,

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I'm gonna have to break this up into sections. But what we're going to really unravel and kind of expose is how pietism and legalism really changes the purpose and the design of Proverbs.

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You end up losing the value of it and not gaining the value of it. And you end up putting pressure into Proverbs in your own life and you personalize

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Proverbs in ways that Proverbs, we're going to argue, was really never designed to be internalized.

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It was actually supposed to be designed to push you out of yourself. So that's kind of where we're at.

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Now, before we get started, I thought it would just be fun how, we do this all the time, how people pick and choose their favorite

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Proverbs. So Justin, I wanted to give you my favorite Proverb. Justin Perdue I'm really excited.

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I'm sitting down. It's a good thing I'm not standing up because I might fall over. Go ahead. Right. And so, of course, we've always heard, and we'll talk about this a little bit, the

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Proverbs 31 woman, and there's all of these pressures that are put on women for it to be, and it's printed in every room in my house to remind my wife and to remind my daughters of what

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God expects them to be. I'm watching a train wreck in slow motion. No, no.

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But I do think that it's interesting that there are certain Proverbs that we just don't seem to apply and we don't seem to think there's much wisdom in them.

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And so I just want to take Proverbs 31, specifically how it's always addressed to the woman and how she's supposed to be.

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I'm going to actually just read to you two verses at the beginning of the chapter, verses six and seven. This is what the

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Proverbs says. Give strong drink to the one who is perishing and wine to those in bitter distress, let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more.

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Amen. Yeah. I'm just going to let it sit there.

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Let it sit. Okay. I'm just being funny, but that is a proverb.

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I did not make that up. Some of you are grabbing your Bibles right now because you don't believe what

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I just read. That's ESV, by the way, is in there. It's in there.

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Justin, give us some relief, my friend. So you've been preaching through Proverbs and let's help the listener and the reader get some clarity on what do they do with Proverbs.

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So if they've been listening to Theocast for a while, you're enjoying the cross, legalism is bad, pietism is bad. It seems like Proverbs is just a packed jam full of pietism.

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Where's the release valve and how do we turn Proverbs from being guilt -driven to actually finding joy?

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Yeah, there's a lot to do just by way of setting the table. And that's what we're going to spend the next chunk of time doing.

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And then we'll consider the book high level. Proverbs is really poorly represented often.

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And I think for most of us, as you've just alluded to, the book has not been something that's been very life -giving or encouraging.

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And a lot of times if we're honest, we don't even know what to do with it because we go to it, especially for those of us who are reformed and have maybe never heard it taught on, which it's sadly not preached very often,

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I think for some of these reasons that we're talking about, because people are like, I'm not quite sure what to do with this because there's just all of this imperative and exhortation and wisdom and the like.

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And it's going to surprise none of our listeners who have been with us for a while that we want to begin talking about Proverbs by discussing some high level theological categories.

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And so we'll start with the redemptive historical framework of the

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Bible, where we understand the main point of the whole Bible, all of scripture, to be

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God's plan of redemption that He has accomplished through Jesus. And that's really important as we come to Proverbs when we consider even the covenantal framework of the

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Bible, where in the beginning of the scripture, in the early chapters of Genesis, we see that God made a covenant with our first parents,

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Adam and Eve, He told them things that they were to do, and He gave them a prohibition that they were not to eat of this one particular tree.

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And Adam and Eve, we know in Genesis chapter three, broke that covenant that God had made with them, and therefore the curse and judgment came.

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That covenant is referred to theologically as the covenant of works. Had Adam kept the covenant that God made with him, he would have lived on in perpetuity in perfect relationship with God.

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But given that that covenant was broken, not only did judgment come, God in Genesis chapter three and verse 15 made another promise, made another covenant with Adam and Eve, and thereby all of Adam's posterity, that we call the covenant of grace, where He promised a redeemer who would come.

