Clough Proverbs Lesson 18
Avoid the Wrong Crowd – Proverbs 1:8-19
I’d like to begin
by answering a question that was turned in last week and this is a question
which was handed in on the feedback card; if you have some questions on what is
taught these cards can be filled out, dropped into the collection plate and
we’ll try to answer them. Last week we
mentioned that Proverbs is, like much of the Word of God, collides with a lot
of the environment and the attitudes and the intellectual atmosphere in which
we live. And I mentioned one example of
this, the fact that in Proverbs the emphasis directive counseling rather than
non-directive counseling. Directive
counseling is when you give advice and non-directive counseling is something
else. And I wanted to straighten this
out because of this particular question that was asked.
Directive
counseling may and could go against Galatians 1:8-9, this is unauthorized
advice and so forth, why can’t you say that non-directive counseling can allow
the Holy Spirit to guide. In answer to
this question I think the person who asked this is a little confused by what we
mean by non-directive counseling and why the Bible is against this. Some of you who may be taking teacher
training courses, some of you who have had counseling courses in the past,
probably have run across the term. And
we want you to understand that as far as the Word of God is concerned there’s
one and only one way of counseling and that is the directive approach; there’s
no such thing as non-directive approach in the Word of God.
Now the question
here is can’t the non-directive counseling allow the Holy Spirit to guide. If you’ll turn to Proverbs 1:23 this is
wisdom, we won’t reach this particular verse until next week, but verse 23 is
wisdom counseling people, and it says: “Turn you at my reproof;” and if you
will, “I will pour out My Spirit unto you, and I will make known My words unto
you.” That is how the Holy Spirit does
if you do let the Holy Spirit guide, but as a matter of fact how in practice
does the Holy Spirit guide? Doesn’t the
Holy Spirit guide by the means of the Word of God? And hasn’t the pastor-teacher and the one
with the spiritual gift of counseling been designated as the communicator of
the Word of God? And so therefore we
would say yes, we let the Holy Spirit guide, but the mechanics of the Holy
Spirit’s guidance just happens to be the giving of advice based on the Word of
God.
Now the other
thing that I would like to say about this is that non-directive counseling is
often associated with just passively listening. But I want to read a few
portions in a book written by Jay Adams on counseling and this has to do with
the non-directive approach. “Listening,
which so often is equated wrongly with
“This is not
listening. Listening means taking interest in what another says, and responding
appropriately. Taking an interest in content is one essential element in taking
an interest in the client. In the
Rogerian stance, the non-directive approach avoids help, it avoids advice, it
avoids value judgment, it avoids applying divine declarations to personal
problems. Rogerians substitute repetition of the client’s questions for the
application of Biblical principles. It
is not too much to say that the Scriptures say nothing of treating people this
way.” And therefore we abandon the
non-directive approach and declare it to be unbiblical.
Shall we turn to
Proverbs 1:8; in our section today, verses 8-19, it deals with the problem that
young people faced in Solomon’s day and a problem that we face in our own day,
young people particularly. And this
section is dedicated to all teenagers, particularly, and their parents, because
from verses 8-19 we have the first part of the exhortation to wisdom
section. The exhortation to wisdom
starts in verse 8 and continues through
The section that
we’re working on this Sunday, extending from verses 8-19, is the exhortation to
avoid the wrong crowd. It is advice
given to a young person and it was sorely needed in Solomon’s day because in
Solomon’s day there was a preparation for civil war; within several decades
from the writing of this chapter the nation Israel would be destroyed through
civil war, because in 930 AD one of Solomon’s sons ascended the throne, and he
got mixed up with the wrong crowd. And
this person, named Rehoboam, was in disobedience to the Word of God and did not
listen to the counselors, and he would not listen to the wise men in his day,
and so therefore in 930 BC, taking the advice, not of the people who were the
wise men but were the cronies of the gang that he grew up with as a young
person, who were also oriented against the Word of God, taking the advice of
this crowd Rehoboam precipitated a crisis that resulted in the rupture of the
nation. And Solomon, evidently if we are
to judge from verses 8-19, recognized that some of his children were off base,
and some of his sons particularly were running with the wrong crowd. And so this section, although we know
historically was only partially successful, is a section by parents to their
young people, particularly teenagers. It is the problem of the wrong crowd.
The mechanics
behind it go back to what a teenager looks like and we want to study this
because the Bible is always based on reality and we want to examine how a young
teenager looks from the standpoint of the Word of God and why wrong crowds are
a problem to him.
The first thing
about it is… we’ll look at what the teenager looks like and then we’ll look at
the situation that he is facing. What is
a teenager? The first thing about the
teenager that the Bible recognizes is that he is unstable; there is nothing
wrong in this, this not a term of derision.
