Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

I must say that I have a great sense of blessing and privilege right now. You know, that I have been chosen by God to do the things that He has called for me to do. Last year, we walked together through every book of the Bible, just pulling out the gospel chord in each one of those books, that in a real way, every portion of Scripture teaches the gospel in some way. And this year, we’re going to spend an entire year in the Proverbs.

I have a confession to make that I think, for much of my life, I didn't understand the Proverbs at all, and I think that I'm not alone.  I would ask you, “When you think of this portion of Scripture, the Proverbs, what do you think is there?” I think that Proverbs is one of the most referenced portions of the Word of God, yet maybe one of the least understood portions of the Word of God. Here's what I think most people think. They think of the Proverbs as these utterly isolated little nuggets of wisdom; they’re really not connected to anything else. It's like God just dropped these little diamonds of wisdom down into a pile, and you can pick away at them, and hope you get something for your life.

That view of the Proverbs looks at the wisdom in the Proverbs as being sort of mechanical; it's almost a machine-view of wisdom.  You do this and you get this, as if you're winding a watch. And so, we think of the Proverbs as different than every other part of Scripture. It just functions differently, it just looks different to us; when actually, the Proverbs are like everything else in Scripture.

The other thing we think of is we think of the Proverbs as always living in the ‘now.’ Now here’s what I mean by that.  That the Proverbs don't have the past to them; they don't have any future to them; they just have a ‘present.’

But I want to propose to you, as we walk through the Proverbs, that the Proverbs together give us an incredible portrait of everything that the Bible is about and how to live inside of that portrait. Let me say again, the Proverbs together give us an incredible portrait; everything that the Bible is about and how to live inside of that portrait. They’re radically insightful, radically convicting, radically encouraging, radically hope-giving.

And I want to give you what I think is the summary passage of Proverbs. It's Proverbs 21: 30 and 31. “No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the LORD. The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the LORD.”

The Proverbs are helpful; the Proverbs are wise because of the Lord. I can rest in the wisdom of the Proverbs because victory belongs to the Lord. It's so far from anything like sort of separated abstract wisdom; there's a Lord of the Proverbs, there’s a Lord that stands behind the Proverbs, and we want to look at that as we think about what the problems are about.

Let me read this summary again; I think this is so encouraging, “No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the LORD. The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the LORD.” Join me as we take this walk through the Proverbs.

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

So because I don't think that the Proverbs is fully understood for the richness that is there, I want to spend a few of these episodes that we have together to just lay a foundation for understanding the riches that are in this portion of Scripture. So here's the first thing I want to say is that every proverb tells a story. You don't really understand the proverbs unless you understand that they're not mechanical, they’re narrative; that embedded in each proverb is the plot line of the whole redemptive story. Every proverb carries that plot line; there are three pieces to that plot line.

First, creation.  The Proverbs points us to the world as God meant for it to be, the world according to God's perfect design as the great wise creator that He is. As you read the Proverbs, you ought to mourn for the loss of that world. It's all over; the Proverbs should make you sad that the world we live in is not actually the world as God designed it. And we’re confronted with just the beauty of God's created plan.

The Proverbs has the next part of the plot line, the fall.  We’re confronted with a world that is damaged and dysfunctional, that just doesn't operate the way that God intended.  We’re confronted with a world that is now a place where foolishness is just everywhere, where dark dangers confront us, where temptation exists.

And we are then blessed by the third part of the plot line; it's redemption, it's a world restored by grace, a world reconciled by God's goodness. You say, “Well Paul, how does that help me understand the Proverbs?” Well, let me give you an example. One of the popular Proverbs is Proverbs 15:1. It says, “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Now, think about this. Is that proverb actually telling me every time I give a soft answer to an angry person, I will turn off his anger? Well, you know that that's not true; that won’t always happen.

So what is that proverb about? The proverb is about this, that meek Christ, who uttered when threatened, “uttered no threats but committed himself to His heavenly Father who does all things justly,” (1 Peter 2:23) meek Christ will win. And so, when I choose to entrust myself to my heavenly Father and speak softly in the face of a person's anger, I’m moving in the same direction as the biblical narrative; I'm moving in the same direction as God's story; and ultimately, that direction is a pathway of blessing.

All the anger of all of the enemies will one day be silenced, and we will enjoy perfect peace and perfect harmony and perfect righteousness forever and ever and ever! That story is embedded in that proverb, and so although I may not get that reaction today, it's going to happen. And because I'm heading in the same direction as God's story, I will be blessed along the way for doing that. That's how every proverb works. Every proverb is eschatological; it looks to the future and all the promised blessings of what it means to follow God. They're not just mechanical; they’re embedded in that story. They preach the story of creation, fall, and redemption. And when you see that, they explode with deeper meaning and deeper encouragement than that mechanical view of the Proverbs.

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well as we continue our introduction to the Proverbs, here’s the next thing that I think is important to understand. It's this, that every proverb is rooted in the soil of the Law of God. The Proverbs confronts us with the fact that we were created as moral beings, living in a moral world, under the authority of a holy God. That's the worldview of the Proverbs; we’re moral beings, living in a moral world under the authority of a holy God.

So, that means that the definition of a fool in Proverbs is not just a person who’s dumb.  Often that's sort of the popular view of a fool, he’s just dumb. No, the Proverbs presents a fool who denies the righteousness and the righteous requirements and authority of God. A fool denies his own moral makeup and denies the authority under which every human being is meant to live.

You see, the Proverbs presents to us the foolishness of sin in a very interpersonal way. You say, “Paul, I don't understand what that means.” If you work your way through Proverbs, ignoring the wisdom of Proverbs is again not just about being dumb or breaking some moral abstract code; it's about rebelliousness against God. That's why the Proverbs says, “(It's) the fear of the LORD (that) is the beginning of (wisdom).”

What is that fear the Lord? It’s not terror of Him. It's filled with a sense of awe of His holiness, His righteous authority, that makes me want to submit to His will. Foolishness is presented in the Proverbs as rebellion against God. Now that fits with exactly how the Law is presented in Scripture.

Think of the Ten Commandments. If you look at the Ten Commandments, the first set of commands is about God being in His rightful place; it’s about the worship of God, about the rulership of God over your heart because unless God is in that place, you will not have a prayer of keeping the rest of the commands. It's a vertical view of law.

Whenever I work my way through Proverbs, I think of David and his confession in Psalm 51. David had committed adultery and then followed it with murder, and he says this in verse 4, “Against you (speaking to God, against you and), you only, have I …done (this sin, this evil) in your sight.” You see, he's saying, “My sin is not just against Bathsheba and her husband, but more significantly, it's against you.” I am made to live a Godward life.

Every proverb is Godward; every proverb is about the fact that I'm a moral being, living in a moral universe, living in immediate responsibility to God, and there’s only two ways of living. I live as a fool, I deny His existence, I deny His authority, and I live my own way. Or, I recognize His existence, and I submit to His way and His will.

Every proverb is rooted in the Law of God, and God's Law is vertical, it's personal. Sin is not just the breaking of an abstract moral code; sin, every sin is a sin against God. Every act of foolishness is against God because it's in Him that “we live and move and have our being,” We were made for Him and that message is everywhere in the Proverbs.

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, I'm happy to say that since I have said that every Proverb is rooted in the Law of God; I'm happy to say that every Proverb is rooted and reveals the grace of God. You know, if you ask the average believer, the average reader of Scripture, where they would go to learn about the grace of God, I don't think anybody would say, “Go to the Proverbs,” because we just don't think of the Proverbs that way. But the Proverbs teaches us such beautiful things about God's grace.

Let me detail some of those things for you. It’s such a delight for me to be able to do this because it's one of things I love about the Proverbs how you just see this God of beautiful grace behind the Proverbs.

First of all, the Proverbs reveal to us the Father-like love of God. In fact, the format of the early part of Proverbs is a father giving instruction to his son. Literally, that Father is God. Literally, we are the sons.  Think of a dad who loves his son, who pulls his son on a couch, pulls him close, and puts his arm around him. And says, “Son, I love you, and I want you to be blessed, and so dad has some things he wants to say to you.” Isn’t that beautiful? That's God; tenderhearted, kind, loving!

And you see just the beautiful generosity of God that He would lavishly give us His wisdom. Think about this. I’m born a rebel, I’m born resistant to my Father, and yet He doesn't respond to me in disgust; He pulls me close and says, “Paul, I want you to know my wisdom because I love you.” That's beautiful grace.

God's grace is revealed in the Proverbs, that like a father to his children, He really wants what's best for us. The Proverbs is not, “Okay, I'm going to wreck your life, I’m going to take away all your fun because I can do it because I'm the authority. That's not Proverbs at all.  Proverbs is, God who says, “I want you right here, right now, to know the best that life can be for you because I love you, I want what's best for you.” 

The Proverbs teaches us another thing, that the best things that we need, we can't earn; they’re God's gifts to us. You can't earn the wisdom of the Proverbs; you can't deserve the beauty of what you learn in the Proverbs. It's dropped down on us because the God of the Proverbs is a God of awesome mercy.

Further, behind every Proverb is a God who is working to protect, rescue, provide, transform, and deliver us. The Proverbs are reliable because behind them is not a passive God, an active God who's working in us, who is working for us, to rescue, deliver, transform, protect. Proverbs gives us a beautiful portrait of His rescuing mercies. The Proverbs offers us a picture of a God who offers us fresh starts and new beginnings, that foolishness isn't the end of your life because there is forgiveness and redemption, and you can get up, and you can live in wisdom again. When I think of that, I think of Jonah who blew it so greatly, yet in Jonah 3, verse 1, it says, “…the word of (God) …came a second time …to Jonah.” Fresh starts and new beginnings!

And then, it’s a grace of God to reveal our hearts in the Proverbs. The conviction that comes in the Proverbs is God's grace in operation. Listen, conviction isn’t judgment; conviction is God putting His arms around us, drawing us close, and keeping us near. My prayer is that you would see grace, and you would see a God of grace every time you read through the Proverbs, because God's grace is all over this portion of Scripture.

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, we’re walking through an introduction to the Proverbs so that, as we study this portion of Scripture together, you can get the fullness of its riches. What I want to say here is that every Proverb relies on and reveals the sovereignty of God. There is a sovereign God who stands in the middle of the Proverbs, stands behind the Proverbs. The Proverbs presents to us a world under rule. There is a God; He rules His world; His will will be done; those who trust Him will have blessing and ultimate victory. Let me give you that worldview of the Proverbs. There is a God; He rules His world; His will will be done; those who trust Him will have blessing now and ultimate victory to come.

The Proverbs really do confront us with the fact that we don't write our own stories, God does. Listen to Proverbs 16:9, “The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.”

When I read the Proverbs, I often think of this passage, this is in Daniel 4; this is after arrogant Nebuchadnezzar had been humbled by God. He says this, speaking of God:

For his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and (no one) can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?” 

“(No one) can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” That's the God of the Proverbs! Yes, I make plans, but it’s God who directs my steps. Acts 17 says He determines the exact place where we will live and the exact length of our days.

Now, maybe you're thinking, “So, if the Proverbs presents a God to us who is in complete control of us and everything else, why do I need the Proverbs? If God's in control of everything, why do we need to live out this wisdom?” Because the Proverbs teaches us that God is sovereign, not just over the ends of what will happen, but the means as well!

Theologians say it this way, “That the Bible teaches us the true validity of the secondary agent.” So, the way that God establishes His already ordained plan is through the validity of our choices, our actions, our belief, our faith, our obedience.” The means is part of His plan; and so behind the Proverbs is God's plan to use this portion of His wisdom to establish, bless, and ultimately deliver to His children the final victory. He doesn't just determine the end of things; He determines the means as well.

But there's another thing. The reason that the Proverbs work is because God is sovereign over every situation, every circumstance, in which they need to work. The Proverbs are only as reliable as the extent of God's sovereignty is. You see, I can rest with surety that these things will function as the way that God said they will function because, in the place where I need to apply the Proverbs, God is ruling. So, His sovereignty is what gives the Proverbs their surety. Behind every Proverb is the sovereignty of God.

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, we’ve been going through some introductory principles for understanding Proverbs. When I began this series, I said that I think Proverbs is one of the most referenced portions of the Word of God, but maybe one of the least fully understood. So, I thought these introductory principles were important.

Here's the next one, “Every Proverb leads you to Jesus and His cross.” I simply am unable, just unable to read the Proverbs without thinking about the incarnation of Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross. You may say, “Well, why?  How do you get there from the Proverbs?” Well, it's really captured in a single sentence in Proverbs 22:15 which says, “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child.”

