Clough Proverbs Lesson 19
Seek Wisdom now – Proverbs
We’ll begin by
answering some of the questions that were handed in on the feedback cards. One has to do with Proverbs and one has to do
with further thought about Professor Morris’ visit with us; first the one
considering evolution and creation. If
animal fossils were not caused by the flood, such as dinosaurs that survived
the flood, what catastrophe caused their fossilization? The Bible lists at least seven other
catastrophes so we must say on the basis of Scripture that these would be less
than the flood; the flood was the greatest one, the flood is used as the one
model catastrophe, the greatest one. But
there’s a possibility the catastrophe in Peleg’s day, in Genesis 10:25, there
is obviously a catastrophe in Genesis 19 with
Another time
period, it is reflected in Habakkuk 3, is the time of the 40 years wandering.
Apparently all during those 40 years there were catastrophes. A fifth time would be the conquest of
Joshua, in Joshua 10 when obviously the earth did something very radical on its
axis. A sixth time would be during the
judge period of the judges, Judges 5, when God bombarded Sisera in the northern
campaign. A seventh time would be during
the time of David in 1 Samuel 22. An eighth
time would be an entire series of catastrophes largely concerned with the
ministry of Isaiah. Apparently right
after one of these great catastrophes Isaiah opened his ministry and therefore
he cries in Isaiah 1, O why are your homes fallen, why are the great buildings
shattered. And Isaiah is obviously
preaching after there had been some great catastrophe. Amos, existing also at this time in history
prefaces his prophecy with “two years before the great ra‘ash,” or apparently the great earthquake. Zechariah speaks of the same period when he
says there shall never come a time in history like that of Uzziah, when part of
the mountain fell away and the people fled
If we are to trust
extra biblical accounts then we would have to say that there might have been
catastrophes before the flood. The
Jewish tradition, extra-biblical tradition is quite strong that in Enoch’s day
one-third of the world’s population was destroyed. Whereas we can’t substantiate this from
Scripture it is interesting to notice that in the book of Jude Enoch is looked
upon as an eschatological preacher or prophesy teacher, and what better way of
teaching prophecy than to have some contemporary evidences.
The second
question: when should one start training a child and how old should the child
be? The answer from the Word of God in
Proverbs, as we’ll see over and over again, is when the child is born, that’s
when to start, because actually, as some of you have had a chance to read that
excellent tract, Children, Fun or Frenzy,
written by a mother who has applied consistently the book of Proverbs in the
life of her children, you’ll the excellent point this woman makes is that you
are training your children anyway. It’s
not the case whether you are going to train your children, the question is
which way are you going to train your children, because however you respond to
them you are already training them. And
I would say that in the early, early times of the child’s life the most
important lesson to get through is that his environment is rational and
consistent. That is, having the child
exposed to a routine and so on, to give him trust and confidence that the world
around him is rationally consistent.
This is a very important lesson.
And then gradually as his spirit grows stronger, then giving him more
and more responsibility.
A third question
came out of last week: based on what you taught about the difference between
the mother’s instruction, Proverbs 1:8 to the children, and the father’s
instruction, would the old practice of saving severe punishment of children
until the father came home be correct?
If the mother ever had a situation that needed for immediate strict
discipline, I’d say, very definitely the mother would have need for giving
strict discipline at times. The point,
however, in Proverbs 1:8 is that as a general rule the father is the one who
delegates the authority. Always the authority
comes from him and the tragedy is that very few
situations where we have juvenile delinquency develop, very few of those
situations has the mother ever been given the support of her husband; she has
been left to do it all. And obviously
when the kid gets older she can’t do it anyway.
But there will comes times when sharp discipline is needed right then
and particularly for small children there’s no reason why the mother couldn’t
do it. As they get older then you’ve got
another problem.
Let’s turn to
Proverbs 1:20. Last week we dealt with the problem of the wrong crowd and we
said that in Rehoboam’s time, which was a time when the nation would be divided
by a civil war, in the 9th century, 10th century, that we
have a group of men attain national leadership who were nothing but teenage
brats. In fact, they were brats from the
time they got out of the cradle. And
they had a very permissive set of parents.
And apparently these brats got their own way and developed some very
ingrained behavior patterns toward rebelling against authority, and they never
learned their lesson and so finally the nation collapsed when this crowd got to
leadership position. And we saw that the
nation faced a great disaster in the very next generation after Proverbs 1. So Proverbs is important and it was written
into a situation which required training of the child.