The teenager is unstable because at this point in his life he is
transitioning from being a child to being an adult and he’s neither one; he’s
not a child and he’s not an adult, he’s a mixture of both and he’s
unstable. And so if there’s any point of
instability in the life it will be in those teenage years of adolescence. And
so this is one of the conditions that is viewed in this section. It also means that while a teenager is
unstable it gives him the opportunity in his teenage years to begin setting in
motion certain behavior patterns that he will use the rest of his life. He is going to start making decisions that he
has never made before on his own and as he begins to make these decisions that
he has never made before on his own he is going to make them wisely or else he
is going to make them foolishly. And if
he begins foolishly he is going to set in motion –R learned behavior patterns
of responding to life’s situations and he’s going to start right here. And he may do this once, and then next week
he does it again, and the next week he does it twice more and by the end of the
month he has already established a pattern of response that is foolish, that is
unbiblical, and that later on is going to get him in serious trouble.
To counter this,
the wrong crowd is usually made up of teenagers who have already developed –R
learned behavior patterns and they prey on the naïve teenagers. The wrong crowd is usually a group, a gang
that has gone on and has already got sort of a life style to itself and has
already begun to respond to life foolishly and they reinforce each other’s
behavior in their little gang or their little click, and as a result they come
on this teenager that hasn’t established these patterns and they begin to
influence him. And therefore the wrong
crowd can act positively and can act negatively. And this is why God has
allowed teenagers to be tempted by the wrong crowd. The crowds precipitate an issue.
For example, why
does God allow evil to come into your life?
Because it gives you a test to see what you’re made out of, to see
whether you’re going to go with Bible doctrine or against it; with the Lord or
against him. Same with the
teenager. Over here you have the wrong
crowd, a gang that has developed a certain lifestyle of responding toward
life’s situations one way, and therefore when they begin to exercise group
pressure on this unstable teenager who has not yet moved out, then it
precipitates in his mentality an issue: do I go or do I reject them. And it precipitates some sort of an issue
that requires him to make a responsible choice.
So God uses the wrong crowd. And
God used the wrong crowd against Rehoboam and we know what happened historically
in Solomon’s son’s case because Rehoboam went with the wrong crowd and as a
result the whole nation suffered.
A second thing
about the teenagers that comes out very carefully in this and is associated
with the first one is not only are they unstable but they need authoritative
instruction from their parents. And that
will come out loud and clear in this passage in verses 8-19; they need
authoritative instruction. Now before
you vibrate too hard on what authority means here just wait until we finish the
passage and you’ll see what we mean by authoritative instruction. But, a teenager is in need of authoritative
instruction and the source is his parents; not the schools, not the church, not
something else, his parents! And this
passage clearly teaches that. It is the
parent’s job to provide.
Now what are the
parents supposed to provide? The parents
are supposed to provide some moxy, some wisdom, so that the teenager, when he
faces the situation can know what his options are and how he can respond. You will see in these verses to come how the
father and mother are both teaching the son in this passage certain specifics
about how to respond. They teach him
before he gets into the situation. It’s
like military training; it does not good to train your soldiers after they’ve
been under fire; the time to train them is before they come under fire and so
therefore the Word of God insists the parents are to teach their children,
prepare them before they meet the situation.
Now they may not follow your advice, it’s their volition, but at least
you will have prepared them with some specific information on how to respond
wisely to life’s situations.
Now let’s look at
the first verse; this passage, Proverbs 1:8-19 can be divided up into a number
of sub sections. Verses 8-9 would be the instrument for gaining wisdom; verses
10-14 deal with the enticements of the wrong crowd; verse 16, the command of
the parents; and verses 16-19 the motivation to obey. So once again, verses 8-9, the instrument for
wisdom; verse 10-14 the enticement of the wrong crowd; verse 15 the parent’s
command; verses 16-19 the motive to obey.
Proverbs 1:8, “My
son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother;
[9] For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy
neck.” “My son,” indicates the operation
of the third divine institution; divine institutions are institutions that God
has put in the human race for the preservation of the human race. The first divine institution is responsible
labor, the fact that we have a role to perform on earth and we are judged for
that. And we’re not going to come up before the great white throne or the bema
seat of Christ and say God, my mother dropped me on my head when I was a baby
and therefore I’m irresponsible. God is
not going to buy that. The second divine
institution is marriage. All these
divine institutions are given by God, by His decree; they are not the result of
socio-cultural evolution. The third
divine institution is family, and the fourth one is government but that’s not
involved here.
We’re on the third
one here, which is family, and in the Word of God all education proceeds
ultimately from the third and not the fourth divine institution. That is, in the Bible the basis for all education
is in the third divine institution, family; that is the way God made it. Some of you may have a lot of educational
theory and you may have been sitting in classrooms for years where you’ve had
it jammed into your head that the state has to educate. Now I’m here to tell you that the Word of God
is saying it is the family’s responsibility and the state does it only as the
family delegates its authority. Now
that’s the way the Bible approaches the problem. So the family has the job of
education. It’s an awfully difficult
idea to get in the minds of even Bible centered Christians today; they always
want the Sunday School to do the education and you should hear the groans and
groans that we hear Lubbock Bible are forcing the parents to do the educating,
and let the parents teach their own children.