Now think about this, think about the deep and important thing that that sentence says, “Sin reduces all of us to fools.” The Proverbs is proposing that we’re born into the world as fools and that's a shocking thing to think about. No one's born wise, no one! And it’s not wrong as parents to look at their child and be sobered by the understanding that they’ve given birth to a fool, and Proverbs lets us know how destructive and damaging that foolishness is.

But this phrase says something else. It says that this foolishness is a heart problem. Now, what that means is, foolishness is deeper than bad thinking and wrong behavior. Foolishness is a condition of the heart. I can change my thinking, I can make some reformation of my behavior, but I can't escape the condition of my heart. There's more.

If you look at other passages of Scripture as they define foolishness, foolishness, according to Psalm 14, is about God-denial. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Now, here's what this means. It doesn't mean a theological philosophical atheism; it means that I live as if God doesn't exist. I put myself in the center of my world and I make life all about me.  

Now, if we’re all fools and foolishness is a condition of the heart, and the epicenter of foolishness is a God-denial and self-orientation, then Law and Wisdom principles are not enough. We should be thankful for God's Law; we should love His Wisdom, but that Law and that Wisdom doesn't have the power to transform our hearts. And so, the Proverbs points us to the fact that the only hope for fools, because it's a condition, and I can change my location, and I can change relationships, but I can't run from myself, that the only hope for fools is the intervention of divine grace.

And so, the Proverbs point you to the fact that Jesus had to come. He had to live the perfect life that I couldn’t live; He had to die that acceptable death and take on Himself the penalty for all of our self-oriented, God-denying foolishness; He had to rise again, conquering sin and death, or there would be no hope for us. If you understand the deep, scary message of Proverbs, you then understand that Proverbs together, all the Proverbs together, are one big finger pointing us to the coming and the cross of Jesus. In that way, the Proverbs are prophetic because the cry for Proverbs is a cry for rescue; it’s a cry for redemption; it’s a cry for Jesus!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, we’re looking at principles that set up what the Proverbs are about and here's the next one, “Every Proverb exposes a great moral spiritual war.” I can say this for sure, you will simply not understand your life, you will not understand what you face every day, you will not understand how to deal with the things you face every day unless you understand this great moral spiritual war.

This moral war is what makes marriage hard. How could this person that you love so, draw such irritation and impatience out of you? It's what makes parenting exhausting and discouraging. I can’t tell you how many conversations I've had with parents who are just ready to tear their hair out. It’s not that they don't love their children; they deeply love their children. But there are things inside of their children that make this hard. It's what makes church life messy, confusing, sometimes hurtful, in a place it ought to be a spiritual sanctuary for us often isn’t. It’s what makes sexual purity difficult. Why is sexuality such a huge battle for us? It's what makes just reigning in your mind hard. It's what makes financial sanity so hard for so many.

You see, the Proverbs presents to us this great moral battle between wisdom, that's God's perfect, righteous, holy way; the Creator, who formed this world and who made us in His image, knows exactly what is best for us. The battles between that wisdom and foolishness, that's our self-orientated, selfish, me in the center of the world, my pleasure, what I want when I want it where I want and how I want it who I want it with way. And every place in life is a war between those two themes, a great moral war.

It upsets me often the way we talk about spiritual warfare. You hear those terms and people think demons and deliverance and weird things; and actually, spiritual warfare is a very normal thing. It takes place in all the normal places of life, this great moral war lives in the hallways and kitchens and family rooms and vans of everyday life. And so, Proverbs pictures life, right here, right now, as a spiritual warfare battleground; and the epicenter, the turf of that battleground is your heart.

And so, the war is played out in all the places where you live every day. It's a war out there. This isn’t peacetime. Peace is coming, but there's a war going on, and that war is fought in our hearts between God's holy righteous way and our desire for our way. And that desire to have our own way will be with us as long as sin still lives inside of us.  It’s why you get mad in traffic, it's why you get mad at the person who stands in front of you in line, it's why it makes you mad when somebody disagrees with you, it's why it hurts you when people don't pay attention to you; it’s that moral war. 

And here’s what the Proverbs presents, the only weapon that works in this warfare is the ‘Fear of the Lord.’ The only thing that is a defense for me is when I surrender my thoughts, my desires, my choices, my motivations, my purposes, to my Savior-Creator who knows better. It's the one place in war where surrender is victory! And when I’m willing to surrender, then I can defend myself in this great moral battle!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, every Proverb points us to a paradise that is to come. Every Proverb is filled with longing and is meant to fill us with longing as well. The Proverb paints two portraits for us very well. The first Proverbs is of a world that no longer functions as God intended. It's a world that's broken; it's a world where bad things happen; it's a world fraught with danger and temptation. The Proverbs really presents to us what I would call “A Romans 8 World.”

Romans 8 says that “The whole world groans, waiting for redemption.” You groan when you're in pain; you groan when you’re frustrated; you groan when you're hurting; you groan when things are not the way they seem like they should be. We live in a world that's groaning, that everywhere you look, things are broken. There's a song that I just love by Bob Dylan, maybe it's the most biblically rooted song he ever wrote. It’s called, “Everything’s Broken,” and it's stanza after stanza of broken things. And then there's one moment in the song where he says, “You feel like you're choking, everything is broken.”

It's that frustration that we all face, why does it have to be this way? Maybe you would say, “This drives me crazy!” Or, “Why couldn’t that work?” Or, “Why do we always fight?” Or, “Why can’t we get in the car without conflict?” Or, “How can we argue with one another when we just heard a sermon on grace?” That brokenness, that's the first portrait.

And then the Proverbs paints for us very powerfully, a second portrait. It's a world where wisdom reigns.  If you could take all the wisdom pictures of Proverbs and put them in one picture, it's the most beautiful world you could ever want to be in.  It's everything in its right place; it’s shalom. ‘Shalom’ doesn't just mean peace; it means ‘everything in its right place, doing what it was meant to do.’ The Proverbs paints for you a world more glorious and gorgeous than anything you could ever imagine; you ought to put all those things together and say, “I want to live in that world!”

You see, we need the wisdom of the Proverbs because we live in between these two pictures, in between the picture of the broken world and the picture of the paradise, wisdom-reigning world. Theologians say that we live between “the already and the not yet.” And it’s right to commit yourself to God's wisdom-way.

But even as you do that, you don't live in a world where wisdom reigns yet. It's coming because the Lord of the Proverbs will make all things new again, and His wisdom will reign for us and will reign in us forever and ever and ever. And that means a world of absolute righteousness and absolute peace; no more frustrations, no more suffering, no more sin, foolishness--dead forever!

Now what the Proverbs is meant to do, most people don’t talk about this, is produce longing for that world in you. Because the place you start marching toward that world is ‘right here, right now.’ As you commit yourself to God's wisdom, you are taking steps toward the final reign of that wisdom forever and ever. The Proverbs ask you to live with eternity in view and to have longing in your heart for the wisdom-reign that is to come!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, as we look at these principles, I just think this one is so important and helpful and encouraging. Every Proverb is loaded with convicting power. Clearly, the Proverbs are designed by God to offer us way more than a body of wisdom information. I'm afraid that's how the Proverbs are used. We have these isolated little nuggets of wisdom information, and you run to the Proverbs if you want a little more wisdom information. That's not the Proverbs.

The Proverbs are designed by God to stimulate heart and life transformation. So, I want to lay out a little principle for you and apply it to the Proverbs. I’m going to say this a couple of times; “You can't grieve what you don't see, and you can't confess what you haven’t grieved, and you can't repent of what you haven't confessed.” Let me say that again, “You can't grieve what you don't see, and you can't confess what you haven't grieved, and you can't repent of what you haven’t confessed.”

Now, let's look at those three words and take them to Proverbs: grieve, confess, repent. The purpose of the Proverbs is to give you eyes to see yourself in ways that you wouldn't without the Proverbs. Proverbs is meant to be this perfect mirror that you stand in front of and you look at yourself, and you say, “Oh no! I didn't know that was me. Oh! I do do that! Oh! I am foolish in that way.” The Proverbs, in holding before you God’s standard, is meant to give you eyes to see how you've fallen below God's perfect righteous standard. And in so doing, the Proverbs is meant to give you a grief of heart, a sadness because now you see yourself with accuracy. That grief of heart then leads you to confession. The Proverbs can put motivation and content to your confession where you go specifically to your Lord, confessing your sin; and in specific ways, crying out for His forgiving grace.

The Proverbs is to lead you to repentance and define for you what repentance looks like. The Proverbs tells you what change needs to take place and what change looks like. Repentance is a change of heart that leads to a radical change in the direction of your life. So, the Proverbs is meant to gift you with sight, to gift you with grief of heart, to gift you with specificity of confession, to gift you with specific and ongoing repentance, and that is a very good thing for every sinner.

When I read the Proverbs, I think of Isaiah 55. Isaiah 55 says, “When the rain and the snow of the Word of God fall, the briar will become a cypress tree, the thorn bush a myrtle.” Now, that is a really weird metaphor. If I've got a thorn bush in my backyard, and it's nourished by the rain, I don't say to my dear wife, Luella, “If it keeps raining, it’s going to turn into a beautiful tree.” She would think I was crazy.

You see what that picture is is a picture of radical, organic transformation, that under the rain of the wisdom of the Word of God, you don't become a bigger better you, you become a radically different you. And so, as God rains the Proverbs down on us, they’re meant to change us, radically change us. That takes sight, that takes grief, that takes confession, that takes repentance. Praise God that every Proverb is filled with convicting power and convicting grace!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, the last of these principles is that, “Every Proverb captures, at street level, what the Bible is about.” What the Proverbs gives us is functional or practical theology. Proverbs bridges the gap between our confessional theology and our functional theology. What does it look like to actually believe that God is sovereign, to believe that He is wise, to believe that He is good, to believe that He will save us from ourselves? That's what the Proverbs does.

So, let's look at where we’ve been so far. We've said every proverb:

• Contains the whole biblical story.
• Every Proverb is rooted in the Law of God.
• Every Proverb is rooted in the grace of God.
• Every Proverb relies on and reveals the sovereignty of God.
• Every Proverb leads us to Jesus and His cross.
• Every Proverb exposes a great moral spiritual war.
• Every Proverb points us to a paradise that is to come.
• Every Proverb is loaded with the grace of convicting power.

That's where we’ve been.

Now, here's where we’re going to go; rather than looking at the Proverbs in a verse by verse way, we’re going to spend all the rest of our time, as we walk through the Proverbs, looking at the themes that are in this portion of Scripture. These are the cords that hold the Proverbs together. They’re like strands that stretch from the beginning to the end of the Proverbs. And these strands are not just the cords that hold the Proverbs together, they are the cords that hold the great biblical narrative together. The Proverbs capture the glorious, encouraging, sight-giving, motivating, convicting, worship-inducing, life-changing themes of the Bible. I don’t know how else to say it, but they are, the Proverbs are a masterful portrait painted by a Divine Artist.

And so, I want to tick through the themes that we’re going to be looking at that work their way through the Proverbs with the hope that this will whet your appetite:

• The fear of God
• The wisdom of wisdom
• The Fatherhood of God
• The great Biblical drama
• The operation of grace
• The moral world ruled by a holy God
• The seduction of sin
• The centrality of the heart
• The great glory war
• Eternity,
• Redemption,
• The grace of fresh starts and new beginnings
• The importance of a life of submission
• Justice
• Rich and poor and what true riches is about
• Honesty
• Generosity
• Love of neighbor
• The nature of sexual temptation
• The folly of folly
• Humility
• Our rich emotional life of sadness and celebration
• The problem of anger
• The importance of work
• The stewardship of physical things
• The practicality of Godward living
• The nature of godly womanhood
• Jesus, the obedient Son
• The function of God's Law
• The glory of God

I want to end this series of introductory studies with reading the first few verses of Proverbs.

To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to youth--Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and saying, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Now, here's what these verses are saying. Instruction in wise dealing--there's moral content in the Proverbs. They’re practical; they’re instruction about things we face every day. They are moral--they talk about righteousness, justice, and equity. They are for everyone from the simple and the young, to the wise; even the wise can increase in learning. They’re conceptual--they give us a worldview to the one who understands and obtains guidance. They unfold mysteries to us--to understand a proverb and a saying of the words of the wise and their riddles. In the Proverbs is moral, practical, worldview, mystery-illumining instruction for everyone! Why wouldn't you want to spend time in the Proverbs?

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, I am an excited man today because we begin the process of working our way through Proverbs; we’ve done a series of introductions to what the Proverbs are about. But, we’re going to handle Proverbs thematically, and these themes will take us for the next thirty or more of these little Bible study sessions, and I just feel such a great sense of privilege that I get to work through the depth of and the wonder and beauty and majesty of this material. The other day, I was researching my way through the Proverbs, and it just washed over me what a deep sense of privilege it is that I get to do this and that God has preserved this material for us.