And beginning in
verse 20 this morning we have another exhortation. Remember the first part of
Proverbs, from Proverbs 1:1-9 is dealing with exhortation. And exhortation sections of Proverbs are not
Proverbs proper. Proverbs proper can be
seen because they’re just simple statements.
Exhortation has the imperative.
So we have the imperative mood in the exhortation section and the
exhortation sections can always be seen because of the imperative and because
of various substantiating clauses. And
so we are handling the first 9 chapters of Proverbs by these subsections. Beginning at verse 20 and extending through
verse 33 we come to the second exhortation.
The first one was the exhortation to avoid the wrong crowd.
The second
exhortation is to seek wisdom while it is available. And so beginning in Proverbs 1:20 we read:
“Wisdom cries without; she utters her voice in the streets; [21] She cries in the
chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates; in the city she utters
her words, saying, [22] How long, you simple ones, will you love
simplicity? And the scorners delight in
their scorning, and fools hate knowledge.”
This rebuke is a part of this large section that if you wanted a verse
to summarize the theme of verses 20-33 I would recommend Galatians 6:7-8, “Be
not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also
reap. [8] For he that sows to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but
he that sows to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” This verse teaches that God has a certain
created order; we violate that created order to our own hurt and out own injury
every time. We come out the losers.
Now in verses
20-33 we’re going to deal with the problem of the national response to the Word
of God. And you remember something that
I prepared you for earlier and hopefully you were listening when I prepared you
for it, was that wisdom must be built upon knowledge. You have to have knowledge first; you cannot
have wisdom with knowledge. And this was
shown by the Greeks, it was shown by the Egyptians, it was shown by the
Assyrians, it was shown by the Babylonians, it was shown by the Chinese and so
on, you can go into every major civilization and see shortcomings in wisdom
were always brought about by the fact they had no authoritative comprehensive
body as knowledge. Now the Word of God
only is that source of total knowledge, not in the sense the Word of God gives
us all details but the Word of God gives us knowledge for every area. It gives the framework on which we can hang
things. And so the Word of God, then,
revelation must be the source on which wisdom is built.
So this section
could be divided into certain subsections.
Verses 20-23, which we just read, would be wisdom’s cry; verses 24-28
wisdom is rejected; verses 29-33, the reason for it all, and there you’ll see
the tie-in back to the doctrine of creation and the fall. But verses 20 and following should be very
important to you as an American, because our country is in much the same
position that
Now it’s not
possible for an entire nation to gain wisdom, but these verses are directed to
a small group in the population who would take in the Word of God and apply it
in their life. And it doesn’t take a
large group of people to change things here.
It doesn’t take a large group of people to create issues on the campus;
it doesn’t take a large group of people to create issues in the city; it
doesn’t take a large group of people to create issues nationally. All we need is a small but faithful and
highly trained group of believers who know that they can apply the Word of God
and break out of the fundamentalist blindfolds that we have worn for 50
years. Traditionally in fundamentalist
circles we have had the idea that the Word of God is to be confined to my
devotional life and never to be applied to my business, it is not to be applied
to the national scene in any way; the Word of God has nothing to say about
economics, the Word of God has nothing to say about education, keep the Word of
God confined to the religious field and don’t ever, ever let it spill out and
flow into all areas of life. That is a
heresy, and if we can break out of that tradition and go back to the great
Reformers, Calvin and Luther and others who saw clearly that the Word of God
had to encompass all areas of life, then we can save our country, and we today
can experience a tremendous revival and a tremendous time of stability.
But in Proverbs
1:20 and following we’ll notice that wisdom is personified. Throughout this book you are going to notice
a principle that we didn’t cover last week but should have, that wisdom is
presented as a female. And this is very
important because throughout Scripture it is usually God or Christ who is
presented as the male and the believer as the female. But here in the book of Proverbs we have the
role reversed. Wisdom is presented as
the female and the believer is presented as the male. Now why is this switch? This switch has to do with the two sides of
faith. Faith has a doing side and a
resting side. When we rest by faith we are
receivers of God’s grace; we rest because we cannot do. We rest at the point of salvation. If you are here today and you are without
Jesus Christ and you are one of those individuals who think they can earn their
way to heaven by 10,000 good works, by going to church regularly, by giving
money to all the charities and so forth, you are not resting where you should
be resting in that you are insisting that you can earn your righteousness and
the Bible says you can’t. You have to
rest and receive +R through the atoning work of Jesus Christ.