You’ never heard a hullabaloo like we heard a year ago when this program
went into effect. It’s amazing; our
parents are so used to delegating their responsibility to someone else and when
it’s dropped flat in their laps this becomes a great shock.
So the Word of God
clearly shows verse 8, that it is the third divine institution that is
operating and why is it that God ordained it be done this way? That goes back to the nature of man. Here is the situation that this young person
is going to face in life, and let “R” be the response that that young person is
going to make toward the situation. So
here’s the situation, there’s the response that the young person is going to
make. Now what is going to determine how
that young person responds to the situation?
What determines a young person’s response is wisdom or the lack thereof,
and that is something that is acquired and that is something that is learned
over a time period. It takes time to do
this kind of thing, a tremendous amount of time. This is why the family does it and why it
takes years to train someone to respond to situations [can’t understand
words]. And when they are not praying
they panic and they develop all sorts of weird behavior patterns because
they’ve never been trained and they have never learned how to respond to the
pressures of life. This is why we have
people in the funny farm. The only
reasons why people are in the funny farm is because of one reason; they have
faced trials and pressures in their life and they have responded to those
trials and pressures wrongly. And don’t
you buy this line it’s society’s fault or something else; listen, every person
has grown up under adverse situations somewhere. The key isn’t the adverse situation; the key
is how you handle the adverse situation and that’s where the emphasis is and
that’s where learning comes in and that is where the third divine institution
is to come into operation. So this is why
in verse 8 the father is doing the teaching and the mother.
Two words are used
for instruction that shows you the roles of the mother and father. For example, it says, “My son, hear the
instruction of your father,” the word “instruction” here is musar, and that is the word which means
severe training including corporeal punishment.
That is a word for severe training.
Now when it gets to the mother it’s going to use a different word and
we’ll see the difference. But musar is used for the father and it is
the father’s job not to be an ogre, it’s not his job to be just a brutal father
but it is his job to provide strength to back up the training program; it’s not
the mother’s job to do this, it’s the father’s job. And time and time again we have bad situations
happen and the mother comes and she says my son’s doing thus and such, and why
doesn’t your husband just clobber him; well, he doesn’t want to do that, he
leaves it up to me. And so here’s this
little woman and here’s her 18 year old son so what’s she supposed to do? It’s because probably over ten years the old
man is too lazy to do anything about it or he didn’t know what to do because he
was one of these smart American males that thinks he’s self-sufficient and
doesn’t need the Word of God and he knows everything and he wouldn’t bow his
knee to the Word to learn anything and it sure shows up because we have a group
of stupid American males that are running the household and they don’t know
enough to come in out of the rain and this is what happens. But in the ancient world the father was
expected to learn how to exercise this kind of training for his family.
So therefore, the
father here, in verse 8, is talking to his teenage son, and obviously the
teenage son must hear, the word “hear” here also means to obey, this
presupposes that the old man has taught his son something before verse 8. Obviously the son cannot obey instruction if
the son has never had it. So this also
teaches a principle that the training is to precede the teenage years. If you’re going to wait until the teenage
years it’s all over because there’s a certain blank out about 15 and gets over
about 25 and between 15 and 25 there’s no more stupid people than the parents,
everybody else is smart except my parents, boy, they’re dumb. All of a sudden
after 25 when the person begins to face more complicated situations then they
suddenly discover that maybe the old man had something going for him. So suddenly the parent’s IQ raises after 25;
it’s amazing how it drops in between, it’s variable of course.
So musar is the word that means that the
father does, he provides the training and it doesn’t mean unfairness. It means simple, just, authority but
strength. Now contrast that with what it
says of the mother. “…forsake not the
law of thy mother.” Now the word “law”
here is torah, and it can mean the
legal instruction but the primary meaning of torah is guidance. And this
emphasizes the mother’s role in the third divine institution, that every
mother, basically, is a counselor. And
during the odd moments of the time who is it that usually hears about the jams
first? It’s the mother. And then the man comes home after a tired day
of business and all of a sudden, he opens the door, “do you know what happened
today?” And he’s tired because he’s had
everything happen to him today and he walks in cross-eyed and the first thing
he gets hit with, do you know what Johnny did today, he did this, this, this
and this, and so on. That always takes
grace to get through the door.