Well, we want to start with the two of the most dominant themes in Proverbs. The first of those themes is the fear of the LORD. I think that phrase is one of those greatly misunderstood phrases because often when we think of fear, we think of the kind of terror that makes you run away or fight, that heart-pounding, what in the world is happening, how can I get myself out of this thing? And that's not at all what the fear of the LORD is.

The fear of the LORD is such a reverential awe of God that grips your heart that you're willing to listen to His wisdom, you're willing to submit to His commands, you're willing to surrender your will to His will, and you're willing to rest in the awesome promises of His grace. The fear of the LORD makes you run toward Him, not away from Him and causes you to live in a way you would not live apart from Him. It's the fear of the LORD that caused David to walk into that valley of Elah and to challenge that great warrior, Goliath. It's the fear of the LORD that made Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego unafraid of the threats of Nebuchadnezzar. And, it’s the fear of the LORD that has propelled all of His saints to live as soldiers of light in a darkened world.

And so, the fear of the LORD is a wonderful and beautiful thing. I want to just take a moment to just run through how Proverbs talks about the fear of the LORD. Proverbs 3:7 says the fear of the LORD diminishes your trust in your independent wisdom. Chapter 8 says the fear of the LORD crushes pride and arrogance. Chapter 14 says the fear of the LORD produces confidence and courage along with a place to hide, a refuge. Chapter 15 says the fear of the LORD is way more valuable than wealth and affluence. Chapter 16 says it's the fear of the LORD that makes you turn from evil.  Chapter 19 says where the fear the LORD is there’s true rest and satisfaction of heart. Chapter 22 says the fear of the LORD brings life and blessing and reward. 

Hear that, it’s the fear of the LORD that brings life. You know, it’s not just conviction of sin, but it’s the fear of the LORD that made all of us cry out, “God help me, God forgive me!” It is really true that it’s the fear of the LORD that brings life. And here’s what you need to understand, you and I would have never feared the LORD in this way apart from the rescue and empowerment and illuminate of His grace.

How is it that grace operate? It produces a greater fear of God than fear of anything else in our lives that draws us to Him in love and worship and surrender and confession and rest and hope and courage. My prayer is that the fear of the LORD would be the dominant thing in our hearts driving us to Him and causing us to live in a way that brings glory to Him.

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, the second of the two big dominant themes of Proverbs, and this just makes perfect sense, is wisdom. What is true wisdom? Wisdom is a very different thing than knowledge. Knowledge may be an acquisition and understanding in my mind of a set of facts, a set of truths, but wisdom is really the ability to apply those truths to the situations, relationships, locations, of everyday life. And that's what's so magnificent about Proverbs!

I want to just point you to how the very first chapter of Proverbs talks about this wisdom.  It really wants us to understand that this wisdom is for everyone in every situation.  First of all, it's practical. It says, “it's instruction in wise dealing.” I like that; you're always dealing with something, somehow, someway, in some circumstance with someone and you need practical help, and it’s found there in the Proverbs.

Wisdom is moral; it says it's “for righteousness and justice.”  Moral living requires God's wisdom. It's for everyone. I like these phrases, “it’s prudence to the simple,” but, “The wise hear and increase in knowledge.” You will never outgrow, no matter how much you mature as a child of God, you will never outgrow your need for fresh planting of God's wisdom in your heart.

This wisdom provides a worldview for us; it says, “The wise understands and obtains guidance;” it gives you a framework for making the decisions in life that all of us have to make. It doesn't make all those decisions for you, but it gives you a framework for doing that.

It says in this passage that it's illuminating, “The words of the wise and their riddles.” In Proverbs, we have great mysteries of the universe that are unpacked for us by a God who loves us and wants us to flourish. God unfolds the mysteries of His counsel so that we would know Him, we would know ourselves, we would know how to live, and we would know how to guard ourselves against danger.

This gift of wisdom is a gift of a long satisfying life toward God and with others. We should all read the Proverbs, and say, “I would love to have the life that is held out for us in Proverbs, I would love to be that wise person, I would love to live this way, I would love to handle my money this way, I'd love to deal sex this way, I'd love to deal with relationships this way, I'd love to be this generous, I‘d love to be this good in my planning and in my work, I would love this.” Well, that's why you’ve been given the Proverbs, because God wants that for you as well, He wants you to live wisely.

But, there's one other thing that I think is so important, wisdom captures the entire gospel story. It says in Proverbs 3:18 that wisdom is a tree of life. Now, think about that. The Biblical story is really captured by three trees. The tree in the Garden of Eden, that's Genesis 3. The tree of life in Revelation 2, and how do you get from the sad moment of that tree in the Garden to the glorious moment in the tree in Revelation 2? Well, it's the tree on the hill of Calvary where Jesus shed His blood so that we would know His grace. Wisdom captures the whole story; it is a tree of life.

It reminds you of the dangers of Genesis 3, it reminds you of the glories of a day when wisdom will reign forever, and it drives you to the cross of Jesus Christ to confess that you're a fool and I'm a fool, and we need the rescue of God's grace. Sadly, sin reduces all of us to foolishness. And so, when God says wisdom is a tree of life, He knows what He is saying, He knows He's wrapping His arms around the whole gospel story, taking us to the cross of His Son so that someday we will be in that place where wisdom reigns forever!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, the third theme I want to consider with you is all over Proverbs, but it's not as evident. It is the Fatherhood of God. You may say, “Well, wait a minute, Paul, I've read the Proverbs, I’ve studied the Proverbs, I’ve done Bible studies in the Proverbs; I haven't seen any Proverb that talks about the Fatherhood of God.”

Well, let me talk to you about how this emerges in the Proverbs. One of the sweetest, most tender, most encouraging portions of the entire Bible is Proverbs, chapter 1 through chapter 7. Here is a father pouring down his wisdom on his son. I think of it as a father sitting on a couch next to his son with his arm around him and saying, “Son, there are some things I want you to know because I love you and here's loving instruction, and loving practical counsel, and loving warning, and loving values clarification, and loving guidance.” It's just such a beautiful portion of Scripture.

And that section is marked by ten fatherly pleas or appeals. It's like a father saying, “Son, please don't ever…or please do this.” You can feel the tenderness of heart in these chapters.

Chapter 1, the father says, “Do not run after unjust gain.” It's a warning against greed; greed will destroy your life.

Chapter 2, the father says, “If you get anything, get wisdom. It's the treasure of treasures,”

Chapter 3 is a call to fear the Lord. The second part of chapter 3 is a call to stay inside of wisdom's boundaries and don't demand your own way.

The first part of chapter 4, the father says, “Make wisdom your tradition, your legacy. Lay down the legacy of wisdom.” I love that. You're always building some kind of legacy.

Middle part of chapter 4, the father says, “There are only two ways of living, son; you live as a fool or you live as a wise person, and everybody fits into those categories.”

The end of chapter 4, the father says to his son, “Above all else, guard your heart because your heart is the wellspring of life. Your life, your choices, your decisions, your words are controlled by the thoughts, motives, desires, spiritual condition of your heart.”

The ninth appeal is in chapter 5; it's about the importance of sexual morality, and then chapter 7 is a call to run, run, run from sexual temptation.

Now you say, “Well, what does that have to do with the Fatherhood of God; that's just fatherly wisdom?” Because God the Father has preserved this for us, and so he is the wise Father and we are the children. You understand how God functions as a Father by studying these passages; His warnings and His encouragements and His wisdom and His grace are all over these. And, as a loving Father, He offers us what we would never know on our own.

I often think as I’m reading this passage of a young child, he doesn't know what he needs to eat, doesn't know that he needs to sleep, doesn't know what is dangerous, doesn't know the importance of his parents’ authority. He doesn't know, he doesn't know, he doesn't know, he doesn't know! That's us! And so, we need a Father who will come to us and be generous in love and generous in wisdom, and the generosity of the Fatherhood of God is all over the Proverbs. He gives, and He gives, and He gives, guidance and warning and grace and deliverance and promises because He loves us. You're never without a father because you have a Father in heaven who loves you and will generously unfold His wisdom to you!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, a fourth theme in Proverbs is the great biblical drama. You live in the midst of a huge drama whether you know it or not. Behind every biblical story, behind every biblical command, behind every biblical principle, behind every biblical promise, behind every biblical encouragement is a great spiritual drama.

It is the war of wars. It is the reason for the horrible disobedience and fall of Genesis 3. It is the reason for the covenant promises to Abraham and his descendants. It is the reason for the incarnation and the cross. It is the reason for the commission of the disciples in the church to carry the gospel message around the world. It's the reason for the gift of Scripture. It's the reason for the promise of the new heavens and the new earth. On the sad day in the Garden, a war was unleashed between wisdom and folly and foolishness.

Now, it’s really important to understand what this war is about; it's not a war of intellectual worldviews; it's not a war of abstract theology versus human philosophy; it's not a war of the way I think versus the way God thinks. This war is much deeper than that, and we begin to understand that in two ways.

The first way is that the Proverbs says, “It's the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom;” that surrender to God's wisdom is personal, it's relational, it's Godward. This war is about the presence of God in our lives; it's about surrender to the authority of God.

That war goes back to the first four words of the Bible, the most important words in the Bible, “In the beginning God.” If God is on site, then this is all about Him, His will, His way, His glory, His promises, His grace. He is central; we are not! And wisdom always surrenders to the centrality of God in all things! That's what it's about.

The same is true with folly, foolishness. Proverbs says that the fool despises God; he disobeys because he despises Him. The psalmist says that the fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” Foolishness is not just being dumb, it's not just thinking dumb things; foolishness is rooted in a rejection of the centrality of God, His authority, His glory, His will and way, in all things.

So, the moral drama of Proverbs is about how we will respond to God because everyone who's ever been born, whether they know it or not, is responding to God in some way. Everybody lives even an atheist, a Godward life because God is so present; He is actually the environment in which we live, that you either bow the knee to Him or you deny His existence and despise His counsel. That's the drama!

Now here's where Proverbs leads us, it's actually not natural for any of us to recognize God's existence and to make Him central because the DNA of sin is selfishness. We want to be central. And so, if you understand the nature of this war, what you will do is cry out for grace. May you give me the grace to make God central in all things in my life!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

You know, most people look at the Proverbs and see only law and principle. It's just like, here's a whole set of God's rules, and just get out there and obey Him. And so, this next theme is really important; it is that the Proverbs really unpacks for us the operation of God's grace. Proverbs brims with God's grace. I think there's probably few Bible students who, if you asked, “Where would you go to learn about the grace of God,” would say, “Oh, go to Proverbs, that's where.” I've never heard anybody say that.

But there's a way in which that's true. Every warning of the Proverbs is a grace, every morsel of understanding that's imparted is a grace, every practical guidance is a grace, every moral encouragement is a grace. You could argue that the fact that Proverbs is even in our Bible is a glorious grace of God. This is God unpacking things only He would ever know as Creator and Sovereign and Savior that we would not know yet we desperately need. This is God warning us away from danger. So the very existence of the Proverbs in Scripture tells you that your God is a God of sweet, faithful, never-changing grace! And for thousands of years, God's people have been rescued by what's on the pages of Proverbs. How beautiful is that!

But there is more. If you begin to walk through Proverbs, asking yourself the question, “What do I learn as I go through the Proverbs about how God's grace operates?” You'll be amazed. You know, it makes me a bit sad that I think as much as we throw around this word, people don't really understand grace. They think of grace as that moment when God opens our hearts and draws us to Himself in our conversion. When I talk about grace in everyday life, like grace to a parent, they often think it just means being nice, being permissive. Grace never calls wrong right; if wrong were right, there would be no need for grace. And so, grace really does need unpacking, it needs definition.

I think we’re confused by about how grace operates. So, here's the Proverbs, here are the things that you see grace doing in Proverbs. Grace illumines; it sheds light on things that would be darkened to us apart from this grace. Grace rescues; you see, we’re just being rescued all over in the Proverbs.  Grace forgives; there's redemption in Proverbs. Grace empowers, grace protects, grace promises, grace delivers, grace warns, grace transforms, grace is generous, grace is patient, grace is angry with sin, grace comforts, grace meets the simple, grace continues to meet the wise and mature. Grace is so full of needed things; none of us will ever outgrow grace!

I’m going to challenge you to do something. I want to challenge you to go to the Proverbs and search for God's grace. See all the ways that grace operates, displayed on the page in Proverbs, and realize here it’s not just a portrait of God's wisdom, it’s a portrait of our Savior and His love for us, His deliverance, His promises, His power, and that He is leading us to a final victory that only grace could accomplish!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, we are working our way through themes in the Proverbs. Rather than going chapter by chapter or verse by verse, we’re picking out these chords that run all the way through the Proverbs. And the one we want to look at first here is that we live in a moral world. You cannot make sense out of the Proverbs unless you step back and say, “There's a description of the world that we live in that is basic to understanding the material in this portion of Scripture.” If you read the Proverbs, you realize that everything is not okay, everything is not all right, and you and I didn't have a vote. God has decided what is right. He's decided what is true. He's decided what is just. He's decided what is righteous.