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And then underneath that covenant of grace are a number of other covenants that are subservient to it, beginning with the

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Noahic covenant in Genesis, where God promises to sustain the world, but then also the covenant God made with Abraham, where He promises to make out of Abraham a people that every nation would be blessed through Abraham's promised seed, and that Abraham's people would have a land forever.

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We know that those things are ultimately fulfilled through Christ and will be consummated in the new heavens and the new earth.

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There is also a covenant that God made with Moses in which He gave the law, which we understand to be a reissuing of the covenant of works, not formally, but with respect to what

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God requires, its terms. Here is how we are to live. And then God also made a covenant with David that one of his sons would sit forever on the throne of righteousness.

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And it is in that particular era of the Davidic covenant that we find Proverbs. In fact,

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David's son, Solomon, wrote the majority of the Proverbs. And so it's helpful for us to hold all of that in view in terms of redemptive history and where we're situated in the

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Bible. So that's a lot that I've already just said. I don't know if you want to jump in before we maybe get into the law and uses of the law.

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But please, John, I've talked for like five minutes. No, it's good. It was a great overview. And for those of you that are new to covenant theology, welcome to the intro.

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We have some recommendations on our website, some books. Just go to our website and go to recommended reading.

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There's some books you can read there. But I will say that the hardest part of reading

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Old Testament literature, specifically something like Proverbs, is that we always read it encapsulated as if it's its own book, like in a vacuum.

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Scripture is a library, and in this library that holds books happens to be Proverbs, and if you were to walk into a library, you have fantasy, you have history, and then you have wisdom.

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And so we're going to grab wisdom, but that's not how it was written. It wasn't written disconnected from the story of redemption that started in Genesis and is now flowing all the way through the book of Revelation.

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So when you think of, just as Justin said, when you think of Proverbs, you have to look at it in its historical setting, which is it's during the time of David underneath the

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Davidic covenant, which meaning is, if you don't understand the Davidic covenant, this is vitally important.

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There's a promise given to David that one of his sons is going to sit on the throne and perfectly obey the law.

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And when he obeys the law perfectly, he will earn the eternal kingdom. He will earn the right passage to God's kingdom forever.

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So, of course, Solomon is born, and then Solomon thinks this is him. And he builds the temple and says, okay, and of course,

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God then clarifies again. No, you don't understand. It's definitely not you. Look at your life.

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He means perfection. He means absolute perfection. And so from that moment on, you hear the stories of this king lived right in the eyes of God, but he wasn't perfect.

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And this king was horrible. It was up and down and up and down. And this is why we're waiting for the coming king. When you finally get to Matthew, you're waiting for the coming king.

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And what does Jesus do? As the king, the Messiah, the king of the Jews, he perfectly obeys the law and therefore earns right of passage into the eternal kingdom for all of the people of God, not just the

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Jews. We're excited to announce that we have a new free ebook available at our website called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest. And we, the hosts, put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

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And you can get this at theocast .org slash Primer. And if you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at Theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us.

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You can do that by joining our Total Access membership. That's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years, or simply by donating to our ministry.

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And you can do that by going to our website, theocast .org. We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

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And that's the big thing, is that the greater David who is to come, the

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Davidic king, the Messiah, would fulfill the law for his people's sake.

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It's the very clear witness of Scripture that his obedience would then be representative for and be counted to all of his subjects, and he, through his righteousness and obedience, would bring his people into the kingdom of God forever.

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And so it's important that when we go to Proverbs, we keep all of that in view because the

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Mosaic law is still a thing, right? And so we're under law, and the people are looking for the

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Messiah, the Christ who is to come, who would fulfill the law and sit on the throne forever. So you cannot read

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Proverbs divorced from those redemptive historical realities, or you will go all kinds of astray with it, for sure.

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So at this point in history, you have the promise given to Adam and Eve.

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Well, the law we know already exists because it's the first five books of the Old Testament. So David would have known of the law.

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He even says, I love thy law in his Psalms. The Abrahamic covenant then consists inside that law.

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Of course, it's in Genesis. So they understand that from Abraham, there is to come a seed.

