Introduction to Proverbs

Reformed Rookie

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:27

Okay, this is a new study that we're starting today from the book of Proverbs, all right, subtitled

00:32

Wisdom for Life. From Haddon Robinson, an old old -time preacher, and then wisdom is the application of the of God's Word used for the glory of God.

00:47

All right, so if you put all of these together you come up with somewhat of a definition of what biblical wisdom is.

00:55

Wisdom is acquired by those who are in Christ through spiritual reception and understanding of God's Word.

01:03

Okay, now if we've taken that as a definition, true wisdom can only be acquired through the power of the

01:12

Holy Spirit. We're going to look in a few minutes at some of the differences between what we would call the wisdom of the world or worldly wisdom as opposed to godly wisdom.

01:23

So, but talking first about true wisdom, it is of divine origin. It's made possible by regeneration.

01:33

In other words, unless one is born again, true biblical wisdom is not available to that person.

01:41

Right? Even though it's of divine origin, and it's only possible through regeneration, human action is required to receive it.

01:52

And what we mean by that, the reading of God's Word and prayer. Wisdom is not something that you're going to get by osmosis.

02:05

It's not just an automatic thing. It's something that you have to actually strive for and work for, and you'll see that as we go through the book of Proverbs.

02:14

First point, and we're going to see this right in the very beginning of the book, is that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the

02:20

Lord. All right. Difference between worldly wisdom and godly wisdom.

02:28

I'm going to give just a couple of examples of it now, and you're going to see this as we go through the book, because one of the points that we need to understand is

02:38

Christianity is a religion of antithesis. Okay? In other words, there's no neutrality.

02:46

You're either following the scriptures, or you're not. There's no blending of the two, and you're going to see that even when it comes to living a godly life and following biblical wisdom.

02:58

All right. So first, let's look at godly wisdom, and again, these are only a few points. You know, the whole study is going to be seeing the difference between godly wisdom and worldly wisdom.

03:08

Godly wisdom seeks for the Lord with an obedient heart. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the

03:16

Lord. All right. If you're not seeking the Lord with a heart that's desiring to serve him, right off the bat, you're not seeking godly wisdom.

03:25

Okay? Look at James 3, verses 13 to 18, and this will give you a good idea.

03:32

All right. Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show his behavior, let him show his good behavior, his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom.

03:42

Notice how important this is. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant, and so lie against the truth.

03:51

This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exists, there is disorder in every evil thing.

04:00

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy, and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.

04:10

And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Now that's a mouthful, and again,

04:16

I'm not going to exegete this passage right now. I just, I put this up here just to show you the difference between worldly wisdom and godly wisdom.

04:30

Godly wisdom is based upon the Holy Scriptures. That's one of the biggest differences right here, is if you look at the wisdom of the world, it's based upon human reasoning, human understanding, how we understand things, as opposed to godly wisdom, which has come straight from the

04:50

Scriptures. Godly wisdom will cause you to do things that go against what you really think is the right thing to do.

05:02

Okay, and you'll see that as we go through what I mean by that. For example, ungodly wisdom, worldly wisdom, says, do you want to get ahead in the world?

05:15

Look out for number one. Put yourself first. They even have resume writing courses that you can take on how to exalt yourself.

05:23

Okay, what does godly wisdom say? If you want to be first, humble yourself.

05:30

Always look out for the other person as being more important than yourself. Two different things.

05:35

That goes against everything that we learn in this world. Godly wisdom is trusting in the

05:42

Lord as opposed to leaning on your own understanding. That's exactly what we're talking about here, is there are certain things, certain principles that were taught in life that run counter to the

05:54

Scriptures. And if you're going to be wise in a biblical sense, you have to learn to put aside your own understanding where the

06:01

Bible addresses something clearly. And we'll see a lot of these examples as we go through.

06:07

Godly wisdom is demonstrated in the life of the believer.

06:14

That's the only place you're going to see it. Godly wisdom looks long -term at God's greater picture, and you'll see that just the opposite with worldly wisdom, which is very, very short -sighted.