But the point is
that the mother’s job here is the counselor, she gets it all day and so you can
excuse her a little bit too. She’s the
recipient that all this stuff that starts in the morning with the breakfast,
and she gets everybody out of the house and then things fall apart all during
the day and finally when the man comes home at 6:00 o’clock or something she
looks upon him as her savior and he’s supposed to come in with a magic carpet
and make everything get better, because she’s had to sustain this thing all
day. But please notice the roles of the
mother and the father. The mother is the
torah giver, she is the one who gives
the guidance and this means that mothers, you are to know the Word of God well
enough to be able to give counsel specifically to your children. This is where your children learn, they don’t
learn at some sort of an artificial devotional that starts at 9:32 and gets
over at 9:34 where we will now sit down and learn, everybody be quiet. That’s not where the learning occurs. The learning occurs as you take advantage of
situations during the day. The little
kid comes in because somebody punched him in the face or something and
immediately he starts looking to you, what am I supposed to do, go out there
and hit him over the head with a 2 x 4 or what, and he’s looking to you,
mother, for some advice. And that’s when
you, if you know Bible doctrine, will be able to fill him in and he will be
receptive to learning it. But if you
don’t know the Word of God all you can give is human viewpoint and so what are
you doing? You’re training your kid in
learned behavior patterns that are grounded on human viewpoint, or learned
behavior patterns grounded on divine viewpoint according to how you handle the
situations during the day. But those are
the valuable training periods, during the day, and nobody but you can do
this.
Proverbs 1:9
describes the result of this, it says, son, if you will obey the musar of your mother and forsake not the
torah of your mother, then verse 9 is
a result, then “They shall be an ornament of grace upon thy head,” now the word
“ornament of grace” is an idiom which in the church age refers to Jesus Christ
from the heart; an ornament of grace refers to character. As it is used in the
Hebrew Old Testament it means something that is attractive. An ornament is something obviously that is
attractive and it’s talking about the young teenager and he’s saying listen, do
you want real character? Now usually
teenagers are characters but this is talking about being a character that is
attractive. If it is a young female
teenager it is learning how to be a lady and learning how to show her
femininity the way the Bible to be shown.
If it is a man it is to train that young boy to be a man the way Bible
speaks as manhood.
And so therefore
the character that is developed in the teenage years are a result of heeding
the musar of the father and the torah of the mother. This is a promise, so to speak, this is the
effect it will have. It will be
something attractive. The word “grace,”
the “ornament of grace” means that there will be a graciousness about this
character that will even impress the non-believer. In other words, here’s the person and they’re
in the company of other people; these other people may be non-Christian, they
may be in some sort of a gang, they may be in some sort of a social grouping,
they may be in some sort of a club, they may be in some sort of an
organization, yet if there is strong character based on divine viewpoint these
people may disagree but they will have respect and this is the way the word
“grace” is used in this kind of a context.
It means these people may disagree with you but they will always respect
you. We have had men in our church in
the past, men who have done sacrifice on promotion systems in the military and
other places because of their testimonies.
They did a fantastic job on the job but they wouldn’t put up with a lot
of the foolishness and as a result were passed over by promotion. Their
adherence to the Word of God cost them something. But I always observe something interesting
about these men; when there was a problem guess who they came to? They always came to these particular men
because they knew these men were reliable, they knew these men could do the job
and so forth, and what does that tell you?
An “ornament of grace,” the non-believing world will say I disagree with
what you believe but I respect you for your character and your person. This is the idea that is developed in verse
9.
“Chains about thy
neck” would be the female side of it; the first one, “ornament about thy head”
would be the male, the young boy, and “chains about thy neck” would be the
necklaces on the girl, something that would be attractive and something that
would produce a beauty. And notice the
Bible’s emphasis is not on the outward physical appearance; it is on the inward
mental attitude, and you can have a person that is beautiful on the outside and
fowl on the inside and it shows right through, you can just look at them and
tell. You can’t be around such a person
five minutes before you understand that on the inside they’re rotten. And yet we find other people that on the
outside are practically nothing; you wouldn’t look at them twice but when you
get to know them you find they are some of the most beautiful attractive people
you will ever meet because of their inner character and that’s this inner
character, verse 9; the emphasis on both the man as somebody that they’ve
looked up to and is respected and the girl that is attractive because of her
inner mental attitude.
Proverbs 1:10
starts the next section, the enticement of the wrong crowd, and beginning in
verse 10 and extending through verse 14 we have the application. Verses 8-9
were the parental instruction and the source of it all; now verses 10-14 deals
with the enticement of the wrong crowd.
This is what the father teaches the son.
Now something to notice about verses 10-14; these verses anticipate
trouble before the trouble and this is something about parental instruction and
guidance. It is preventive medicine;
it’s wonderful to be able to have Bible doctrine when the crisis hits but it’s
a lot better to train the young person before they get in the crisis. Preventive medicine is better than curative
medicine and that holds in the areas of counseling and raising a family.
And so here in
verse 10 the father is anticipating something that he knows is going to happen
to his son. Now all of this is basically
directed to the male. The reason for
this is the style of Hebrew writing and the culture of the times so girls,
don’t get insulted, this apples to you too. Everywhere you read “sons” you put
yourself in there, “my daughters,” and apply it to yourself; just remember that
in the culture of the time the male was the one that was looked upon as the one
that should be the receiver, he is to be the leader and he should receive the
first training.
“My son, if
sinners entice thee, consent thou not.”
So the first thing that we notice here is a condition; the condition
clause, beginning with the word “if,” beginning also with “if” in verse 11,
extends down to verse 14, that whole thing, verse 11 to the last word, “purse”
in verse 14 is one big long conditional clause.