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And even it says through Judah, there's to come a king. And from that king, all the nations will be blessed.

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And so they understand these promises because they lived under the law. The law was read to them as a people.

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It was a part of their culture as the Jewish nation. So the Messiah is not foreign to them.

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So when you read Proverbs, you're not reading it disconnected from the history, from the law, and especially from the promises of the

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Messiah. Because Jesus actually comes in every command that you see or every wisdom literature that's written in there.

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Jesus is the final fulfillment of that. Just to kind of drop it early.

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We don't need to bury the lead, right? I mean, I know as I'm preaching through Proverbs 1 -9, I am very clear, redundantly so, over and over again, that Jesus is wisdom personified.

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He is wisdom fulfilled. He is wisdom consummated. All of these things, wisdom provided.

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And so whenever we see all of those things described in Proverbs, we should be seeing Christ in those regards.

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But then inevitably we're dealing with another thing that we talk about a lot at Theocast, which is law gospel distinction when you come to Proverbs as well, because the

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Proverbs is full of imperatives and there are even certain phrasings that go just like the law goes, where Solomon will write to his proverbial son and say, son, keep my commandments and you will live.

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And we look at that and we say, oh my goodness, like this sounds just like Moses, when

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Moses says, do these things and you will live, do these things and you will live by them. So there's a lot of that in Proverbs where we have to parse law and gospel to help people realize that the uses of the law are in full effect as we come to Proverbs when we look at these imperatives, some of it is wisdom, as you and I were talking about before we even came on, and then some of the commands certainly are promised, there are promises attached to them.

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And when we see that, we should think first use of the law, where we're told do these things and you'll live, we assess ourselves in light of that and we have not done what we're commanded to do and we look to Christ who has done it for us, second use of the law though, to restrain our corruption, right?

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So when Solomon will write to his proverbial son, do these things, son, and your life will go well, or do not walk in the streets where you're going to be tempted at night by...

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Don't walk in the, don't, don't hang out with people who plan and do wickedness all the time.

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It'll wreck your life. You know, do not, son, the, the adulterous, right? Do not go there, son, because it, it will absolutely destroy your life, you know?

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And, and so that's second use of the law and in terms of the restraint of our corruption, because we see that there are promises associated with doing good and there are punishments and, and suffering associated with doing evil.

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And so it, it curbs our, our corruption. And then third use of the law in Christ Jesus, we see a guide for our living.

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You know, but it's, Christ has done it. We're safe. We're good with God. We've been reconciled to him. And now we can consider these things in thinking about how we love

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God and also how we love neighbor. Proverbs is very useful because you and I are talking about this too.

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There's nothing in Proverbs that you and I can think of that is not vertically oriented in terms of love to God or horizontally oriented in terms of love to neighbor.

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And so Proverbs is packed full of stuff that makes you useful to your neighbor. You will be a better neighbor if you think in these ways and apply some of these things, but they're not to be just internalized and, and turned into this really hyper introspective thing that we often do, thinking that if we just take these things to heart, our lives are just going to have this nice clean upward trajectory all the time.

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That's not, that's not the promise of Proverbs at all. Well, you, you kind of dropped some, some, some massive categories in here.

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So I want to unfold them a little bit just for the listener that might be new. No, no, it's great.

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What are you talking about? So law gospel, first of all, we need to clarify if you are new to Reformed theology, if you're new to theocast and you hear a law gospel distinction, you are probably asking yourself,

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I think I know what that means, but I'm not sure. So it is, it's, it's one of the most important imperatives for you.

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It's imperative, I should say, for you to properly understand scripture, to understand that there, there are, there are, there are ways in which the

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Bible presents itself. So a law is God's commandment for you to obey.

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And then if you do that, you are then accepted in his eyes. And if you do it perfectly, you're accepted in his eyes and considered righteous and shall live, do this and live, right?

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So just for sake of example, it's very obvious, the 10 commandments, do not, do not, or do, and the obvious of those is you're acceptable in the eyes of God.