06:30

Worldly wisdom, it is called foolishness in the Scriptures. Well, I'll show you here.

06:39

Look at 1 Corinthians 1, 18 -25. This is a very important portion of Scripture. Look at what it says,

06:46

For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

06:56

It is, remember, one of the biggest complaints against Christianity was the fact that, of the vicarious atonement, you know, the gospel message.

07:07

You want to be saved, you have to put your full faith and trust in Jesus Christ, because he is the only one who can remove your sin.

07:15

Even back in Paul's day, that was considered foolishness. They said, how foolish, how can somebody else take away your sin?

07:23

Those of you who remember the late Christopher Hitchens, all right, extremely bright man, intelligent, you know, and a kind man.

07:33

I had opportunity to meet him at one of his debates. Very gracious, very kind.

07:38

In fact, he was the type of guy that you wanted to be around, all right? Yet, he, the biggest thing that he rejected, and in fact, he didn't call himself an atheist.

07:51

He called himself an anti -theist. He hated the concept of God, and the thing that he hated most was the concept that somebody else could take away your sin.

08:02

He said that just made no sense to him. For it is written,

08:09

I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever. I will set aside. Where is the wise man?

08:15

Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

08:21

And then I'm not going to read all of it, but that's the essence of that whole portion of Scripture, is that it's only the wisdom in Christ that is long -term.

08:32

It's not easy being a Christian in our society, and in fact, now everybody else is given preference except for the

08:41

Christian. In our society, if you're a Muslim, God forbid that somebody should say something to you that's offensive to you.

08:50

That's a huge crime, but anybody can say whatever they want about Christianity, and that's where we're open season, all right?

09:02

Worldly wisdom is short -sighted. I want what I want, and I want it now, all right?

09:09

Instant answers. One of the things we need to understand, too, about godly wisdom is that it doesn't come all at once, and sometimes the answers that we're looking for are not readily available.

09:29

It takes time. It takes study, and even answers to prayer may be delayed for reasons that only

09:38

God knows, and we don't necessarily, we're not given a glimpse into that, so it's very easy to become short -sighted and only look at the short -term goals instead of looking at the big picture.

09:52

Instant gratification. Worldly wisdom looks at the world and fails to see

09:58

God, okay? So, let's look at the book.

10:05

Now, that's just a little introduction into the concept of wisdom, and again, we just scratched the surface, okay?

10:14

Looking at the book of Proverbs, the purpose of the book is given in the first seven verses, okay?

10:20

This is one of those books that right in the very beginning we understand what the purpose is, and here we see the

10:27

Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, to know wisdom and instruction, to discern the sayings of understanding.

10:34

There you have it. What's one of the purposes of Proverbs? To learn how to understand wisdom and what we would call pithy sayings, etc.,

10:45

all right? To receive instruction in wise behavior, righteousness, justice, and equity. Justice and equity is something that our criminal justice system is departing from, and it's becoming more and more subjective, all right?

11:03

Having worked in the criminal justice system for 20 years, and I know we have a couple of guys here still working, you have to see that, how court decisions are becoming more and more selective and and not true justice.

11:19

To give prudence to the naive, to the youth, knowledge, and discretion. A lot of Proverbs is written to young men and young women.

11:28

A wise man will hear an increase in learning and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel. To understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles.

11:38

You realize that a lot of Scripture, and even in a lot of life, principles of life are not always given in a didactic sense, but they're given through riddles, wise sayings, illustrations.

11:58

Proverbs is a very unique book, but I'm getting ahead of myself there. The fear of the

12:04

Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Here's the purpose. This is why the book of Proverbs was written, to make one wise, all right?

12:16

Proverbs takes us beyond intellect and knowledge and into the realm of wisdom. It's the difference between being smart and being wise.

12:23

There's a lot of smart men, intellectual men, who are fools. All right.

12:29

One of the things you're going to see, and as we study the book of Proverbs, is that foolishness is not somebody who is not well -educated.