Now, in this way, Proverbs is very modern, very helpful for this moment that we’re in because there's a massive cultural denial of the moral world that we live in. Maybe that's pictured by this phrase that’s become current; “Well this is my truth.”  Well sorry, it's true or it's not, and that's the picture in Proverbs. Proverbs 2 says this:

For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity, guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints. Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, and every good path; for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech, who forsake the paths of righteousness to walk in the ways of darkness.

In the Proverbs, you’re confronted with, there's such a thing as righteousness and there's such a thing as evil. All of chapter 10 of Proverbs is a contrast between these two lifestyles, the lifestyle of the righteous and the lifestyle of the wicked. Chapter 15 is a meditation on how the Lord responds to the wicked, and it says this sad thing, “He's far from them.” You don't ever want God far from you.

For the righteous he says, “He hears their prayer.” That means God is watching, God is attentive, God is caring for His children. And as I think of this moral world, as I think of righteousness and evil, I can't help but think of Romans 3, where it says, “There is none righteous, no not one.” The Proverbs reminds me that I am not naturally righteous, that my life falls short of God's moral standard; and the Proverbs, in that way, is a massive warning for sinners and reminds us that the only hope for sinners in a moral world is a Savior. Proverbs will drive you to the Savior if you understand the world that's being described.

Psalm 51 says that the wicked go astray from the womb. We are born into the evil side of things, and it's only by the grace of the righteous life and acceptable death of the Savior that we are viewed righteous in God's eyes if there is a moral world. And the only hope for us in this life and the one to come is the Lord Jesus Christ who comes to rescue us from us and to present us righteous before God and offers us the hope of living in a place that’s perfectly righteous forever and ever. This is a moral world and a moral world needs a savior!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Proverbs paints for us a portrait of what sin is and what sin does. In fact, you probably don't get a clearer description of the seduction and the deception of sin than you get in Proverbs. And I think sometimes we read the Proverbs in a ‘surfacy’ way because we’re just looking for these little nuggets of wisdom that will make life easier for us, and we don't ask deeper questions and delve deeper into what the Proverbs is actually presenting to us.

One of the places where I think that's true is the warnings like in Proverbs 5 and 6, about the adulterous woman, the danger of sexual sin. I'm deeply persuaded that that volume of material and its descriptiveness about the danger of sexual sin is not just to warn us about sexual sin, but to give us a case study about the danger of sin, what sin does. And so, I want to unpack that for you.

If you look at these descriptions, the first thing you're confronted with is sin is actually pleasurable. The little phrase that “The lips of this woman drip honey,” there it is. They don't drip acid; they drip honey, and you're attracted by the temporary pleasures of sin. One of the seductive aspects of sin is it does offer you temporary pleasure.

Sin is seductive. The little phrase here says, “She has speech smoother than oil.” I mean, sin works you; it whispers in your ear. It says the things you want to hear.

Sin is a liar; sin never delivers what it promises! Did you hear what I said? Sin never delivers what it promises; it says that what you end up getting is “Bitter as wormwood” (Proverb 5:4).

Sin is destructive. You think what you're going to get will be fulfilling, and the little phrase here is, “Her feet go down to death,” (Proverbs 5:5) Now, that's scary! Follow this and it will lead you to death.

Sin is addictive, enslaving. The question is asked, “Why should you be so intoxicated?” There's a drunkenness, addictive, enslaving aspect to sin.

No sin is hidden from God's eyes. We’re warned that, “Our ways are always before the Lord.”

Sin ensnares and the description says, “You’re held fast by the cords of your own sin,” bound up.

Sin has terrible consequences. And I love these descriptions, I think it’s so helpful. Here's the question, “Can you carry a fire near your chest without your clothes being burned?” How descriptive is that? “You will get burned.”

And sin blinds. That's why it says, “Don't go this way.” The commandments of the Lord are a lamp, they open up the darkness so you can see with accuracy. You see, the problem is sin doesn't always look this dangerous to us. When you’re having a third piece of cake, an act of gluttony, all you are remembering is the beautiful chocolate taste. When you’re lusting after a woman at the mall, you're seeing beauty; you’re not seeing the danger of that, and that's why the warnings, the descriptive warnings in Proverbs, are such a grace because we get to see sin for what it actually is, and we’re warned to run! We need that warning!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, one of the dominant themes in Proverbs is the centrality of the heart. You cannot read the Proverbs without concluding that your body only goes where your heart has already gone; your mouth only goes where your heart has already gone; your eyes only go where your heart has already gone. And so, we need this emphasis in Proverbs. It probably reaches its early crescendo in Proverbs 4, where the father says to his son, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” We could put it in modern language, “Son, if you do anything. guard your heart because life comes out of your heart.”

Now, we have to unpack what this word means. ‘Heart,’ if we take all the ways the Bible talks about this word, the Bible describes the heart as the control center of your personhood; it's the center of your thoughts, it’s the center of your desires, it’s the center of your emotions, it’s the center of your purposes and your motivations. And so, the father is saying, “This is what drives you, this is what controls you, this is what shapes your living. You have got to be concerned about your heart.” And the Proverbs would tell us the way to guard your heart is to have a Godward heart, to surrender your heart to the will and the way, the presence and the glory, of this God who looms so large in Proverbs.

Proverbs is a case study in what the heart does. You have all these different postures of the heart that are discussed in Proverbs: The foolish heart, the wise heart, the joyful heart, the grieving heart, the evil heart, the righteous heart, the tranquil heart, the understanding heart, the foolish heart, the just heart, the cheerful heart, the arrogant heart, the greedy heart, the angry heart, and the list just goes on and on.

The Proverbs helps you to realize that what's hot and happening in you is your heart; that what controls your heart has you. Your life always lives under the control of the heart. That means lasting change, in any person's life, always starts with your heart. Proverbs would say the heart is a problem, and Proverbs would remind me that my greatest problem in all of my life doesn't exist outside of me; it's not those less-than-perfect people and all those less-than-perfect places in my life. My greatest problem is inside of me. It's the thoughts and motives and idols of my own heart. It's the tendency for me to put myself in the center when God must be in the center.

Well, this means that we can all find comfort in the bright golden promise of the New Covenant. What’s that promise? “I will give them (Can you finish it?) a new heart.” (Ezek. 36:26) You see, if in the grace of Jesus, there isn't renewal of my heart, rescue of my heart, that grace isn’t grace.

You don't need so much reformation in your behavior because your behavior only changes in a lasting way if your heart first changes. So, you read the Proverbs and it's your heart, your heart, your heart, your heart, your heart, your heart. So that, you and I would pray with David, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” (Psalms 51:10-12) My prayer is that your study of the Proverbs would lead you to pray that prayer. “Oh, Lord, won't you create in me a clean heart,” Because, if there is not a hope of a clean heart, there is no hope for me!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, the Proverbs not only teaches us that we live in a moral world, but we live in a world under rule. Now, this theme is different than the themes we've looked at so far because it's not taught in a few passages or a particular chapter in Proverbs. Rather, this is the overarching context of this book of Scripture that God looms large in His world. There is a God who rules this world.

The Proverbs would remind us that maybe the most important words in all of Scripture are the first four in Genesis 1, “In the beginning, God.” If there is a God who is the creator and controller of this world in which we live, then everything is about Him. Romans 11:36 says, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be (the) glory.” That's the view of Proverbs.

On the stage of our lives, He is the central character, He is the controlling actor. The Proverbs are deeply humbling because life is not all about me, it's not all about what I want, when I want it, where I want it, how I want it. It's not about me setting my own rules for my life. It's not about me doing whatever I want to make me happy. There's a God that looms large.

He sets the laws by which we live. He created and controls the natural world in which we live. He alone has the power to provide what we need physically, emotionally, spiritually. Yes, He rewards, and He punishes. He alone is the source of the grace that we so desperately need. He generously dispenses the wisdom that is so necessary and provides the only way of living the way we were created to live. He is worthy of our trust. Everything else in life will fail us. There’s no indication that God is anything but absolutely trustworthy in the Proverbs.

He has the power to rescue fools; that's all of us. Sin reduces all of us to fools. As I’ve said before, in Proverbs, God looms large; you cannot escape His presence, you cannot escape His power, you cannot escape His law, you cannot escape the need for Him. There's no room in the Proverbs for agnosticism, that view that there may be a God out there somewhere, but He’s not in contact with His world and you can't really know Him. This God is knowable; this God in Proverbs reveals who He is. He reveals what He does.

There's obviously no room for atheism. You can't read the Proverbs without crashing into the presence and power and authority and wisdom and grace of God again and again. In fact, the Proverbs actually forces us to understand that God is the environment in which we live. You can’t get up in the morning without bumping into God.

One of the saddest moments of the irrationality of sin in all of Scripture is when the prophet Jonah doesn't want to do what God is asking him to do, and he says that he's going to run from God's presence. If you think you can successfully escape the presence of God, you have gone spiritually insane.

Well, there's none of that insanity in Proverbs. If life is about knowing and serving God, then we need a portion of Scripture where God looms large, where He is inescapable and glorious and present and active. This God is real, and this God is knowable. This God reveals Himself. This God never slumbers or sleeps; He is constantly active doing what He's promised to do. This God is our hope!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, this theme that we’re going to look at next is a lot like the previous one. When you're reading the Proverbs, you shouldn’t just read for gaining nuggets of wisdom or just not look at the context of Proverbs, but you should step back and ask yourself the question, “What is the world that is being described by this portion of the Word of God? What do I learn about life, what's the big picture that's being presented to me here?”

And there is just glorious big picture stuff in Proverbs that picks up the glorious big picture themes in the rest of Scripture. And one of those themes is that we live between the ‘already’ of our conversion and the ‘not yet’ of our home going, in a right here, right now, glory war. The Proverbs is all about glory.

Now, let me say something about this. We human beings were created by God with a glory orientation. We are attracted to glorious things, every one of us. That's why a toddler is attracted to that light that flashes on that cell phone; it's this glorious attractive thing. That's why we like the triple mousse cake, or the dramatic movie, or the triple overtime NBA game, or a compelling piece of music. We are oriented, magnetized to glory. Animals are not like that; the penguins don't score one another as they dive off into the water, “That was a 9.5!” The rhino doesn't say to the zebra, “Dude, that's the most awesome coat I've ever seen; where did you get that cool coat?” It just doesn't happen, but we do that. And so, you're always hungering for glory.

And the Proverbs would present to us that there are only two kinds of glory. There's the ultimate glory, that is the glorious glory of the glory of God, His presence, His power, His wisdom, His mercy, and listen, the glory of everything else. Whether that's power, wealth, sex, food, the list is endless.

And the Proverbs does something for us, I think this is very helpful. All the wisdom truths that Proverbs is trying to teach, are illustrated by physical, natural illustrations. Now if you step back, what you learn is that every physical created thing is not a glory in and of itself, but it’s meant to be a finger that points you to the greater glory of God. That's why the ant can teach me something about life, God’s designed it that way, that all those things pull me toward Him. Right now, your life is shaped by a hunger for glory, and you're trying to satisfy that glory with the physical, created things that were never meant to satisfy your heart.

Proverbs tells you these things will not satisfy your heart. Wealth won't satisfy your heart, power won't satisfy your heart, sex won't satisfy your heart, winning the deal, no matter how hard, whatever you had to do to win, won't satisfy your heart. Satisfaction is only found in the Lord, in submitting to His will and His way, living for His glory. Today, you woke up to a glory war and tomorrow you will again, and you have to ask yourself, “What glory captures my heart? What am I trying to feed my glory hunger with? Is it God or is it something else?” Everything created will never satisfy your heart but is a finger to point you to the one glory that will bring contentment and satisfaction to you!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

One of the things that I think we often think about the Proverbs is that it's trapped in the ‘here and now,’ that there's no past in the Proverbs and there's no future in the Proverbs; it’s just about what's happening now, and the dangers of now and the righteous path for now. And that's just not true. One of the themes that courses its way through the Proverbs, that you may not have noticed, is the theme of eternity. You could not have the balanced, Biblical worldview that is in Proverbs without eternity being part of it.