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The gospel has no do, and it has no should, because that's not good news.

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So the law is always do, do, or should. The gospel is always done, receive.

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So the gospel is good news that, that's right. Jesus has accomplished the law.

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Not only has accomplished it, but did it on your behalf. And that's what we receive.

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We receive as the good news, one, forgiveness of our failure of the law. And two, we receive the righteousness of Christ.

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That's gospel. So when we say a law gospel distinction, when you read Proverbs, you have to have that in your mind.

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Because what we will do is we think, if I do this, God will accept me. That's actually law.

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And you have to be careful there. You cannot turn that into gospel. So that, that's one. I think, and also the three uses of the law, which we have, we have brothers that would say they don't agree with us, which isn't funny.

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As I was thinking about this and specifically like our Lutheran brothers, which I love them. And even some of our Reformed brothers, they would say, we don't believe in the third use of the law or uses of the law that way.

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And I would say they do. They just don't verbalize it that way. Because if you practice church discipline, you believe in the third use of the law.

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Well, let me say this. I said this in a sermon recently in my church context, because I acknowledge,

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I mean, for a lot of our people, John, they've never heard of the three uses of the law as they come to CBC and they're learning this for the first time.

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And, and I acknowledge that in preaching a sermon recently, like I already said that, Hey, you're hearing this language of the three uses of the law, first, second, third use of the law, et cetera.

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And you're like, I've never heard that before, brother. You know, where, where is this coming from? And to try to help people and comfort them and ease their minds a little bit,

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I said, look, we could talk about the history of it and all the rest at some other, some other point in time, but just think about how you live with your brothers and sisters in the church and how you talk all the time.

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The three uses of the law are clearly in use and in view for you. So for example, when you're dealing with a brother or sister in the church, who's in sin, and you say to them, brother or sister, look to Jesus.

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He is your righteousness. What is that? That's the first use of the law. Yes, you have failed.

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Look to Jesus who has done everything perfectly for you. That's first use. Second use, whenever you look at somebody and you say you're, you're meeting with a friend and you're like, brother, do not go there.

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What you're doing is dangerous. It's going to wreck your life. What is that? That's second use of the law. It's restraining human corruption.

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And then third use, whenever you look at one another and you, in Christ Jesus, plead with one another, pray together that God would give you grace, that you might live unto him, that God would keep you from sin, you know, that we would conform our lives even to what

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God says is good and bad. What is that? I mean, we're acknowledging the third use of the law as the guide for our living.

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And so whether we want to acknowledge these categories formally or not, we all talk this way, think this way, plead this way, pray this way in the church.

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And so all we're trying to do is put handles on that for people. And we're not, this is not new to us. I mean, this is very old.

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So just, yeah, quick interjection on that. Yeah, we try in the podcast to help point you to confessions and reformers to help you understand that this is not, it's not even a denominational movement.

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This is men trying to unpack and unfold scripture, which is our final authority. It's just helpful to use, you know, for instance, we use things like the word

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Trinity to help explain a very, very complicated concept. I have to say one word and you immediately understand what

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I'm saying. So when we say law gospel, it's just another way of saying a word like Trinity, it helps clarify categories for us right away.

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So I want to go back to what a comment you had made, if we can keep the three uses of the law and law gospel distinction, and more importantly, a redemptive historic understanding, meaning that the

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Bible is about redemption and it unfolds through history. When we look at Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, there are wisdom in there that are not attached to promises that we can hang our hat on.

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For instance, just as I was being funny, but out of reading Proverbs 31, six and seven, where he gives like an exact command, he's saying, go do this.

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There's an imperative. Well, right. If I don't obey that imperative, am

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I in sin that if I don't give strong drink to those who are perishing? Because you and I have experienced congregants who are perishing.

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So am I in disobedience because I didn't take a bottle of wine or bourbon into the hospital and give it to the person?