12:39

Foolishness is somebody who is not a moral person. Foolishness and wisdom are described in moral terms in the book of Proverbs.

12:48

So you can be a tremendous intellect, you can have a 145 IQ, be a member of Mensa, and according to Scripture, you can still be a fool.

12:57

Or you can have a low IQ, all right, and yet be considered very wise.

13:08

That is, when you talk about wisdom, it's the realm of application. What do you do with the knowledge that you have?

13:14

All right. You can sit in a class, even a study like this, learn all the principles, but if you don't put it into practice, it's foolishness.

13:25

Knowing the law of God is not enough for Christian living, okay?

13:32

We know that since the book of Proverbs is in Scripture. Nothing is done by accident.

13:37

All of Scripture is there for a particular reason, and since we have a book of wisdom, we understand that it's not there, it's not extraneous.

13:47

It's there for a reason. Therefore, it must be necessary, otherwise God would not have included it in His Word.

13:54

If all we needed was the law of God, the Ten Commandments, that would be fine, but that's not the case.

14:02

Here's three reasons why the law of God is not enough, and these are only three. You can probably come up with more. We may know the law and still not comply with it.

14:12

Let me ask you a question. When David sinned with Bathsheba, when he committed adultery and then ultimately murder, you think he forgot that the

14:19

Ten Commandments said, thou shalt not commit adultery and thou shalt not murder? No. What did he do?

14:25

He just failed to comply with it. All right. He says, I want what

14:31

I want when I want it. We need something to tell us how to apply the principles of law to life.

14:40

How do you apply thou shalt not commit murder? How do you apply that to circumstances today?

14:48

All right, because we have people dying in very unusual ways. Okay. We may know the law and yet miss the weightier provisions of it.

15:00

Remember when Jesus was rebuking the Pharisees, he said, row unto you, scribes,

15:07

Pharisees, hypocrites, you tithe of your excuse me, you tithe of your mint, your dill, your cumin.

15:15

In other words, they were tithing of the things they grew in their garden. He says, yet you miss the weightier provisions of the law.

15:21

They were taking advantage of their elderly parents. They were taking advantage of people in business. And he said, so even though they were straining at gnats, they were swallowing camels.

15:33

Okay. Wisdom gained in Proverbs is a practical remedy for these problems.

15:42

Virtually anything that you need in the realm of wisdom is found in the book of Proverbs.

15:49

It's just an incredible book and an incredible study. We need to be trained to discern good and evil.

15:57

You might say, well, wait a minute, didn't we get that at the fall, you know, when Adam and Eve ate of the garden? Well, not really.

16:03

Because Hebrews 5 says, for everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe, but solid food is for the mature, because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.

16:17

All right. In other words, what he's saying is, when you're saved, you get a certain amount of wisdom.

16:25

Your spiritual eyes are open, but it's not enough. That's like the milk of the word. You need to get to the meat of the word so that you can really understand things.

16:35

You hear a lot about, well, that's a gray area, and maybe, maybe not.

16:42

Maybe our understanding is what makes it gray. You know, we're looking through dark glasses, and we need to be trained to see clearly.

16:54

There are situations that face us today that were not present in ancient times. For example, look at our technological advances.

17:01

What happens when you drive your car recklessly and kill somebody? Is that murder?

17:10

Hmm? Well, all the,

17:15

I mean, all the scripture says, all the law of God says is, thou shalt not commit murder.

17:22

Does it rise to the level of murder? Is every killing murder? How do we know that?

17:31

The scriptures, and in particular, Proverbs, but you even have other portions of the law of God which tell us how to apply, thou shalt not commit murder.

17:43

Believe it or not, you know, you see if, I'm very familiar with our homicide laws here in New York State, and our homicide laws follow the scriptures pretty closely.

17:54

There's varying degrees of murder, two degrees of murder, two degrees of manslaughter, then you got criminally negligent homicide.

18:01

There's all kinds of, based upon the, so not every not every taking of a life is murder, and some taking of a life is justifiable.