Now, the second
part of faith, here is where the believer is obviously a female; the female is
presented in the Scripture as a responder, the male is the initiator. And so here in Scripture the believer takes
the female role as the responder; the believer responds to the initiated love of
God. So therefore God initiates, the believer
responds and so that is why we are said to be pregnant with the sperm of Christ
in 1 John 3:9. So the believer,
therefore, is the female in that role.
But the believer also has a doing role and that is the role under study
in the book of Proverbs. Here the
believer is cast in the role of the male and he is to seek his help meet.
Now in the second
divine institution, there are various divine institutions, or creation
ordinances, whatever word you wish to use for them, in the second divine institution,
marriage, we have a godly and ordained system of social existence in which you
have a male and a female and that is not something that is reproduced from the
animals. The male/female relationship of
marriage is ordained because of the first divine institution which is
volition. God gave Adam a choice; God
gave Adam responsible labor to do and he could choose to accept or reject. Shortly thereafter God said now Adam, in
order to make a help or a helper that is fit for you… some of you use the word
“helpmeet” as though it is one word, it isn’t at all. It means a helper that is specially designed,
and that is the woman; she’s especially designed for her right man. And Eve was especially designed for
Adam. Adam had a job and it’s the first
divine institution to carry out God’s will, but he couldn’t carry that will out
by himself. By himself Adam was
crippled. God said it is not good, Adam,
that you be alone faced with the job that I’ve laid on your shoulders and so
therefore I am going to provide you with a helper especially suited for
you. So we have the rise of the doctrine
of the helper, or the second divine institution.
Therefore we have
from this divine institution the norm; the norm for the human race is marriage
and because the simple reason is that the person by themselves are generally
incapable of handling the will of God.
And you say that’s not been my experience, since I’ve been married it’s
been worse. That’s because God has
ordained an institution which requires wisdom and if that is bad then it means
there’s a lack of wisdom somewhere along the line and God wants you to learn
it, to handle it, and then later on He’ll give you some more work to do.
So you have
marriage; now the marriage analogy is what is used in the book of Proverbs; chakmah or wisdom is the wife. This is why the book of Proverbs ends with
the virtuous woman, and it begins with a woman.
Wisdom is the woman. And of
course in Proverbs 31, that virtuous woman there is the incarnation of
wisdom. So all through this book you’re
going to have wisdom and wisdom is portrayed as the ideal wife. And so the believer is to, so to speak,
chase after and find the helpmate that God has made for him. So this is why the roles are reversed in the
book of Proverbs. We are to, as it were,
go out, locate the helper that God has ordained and especially designed in
order to carry out God’s will for our life.
So in order for the believer to move out he must have a helper; wisdom
is his helper and this is why wisdom is a person in verse 20.
“Wisdom cries
outside;” and this is speaking, as “she utters her voice in the streets,” it’s
speaking of the wise teachers who used to go into the great urban centers of
Israel. Please notice that every area of
the country was covered through urban evangelism. The strategy in the Bible is always urban
evangelism first, then world evangelism.
You don’t waste your missionaries sending them out to a few tribes some
place before you hit the major population centers. You always hit them first and then
branch. This is the New Testament norm
of Acts and you see it here. Wisdom is
uttering her voice, not in the fields but she is uttering the fields in the
urban centers where there is a maximum concentration of people. This would be the proclamation of the Word of
God and it is a public proclamation. If
the first part of Proverbs 1 was individual, warning an individual teenager
about the wrong crowd, beginning in verse 20 we’re seeing a national address. Here it is warning the citizens of the nation
Israel to get with it.
In other words,
he’s saying look, you people have no excuse, you people have all opportunities
to take in the Word of God. We would say
to day it’s on all the media, because in the next verse 21, “She cries in the chief
place of concourse, in the openings of the gates; in the city she utters her
words, saying,” now the “chief place of concourse” was the chief of streets and
it was used in the ancient city for the place of public announcements and
proclamations. And so what this is
saying is that these wise men, whether they be prophets, priests or wise men
formally or not, have conducted their ministry at the centers of the public
media. Israel was a lot different; you
can’t do that today in our country. But
in Israel you had a proclamation of the Word of God on the media so that at the
central place in the urban culture, we would say the newspaper and TV, the
central place of communication was dominated by using teachers.