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You see what I'm saying? Like we get so hyperactive about obeying scripture, but yet we actually don't think about what we're doing.

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And so you would say, well, John, no, but then you'll go to another proverb and say, all right, if you don't do this, you're in sin.

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I'm like, okay, let's understand the context here. Israel, unfortunately, had had a horrible history of falling in pack with paganism over and over again.

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They would go into captivity. They would worship false idols. They would get into all kinds of sexual and cultural sins that were just debauchery.

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And so you've got a wise man who was blessed by God with wisdom saying, all right, son, the world's pretty messed up.

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I need to give you some wisdom here, some common sense for the day. Common sense for the day in light of God's truth.

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And I want to make this comment now before we move forward. We've already referenced Ecclesiastes a few times.

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Ecclesiastes was written by the same man who wrote the majority of Proverbs. And it's critical that we hold those two books in tension because Ecclesiastes is a very honest treatment about life under the sun in a fallen world.

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And the futility and the toil that we often encounter in our day -to -day lives, the fact that death is real, and the fact that death tramples on every good thing that we have, that every good thing we have in life at some point will be a memory and then it'll just be gone.

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And so it's important for us to hold Proverbs and Ecclesiastes in appropriate tension and not cancel one with the other.

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And so in thinking about that, it's really important to remember some of the things that Proverbs will not do for you.

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So like Proverbs, if you read them and take them to heart and apply them appropriately and all the rest, will not do the following.

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Proverbs will not deliver you from the fallenness of the world. It will not guarantee you good circumstances.

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It will not deliver you from all suffering. It will not keep you from the toil that characterizes life under the sun.

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It will not keep you from ever knowing heartbreak. It will not deliver you from pain and sorrow altogether.

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It will not keep you from groaning. Like think about Romans eight. You will groan the entirety of your days on earth as you await the redemption of your body.

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And also Proverbs will not deliver us from the struggle against sin. We will still fight our corruption and we will not be delivered by Proverbs from weakness.

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And so it's really important that we realize these things and that we are not guaranteed in abiding by proverbial wisdom that things will never fall apart in our lives.

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And so I'm not trying to be like a broker for Satan's doubt here at all, but it's important that we hold

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Scripture together and not be irresponsible in the way that we approach Proverbs and we uphold it for what it is.

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It's wisdom in light of redemptive history. There are promises that are made in it that we see ultimately fulfilled in Christ in our place.

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And there is guide for our living and all that. That's certainly true. And we're taught the difference between wisdom and folly, the difference between righteousness and evil, and we're taught how to be all kinds of good for our neighbor in looking at the

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Proverbs and we can learn much from it, but we ought not turn it into something that it was never intended to be.

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No, no. So understanding the difference between wisdom and promise, you know, there are things in here that are helpful.

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Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, lean not into thine own understanding and all thy ways, acknowledge him and he shall direct thy path. That's a great promise.

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That's a great promise. Trust in the Lord and not yourself is good counsel. Right. And that's wonderful.

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But there are other sections of Scripture that there are wisdom and context, you need to understand context, and they're what

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I call general wisdom. And listen, if you have children, you do this with your children. If you have employees, you do this with your employees where you give them some general counsel of saying, listen, in general, and the general rule of thumb is this is not helpful.

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This is not wise. I'm teaching my son how to hunt. I got him a shotgun and we, you know, so there are,

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I'm giving him some rules that in general, if he applies those rules, he'll be safe, but it's not a guarantee that he's never going to get hurt and those are the things that you have to be careful with.

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When it comes to the gospel, there's like nothing that separates you from that promise.

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Like that's a guaranteed promise. And understanding that Jesus is the final fulfillment of all wisdom and promise, that everything that you have ever been commanded to do, including what's in the

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Proverbs, is fulfilled by the ultimate, which is Christ. So understanding where the context is, if you read that, it releases the pressure of everything that's in Proverbs thinking, oh, unless I do this,

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I'm going to be an unwise, foolish person that God's never going to bless. Wrong. You have all blessings in Christ Jesus.