18:12

The law doesn't say that, but the ancillary portions of scripture, and specifically

18:18

Proverbs, medical advances. Think of how many ethical questions come up because of the medical advances.

18:28

Do you pull the plug, or don't you pull the plug? Well, they didn't have to deal with that back there.

18:35

But now we have, so how do we make these decisions? Is it just left up to us? Well, that would be leaning on your own understanding.

18:42

Does the Bible address those issues? You bet it does. All right, but if not, if you're not studying the scriptures, how are you going to make these decisions?

18:53

And in fact, what happens, take that illustration I just gave you. What happens today when somebody is terminally ill, and they're suffering?

19:05

Decisions are made purely by what? Emotion, and let's face it.

19:13

You're put in that emotional position, and you're not thinking clearly.

19:19

You see a loved one who's laying there, and who's dying, and you've got to make a life -or -death decision. You want that to be a godly one, and not an emotional one that you may regret later.

19:30

Okay, why do we stand in front of the abortion clinic, and try to convince women not to have abortions?

19:36

To prevent them from making a tragic mistake. They're not thinking clearly at that point.

19:44

So we need wisdom to apply biblical laws and principles to contemporary issues. Example, don't muzzle the ox while he's threshing.

19:53

That's given. There's two portions of scripture in the New Testament that quote that Old Testament saying.

20:01

That saying comes from the Old Testament, from Moses. All right. Now if you look at these two portions of scripture, look at what it says.

20:11

Look at the first one. Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching.

20:18

This is one of my favorites, by the way. For the scripture says you shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing, and the labor is worthy of his wages.

20:29

In other words, what Paul is saying is that Old Testament principle about the ox, don't muzzle him while he's threshing.

20:36

It's not just about the ox. There's principles involved. And he elaborates it on in 1

20:42

Corinthians 9. For it is written in the law of Moses, you shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing. God is not concerned about oxen, is he?

20:50

You know what he means by that? He said, Moses didn't have to tell the farmers that when the oxen is working hard, you got to feed them.

21:01

Why did Moses tell him that? Because they needed to be instructed? No, they knew that. They were farmers.

21:08

They knew that if you don't feed your oxen, he's going to collapse. So why is he giving it?

21:13

He says, or is he speaking altogether for our sake? Yes, for our sake it was written because the plowman ought to plow in hope and the thresher to thresh in hope of sharing the crops.

21:24

If so, if we sowed spiritual things in you, is it too much if we should reap material things from you?

21:31

All right. If others share the right over you, do we not more? Nevertheless, we did not use this right, but we endured all things that would make cause no hindrance to the gospel.

21:42

So in other words, Paul is taking two different circumstances from the same portion of Scripture and saying, there's a principle here that you and I need to understand.

21:53

All right, and you could probably, we could probably just take that one phrase and if we went around, we could probably come up with a dozen more applications for it.

22:03

Today. That make sense? All right, back to the book of Proverbs gives the basic principles of acceptable behavior.

22:15

It is spiritual common sense. Spiritual common sense. It teaches how to get along with people.

22:25

That's not how to get along with people. That's supposed to be how to get along with people. Sometimes you want to be alone.

22:42

That's a, well, there you go. I was going to say Freudian slip, but no. Okay, how to get along with people, how to be successful.

22:52

All right. Proverbs in particular is a remedy for success. If you own a business, you're working for somebody else, you put the proverbial principles and they'll teach you how to be successful and of course how to please

23:08

God. God doesn't inject us with a shot of wisdom when we are saved.

23:16

All right, we are required to pursue it, to seek after it. Those are the things that we're going to read in the book of Proverbs that we are to pursue it, to seek after.

23:25

These are all words that are used in conjunction right in the book of Proverbs. Seek after wisdom, pursue it.

23:32

It's like buried treasure. What kind of book is

23:40

Proverbs? It's wisdom literature. Okay, it is not a series of laws or commands.

23:47

I've seen too often preachers quote from Proverbs and preach it like it's a command.

23:54

It's not. These are not commands. They're not laws. And if you take them that way, you're going to misapply it and it's going to come back and bite you on the tail at some point or another.