And this verse is
a declaration that is going to damn the nation because the author of Proverbs,
Solomon, is saying a generation is growing up, take careful notice; you have
had a chance to learn the Word. You have
had a chance for years in the public places, in “the chief places of
concourse,” in “the gates.” The gates
were a place where the announcements were made because here’s where the news
came. Riders would come in from the
cities round about and they’d dismount, they’d walk in, they’d come in by camel
or by donkey and they would dismount at the gate, and at the gate was the
collection point for the latest news. So
this is why verse 21 is emphasizing the fact, and we’d have to translate it
culturally, that wisdom is on all the media.
No chance is given for a plea of ignorance. This is where the great prophets preached,
Jeremiah, Isaiah and Hosea didn’t hide themselves in a haystack some place,
they got right out into the middle of the urban areas; they hit the academic
areas of their time.
This is what has
been wrong with mission strategy in many of our circles today. We have utterly failed to reach the centers
of opinion of our generation. One of the
great centers of opinion in our generation is the academic establishment, and
yet we fail to make a head-on confrontation with them. We fail to make a great issue so that in
those academic areas the pace-setters for the whole culture, the Word of God is
dismissed as a harmless fable. Now how
much evangelism can occur if we do not collide with that area? Paul would never have rested; if Paul was
alive today where would Paul preach? If
you read the book of Acts where would Paul be?
He’d be in the great cities and the academic centers because he would
know that is where the opinions of the whole culture is generated and if you
smash in there, and you drop the bomb, so to speak, on the key targets, then
you can handle the rest later but Paul would never have been content with a
second front strategy. It would always
have been primary front in the middle of the urban and academic area.
So here in
Proverbs 1:21 we see the same strategy in Solomon’s day. In the head urban areas, this is where the
Word of God was to go forth. Verse 22 is
the personal appeal and in verse 22 we have one of the themes of this entire
section, so let’s look at each word carefully in verse 22 because the playoff
between three words is the tip-off on the major theme of this passage. “How long, you simple ones, will ye love
simplicity.” Now the word “simple” here
is the first word and this is the key word for the passage. It looks like this in the Hebrew, peti; peti is a word which means open-mindedness in a naïve sense, much
like another word that we went through earlier.
It’s open-minded in a gullible sense.
It is a picture of innocent stupidity.
There’s another word coming up that’s going to be different, it’s played
off against this word but you watch this word.
“How long ye
simple ones,” a simple one would be a person, believer or non-believer who is
listening to the Word of God and is not yet squared away. In other words, the Word of God is something
new, he’s never heard it before. He may
have been won to Jesus Christ through some sort of a campaign years ago, never
been near Bible teaching and now he’s near Bible teaching and this is something
new to him and he doesn’t quite know what to make of it. Or it might be a person who’s without Christ
and they come in and they’ve never heard anything like this either. And so this is the innocent stupid
person. This is a person who hasn’t made
a decision one way or the other, he’s open to all opinions but he is
stupid. The word means stupid, and it
means that he does not understand what’s going on. And wisdom is saying look stupid, how long
are you going to stay stupid; how long do you crave being stupid.
Unfortunately this
holds true for all too many people today.
We have the nod to God crowd that trot into their churches at 11:00 and
that’s the last contact they have with the Word until next week. And they expected a 30 minute sermon-ette for
Christian-ettes is going to get them through the entire week and this is the
extent of their spiritual food for the week.
And they don’t need anything else, they can handle it all by themselves,
they don’t need any of that religion garbage, and so forth. This is the self-reliant, proud, attitude and
these people would be known as the ignorant stupid ones, people who do not want
the Word, apparently, or at least who have not had the Word of God in their
life and don’t know what to make of it.
So wisdom says
look stupid ones, how long are you going to love and crave being stupid; how
long are you going to crave being ignorant.
[can’t understand words] in the city of Lubbock, they know where to get
hold of the Word of God, they know there are tapes available, they know there
are books available, they know where the Word of God is taught, but they love
being stupid and they love going to some apostate religious organization
because their great Aunt Tilda went there and her name’s on the corner-stone or
something and because her name’s on the cornerstone we just have to uphold it
and so forth, I know it’s apostate but….