And that comes to us in two ways. First, there are direct references to things beyond the ‘here and now’ Hear Proverbs 12:28, “In the path of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death.” Think about that. That's way more than, “Sin will kill you somehow in the here now.” It's stretching your view beyond just the present rewards and punishment of life to, “This is bigger, this story is bigger than just the here and now.” That's in Proverbs 14:12, Proverbs 10:2, Proverbs 10:16, that same view. Eternity is all about the life-and-death consequences of sin and righteousness and the grace that is ours to ever stand before God as righteous. The Proverbs surely has that chord of eternity in it.

But there's more and I love this. The Proverbs gives us a glimpse, a bit of a portrait of what the world to come will be like if peace and harmony and righteousness and justice and wisdom would reign in everybody's heart and everywhere forever and ever. When you read the Proverbs and you see what God is holding out, you are seeing ‘shalom’ again, ‘shalom’ that was shattered in the garden.

What is ‘shalom?’ It's way more than peace! ‘Shalom’ is everything in its right place, doing what it was meant to do. The Proverbs begins to give you a picture of that. Imagine a world where everything is in its right place, and everything and everyone is committed to doing exactly what we and it were meant to do. Imagine a world where there is no sin, there is no suffering, there is no danger, there is no death, there is no foolishness, but wisdom and righteousness reign for ever and ever and ever.

You and I should say to ourselves as we read the Proverbs, “I want to live in a world that's like the one that God describes in the Proverbs.” And you and I could never ever earn a ticket to that world because in the brightest of our righteousness, we sadly fall short of the glory of God. If we could be the righteous, wise person described in the Proverbs on our own, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus would not have been necessary. That eternity that's pictured in Proverbs is only ours by grace.

And so, Proverbs is meant to produce in your heart a celebration that this thing that seems so far away that we could never achieve is ours, and someday we will be in that place where wisdom and righteousness reigns for ever and ever and ever! That message is in the Proverbs.

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, I feel such a great sense of privilege that I get to live in this portion of God's Word and dig deep and mine the beauty of the content that is there. And I have come to see that the Proverbs is way, way, way, more than I thought it was. It's way deeper, it's way more beautiful. And one of the places where I think that beauty is seen is in the theme of redemption that is in Proverbs.

There really is a theme of fresh starts and new beginnings in the Proverbs. Never ever, in the Proverbs, do you get the sense that we’re trapped in our sin and there is no hope for us. I mean, think about this, if we were trapped in our sin and there was no hope for us, why would you have the Proverbs?  Why would you have the Bible? Why would you have any of this? You don't want to read the Proverbs and read it like you're sitting in front of the doctor that is announced that you have terminal cancer and there's nothing he can do for you.

The whole cast of the Proverbs is there is the possibility of redemption or the Proverbs doesn't make any sense and there are particular passages that get at this.  Let me read a verse to you that I think is one of those that you have to dig deeper in to see the powerful theme of redemption here. This is Proverbs 20:12, I love this verse, this is one that you ought to put on the mirror that you look at every morning, “The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the LORD has made them both.” Now you may read that and think that we’re just talking about God as Creator here, and He creates your ear, and He creates your eye, and they wouldn't exist without Him.  That's surely true!

But I don't think that that's what this passage is about. The Hebrew word for hearing here is ‘shema.’ That's, “Hear, O, Israel, the LORD your God, the LORD is one.” It means something deeper than hearing. The Hebrew use of that word ‘hearing’ is a term for listening, for paying attention, for submitting, for obeying.

Seeing expresses, in the Hebrew mind, it's a metaphor for insight, for understanding. You read this and it makes me think of Deuteronomy 29:4, “The Lord gives to the heart eyes to see.” Or, Psalms 119, “Open my eyes, that I may (see) wondrous things out of your law.”

The picture here is God, in the glory of His redeeming grace, doesn't leave me deaf and blind. Sin makes me deaf and blind; I can’t hear what I need to hear, and I can't see what I need to see. It's one of the curses of sin; it’s a horrible thing! It’s a horrible thing to live blind and deaf, and not know it.

You know, the Proverbs says, “God moves toward us, and in grace, He grants us a heart that hears, that sees.” And because we hear and see, conviction comes into our heart, and conviction is followed with confession, and confession is followed with forgiveness, and forgiveness is followed by a whole brand-new way of living, acceptance into the family of God, identity as a child of God. It all starts with God granting hearing and God granting understanding. That's redeeming grace. Apart from that grace we would never know God and we would not have any hope. The Proverbs presents to us redeeming grace!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well I have been blown away by two things as I've gone through these themes in Proverbs. The first one is just the depth and breadth and practicality of the wisdom in this portion of the Word of God. The Proverbs just speaks to everything and in a such a sweet and wise way. And, I've also been blown away by how the Proverbs maps onto the narrative and the message and the hope of the gospel.

And, that brings us to this theme that I want to get us to think about right now; it's the theme of fresh starts and new beginnings. Now, this is one of those overarching themes in Proverbs. You really don't understand the Proverbs unless you understand this; it's not there in a single passage or in a single chapter; it's not apparent on the surface, but it's what the Proverbs is about.

Think with me. The book of Proverbs is an invitation by a God of grace to abandon the old foolish ways of sin and a welcome to fresh starts and new beginnings. When I say that, I think again, “Isn't this the narrative of the Bible?” Abraham doubted God's promise and took life into his own hands but was given fresh a start a new beginning. David committed adultery and murder but was given a fresh start and new beginnings. Jonah ran from God-was given a fresh start and a new beginning. Peter denied Christ-given a fresh start and new beginnings. Paul persecuted the church-given a fresh start and new beginnings. And each one of us are offered that fresh start and new beginnings. We’re meant to look into the mirror of the Proverbs and say, “I'm not what I should be and not walk away hopeless, but walk away with hope because the God of wisdom is also a God of grace. So, I want to talk about your approach to Proverbs with four words.

The first one is ‘consider.’ You ought to look in the mirror of the Proverbs and consider who you are, consider what you're doing, consider how you’re acting. Humbly look at the sightedness that the Proverbs gives you.

The second word is then, ‘confess.’ Don't deny what you see, don't rise to your own defense; confess what God shows you through this wonderful mirror of His Word.

Third word, now ‘commit’ yourself to a brand-new way of living. When you confess your sin, God never will mock you, He’s never disgusted, He never will turn His back, but He meets you with His grace. But His grace is not just for giving grace; it's empowering grace. And so, commit yourself to a new way of living. Say, “I'm going to live the wisdom of the Proverbs.” Now, you don’t have any ability to do that at all, but you're not left to your own resources because God is for you and with you and in you.

The fourth word is ‘change.’ There's an old saying in counseling circles that change hasn’t taken place until change has taken place. Commitment is a step of change, but it's not change--change is when you now apply those new commitments to the situations and relationships of everyday life.

How should Proverbs inform the way you think about money, the way you think about relationships, with the way you think about sex, the way you think about your talk, the way you think about justice or generosity or all those other things that are in Proverbs? Commit yourself to actual practical change. The God of wisdom is also a God of grace, and He welcomes you to look into the mirror of His Word, to confess what you see; He greets you with forgiveness, and He greets you with empowering grace. Proverbs is an invitation to fresh starts and new beginnings, or it makes no sense at all in its place in the Word of God!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

The theme that we want to look at now is maybe one of the places where the book of Proverbs is its most radical, it's most countercultural. We live in a culture where any authority that sets a boundary seems to be repudiated, where we’re told that everything is supposed to be okay no matter what you want to do, no matter who wants to do it, and to put strictures on people is some form of bigotry.

Proverbs puts before us the importance of a life of submission, a life of submission to higher authority, a life of submission to greater wisdom. Hear how Proverbs begins, “Hear, my son, your father's instructions. How long will you love being simple? (I love that.) Let your heart keep my commandments; be attentive that you may gain insight.” You get this repeated thing: listen, hear, obey, pay attention in the first several chapters of Proverbs.

The Proverb says to us. “There is One who sits on the throne of the universe who knows better and who has generously poured His wisdom down on us.” But that means the wise life, the good life, the fruitful life, is not a life of independence and self-direction. That philosophy is a drop-dead lie that will hurt you. Independence is not the goal of life; self-direction is not the goal of life. The good life is not that I can do whatever I want whenever I want to do it; that's not the good life. And yet, sin makes that attractive to us.

If you're a parent, you've never had your child say to you, “I wish you would just command me more. I wish you would tell me what to do more. I just don't get enough commands in my life.” But, early, a child will learn to say “No!” to you and learn to resist your authority. Real life is always found in submission to God, obedience to His commands, gladly receiving His wisdom.

Now again, this is where Proverbs fits so well with the gospel story. Think of this, what is the move of God's grace? What is the inertia of God's grace? I want you to hear what I’m about to say, “The move of God's grace is not to bring you from dependence to independence; the move of God's grace is to bring you from independence to greater dependence.”

The more spiritually mature you are, the more God's grace has worked in your life, the more dependent you will be on God:  on His wisdom, on His commands, on His grace, on His Word, on the fellowship of His people, on any resource of grace that God puts in your life. That's what grace does. And so, the move of Proverbs is the same; it's to challenge the natural independence of sin and say, “No, no, no, don't you get it?” There's One who knows what's best and has poured that wisdom down on you just because He's a God of grace and He’s a God's love.

Listen, the goal of God in Proverbs is not to wreck your life; it's to make you thrive, it's to give you the good life, it’s to bless you with beautiful things that you would never have, you would never choose on your own. It's a gift of God to us to say, “Come, submit to Me and I will lead you in a good path.”

The key to the good life is not independence; the key to the good life is submitting to the wisdom and the authority of God!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

There is a theme that is all over the Proverbs; I mean it almost isn’t an exaggeration to say it's there in a thousand ways. It's the theme of justice. This theme is so near to the heart of God because God is the Ultimate Judge, the Ultimate Ruler and Giver of justice because He is always holy and always righteous in everything He says and everything He does. It’s impossible for God to be anything else. This is so central to the value system of Proverbs.

It is how the book begins, “To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity.” That’s your introduction. The writer of Proverbs is saying, “If you want to know what the Proverbs is about, it's about righteousness, justice, and equity.” You could argue that everything that Proverbs teaches fits under that rubric of a righteous life, a just life, and an equitable life. That's the way Proverbs is positioned and that's the way that we should understand it.

In chapter 2, there's a connection that is made between “Wisdom taking root in your heart and understanding justice.” That's really interesting. One of the heart changes that God wants to work in me is that justice means something to me, justice is important to me, and I understand what justice is. And so, you have to think about that when you’re reading Proverbs. Proverbs has many places like in chapter 22, where we’re called not to exploit the poor. And then God says. “If you rob them, the Lord will rob you.” That, in Scripture, is called a warning.

Accepting a bribe that perverts justice is another way that is talked about. Proverbs 21 says, “When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous,” and then you get this, “…but a terror to evildoers.” I love that turn of that thought.

To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.” If I said that to you, would you say, “Tripp, what are you talking about? To do justice is more acceptable than sacrifice?” Well, I just quoted Proverbs 21:3; that's how important this issue is in the heart of God.

Now, I have to say this, sadly this subject of justice in this generation in the church has become hugely controversial; it’s become hugely divisive. I had a situation where I posted just a series of passages from scripture on justice; I made no comment, it was just the Bible, and I got vile comments back on Twitter from Christians, angry that I was posting these things.

I think we desperately need to get back to the worldview of Proverbs. Justice is close to the heart of God because He's the ultimate ruler of justice because He is just in every way. Justice is deep in the value system of the worldview of Proverbs. Justice is something that is meant to give joy to a righteous heart. If you understand the ways of God, you will understand justice, Proverbs says.

Maybe we’ve misunderstood the heart of God. Maybe we've turned human beings into disembodied souls that aren’t whole human beings. Maybe we need to reevaluate the importance of justice in our lives and represent this ‘just’ God wherever He has placed us, be vehicles of His justice!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, one of the themes that is surely all throughout the Proverbs is the theme of the rich and the poor. The Proverbs says a lot about the life of the rich and the plight of the poor. It says a lot about the temptations of people who are rich. We sometimes think that there are all kinds of temptations in the life of a poor person, maybe to doubt God to get what they need in immoral ways.

But the Proverbs really talks about the temptations of the rich. And it has a lot to say about the hardship of the poor. But as the Proverbs wants to do, it approaches the subject of rich and poor in a radically different way. It doesn't deny the reality of poverty; it doesn't deny the seductiveness of riches. But what the Proverbs does is confront us with a different kind of riches; that the truly rich life is not found in your wealth, it’s not found in what you can buy, it’s not found in whom you can buy, it's not found in the pile of stuff that you've accumulated.