That is, verses 10-14 stipulate the situation that is going to come into
that young person’s life. It hasn’t yet,
but when it does you are to be prepared. And so the father is telling his son;
son, now look, this is the way it is and here’s how you’re going to handle it
when it happens. And this is the kind of
training that should be given, before the trouble.
“My son, if sinners entice thee,” the word
“sinners” is a very strong word which means habitual rebels. It is the word to rebel against the standards
of God constantly and continually and it refers, therefore, to the essence of
the wrong crowd, the gangs, and the gang is usually characterized, as we will
soon see in a beautiful piece of sarcasm at the end of this section, the gang
is a group of people who always are very weak on the inside and because they’re
weak on the inside like to compensate by looking tough on the outside. And they put on this façade of toughness: we
run in a gang, five of us can beat up somebody, we’re tough, and so forth, this
kind of thing. And this is always how it
works with the wrong crowd because they are basically weak people and they gain
their strength by getting together as a gang.
And the word “sinners” means that they are habitually on negative
volition, they, in the historical context, were the crowd that Rehoboam ran
with; these people were in existence during Solomon’s era, they were brats in
the city of Jerusalem that were running around and Solomon knew about them and
he called them sinners because he was emphasizing the fact that these young
people have already begun to reject authority; they reject the authority of
God, they have rejected the authority of their parents, they have rejected
authority all over the place and so therefore they’ve got these –R learned
behavior patterns and this is going to emerge quite sharply in the verses to
come. But they are rebels against any
and every authority. One of the last
bastions of authority over young people in the schools today is the coaches.
And even the
coaches, I am told, even the coaches on many of the teams are losing their
authority. It’s the same old story; I
can remember when I was going to high school, we had trouble with some of the
wrong crowd coming in our school and all the teachers seemed to be afraid of
them; these goons would walk through the halls and the teachers would
communicate and indecisiveness which scared the other students and so the other
students didn’t do anything because they were being cued by the way the
teachers responded. But there was one
man who called their bluff, one of the most famous wrestling coaches on the
east coast; we had in our high school a wresting team that didn’t lose a match
for 12 years and he was an excellent wrestling coach. I can still hear his voice, he’d walk down the
hall and he’d spot the wrong crowd, he had an excellent way of doing this and
then he would shout so loud the whole school would hear him: well, I see you
have some cigarettes stuffed in your pimply little faces today, and just
ridicule them, absolutely ridicule them in front of all the other students and
there was a fantastic effect and as a result of this these people were
controlled. And of course they didn’t
dare to anything to him because he was the wrestling coach and if they tried
there would be a little rumble. So he
took full advantage of his position as wrestling coach. They used to be known as the hoods and he’d
say well, I see you’re hooding well today, and he would say it so loud that the
whole school would hear it and everybody would start laughing, and the gang,
the wrong crowd, you just sort of see them shrink around when he walked down
the hall because he had this tremendous deterrent effect. They had to respect his authority and it was
one of the few men whose authority they respected.
The “sinners”
here, these people, verse 10, were the wrong crowd in the city of Jerusalem and
they had developed this attitude of to hell with authority. Now Solomon says look, if these people come
along you get out and don’t you go along with them
Proverbs 1:11, now
the specifics, and he’s going to give three ways they will entice you and every
one of these three ways in verses 11-14 are exactly ways in which they’re
bringing that young teenager under tests; all three of these ways, the first
test, the second test and the third test, are all directed against the very
weaknesses of a young person. Let’s look
at them. The first one, verse 11, “If
they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily
[secretly] for the innocent without cause,” this basically is the adventure
lust; this is the lust for power: come on man, feel like somebody, do
something. And this is the appeal for
power and adventure, and although it’s phrased in case of murder this probably
was the original [can’t understand word] or something, they went around and
just killed for kicks, and this is their way of soliciting the power lust of
the young person. Young people always like to have some power and it’s natural
in one sense, unrestrained it becomes bad, but it’s part of their growing up;
for the first time they begin to feel like young men and young women and they
don’t want to be children any more. So
it’s natural they begin to have these anticipations and so on but notice what
the father says: Son, just where you’re the weakest they’re going to hit you;
right here, right in the area where you want to experience and the adventure
that’s exactly where they’re going to get you.
So the father here
is doing two things; he is anticipating the attack of the wrong crowd on his
son and he is also, in so doing, telling his son about himself. And he’s saying son, you’ve got a weakness
here and they’re going to hit you right here.
And probably, if he’s like any red-blooded son he says oh yea, I know
all about it dad, fine… and it won’t register until it happens but at least the
father will have pre-empted the thing by telling him before it happens.
Then verse 12
continues verse 11 as part of this first invitation, appeal to power, “Let us
swallow them up alive as the grace, and whole, as those that are going down to
the pit.” And this means that this is
just to pick on people, irrespective of cause, just for the thrill; go down and
clobber somebody with a chain or something.