So they deprive
themselves of the Word of God and they deprive their family of the Word of God
and they deprive their children of the Word of God and their children go off
the track and then guess where they come for counseling. It’s very interesting. I have a neat policy; if someone doesn’t come
steady to the Word of God I don’t counsel them any more. I have wasted my time hour after hour after
hour counseling people from other congregations in this city. My reply now is where do you go to
church? Oh you do; well, you go back to
your pastor and he’ll be glad to counsel with you. In the last month I have had to turn away
four or five people on this basis. They
want to come over here for a band-aid and I’m not in the band-aid
business. Every time they have a
problem they come trotting over here and every time, do you know what it
is? It’s because they are stupid and
they want to stay stupid. All of their
problems could have been handled by the Word of God but they don’t want that;
it’s too much to study the Word. And one
person told me, I can’t concentrate for more than 15 minutes; what do you do
with Saturday afternoon with a football game on TV, you have plenty of time to
concentrate on that, no problem there.
But nevertheless
there is a lack of systematic taking in of the Word of God and let me just
share something with you, you are never going to grow, wherever you are, until
you take in four to five hours of Bible teaching every week. And if you don’t and you’re too busy doing
something else you’re just not going to grow at all. You can get it from tapes or something else
but that’s an absolute minimum, you ought to have an hour a day in the
Word. And if your schedule won’t fit it,
your schedule is too busy. You can take
2-3 hours out each day for food physically, now why can’t you take some time
out for spiritual food. I’ve noticed
something, the people that are going on with the Lord, inevitably, and I’m not
trying to be a legalist about this, I just notice and observe as pastor, I
notice the connection. The people that
are rocking on through tremendous catastrophes, tremendous personal crises, and
have the ability to be stable and an ability to witness for the Lord are always
people, if you look at them carefully, on down the line consistently, day in,
day out, week after week, month after month, have taken in Bible doctrine in
the Word of God. And they haven’t just
trotted off to some spiritual life conference to get a hypodermic of some
emotionalism and say that will hold me for the next year until something else
happens. No, they take it consistently,
day in, day out, day in, day out, day in, day out. The people that fall apart as we are going to
see in this passage are the people who want to be [can’t understand
words].
Let’s look at
these, there are two stronger words used in verse 22. “The scorners delight in their scorning, and
fools hate knowledge? Now the word peti here, that we’ve done, is innocent
stupidity. But the next two words refer
to deliberate stupidity. And this is
going to be the theme of this passage.
Ignorant stupidity is excusable, for a time. But the deliberate stupidity is inexcusable
and is going to reap a disaster in the life.
And so what wisdom is saying in verse 22 is look, how long are you
innocently stupid ones going to love your innocent stupidity, and then there’s
a warning given. It shouldn’t be “and,”
it should be “both,” “both scorners delight in their scorning and scorning and
fools hate wisdom.” The whole thing is
an addendum to the question: how long are you going to love your stupidity,
because here’s what’s going to happen.
The scorners, these are people who turn away, they are hardened troublemakers.
In the diagram of
chaos in the soul this is what they look like; they’ve gone on negative
volition, they’re experienced a darkening of their soul, they’ve experienced
human viewpoint, and they’re sucking human viewpoint in and therefore that
kills off the faith technique in their life, and they can’t operate by faith
because they’ve got so much human viewpoint they doubt everything; they can’t
believe because they’ve got a massive amount of this human viewpoint in their
soul. And as long as that human
viewpoint is in their soul there’s no way they can believe at all. So what happens? They can’t operate by faith, they can’t
appropriate grace, so now they’re in trouble, and these are those that are
labeled here as scorners, they are hardened people who are deliberately and
willfully ignorant.
The next word,
“fools hate knowledge,” is kesilim
is a word which occurs again and again in Scripture. The kesilim
are a group of people who are dull and passive.
The word “scorner” means a hardened attitude to the Word of God. The only time I got in my life for the Word
of God is between 11:00 and 11:05.
That’s the scorner. However, the
“fool” here is a person who is dull. Now
dullness in the Bible means that these kind of people can’t carry on a
conversation on anything profound for more than two minutes. If you’re in their presence you can quickly
tell how dull they are. You walk in and
all they’re talking about is what so and so did, did you see so and so, they
put pink polka dots on their garage yesterday.
And then they go on to a big long discussion about do you think those
dots were big enough or do you think he should have small ones on the garage
door; maybe he should have bigger ones on the roof. And from there we proceed and start talking
about how much it rained last week on so and so’s flower bed, equally profound
topics all over the board. This the
Bible speaks of as a dull person, spiritually nitwit. And the reason is because they don’t know
enough doctrine and they have no spiritual maturity to talk about anything
worthwhile so that’s what they talk about and this is the fool.