It's found in honoring the Lord with whatever you have; and in that way, a poor person can be rich because there are riches that can never be earned in that way and can never be robbed or faded away. The Proverbs talks about honoring the Lord with your wealth; and if you do that, your barns will be full. That's a metaphor that God blesses people who have a higher agenda for their wealth than just their own pleasure. Proverbs 19:1 says, “Poverty with integrity is better.” Isn’t that interesting that you can be poor, poor poor. That means you’re poor in physical terms, but you are also poor in spiritual terms. Or, you can be poor and rich; you’re poor in physical terms; but you’re rich in heart because you’ve been blessed with the riches of integrity.

There are two kinds of game changing passages in Proverbs about this topic. This is Proverbs 28:6, “Better is a poor man who walks in…integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways.” It would better to be poor and live a righteous life than have all the riches you can imagine. Now how countercultural is that? But that's exactly what the Proverbs says. Or, Proverbs 30:8 and 9, “Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of (the LORD).”

Here is the writer of Proverbs saying, “Lord, help me to avoid the two temptations:  the temptation of wealth that I would use it in the wrong way, the temptation of poverty that I would feel it’s right for me to break your law to get what I need. Just give me enough for today so that I can live a righteous life with integrity.” That's real riches.

How radical it is to think that a poor man is richer than a rich man when that poor man lives a righteous life before his Maker. That's the riches you ought to quest for, not the big car, not the big house, not a bunch of money in your wallet, but rich in a life that honors God!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, I guess it would just make sense, given the way Proverbs approaches life, that honesty would be a key theme in Proverbs. There is simply no place in all of the Bible that holds before us more the importance, the blessing, and the honor of a life of honesty and integrity. When I first wrote those words down on a piece of paper, I immediately thought of Psalm 51. As David is confessing his sin, he says, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity,” that literally, “The wicked go astray from the womb (You know what the Bible says next?) speaking lies”

One of the things that sin does to us to us; it removes truth from our mouths. It's the tragedy of the damage of sin. Yet there is a God of truth who prizes truthfulness in every way. Read the Proverbs and you will know that dishonest gain is the fool’s way and wisdom's way is always honest in every way.

I can say this to you for sure, “There is literally no chapter in 31 chapters of Proverbs that doesn't talk about honesty in someway.” If honesty were the color red, the entire book of Proverbs would be dyed red; that's how significant this is.

Now that makes sense because God is the ultimate source of everything that's right and true. I was hit by this when I was reading through the Proverbs; I came across Proverbs, chapter 6, verses 16 through 18. This is a very familiar passage:

There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.

I was sort of laughing at this, “There are six things; seven that are an abomination,” because there are only actually six things mentioned here because lying is mentioned twice. It's the way the list begins and it’s the way the list ends. A lying tongue there in the beginning; a false witness there in the bottom. I mean, this is so reprehensible to this God of wisdom, that in His list of things He hates, He mentions it twice just so we’d get the point.

Wisdom is always truthful; hear the words of Proverbs 8: 6 through 9. This is talking about what wisdom does:

Hear, for I will speak noble things, and from my lips will come what is right, for my mouth will utter truth; wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are righteous; and there is nothing twisted or crooked in them. They are all straight to him who understands, and right to those who find knowledge.

Why is lying such an abomination to the Lord? Because every lie is rooted in idolatry. I lie because there's something more important to me than the honor and the will and the plan of God. If you want to know how much idolatry is in your life, look at the way that you bend and twist the truth for some pleasure, for some benefit, other than what the Lord calls you to!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, we are walking our way through the beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful themes of Proverbs. I mean, if you want a portrait of life as beautiful as it can become, read the Proverbs! It’s just a portrait of the good life, and part of that is this theme of generosity.

Now, you know if you’ve read the Bible, that the whole Bible is a generosity story. It could be captured by nine words in John, “For God so loved the world that He gave.” God is, in all ways, a giving God, generous, generous in creation. Look at the gorgeous world that He gave to us.

Generous in His revelation-look at this amazing book, the Bible, and it’s glorious heart-rescuing, life-changing wisdom.

Generous in the gift of His Son and in that Son is a guarantee that if God would give us His Son, won’t He give us everything else that we need?

Generous in the gift of His grace: rescuing, convicting, forgiving, transforming, empowering, delivering grace.

Generous in His wisdom.

Generous in His moment by moment care. This One who rules heaven and earth would say, “You come, you cast your cares on me because I really do care for you.”

So, it makes perfect sense that this would be a theme in Proverbs. Now, it is possible to miss the presence of this theme and the dominance of this theme because of the way that the Proverbs talks about it. This is Proverbs 3:9 and 10. “Honor the LORD with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.” Whenever you see the phrase, “Honor the LORD with your wealth,” He’s saying, “Do something more with your money that spend it on yourself . . . Honor the LORD with your wealth.”

Well, that means asking the question, “With the ultimate in wealth, God being the richest Being in the universe because He owns everything, what is it that God does with His wealth?” He pours His blessing down on us; He meets our needs. He’s a giving generous God.  Honor Me by following me in the way you think about what you have.

What makes you more excited? A $100 in your pocket or $100 that you can give to somebody and change their life, even if just for a moment? Be honest, how hard is it for us to honor the Lord with our wealth? Proverbs 14:21 says this, “Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner, but blessed is he who is generous to the poor.”

Now, how could we be anything less than generous if we know where the Biblical story goes? Here’s where it goes, this is 2 Corinthians 8:9, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich.” God met us, the One who is rich in every way, met us in the poverty of our sin; how did He meet us? He became poor so that we, through that experience of His, might become eternally rich. If that’s the inertia of the story, if that’s where this story is going, then how could we not honor God with our wealth?

The Proverbs would say, “The key to generosity is to know that what you’ve been given doesn’t belong to you; it belongs to the Giver. Use it His way!”

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

It's been good to spend time in Proverbs; it’s been good to look at these themes; it's been good for my heart; it's been convicting and yet gloriously comforting, and I just want to encourage you again--don't hold these themes intellectually, stand before them as if they were a mirror. You don't have to be afraid of anything that the Proverbs will reveal because there's nothing that could be known, revealed about you that hasn't been covered by the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Stand before that mirror, unafraid; confess what you see.

Well, the next theme is love of neighbor. You just don't have to read long in the Proverbs to see that every Proverb is rooted in one of the two great commands. Let me say that again, every Proverb is rooted in the two great commands. If you took the two great commands as columns on a piece of paper, you could write every Proverb under one of those two columns. Proverbs is a practical application in every area of life of what it means to love God and love your neighbor.

In fact, you could argue if you just take the second great command, that Proverbs is a wonderful unpacking, a wonderful portrait of that command to love my neighbor. If you want to know in detail what it looks like to love your neighbor, run to Proverbs. You'll get all kinds of practical advice on what that looks like. So, Proverbs has much to say, at street level, what it means to love your neighbor.

And one of the things that’s interesting, one of the points of focus of neighbor love is the use of your tongue. It's your talk. In chapter 15, there's a long contrast between the good fruit of a gentle word and the negative fruit of a hard word.

Now, think about that. What Proverbs is saying is your ability to talk wasn't meant just to serve you, it was meant to serve your neighbor. You talk in an other-centered way, knowing that you have great power to influence a person by your words. Now, think about this, you can say something horribly mean and a person begins to cry; you haven’t hit them, you haven't touched them, but you have created something inside of them that actually creates a physiological response just by words!

You can sit next to a discouraged person and say loving, kind, encouraging words and literally lift a person's heart. So, the Proverbs says, “If you want to love your neighbor, watch what you say!” Use the power of the tongue to do good in the life of your neighbor; because if you're not committed to that, you will use your tongue in ways that end up harming your neighbor. You can't read the Proverbs without encountering the fact that love of neighbor is revealed in the things that you say, the way you use this powerful ability to talk.

But there's one other thing that Proverbs does, Proverbs 15:14 does this, it makes a connection between the heart and the mouth, and that immediately propels us to Luke 6, that says, Jesus speaking, He says, “It’s out of the heart that the mouth speaks.” My use of the tongue, whether selfish or loving, is not a mouth problem, it’s a heart problem. And that's why in James 3, we’re told that, “No one can tame the tongue because no one can tame the heart.”

Dare we run for God's grace and say, “Won't you make me a person who loves my neighbor by the use of my tongue?” What does that look like? Well, Ephesians 4:29 says this, “Let no corrupt talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” (ESV) May God give us grace to use our tongues as instruments of grace, instruments of love in the lives of others?

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, if you are reading the Proverbs and you don't leave understanding the seriousness of sexual sin, you just haven't been paying attention. It’s one of the cardinal themes of this book. In fact, the way Proverbs deals with sex is one of the things Proverbs is known for, and there's a level of seriousness that is so important in this generation that we’re in.

Listen to some of the phraseology in describing sexual sin: “bitter as wormwood, feet going down to death, forbidden intoxication.” One text says, “How can you have a fire in your chest and not burn your clothes?” I love that phraseology. “Will not go unpunished, wounds and dishonor,” those are all the ways that Scripture is trying to marshal word pictures to say, “Don't go there; there's danger there.”

But I have to say this, the Bible is not sex or pleasure negative. And you see that in Proverbs 2. And so, you can't really look at this issue of sexual sin without thinking about the theology of pleasure in Scripture. I want to do that for a moment. It's not necessarily godly to deny pleasure because God, in His wisdom, created a gloriously pleasurable world for us.

The sight and sound and taste pleasures of that world bless us every day. And then God created us with pleasure gates: your eyes, your ears, your sense of touch, your taste, your smell, are all ways that God has designed for you to take in the pleasures He's created in His world. So, to enjoy these pleasures is really to glorify the God who created these pleasures. Pleasure-enjoyment is God-glorifying.

But here's the thing that Scripture says, that our culture never says, is that every pleasure requires boundaries. Pleasure without boundaries always leads to danger. I mean, think about this, think of the pleasure of the flora and fauna that we get to eat, food. If you go there without boundaries, you will end up obese and in ill health.

So, the Proverbs presents to us the beauty of sexual pleasure while it also holds before us the danger of sexual sin. In Proverbs 5, we have this moment where it says:

Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.

What a beautiful expression of this place where God has designed sexual pleasure to be enjoyed, that is marriage.

So, the warnings that we have in Proverbs are not meant to make us think that the pleasure of sex is just wrong at any place. God created that pleasure; it’s a significant part of the marital relationship, but it needs to be lived within those boundaries.

How important is that now when we are experiencing the pornification of our culture and the technology that brings up pornification, not just into our houses, but into implements we carry in our pockets. And how humbling it is to admit that it's only ever the evil inside of me that hooks me to the evil outside of me. Sexual sin is not first an issue of environment; it’s first an issue of the condition of my heart. I want pleasure outside of what God has designed for me; and for that, I need rescuing and empowering grace!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

One of the sweet and important themes of Proverbs, it just shows the tenderhearted care of the Lord; Proverbs really tries to help us to see the folly of folly, the foolishness of foolishness. And the reason that that is so important is we all have this problem. Foolishness doesn’t always seem foolish to us.

If you're pulling out your credit card to buy something that you can’t actually afford, with no thought of how you will actually be able to pay this new increase in debt, you're not thinking about how foolish it is! You’re thinking about the excitement of this new possession that you're about to get. If you're lusting after a woman at the mall, let’s say, you're not thinking of the utter danger and foolishness of what you're doing; you're thinking of the beauty that you're looking at and the pleasure that you would fantasize in your mind. We need to be warned, to remember the foolishness of foolishness.

Now here's the problem, foolishness doesn't just live in the grand moments of your life. Foolishness lives in all those little, seemingly inconsequential, mundane moments of your life. The life of a fool isn't built in four moments; the life of a fool is built in ten-thousand little moments. And the life of a wise person isn't built in one or three or five moments, but it’s built in a thousand little teeny moments of life.

So, the Proverbs works to help us to see the dangerousness of foolishness. And what it does is it works to convince you that the fool is not just dumb; foolishness is a moral thing because wisdom is a Godward thing. So, the heart of foolishness is a denial of the Lord; a denial of His presence, His authority, and the wisdom of His way. In fact, Proverbs, in the 14th chapter, basically presents the fool as someone who despises the Lord. There it is.

I think of Psalm 14 that says, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Now, we’re not talking there about philosophical atheism; we’re talking about living in a way that denies God's place in my heart and in my life.

Proverbs 17 is a whole chapter that just unpacks that foolishness is not just a series of stupid choices, but a series of sinful choices; so much so that the fool is so full of himself that he resists rebuke. He resists any thought that he may be a fool; and because of that, the Proverbs says, “Your foolishness will lead you to ruin.” And it depicts that ruling in a multitude of different ways.

So, here's what we need to understand. The fool doesn't just need instruction. Let me say that again, “The fool doesn't just need instruction; he needs heart and life transformation.” We need this instruction because sin reduces all of us to fools!