And if you’ve ever been around some of the big cities you can see these
gangs walking around in daylight, with chains and everything else, and that’s
just the way it looks, perfect illustration; things haven’t improved over 30
centuries.
Proverbs 1:13, the
second attack they’re going to make.
This is a catering to materialism lust.
So the second thing is dedicated to the materialism weakness. So the father tells his son, look son, you’re
going to have an area of lust here and most people do, so right at your area of
weakness they’re going to hit you and they’re going to come up and say
something like this, “We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our
houses with spoil,” and so this is catering to break in and steal a few stereos
and tapes and guns and a few things like this; it caters to the materialism
lust.
And then finally,
one of the most powerful attacks in a young person, the third motivation caters
to approbation lust, the lust to be accepted and there’s not one young person
that honestly in their heart doesn’t want to be accepted. Now that can be legitimate but it also can
become illegitimate. When everything is
sacrificed for the cause of being accepted by the crowd, and so notice the
offer in verse 14, “Cast in thy log among us, and let us all have one purse,”
let’s all work together as a team and you’ll be a perfectly accepted member of
our gang. So here is the catering to the
approbation lust.
So we have these
three lusts: power lust, materialism lust, and approbation lust. And the father is warning his son, son,
you’ve got these weaknesses, you are going to have learn to anticipate them
hitting you right there. Now what finer
education could a young man have than this kind, because the lessons that he
learns in throwing off the wrong crowd will be exactly the lessons he will
learn throughout the rest of his spiritual life. He applies that in the spiritual realm
because this is how Satan hits us, isn’t it?
Isn’t Satan and his demonic hordes the wrong crowd for us? Aren’t they always coming to us and hitting
us precisely where we’re weakest? And so
here the teenager is learning lessons that he will apply for decades later, all
the rest of his life.
Now Proverbs 1:15,
here is the central command of the parents. “My son, walk thou not in the way
with them; refrain thy foot from their path,” that’s the command; he gives his
son something specific. And I want to
point out something in verse 15 about giving advice, how not to do it. The more general your advice the least
effective it will be. Run the risk of
being too specific than being too general; run the risk of giving specific
advice for something that will never happen rather than giving some blanket
thing that doesn’t mean beans because when the crisis hits and the wrong crowd
kind of saunters up to them in the hall, he’s not going to have time to sit
there and say let’s see, now what did my father tell me, dot, dot, dot, and
it’s not going to register. What’s going
to register is something specific that he can apply then quickly. This is done here although you don’t get it
too much in the King James; “walk not” is a quick imperative. There are two ways, there’s a slow imperative
and a quick one in the Hebrew; the slow one, such as used in the Ten
Commandments, starts with lo,
l-o, it’s a Hebrew negative and it says
don’t do this as a principle; that’s one way, that’s the slow negative. But that’s not the one used here, al, a-l is the one that’s use, al is another Hebrew negative particle
and this means when you’re just about to start it, stop it! Quick!
And so we would
interpret verse 15 as saying when you start to see the wrong crowd begin to
entice you do a 180 and get out; move out.
That’s what this is saying, it’s not some sweet little pious thing,
don’t go off with the baddies; that’s not what it’s talking about. It’s talking about when you’re in the middle
of that situation and you begin to see it matches what I told you and they’re
hitting you right here you just do a quick 180 and get your left, right, left,
right, left right, left right, away from there; just move out. Don’t stand around waiting because there’s
another principle in giving advice and giving advice to people that are under
pressure: the quicker they can respond biblically the easier it is and the
further they wait in the situation, trying to make up their mind the harder it
becomes. The longer that man’s son sits
around listening, well, gee, maybe my father didn’t really understand the
problem, and gee, maybe they might have something, and the first thing you
know, what could have been a clear cut decision is completely washed out. So verse 15 emphasizes the quickness, the
abruptness, and the certainty of doing it.
In other words, don’t sit around, just move.
Proverbs 1:16-19,
this is a very important section because here is where the father justifies his
command. Now a lot of parents would
agree with verses 10-14 and verse 15 but I find in practice very few actually
do a thorough job in verses 16-19, that is, supplying the motivation behind
their command. Do it? Why? I
told you to; now that’s a command and sometimes that is necessary. It’s not necessary to enter into a 500 word
essay why you want your son or daughter to do something now, all the time, but
on this kind of instruction you will notice over and over again, between
chapters 1 and 9 in the book of Proverbs, every time we see a command, every
time we see an extensive motivation section, do this son because, point 1,
point two, point three, period, and there’ll be a series of reasons underlying
the command. So let’s look at these
reasons.
There are two
reasons basically given in Proverbs 1:16-19.
The father and the mother have said get out of the way, get out of the
way quick, don’t hang around. The first
reason in verse 16, “For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed
blood.” Now you have to understand verse
16 in the light of the Old Testament.