Proverbs 1:23,
here’s the invitation makes; wisdom is personified as speaking out through the
prophets and teachers of Solomon’s generation; they have saturated the
cities. By the way, just to show you
something else, you can evangelize totally an entire culture and within forty
years that culture will go completely apostate, and here is a beautiful case. If we are to literally believe verses 20 and
21 we have to say that in Solomon’s day you had a total urban evangelism and
yet people heard the Word and all the evangelism did was harden their
hearts. Now this is not an excuse not to
evangelize; we have a command to evangelize; we have a command to be missionary
minded. But we can use the very tool
that soften men’s heart to harden them.
The preaching of the Word of God can harden hearts. And here it is.
“Turn ye at my
reproof; behold, I will pout out my spirit unto you, I will make my words known
to you.” Now the word in verse 23,
“turn” is shub, and it is translated
in the New Testament as “repent.” shub, I put that up here because we’re
going to see that again. And this is a
verb that means to reverse, do a one eighty.
“You turn at my reproof,” in other words, the Word of God goes forth and
we have somebody here on human viewpoint.
And all of a sudden they get hit with the Word of God. It may be in some pet area of their life and
they hear enough divine viewpoint that they see there’s something wrong some
way, either I’m wrong or he’s wrong but we both can’t be right; and there’s a
collision and they feel it. And what
wisdom is shub, you turn, “you turn
at my reproof.” When I tell you there’s
something wrong you respond to it and don’t hold onto your human viewpoint, you
change.
So “turn you at my
reproof” and then there’s a promise, the rest of verse 23 is a promise that if
we will turn at the reproof of wisdom, then this following thing will
happen. Two things will happen, two
sides to the same coin but the two are related.
“I will pour out my spirit unto you, and I will make known my words unto
you.” Now this goes back in New
Testament terms to Christ in the heart.
Say we’re on positive volition, that would be “turn you,” shub, verse 23; the person goes on
positive volition; as a result of the person responding to what they hear of
the Word of God the promise of verse 23, “I pour out my spirit,” and “make
known my words.” This refers to the
illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Second step, the enlightening ministry of the Spirit; that is what is
promised. And when this occurs then we
have a gradual reestablishment of the divine viewpoint framework in the
mentality, we have an experience of the love of God spilling over to human
relationships, and we have fulfillment in God’s plan. But that is Christ in the heart and it starts
with turning at wisdom’s reproof, and if we will, these two things.
Furthermore, note
the language in verse 23 because a lot of people under the charismatic fad have
taken the idea that pouring out of the Spirit in the latter days is some sort
of a goofy thing where the male tenor turns soprano or something and then we
all flap our tongues and have a big emotional experience. Now pouring out of the spirit is defined for
you in this verse. It is a Hebrew idiom
and has nothing to do with the tongue flapping at both ends of having some
great ecstatic emotional experience.
Let’s learn the biblical idioms for what they are. Pouring out of the Spirit equals illumination
to the Word of God. This is synonymous
parallelism and verse 23 forever for the rest of Scripture defines what it
means. “I pour out My Spirit” means I give
you understanding and insight into the Word of God; that’s what it means, it
has nothing to do with emotions. There
may be an emotional response to learning new truth about the Word, true, but
this verse forever defines the idiom for you.
So Proverbs
1:20-23 is wisdom’s great ministry to that generation in Solomon’s day. That is a picture of American in the 20th
century. No nation has been blessed as
we have with repeated and repeated and repeated exposure to the Word of God.
Now Proverbs 1:24,
the bad news. Verse 24-28, the second
section of this unit and here we have wisdom rejected. So this is what happened to that
generation. Solomon could see it
happening with the young people of his time.
He could see that as king he had done everything he could to provide for
a sound biblical education and still they turned away. And it was obvious to Solomon and so therefore
he writes in here in verse 24, “Because I have called, and you refused, I have
stretched out my hand, and no man regarded, [25] But you have set at nought all
my counsel, and would have none of my reproof, [26] Therefore I will laugh at
your calamity; and I will mock when your fear comes.”
Now verses 24 and
25 are a causal clause; they are all related because verse 26 is a final
conclusion. Verses 24-25 give you a
synoptic of what literally happened at that point in history. “I have called,” again it speaks of the
public ministry of the Word of God in the urban centers of that day, “I have
called but you refused; I have stretched out my hand,” and this referring to the
way the prophets would speak, apparently if we are to understand how actually
Amos and Hosea spoke, they didn’t speak with a loud speaker system, they
actually taught the Word of God right there in the streets and they would
gather the people together and the sign to gather together to hear the Word of
God would be holding stretched forth hands, and this is what is mentioned here
in verse 24. The “stretching out of my
hand” means the invitation to come hear the Word of God. “I have stretched out my hand, but no man
pays attention.” The word “regard” is a
Hebrew participle and it means no man is of a character who pays
attention. It’s a participle which
refers to the character of the particular believer. These are people who should have heard. In our day, in our dispensation, this refers
to believers, not unbelievers. There is
no believer who pays consistent attention.