24:07

It imparts wisdom to apply the laws and the commands. It cannot be read like most other books in the

24:16

Bible. Most other books in the Bible, what do we do? We can sit down and we can just read them through.

24:23

One of the things I've encouraged you guys to do, I'm preaching through the Gospel of John in the morning service, is that periodically to sit down and just read through the whole

24:30

Gospel of John and it's a narrative and it flows. You can read from John 1 to John 22 and there's a story that's being told.

24:39

Not so the book of Proverbs. It wasn't meant to be read like other books of the

24:48

Bible. It was written differently to be read differently because its purpose is different.

24:56

Okay, remember, get back to the purpose, verses 1 to 7. Wisdom literature was very prevalent in the ancient cultures.

25:07

All right, it's not so much today. It's still around. You still have wisdom literature, but in the ancient cultures, it was prevalent.

25:19

All right, wisdom literature is a collection of wise sayings of the particular culture. All right, it was passed on orally or written.

25:28

Usually it was oral. Because remember, you know, writing implements and you know paper and stuff was not available to them as it is to us today.

25:37

So it was passed on, but sometimes it was written. Wisdom literature became the standard of measure of the greatness of the culture.

25:48

In other words, this collection of sayings, these wise sayings, how important were they and were they any good and how much did they have?

25:57

That became a standard of what was a great culture. Why was the Greek culture so great?

26:03

Look at, we may disagree with some of the writings of Plato and Aristotle, not

26:10

Socrates, but Plato, Aristotle. We may disagree with it, but you can't say that they weren't wise men, all right?

26:18

They had to, they elevated that culture. Proverbs is the penultimate of all wisdom literature because it is based upon God's perfect law.

26:33

Deuteronomy 4, 6 to 8. So keep and do them, this is speaking about God's law, so keep and do them for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.

26:53

But what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as the Lord our God whenever we call on him?

26:59

But what great nation is there that has the statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law which

27:04

I am setting before you today? Notice what Moses is saying. He says the neighboring people, when they see you and they read the law that God has given you, are going to say, wow, this is a great nation.

27:17

In fact, that was one of the things that caused problems for the Israelites. Then the surrounding nations were afraid of them.

27:28

We actually have some ancient writings from some of the kingdoms in Canaan when the

27:34

Israelites were marching out of Egypt and coming into the land of Canaan, pleading for Egypt to help because the

27:40

Haberu, that's what they called them, the Hebrews, the Haberu, were coming and they were afraid of them because they were such a mighty people.

27:52

The structure of Proverbs, it's a cluster of sayings as opposed to a narrative.

28:00

It has no formal structure as we normally think. We can outline almost every book of the

28:09

Bible in some normal fashion, what we would normally think of as an outline.

28:15

It's almost impossible to outline. Notice I say almost. It's almost impossible to outline because of the way the structure is.

28:23

You have some of the same sayings throughout, just some minor word changes. Sometimes it's identical.

28:29

There's no particular structure as far as thematic things go.

28:37

King Solomon is said to have written 3 ,000 Proverbs, a thousand songs. Many of them are included in Proverbs.

28:47

Obviously not all since the book only has 915 verses. There are other people who wrote as well.

28:55

It was written by several authors besides King Solomon. Proverbs 30, we see

29:01

Proverbs of Agur. 31 .1, King Lemuel, although many people think that that is in fact

29:08

Solomon. The Wise Men, whoever that group is, we don't know, but some of the

29:15

Proverbs are attributed to them. Then we find several Proverbs compiled by Hezekiah's men.

29:23

There are other authors besides Solomon. Hebrew poetic style,

29:31

I'll go through this and then I think we'll stop after that. Hebrew poetic styles differ from ours.

29:38

The most common style in Proverbs is the parallelism and there's basically four types of parallelisms.

29:47

There are more, but these are the four basic types that you see in Scripture all the time. A synonymous parallelism are two lines that say the same thing just in different ways.