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The final promise and fulfillment is here. When you read Proverbs now, you read it in light of what

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Christ has done for you. The promise is kept by God. And then understand that, hey, listen, a lot of these instructions are helpful for me to be a better neighbor to my wife, to my children, to the congregants.

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A lot of actually what's said in Proverbs is reiterated by Paul in Ephesians and Galatians, because it's talking about temperament and patience and graciousness.

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Justin Perdue Or chapters like Romans chapter 12 and following is another section. It's very proverbial.

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And so I might look at a few specific verses and sections of Proverbs really quick and just make some comments that might be helpful to the listener.

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So I want to begin with Proverbs 1 .7, which is a very famous verse for good reason that reads this way in the

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ESV, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and instruction.

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So the first comment maybe on the latter piece is it is important for us to know that in our natural state, born into a state of sin, we do not like instruction and wisdom, we are opposed to it.

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And so we need to start there and that's important. But that first piece, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

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Well, let's ask ourselves what that might mean. The fear of the Lord, the reverence of the Lord would entail what?

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First of all, it would entail knowing who the Lord is. And so we know something of his character and his nature and his holiness, right?

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Then in knowing and fearing the Lord, we would know and understand what he requires, which we've already discussed.

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It's laid out for us perfectly in his law and he requires perfect fulfillment and obedience to that law.

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And so in knowing who God is and knowing what he requires, I then assess myself and I am undone and I'm ruined before him and I am immediately driven outside of myself to Christ who has met

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God's standard and fulfilled God's law perfectly for me so that I might dwell with this holy

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God forever in perfect relationship with him. So right out of the gate in Proverbs, we get this very redemptive, historical, first use of the law thing going on.

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And then as we make our way over into chapter three, I just want to briefly touch on again what you referenced, John. Also very famous verses, verses five and six of chapter three, trust in the

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Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths.

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Well, trust in the Lord and not yourself. That's a wonderful exhortation because, I mean, first of all, trust

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Christ in the gospel and not your own righteousness. When the Proverbs uses the language of straight paths,

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I mean, there's often the juxtaposition of the path of the wicked and the path of the righteous. The path of the wicked are those who are going to be removed from the land and cut off, that's what

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Solomon even says, the path of the righteous are those who will inherit the land. Well, how should we understand that?

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Again, we're talking about the righteousness of God counted to sinners by faith in Messiah. And so we cannot escape any of those things as we look in the book of Proverbs.

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And then even chapter 16 in verse six, where we read that by steadfast love and faithfulness, iniquity is atoned for.

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It's like, oh my gosh, well, whose steadfast love is that? And whose faithfulness is that?

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You know, by which iniquity is atoned for. So are we, I mean, I just want to be very clear here.

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Like people are like, is Jesus in the Proverbs? You better believe he is. He's all over the place. As our righteousness and our atonement, and as the fulfillment of everything described by way of wisdom for God's people.

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And I would argue that the beginning of wisdom, so if the beginning of knowledge is the fear of the Lord, you could put right beside that.

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The beginning of wisdom is trusting Christ. Like at the bottom of wisdom is trusting

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Jesus to do for you what you could never do for yourself and relying upon him alone for your standing before God.

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Yeah. And I want to bring up a couple of famous Proverbs that are out there that are used.

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One's used by parenting classes or parenting books. You know, Proverbs 22 .6, train up a child in the way he should go.

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Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Well, I don't,

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I mean, it seems like people have tried that Proverbs and it doesn't seem to work. So either they didn't train up their child right or the

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Proverbs wrong, or maybe we're not understanding the Proverbs, but Proverbs 22 is chock full of all kinds of interesting instructions.

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Let's keep reading. Let's keep reading things like whoever, and those verse 12, the eyes of the

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Lord keep watch over the knowledge, but the overthrowers, the words of the traitor. He who loves purity of heart and whose speech is gracious.

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This is a fun one. We'll have the King as a friend. So, you know, what these general rules of thumb, what is he meaning?