The phrase, “running to evil” and “shedding blood” are well-known idioms
that would have connoted things that they don’t connote to you and me, unless
we know the Old Testament. Those two
phrases, “running to evil” and “shedding blood” connote the Mosaic Law. What verse 16 is saying is that they are
violating the law of God Himself. A
smart Jewish father was grounding his authority on the autohirty of God, not
his.
Remember verse 7,
“The fear” or “respect of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” Why do you suppose verse 7 is in there? Because he doesn’t say the respect of your
parents is the beginning of wisdom, because that respect of parents if a
floating thing, it’s hanging in thin air if you don’t first have respect for
the Lord. So therefore, it is going back
to the authority vested in the third divine institution by the Creator, and so
the argument of verse 16 expanded so you can understand, the argument of verse
16 is to say son, I tell you to get out of the way because this wrong crowd is
going against God’s ordained created order and they’re going to reap the
results of it. In other words, the
authority is cast from the father upstairs.
Son, you may not like what I’m telling you; you may disagree with what
I’m telling you, but let me tell you something—I’m telling you this because of
what God has said! You always take it
back to God and make sure, of course, it’s grounded in the Word, and this is
why these very phrases are used in verse 16.
Actually the father is quoting parts of the Mosaic Law to his son and he
is saying the reason why I want you to do this, son, is because this is what
the law of God calls for in this situation.
Now here’s another
interesting thing; this apparently was how the young people learned the Word of
God. Verse 16 describes the content of
the Mosaic Law; but verse 15 tells him how to apply it, and who is it that’s
telling the young person how to apply the Word?
The parents. Don’t you see the
role? The parent learns the Word and he
says son, you know that verse, such and such, but knowing the verse isn’t
enough, that verse has to be translated into a real act, in a real behavior in
a real situation, and son, here’s how to do it.
So the parents are communicating in verse 16 wisdom to the children
because wisdom is the application of doctrine in the situation. So verse 16 is simply the application of
doctrine and that’s the motivation behind the command; you do this because of
the God-ordained order in the universe.
You say well, that’s pretty theologically abstract to appeal to
children; yes, it may be to your children but if you’ve done your job as a
parent all during the years by this time, teenage years, they should have an
understanding of what God’s created order is like so you can use it as a
motivation for command. If you don’t it
means… well, the job hasn’t been done and you’re in trouble now.
The second reason,
verses 17-19, has to be understood in the light of the first one. If you left out verse 16 the tendency would
be to look at verses 17-19 as just sheer pragmatism. What do I mean by that?
Well, I mean verses 17-19 are just saying son, don’t do it or you’re going to
get burned. Now if you just read verses
17-19 and forget verse 16, all you have left is “son, don’t do this because
son, you’re going get burned if you do.”
Now that is a basis for giving advice but it’s not a very persuasive
basis and it’s not wisdom. So verses
17-19 hang on verse 16; verse 16 is your first and primary reason, because this
is the law of God, and secondarily, because of the law of God, then verses
17-19.
Let me give you an
example in another realm. The Pharisees
used this one. The Bible says murder is
wrong because it violates God’s command.
Do you know what the Pharisees were teaching in Jesus’ day? Don’t murder someone because if you do you
might get caught. Now that might be a
good reason not to murder somebody, of course, it wouldn’t apply in this
country, but it might be in some countries not to go bang somebody over the
head because you might happen to get caught; you might be in Spain, and other
places where law and order is upheld, you might just happen to get shot. So you have places where this advice would
fit but is that the final reason? That
isn’t the final reason; you don’t not murder people because you might get
caught; you don’t murder people because it’s a sin against God Himself. You slap Him in the face when you kill
somebody made in His image. And so
therefore, all of this roots back to the authority of God. So I can’t emphasize enough, as we conclude
with verses 17-19 that don’t read these separated from verse 16.
Proverbs 1:17,
“Surely in vain,” now this is a proverb actually, verse 17, and it’s stuck in
here a marvelous and sarcastic illustration of the wrong crowd. This is a fantastic illustration and we’ve
got spend a little big of time understanding this proverb. “Surely in vain the net is spread in the
sight of any bird.” That really sends you, doesn’t it; it really makes
sense. We have to take this proverb
apart and understand it; what has that got to do with what’s going on
here. You can get a hint if you look at
verses 18-19, “And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk secretly for
their own lives. [19] So are the ways of
everyone who is greedy of gain, who takes away the soul of the owners
thereof.”
Verse 17 is a
proverb and here’s the analogy. The bird
is a member of the wrong crowd. The net
is a God ordained order of the universe; in other words, God’s laws, or we
would say the warnings. And the idea,
the word for “bird” that’s used here, [can’t understand words] sarcastic
itself, with any bird, literally it is “any owner of a wing,” not that is an
idiom which means bird but the point I want you to understand is that when it’s
talking about an “owner of a wing,” what is the wing to the net? Here’s your bird. The idea is the net is spread in the sight of
the owner of a wing. Now if the net is
the warning, what does this mean? It’s
like taking a net that was used in the ancient world, the fowlers used these
nets in the ancient world to gather birds, and they say that the birds are so
stupid that they’ll be sitting there on the branch and you can set up your trap
right in front of them, and it doesn’t make any difference, they’ll fly right
into it. And the idea is that they are
owners of a wing. Now what is that
emphasizing? “Owners of a wing” means
escape. Those birds can get out of the
way, they see the net deployed in front of their eyes, they have the wings or
the means to avoid it, but still they get trapped by the net. The birds are the wrong crowd.