29:59

For example, Psalm 2 verses 1 to 4. I think I'm only going to give you two verses.

30:05

Why are the nations in an uproar? That's one way, all right? Just asking a specific question.

30:11

And the people's devise of ain't things. That's not two different concepts. It's saying the same thing just using different words.

30:19

The nations are in an uproar, the people's devise of ain't things. So it's saying one way then another. The kings of the earth take their stand.

30:27

That's one way of saying it. Second way, and the rulers take counsel against the Lord and against his anointed.

30:33

You see what it is? It's to emphasize. The repetition is emphasizing, but it's not just bare repetition.

30:40

It's changing it for emphasis. That's what they call synonymous parallelism where you're saying the same thing just in different words.

30:50

Antithetical parallelism. The poet gives a thesis and then it's antithesis.

30:55

For example, Proverbs 10 .1. A wise son makes a father glad.

31:01

That's the thesis. But a foolish son is aggrieved to his mother.

31:07

That's the antithesis. Again, it's not it's not particularly saying well the difference between father and mother.

31:15

The difference is in the son. He's being wise or foolish. Synthetic parallelism.

31:25

The poet makes a point and then expands upon it. This is a very interesting one.

31:31

When he was Psalm 1, 1, and 2. Here's the first point. How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked?

31:40

Okay, that's the idea. In other words, the blessed man is the one who avoids wicked people.

31:48

Now what he does, it's not synonymous. He's not going to say the same thing just in a different way. He's going to expand on it.

31:57

Like pulling a telescope open. Nor stand in the path of sinners. He's not identical.

32:03

It's expanding upon it. Pull it again. Nor sit in the seat of scoffers.

32:10

In fact, you can almost see a progression. First he's walking, then he's standing, then he's sitting.

32:17

All right, so it's not exactly the same thing. So that's why it's an expansion. Pull it again.

32:23

But his delight is in the law of the Lord. A little bit of an antithetical, but it's more of an expansion.

32:31

Pull it again. Really stretch it. And in his law, he meditates day and night. That's a parallelism.

32:36

That's Hebrew poetry. Most of our poetry, well up until the latter part of the 20th century, was rhyme.

32:44

In Hebrew poetry, it wasn't so much the rhyme as it was these concepts. Then emblematic parallelism.

32:54

This is less, but it's an important one as well. This is where the poet makes a point and then follows it with a picture or vice versa.

33:04

And I'll give you two examples of this. Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

33:10

There's the point. God is your Lord. Okay. He'll take care of your needs.

33:18

What's the picture? He makes me lie down in green pastures. I can rest on the green pastures, you know, ample food for the sheep.

33:28

He leads me besides quiet waters. Notice here, the picture comes first. He leads me besides the quiet waters.

33:36

He restores my soul. See it how it works? Psalm 42 .1.

33:46

As the deer pants for the water brooks. There's the picture. We sing that song sometimes, all right, as the deer pants for the water.

33:54

All right, and I don't know about you, but every time we sing that song, I can see that deer running through the forest, panting, and getting to the water and leaning down and lopping up the water.

34:08

What's the point? So my soul pants for thee, O God. All right.

34:19

I think I'm going to stop here because we're about 20 of and I don't want to cut this one short.

34:25

So we'll stop here. Any questions on what we've Yes.

34:39

Yes, and no. They are basically, they're all related, but they can be slightly different.

34:47

All right, and they are different. Just, just, there's subtleties, but they are different.

34:54

All right, and it depends on how they're used. All right. For example, you're, you're required to live a righteous life, and if you don't, then justice may be meted out to you, and that should be meted out with equity.

35:11

See how they all come together. All right, but so they're all related, but, but not necessarily exactly the same thing.

35:21

Any other questions? No? Got it? Let's close in prayer.

35:28

Father, again, we thank you for this day. Thank you for your word, especially the book of Proverbs. Help us,

35:34

Father, to apply it to our lives that we would be wise. Give everyone here a safe trip home again, and Father, we look forward to worshipping you tomorrow morning in spirit and in truth.