What is the heart of foolishness? It's a denial of God and at street level wanting my own way. Let me just talk to parents, really quickly. Parents, you ought to read Proverbs and look at the folly of folly because you’re parenting fools. Children come into the world with foolishness in their hearts, the Proverb says. And they need parents who hold God's wisdom before them, parents who do more, who hold the need for rescuing heart transforming grace before your children because your children don't just need protection, they don't just need instruction. Your children, being fools, need radical heart and life transformation. That transformation only comes by the power of God's grace. Hold the need of that grace before your children and watch what God will do!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, one of the dominant underlying themes of Proverbs is humility. I would say it this way, “It’s a core underlying transcendent theme of Proverbs.” Although Proverbs doesn't discuss humility on every page, it's on every page because the life described in Proverbs, the portrait of the way we are meant to live in fear of the Lord, that way grows in the soil of humility. Humility is the soil in which this rich beautiful life of wisdom grows.

Fear of the Lord is the key to wisdom. And what is that fear about? It’s about submission, a humble sense of need, willingness to consider and confess, it's about God's honor, it's about worship of Him, living in awe of Him, it's about a willing and joyful dependency. I have to say it again that in that way, Proverbs fits with the move of Scripture. Listen, the move of God's grace is not moving us from dependence to independence; but from independence to a greater willing and joyful dependence on God and the instruments that God puts in our life.

Proverbs 3:34 is one of the principal Scriptures on humility, “Toward the scorners he is scornful, but to the humble he gives favor.” That theme, that passage, is repeated in James, and in Peter, as they think of the importance of humility.

Proverbs 22:4 connects humility with the fear of the Lord; and by that, we begin to understand that fear of the Lord crushes pride. If you're proud, if the people around you would describe you as being proud, you just don't need to be committed to humility; you need to grow in fear of the Lord, because fear of the Lord and pride don't live in the same soil, they just don't.

Why does God hate pride? Well, I’ve just told you because a proud man is a man who lacks fear of Him; and because he lacks fear of Him, he doesn't worship Him as he should; and because he doesn't worship Him as he should, he doesn't submit to Him as he should; and because he doesn't submit to Him as he should, he doesn't obey Him as He should; and because he doesn’t obey Him as he should, he wants his own way instead of God's way; and because of that, his life is moving away from the Lord, away from His honor, and away from that rich experience of life that He promises those who will humble themselves before Him. In that way, every Proverb is an invitation to a humble life.

Now, can we talk here? I don’t know why I'm asking permission; I'm going to talk. That's not natural for us; it's not natural for you to be humble. I think of parenting again; my children have never come to me and said, “Dad, if you could just control me more, if you would just command me more, if you would just take greater charge over my life, I would be so happy.” But it's natural for your child to resist that; it’s natural for your child to act like they know things they don't know.

A child trying to learn to tie his shoe; you’ll reach down to help him and he slaps your hand away. He could try to make a bow for the next century, and he would never make a bow because he doesn’t know how. But there's an instinct inside of him that says, “I don't want to be a person who needs help.” And so, we’re confronted with this life that God says, “This is the good life, this is the rich life. It’s lived in humble recognition of my position, my authority, and your desperate need of me.”

And so, once again as I’ve said over and over again, you cannot read the Proverbs without running to the cross because the Proverbs tells me again and again the thing I most need to be rescued from is me, and there's grace for that rescue!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, this theme that’s all over Proverbs, I call, “Sadness and Celebration.” It's about emotions; there's something interesting that comes to the surface in Proverbs, and it is the rich multifaceted emotional life of people made in God's image. Godliness is far from stoic. God never asks you to deny your emotional life, never.

In fact, think of the theology of emotions that comes across in Scripture. The Bible presents God as an emotional being, even in his infinite, holy perfection. God gets angry, God has pleasure, God hates, God loves, God rejoices. And so, it makes sense that if we are made in God's likeness, if we are made in His image, then that dynamic, that created truth about us sanctifies emotions. Emotions are a place where we’re God-like, and we’re more like God than we are like the rest of creation.

Man, the range is here in Proverbs. You have hot-tempered, glad heart, sorrow heart, anger, joyful heart, hatred, laughter, joy, grief, aching heart, stricken heart, fear, restless heart, and the list just goes on and on. But the Proverbs does something with emotions that I think is just so helpful and so important. It presents emotions as a moral barometer.

You could argue that your emotions are never neutral because they're attached to what rules your heart. If you want to know what you’re really living for, if you want to know what really controls your heart, don't look at your confessional theology; look at where you find joy, look at where you run after pleasure, look at what makes you angry, look at what you hate, look at what you love, and you will begin to understand what is really an effective, functional, street-level control of your heart. Every emotion can be an expression of what is deeply unrighteous or what is beautifully righteous in God's eyes. We need to pay attention to our emotions because they are a barometer.

The Bible will tell us that there is righteous anger; that in a fallen world, there are reasons that we should be angry. In a fallen world, there are things that we should hate. But the Bible also presents that there's dark and evil anger, selfishly oriented anger, anger that’s about me and not about God, and there is evil and dark and destructive hate. In a fallen world, there are reasons to fear. In a fallen world, there are reasons to be sad and to mourn.

And so, the Bible never, never calls you to deny your emotions. What the Bible tells you is that your emotions are never neutral. Your emotions are a barometer of the moral condition of your heart.

Now, I don't know about you, but I find that deeply convicting. I wish I could say that all of Paul Tripp’s anger is completely righteous, but I can't. I wish that I could say that all the things that make me sad are the things that would bring sadness in the heart of God, but I can't. And so, once again, as I think of the moral nature of even my emotions, I know how much I need the work of Jesus in my life!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, we’ve talked about emotions, but I wanted to pick one that has a special place in Proverbs, and its anger. I would call this theme the problem of anger. As we talk about the rich emotional life depicted in the Proverbs, Proverbs has a particular focus on anger, not just our anger, but God's anger. I would say this way, “There's a whole lot of the divine and people anger in Proverbs.

And let's admit it, it’s good for you to admit this, “We’re all angry.” I don't think there's probably a day that goes by for us that we don't experience anger in some way. And there's probably not a week that goes by that that anger doesn't prove to be ugly. And so, we need the wisdom of Proverbs. You see, what Proverbs begins to hold before us is that the question is not, “Are you angry?” Now listen carefully, the question is, “What is the reason for your anger, and what is the object of your anger?” Let me say that again, the Proverbs doesn't first ask the question, “Are you angry?” Proverbs assumes that we’re angry. But what the Proverbs asks is, “What is the reason for and the object of your anger?” Again, anger never exists in this easy ground of moral neutrality.

This theme is especially precious to me because, early in my marriage, I was a very angry man. I was in the process of destroying my life and my ministry and I didn't know it. And, God, in His grace, put me in a situation where He just pulled back the curtains, and I saw myself, and I heard myself, and that began a process of confession and repentance that has radically changed my life. So, I’m very thankful for this theme.

Now, what Proverbs calls us to be, “slow to anger,” and says that the wise person is slow to anger. Now, stay with the logic here, from where does wisdom come? From fear of the Lord. And so, righteous anger is God-centered anger; it's anger that flows out of your fear of the Lord; it's anger that has God in His rightful place.

Listen, it's only when God is in His rightful place that you will be in the appropriate place in my heart; it's only people who love God above all else who will ever love their neighbor as their self. So, if being slow-tempered is wise and wisdom is rooted in the fear of the Lord, then you solve your problem with anger, not horizontally; you solve it vertically because you have a God-ward problem, not just a horizontal problem of people-ward problem.

Again, let the conviction of this wash over you. Conviction is a good thing. There are only two types of anger, “God-centered anger,” and “me-centered anger.” Angry, because somehow people are in my way; somehow, they haven't followed my sovereign rule; somehow, they're not submitting to the ways of my kingdom, and so I'm angry! Or, anger that really flows out of my love for the honor of God, my love for His wisdom, my willingness to submit to Him.

It's a huge grace that Proverbs takes us where we would not normally go with our anger and says, “What is the reason for your anger? What is the object of your anger?” And makes that distinction between anger that is God-centered and anger that is me-centered. Today when you get angry, examine that anger!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, there is a whole theology of work in Proverbs. Sorry, it's true for those of you who don't like work. And you can't have a system of wisdom like is in Proverbs without concluding, “To be human is to work.” And again, that's how Proverbs fits so well with the larger narrative of Scripture.

One of the misconceptions of people is that work is the result of the fall; that's not true! God assigned work to Adam and Eve in that perfect paradise, perfect people, in a perfect relationship to God, everything in its right place, everything doing what it was meant to do, in the shalom of the Garden. God assigned Adam and Eve to work the garden, to dress it, to care for it, to manage it. They were assigned work, and so part of the dignity of my place, in God's economy and the way God decided to rule His world, is that I'm called to work. That's part of what defines me and defines the honor of my role. There's a place in the Psalms that says, “The heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth He has given to man.” I'm like God's resident manager; I’m meant to take care of this world. It’s a position of dignity and honor. And you surely see that in Proverbs.

The fear of the Lord, that life of wisdom, is a life of responsibility; of diligence; of willing, hard work. Proverbs 10, 4 and 5 says, “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.  He who gathers in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame.”

I like the slack hand. If your hand is slack, it means you don’t have any tool in it, you're not working. In an agricultural society, that's just such a picture because in an agricultural society, before the invention of the tractor, if you’re going to do farming work, you picked up tools, you didn’t have a slack hand. So, a slack hand is a word picture of laziness, an unwillingness to work, a denial of my work nature as being created by God.

Proverb 10:26 says, “Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to those who send him.” Now, those who send him are his employers; so, saying it's “like vinegar” or like “how smoke hurts your eyes,” to be in the employ of somebody but not want to work. I think we have a culture that actually values doing as little for as much as you can get paid. Rather than finding joy in the gifts and ability that God has given me to work.

A wise worker plans, the Proverb says. The wise worker is a self-starter; he doesn't need a boss. I love this, the Proverbs literally says that if you understand how God has created you to work, you won't need a boss. There are only two theologies of work, again, and this has been a theme in everything we've looked at in the Proverbs. You either work as unto the Lord; you willingly work hard because you understand that God has called you to work, and you use the proceeds of your work for generosity, justice, and to relieve the poor. Proverbs would say, “Don't just work for yourself, you work so you can be a tool of those things in God's hands.”

The Proverbs then says there's the fool's work; it denies God, he works for his own selfish gain, he uses his power to crush the poor, he uses the poor to gain more. So, we always need to ask ourselves, “Do I love work, and for whom am I working?”

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, we continue to work our way through the themes of Proverbs, and I find myself wanting to say each time, “I love this theme,” because I actually love all of them. But this is the theme of stewardship; it is really a chord that just travels all the way through the Proverbs. Stewardship is your personal commitment to care for what God has entrusted to you, that's what stewardship is.

And from the beginning of Proverbs to the end of Proverbs, you have this wonderful, multifaceted definition of what stewardship is and what it looks like. Proverbs 3:9 says this about stewardship, that it's about honoring the LORD with your wealth. Whatever God has entrusted to you, you want to ask yourself the question, “Do I honor God by the way I use this?”

Proverbs 13:11 talks about the perseverance aspect of stewardship. Stewardship is hard, it requires perseverance, it's about gathering little by little by little. Stewardship is not four or five big things, it's 10,000 little things.

Proverbs 13:22 talks about stewardship, is about determining you are going to leave a good legacy, “A (righteous) man leaves an inheritance,” not just for his children, but for “his children's children.” Proverbs 16:3 describes stewardship as working unto the LORD, “Commit your work to the LORD.” I wonder how often I do that, that every day I would say, “LORD, I want to commit the work that I do to you?”

Proverbs 16:8 says that stewardship is righteous work, it’s about the character of your work, not just how much you work but the character of your work. It says, “Better is a little with righteousness than (much) with (foolishness).”

Proverbs 22:7 talks about the responsibility of the success of your stewardship, that you will get rule and influence; and so, a good steward will have that responsibility.  How do I handle the influence that my stewardship has brought to me?

And then Proverbs 28:27 talks about the fact that stewardship includes generosity, “Whoever gives to the poor will not want.”

Now here’s what you need to understand, the root of this call to stewardship is the doctrine of creation. I'm a painter, and when I finish a painting, it belongs to me because I made it. And so, the doctrine of creation tells us that everything belongs to the LORD. I don't own anything in my life; it all belongs to Him. What we are, we are God's resident managers, but you have to get up in the morning and say to yourself, “Everything I am, and everything I have, and everything I'm about to do, every situation, every location, every relationship, all of my personal capabilities, belong to the LORD,” and then say, “LORD, I will commit my work today to you.”

The question all of us should be asking between the already of our conversion and the not yet of our home going is, “How am I, right now, right here, today, using what belongs to my LORD?” We have to surrender to His ownership and forsake the thoughts of our own ownership.