Now that was the damnation on that generation and we can see from a
careful study of the text why at 930 we have a tremendous civil war in the
nation Israel and we have disaster. Many
people are slaughtered; we have a collapse of the economy. We have an entire national upheaval, because
here in verse 24 the key is given, because they had the chance to hear and
there was no man of the character to constantly pay attention. And this doesn’t mean just trotting in for
some sort of a deeper life conference once every year. This has to do with a consistent week in,
week out, month by month, daily intake of the Word of God. But no one did it.
So verse 25, “You
have set at nought all my counsel, and you would not at my reproof.” The word “counsel” here is a word that means
guidance. In other words, this is
referring to the application of the Word of God. Remember, we’re talking about wisdom now, not
just the Word proper; wisdom is the application of the Word in experience. So verse 25, because you wouldn’t listen to
the Word now you couldn’t apply the Word, and so therefore “you have set at
nought my guidance.” In other words,
wisdom told you in this situation do this; in this situation you’ve got these things going for you but
habitually this generation rejected, rejected, rejected, rejected and
rejected. “And you did not desire my
reproof.” “Reproof” means
correction. The first word there
translated in your King James as “counsel” is emphasis on the guidance that
wisdom gives. The second word, “reproof”
is emphasis on the stickiness, the correction ministry of the Word of God.
Now Proverbs
1:26-28, here is the reaction that wisdom has.
Now you have to be careful; this is a personification of wisdom and
you’re going to say well look, if I read verse 26-28 carefully it looks like
it’s more than personification here.
Well, the reason for this is that our God is a personal God and when we
go on negative volition toward the Word of God, we experience darkening of the
soul; we experience the ingress of human viewpoint from all around us, and then
we go to the next two steps of chaos in the heart, and these next two steps are
described here. And the motivation
behind these steps is found in verse 26; there’s an emphatic change in the
Hebrew text, from you to me; you did this, you did this, you did this. Now verse 26, but I tell you what I’m going
to do.
And verse 26 is a
sign of the personal nature of our God.
God is not an IBM computer. God
is a personal God and part of being personal means He reacts personally to
situations. God reacts personally to me;
God reacts personally to what you do. We
see this in the Psalms and we’re seeing it again here, in that God reacts
personally and when He reacts to this kind of thing we are His children and
He’s not neutral; He reacts with a personal reaction. And what does that mean? We hate God and so therefore we’re under His
wrath and that is a personal wrath, a personal disciplinary wrath of God.
Why? Because He is personal and reacts
to us as personal. Look, if you have
trouble with somebody else in your home, in your family and you cross them, you
know what I mean by a personal reaction.
Why do so many of you have trouble speaking of God in exactly the same
way? Is it because that you have
suddenly absorbed the human viewpoint of our generation and not even known
it. Why is it you can’t see God reacting
to you as another member of your family would react to you? That’s not wrong… [Tape turns].
… nothing else
than what is being done in verses 26, 27 and 28. He can’t do anything else because as the
ideal help for the believer, remember what is the believer in this
relationship? The believer is the male,
the husband, and wisdom is the female, or the helper. The husband rejects the female and therefore
the female responds to him; it’s always that way. She turns into something ugly because she has
been rejected, and this is what is happening in verse 26. The female is turning into something ugly
because she has not been pursued the way she was made to be pursued.
“I will laugh at
your calamity,” and when you need my help I’m not giving it to you; I’m not
going to be your helper, and you may need my help to do God’s will but I’m not
going to be around and I’m not going to be there to give it to you. “I will laugh at your calamity, I will mock
when your fear comes; [27] When your fear comes as a desolation, and your
destruction comes as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish come upon you. [28] Then shall they call upon me, and I am
not going to answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find
me.” That refers to the latter stages of
the chaos in the heart. That means that
disaster can come into the believer’s life, either individually or nationally
and there will actually come times when prayer for deliverance will not be
heard. And where, as it were, that that
person is going to have to keep on slugging it out day after day after day
after day, like Solomon’s generation, from 930 until the time of Jehoshaphat,
that whole generation had no political stability. Thousands of saints cried out for God, give
our country freedom; give our country liberty.