Now let’s tie this
together; what is the characteristic of the wrong crowd? They are people that have got an ingrained
learned behavior pattern that we would call a lust pattern and what this is
saying is that their lusts overcome their volition. In other words, just as the bird that has the
wing to escape from the net and he sees the net put right in front of him but
because… what the fowlers of the ancient world would do, they’d spray grain so
that the birds would go for the grain as bait and they’d get trapped in this
net. But they’d do it right in front of
the birds and the dumb birds would come and get the grain and get caught every
time. And so it became a proverb in the
ancient world for a stupid person. In
other person is like the bird, he sit there and he’s got a wing, he could fly
away and never be caught with the net, but what does he do? Because of the lust for the food he always
gets trapped, even though he has the means of escape from it. And so translated, the wrong crowd, they’ve
got volition, they don’t have to do that, they can choose but because over the
years they have got this behavior pattern going in their souls and they are so
used to reacting to life situations and getting what they want, power lust,
materialism lust, approbation lust, that the lusts override their volition and
at this point they’re like the dumb birds; a warning that this is going to happen
to you doesn’t mean anything because they are right there.
And this is a
lesson that the father is trying to say to his son also; he’s saying son, right
now you’ve got a way to shape up; right now you are in a position where you can
change your life; right now you’ve got a choice in front of you, son, because
right now you can go on positive volition and start developing patterns,
learned behavior patterns of righteousness or you can go on negative volition
and start to develop learned behavior patterns and once you start to develop
these it is going to be hell on earth to break them. And you, at this point in your life, have the
chance. And you can get going with the
wrong crowd and set these things in motion and it’s just like the lust for the
bird for the grain in the net. And
sooner or later you’re going to be just like them, and you’re going to think
you’re going to be so tough and you’re going to be so self-reliant… you’re not
going to be self-reliant at all, you’re a slave… you’re a slave because you
have taught yourself every time there’s an enticement you go to it just like
the bird does to the grain, and then the net is going to come and it’s going to
get you and you’re going to be stuck.
That’s why verses
18-19 concludes this as it does: “And they shall lay in wait for their own
blood,” in other words, reciprocity, it’ll so work out that they’ll get
clobbered, “and they will lurk privily (secretly) for their own lives. [19] So are the ways of everyone who is
greedy of gain,” see the lust, just like the birds were greedy of the grain,
they are greedy of the gain, “which takes away the soul,” the nephesh, “of the owners thereof.” How does it take away the soul?
Let’s conclude
with three illustrations of how the wrong crowd always manages to destroy their
own souls. First, they can wind up
literally physically dead; that’s the first way they can destroy their souls,
by physical death. This would be an
example of boys that go in the military service that have never learned
authority, they’ve learned to manipulate and they manipulate their way through
basic training and they get into a battlefield situation and all of a sudden
they find, you know, you can’t manipulate bullets, and you can’t manipulate the
enemy and so these boys wind up dead; dead because they refused to obey
authority and they paid a price with their own life. You can think of these characters that are on
drugs, out in the hard areas, the heroin and so on, finally it means their
physical death, if you keep on speed long enough it’ll tear you up. And of course, here again physical death, it
destroys them. Why? They’ve got the [can’t understood word] just
like the bird, they don’t have to get caught in the net but they choose to
because they’ve developed a lust pattern, lust after lust and it’s finally got
into a lifestyle that they can’t get out of
and so, physical death.
It can destroy the
mind, the wrong crowd because of their habitual rejection of the Word of God
gradually learn how to oomph their way out of various every day trials, they
let the emotions dictate everything, there’s no discipline of thought, and
finally they go crazy; they go crazy because they develop all sorts of
things. They learn that they can get out
of things by feigning insanity or something and pretending they’re schitzo, and
finally they discover this works, and they turn into a schitzo, because they’ve
learned something; every time they feign insanity it gets them off the hook,
and they can go on this way. They
develop some queer reaction to life.
This happens unconsciously, you don’t even know you’re doing it
oftentimes; but you do know that you’re rejecting an activity in life, you’re
not facing the truth, you’re not handling it, you’re not casting all your cares
upon the Lord for He cares for you.
You’re not claiming that God will provide your every need. And because
of this you tend to go on negative volition, and fall I with the wrong crowd
and that’s what happens.
And the third way
that the wrong crowd loses its soul is that they can lose their bodily health
and that’s obvious for all sorts of practices, all the way from alcohol, drugs,
promiscuity and so on, losing their body’s health. Why?
Like the bird, they’re stupid.
Next week we’ll
begin with verse 20….