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And I think you have to understand that these are what we call general, for instance, if, if you don't speed, then you'll be wisdom, right?

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So I tell my child, if you don't speed, you'll be safe. Well, that's if the people around you don't speed and they aren't drunk and they don't hit you.

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Well, brother, that's exactly the Ecclesiastes piece that we've been bringing up over and over again. So, I mean, take, take

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Proverbs 22, 6, that you said, you know, train up a child in the way should go, even when he is old, he will not depart from it.

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And then this same Solomon is going to come in and Ecclesiastes and say, yeah. And sometimes in a

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Genesis three world, things fall apart and go badly. You know, and, or like you just said, you know, son, drive by the speed limit and be an attentive driver and you will be safer, you'll be safe, true.

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But then like you, like you just alluded to, uh, in Solomon and Ecclesiastes is going to say, yeah, but there's a lot of really bad drivers out there on the road and you could do everything right and still be in a car wreck, you know?

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And that's not to say that like the promise or not the promises, but the wisdom in Proverbs are not right and good and true, they are, but then

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Solomon again is going to come, you know, and put his arm around our shoulder and say, yeah, but it's not always going to be clean and it's not always going to go this way.

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There will be things that fall apart because life under the sun is full of toil and futility and vanity because of the curse.

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And so, you know, I, I jumped on the joke about Ecclesiastes and Solomon there is sort of talking in a way that we are very uncomfortable with in the church.

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And we're sort of like, we read Ecclesiastes and we're like, dude, you shouldn't talk like that. And, and he says, well, you know,

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I'm just, I'm just describing things the way that they are. Um, well you, you shouldn't say that. It's like, well, okay, maybe not, but this is how things really happen.

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I'm just calling it like it is, you know? Well, it shouldn't be that way. You know? And then Solomon's like,

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I agree with you, but it is this way. So now what, you know, what, what are we going to do? And I think it's important that we hold these things in tension to where we apply

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Proverbs in an appropriate way. Like you have been wonderfully describing John, it's general wisdom to be applied and, and realize like that verse about raising your kids, you could do everything right, and things could still go poorly in your child's life.

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And it's not that you have been unwise, right? It's just that so much depends on grace and the fallenness of the world is real.

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The power of sin and corruption is real. And therefore we're constantly looking outside of ourselves to trust the

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Lord because, you know, even, even in our best efforts to apply wisdom, it's, it's not infallible, you know?

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No, I just, even the end of Ecclesiastes, it's, it's, he just puts people into law.

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There's, you scream, where's the Messiah? When you finish reading Ecclesiastes, he says the end, the end of the end of, this is the end of the matter.

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All has been heard, fear. That's right. Fear God and keep his commandment for this is the whole duty of man.

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For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil. That's how he ends.

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And you're going, uh, that there, where's the hope, Solomon? He's like, it's called the covenant of grace.

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It's called promise of the Messiah. Yeah, it's called the Christ is coming. Yeah. Well, we need to move into the members podcast and I think we can speak a little bit more to Ecclesiastes and maybe even throw in song

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Solomon. Uh, I don't know. We'll see, see how that all comes in. Just kind of one book after the other, right?

48:26

Might as well. But it's been, uh, it's been a wonderful conversation. If you want to, uh, participate with us as we continue with this conversation, they go from anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes, depending on what the topic is.

48:40

That's right. So that's our membership podcast. It's just a simple way for us to continue the conversation. And we are a little bit, uh, that's kind of where we relax a little bit more.

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It's, it's not as primitive proper. It's for those who kind of want to jump around the table and enjoy it. So often we will answer questions that we get from our listeners.

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You can join that by going to theocast .org and look for our total access membership is a 14 day free trial.

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Most importantly, what that membership does is it actually supports us so that we can get this message out to more people around the world through the podcast articles and books, and we have more books coming out as well as our transcripts.

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You can go and read those as well. Thank you for listening. We will be speaking to you next week.