Now, you have to know this is counterintuitive for us, this is not natural. We are possessive and selfish and claim ownership over things that don't along to us; and so, once again, this call to stewardship drives us to the grace of the LORD. “Oh! May I recognize God's ownership over everything in my life; and may I always, by grace, commit all of my work, all the time, every day, in every situation, to Him?”

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

So, I think this is a theme that we’re now going to look at from Proverbs; it is particularly helpful for this moment in time. It's the practicality of Godward living. I think we have a massive cultural problem. Yes, even in the church. We live with this spiritual, secular dichotomy in our lives. That dichotomy is assumed by way more believers than you may think. It says that spiritual things belong to the Lord; that's church, that's my tithe, that's ministry, that's fellowship with other believers, that's devotion, and everything else is secular.

What the Proverbs would confront us with is that everything is spiritual. God makes a claim on everything in my life. Everything demonstrates the condition of my heart; everything points to whether I'm serving God or serving myself. There is no dimension in your life according to Proverbs that isn’t deeply and comprehensively and expansively spiritual. All of life is spiritual! You have no secular dimension in your life, whether it’s family, or money, or sexuality, or your talk, or your business, or your possessions, or justice, or wealth, or government; every dimension that you find yourself in is deeply spiritual.

And so, the Godward life is lived out in all of those dimensions in your life here.  Your godliness, your spirituality is not just lived out on Sunday mornings, it’s not just lived out in moments of devotion.  It’s lived out in the way you think about your possessions, the way you spend your money, the way you talk to other people, the way you make decisions about the necessary essential things in life, the way you care for the poor and the disadvantaged, the way you think about the role of government, the way you do your business. It's all part of an expression of your spirituality.

The Godward life, according to Proverbs, is worshipful, and obedient, and submissive, and wise, and generous, and just, and merciful, and righteous, and faithful, and committed to working pure. And those character qualities, again, are lived out in all of those dimensions of your life.

I'm afraid if you'd ask many believers, “Do you have a desire to serve the Lord?” And they would think right away, “Well, maybe I should do some ministry at my church.”

Well, you serve the Lord by the way you eat; you serve the Lord by the way you respond to your neighbor; you serve the Lord by what you do with the money that's in your pocket; you serve the Lord everywhere, or you don't.

And it's sad when we give the Lord this narrow, religious dimension of our lives and we claim everything else belongs to us to do with it as we will. That's just alien to the view of life that is presented in Proverbs. The Godward life is intensely practical, lives in all the places where you live and act and decide and speak and respond every day.

Where does the Proverbs say godliness lives? Everywhere in my life! Or, godlessness lives everywhere in my life! That's why Jesus said, “If you want to follow Me, deny yourself and take up a cross and follow Me; you give Me your life.” That's godliness, and that is powerfully depicted in the wonderful practicality that's presented to us in Proverbs.

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, I can say with enthusiasm, “I've been waiting for this theme.” It's the theme of womanhood that is presented in Proverbs. In fact, this is one of the crescendo themes of this book. It’s really interesting where it's positioned, and I love the picture of the strength and value of a woman presented in Scripture.

Women show up in the biblical narrative way more than you would probably think, are way more essential to the way that God moved His story than you may think. And sadly, I think often in the church of Jesus Christ, the gifts, the presence, the value of women have been underestimated. And then we have just artifacts of misogyny and instances of abuse that are a horrible devaluing of women.

What is the picture of a woman in Proverbs? Well, she's an excellent wife. When you get done with this description, you would think, who wouldn't want to be married to a woman like this? She is trustworthy, a woman of character, she's willing to work, she provides for her family, she's not just dependent, but she's part of providing for her family. This is a woman with business savvy; she goes out and buys real estate and she plants a vineyard, and she's out there making those kinds of decisions.

She's presented as being strong. I love the picture of the strength of a woman. She's generous. This passage in the Proverbs says, “She opens her hands to the poor.” She's fearless. Now, why is she fearless? Because she's prepared. The Proverbs says, “She's known for her strength and her dignity. She's wise; she's capable of teaching.” I like this couplet, “wisdom and kindness.” She's anything but lazy, and she's respected and praised by her family.

Now, why is she all of these things? It says because, “she fears the Lord.” The motivating factor is her deep, abiding confidence in the Lord; and because of her confidence in the Lord, she's able to be strong, and courageous, and make wise decisions and not just think of herself but think of others and be generous and just; it's a beautiful description. She's not timid, she's not unhealthily dependent, she's a leader and an activist.  It’s a beautiful, beautiful picture.

I love this summary, “Charm is deceitful, beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.” What is it that our culture values in women? What is it that the Christian culture values in women? May it be more than her appearance; may it be the value that she has as a child of God, the significance and sensuality of her gifts.

Charles Spurgeon, when he was thinking of the value of women in the body of Christ, said, “Women don't see truth the way men do. They don't experience things the way men do. We need these gifted women in our churches,” and he said, “We must not say to our women in the church, ‘Go home.’” The church needs this kind of women and we should celebrate that God has placed these women in our lives to contribute what they alone are able to contribute.

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

So, I want to talk about a theme that's not in Proverbs but is in Proverbs. It's Jesus, the wise, obedient Son. The name ‘Jesus’ is not in Proverbs; don't bother looking, it's not there. But I think that Proverbs is a beautiful portrait of the Savior who would come and would live a life that just fits right inside of the Proverbs.

Proverbs has this father and son motif structure to it. God is the wise, loving, generous, kind, protective Father who says, “Son, listen to my voice; listen to my instruction; pay attention to my wisdom; always teaching, always controlling, always providing, always rescuing, always warning, always rewarding.

But the Proverbs is not just a portrait of the Father, but also a beautiful portrait of the Son. If God is the Father, who is the ultimate obedient Son? There’s only one name that you can give; it's Jesus. His name is never mentioned, but Proverbs is a prophetic portrait of what Jesus would be like when He took on human flesh and lived. It's telling you what this Messiah will be like.

Think with me, who's the only one who perfectly listened, who perfectly obeyed, who lived a perfectly submissive life, who was perfectly loving, perfectly generous, perfectly kind? Well, the answer is ‘Jesus.’ He was obedient, yes, even to death on a cross. He was generous, came not to be ministered to, but to minister and give His life as a ransom for many. He was submissive; Jesus said, “I came to do my Father's will.”

There's Jesus all over the Proverbs because all of us fall short; all of us have times where we refuse to listen; all of us have times where we actually think that we’re smarter than God; all of us fail in generosity; fail in stewardship, use our ability to communicate for things that are not good, don't always love our neighbor, or have sympathy for the poor, don't always work unto the Lord, but Jesus does!

And what's exciting about this portrait of Jesus is Jesus was the wise, obedient Son in our place. He came to be the obedient Son precisely because He knew we would never be that. We would always fall short of God's requirement, so Jesus came to live that wise proverb-life as a substitute for us so He could be the perfectly righteous lamb that would pay the penalty for our sin, so we could be welcomed again into the arms of our Father from whom we had been separated by our sin. What a gorgeous story!

You don't get the Proverbs fully unless you know the Proverbs are evangelistic; they’re meant to make you hunger for Jesus, to cry out for Jesus, to celebrate Jesus. There is a perfectly righteous Son; it won't be you and me, but that Son lived that righteous life on our behalf. So, there's forgiveness and transformation and eternal life for us even though we’ve lived as fools. What a beautiful story! And Proverbs gives you a portrait of that One who lived that way, not just for His own glory, but for our eternal good!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

So, we want to look at the theme of the beauty and function and limits of God's Law as presented to us in the Proverbs. Proverbs reminds us that it is vital for us to love, to listen to, to celebrate God's Law.  God's Law is not given to rob us of the good life, but so that we would thrive! I love this.

Think about when the Law of God was initially given. God had redeemed His children from four-hundred years of suffering and slavery in Egypt. But these recently liberated slaves had no idea how to live, and so God, in an act of abundant love and amazing grace, gave His Law to them. It was not to wreck their lives, to restrict their lives, but so that, in the boundaries of what God had laid out for them, they would thrive because God loves His children. You know, life doesn't work without boundaries. Every good thing in life needs boundaries, and so God set boundaries for His children.

Think of the power of the Law; you really get this in Proverbs. The Law does an incredible job of exposing the foolishness of sin. I mean, if you can read the Proverbs and not feel exposed; you don’t get down on your knees and say, “God help me, God help me, God help me, I have a hard heart.” Because the Proverbs just exposes the foolishness of sin; the Proverbs is meant to bring you to this point of personal, spiritual awareness and confession.

Now, we need that because, let's be honest, sin doesn’t always look sinful to us. When I’m eating the third piece of cake in an act of gluttony, I'm not thinking danger; I'm just thinking how beautiful that piece looks and how great it tastes in my mouth. If you're at the mall, lusting after a woman, you're not thinking of the danger and rebellion of that act; you're seeing something that’s beautiful to you. So, we need something that exposes to us the sinfulness of sin.

But the Law does something else. It is a wonderful guide for our living. The Law guides us. I need that guidance; because as long as sin lives inside of me, there will be artifacts of foolishness in my heart. And so, I need to be told how to live and reminded again and again how to live, and you see that beautiful guidance on every page of the Proverbs. How elaborately and how expansively and how repeatedly God repeats His guidance to us in Proverbs. Those are wonderful functions of the Law to expose sin and give us a guidance for our lives.

But the Law has limits. The Proverbs highlights those limits because the Proverbs teaches us the centrality of the heart, that my problem is not just informational, and my problem is not just relational, and my problem is not just situational; my problem is the sinful condition of the heart. That's why, in Proverbs 4, the father says to his son, “Above all else guard your heart!”

And what the Proverbs never tells us is that God's Law has the power to transform our hearts. It has the power to expose our hearts, but it takes grace to rescue and change the heart. That's why Jesus had to come.  If the Proverbs could rescue and transfer my heart, Jesus would've never had to come. And so, the Proverbs presents to us the beauty of God's Law but the limits of God's Law as well.  If all we needed is God's Law, then the coming of Christ, His righteous life, His acceptable death, His victorious resurrection would not have been necessary. Celebrate God's Law, but know its limits!

Download Transcript

Download Video

Transcript

(this transcript has been lightly edited for readability)

Well, we are about to consider our final theme, and I am beyond pumped to talk about this. This is the best crescendo to the Proverbs you could ever have. I'm so excited to just spend a moment talking about this. It's the glorious glory of God that's presented in the Proverbs.

You see, you haven't really understood the Proverbs; you haven't really seen or understood the life-changing message unless you leave the Proverbs in awe of the God behind this amazing portion of God's Word. Who is a God like this God? Who has this wisdom? Who has the love to download this wisdom to us? Who would care for us so much? Our God!

It's very important to let yourself meditate on the glorious glory of His glory because it's there, it's there all over Proverbs. He's glorious in wisdom. He's glorious in love. He's glorious in generosity. He's glorious in holiness. He's glorious in tenderness. He's glorious in mercy. He's glorious in understanding. He's glorious in sovereignty. He's a glorious protector. He's a glorious guide. He's a glorious Father. He's a glorious judge. He's a glorious teacher. He's a glorious Savior. He's glorious, He's glorious, He's glorious, He's glorious!

And like every other passage of Scripture, God puts His glory in front of us; may we have eyes to see it. May we not just have a sadly utilitarian approach to the Proverbs, “I need a piece of wisdom today, let me find that piece of wisdom,” and never bow a knee to the glorious One who is the source of the wisdom that you hunger for.

I would say this, “If you only walk away from Proverbs feeling a bit wiser, you’ve missed the core message of this Book.” You want to know what the core message of this book is? I can say it in a word that only has three letters, “God!”

The study of the Proverbs should result in awe of God.  It should leave your heart pumping and your mouth agape and your knees a bit weak as you stand before this One, mind blown by who He is and what He does on your behalf! That should result in worship, not just the formality of worship on a Sunday or in your personal devotions, but a life of surrender and worship, “I want to give my life to this!” And then, I’ve said the word, a surrender of everything in your life to this One of such glory.

You see, all of life is a glory war. There's some kind of glory that will grip and control your heart. It's either the glory of created things and that catalog is virtually endless, or the glory of God.  Your heart will be ruled by the lesser glory of creation or the greater glory of the Creator! And what Proverbs is meant to do, please hear me say this, is cause a glory shift in your heart away from the glory of you, the glory of physical things, toward the greater glory of God. I want to know this One of such glory! I want to serve this One of such glory! I want to worship this One of such glory! I want to surrender to this One of such glory! I want a life that depicts awe of this One of glory! The greatest theme in Proverbs, the crescendo theme is the glory of God!