But no answer; constant oppression to the [can’t understand word],
constant upheaval all the time. And that
was historically fulfilled; they’re going to call on me some day and I’m not
going to be around because when the opportunity was there to hear the Word they
weren’t there; they developed –R learned behavior patterns to the Word of God
and when disaster hit they had already programmed themselves to how they were
going to respond.
Proverbs 1:29-30,
this is why it happens this way. God is
not a meanie, this is not He’s trying to be unfair, verses 29-33 are very
important because as I have stressed in Proverbs, these little sections prove
Proverbs is not part of secular wisdom; this is not just good luck. This is not just pragmatic wisdom handed out,
do this and you’ll succeed in your life.
Verses 29-33 re-substantiate the position that this cause and effect,
cause and effect, cause and effect, cause and effect that we observe is there
because of the kingdom of God. And so
from verse 29 and following this is the explanation of why it all happens the
way it does.
Proverbs 1:29,
“For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD.” It’s the word “because” literally; verse 29
is the reason. “Because they hated
knowledge,” this refers, “hated” is a perfect tense; hated means all the time
that they had the opportunity, they had the opportunity in Samuel’s day, they
had the opportunity in David’s day; they had the opportunity in Solomon’s day
and for three entire generations they had the opportunity to hear the Word and
finally the going sounded in 930 BC and it was too late; it was too late to
save the country, God said I’m through and this country is going to be divided,
period; no ifs, no ands, nothing, and they lost something very, very precious. Why?
Without warning? Huh-un, because
over a time period they hated and despised the Word. Something else was more important, they had
the good time crowd, the social crowd, always something besides the Word,
always a party, always something else but never get out there and listen to the
man who is communicating the Word of God.
Never study it for yourself, never think upon it, always put something
else first. “…they hated knowledge, they
did not choose the fear of the LORD.”
Notice, by the way, the parallel.
“Knowledge” is parallel with “fear of the LORD,” and shows you the fact
that in the Bible knowledge is personal.
Proverbs 1:30,
“They would have none of my counsel, they despised my reproof.” Again the word “counsel” means guidance. When there came a situation in their life,
not only didn’t they hear the Word of God but when they came to a situation in
their life that demanded the Word be applied to their life, they may have had a
problem in their marriage, they may have had a problem in their family, they
may have had a problem in their business, they may have had a problem in some
other area and that area demanded application of the Word and they wouldn’t
have anything of it. They always had
some human viewpoint gimmick to get them through, some band-aid solution. And “they would have none of my counsel, they
despised all my correction.” Over and
over again I told them they were wrong; over and over and over and over again
we told them they were out of line, but they despised it.
Therefore Proverbs
1:31, the law that we observed in Galatians, “He that sows to his flesh shall
of the flesh reap corruption; but he that sows to the Spirit shall of the
Spirit reap everlasting life.” So “They
shall eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own
desires.” Remember last week with the
wrong crowd? Remember what happened to
the wrong crowd? They were like a bird,
you set the net out, put the grain in the net, the bird sees the net, the bird
has wings, the bird has the means of escape from the net but because the bird
has the lust for the food, the bait, he always gets stuck in the trap. And so it is with the wrong crowd last week
we found. We found people who were on negative volition and as, in the words of
this verse, “they ate the fruit of their own way.” What was the fruit of their own way? Negative volition led to –R learned behavior
patterns. You had a group of teenage
punks who could push their father around, push their mother around and they
thought they could push everybody else around.
And so they thought they were the big brave crowd, five of us can beat
up one guy so come with us. And so they
started this operation and finally they would meet somebody that would just gun
them down. Someone was telling me one of
his best friends in the service was this kind, always finding some way to
undermine authority, always finding some way to smuggle drugs in and so on, and
he met his final end in Spain because in Spain they shoot first and ask
questions later. And he tried the same
funny business with a Spanish policemen that he’d tried with a New York City
policeman and the policeman pulled a revolver out and shot him in the gut, and
left him there and he bled to death in the street. Now why?
Because he met somebody that wasn’t going to take it any more. And that’s always the thing and that’s what
this verse is saying. You can get away
with it for a while but someone will cross your path some day and he’s not
going to take it, he’ll knock your block off.
This will happen in some area of business, it will happen in your
marriage, it will happen somewhere but this is a guarantee from the Word—“they
will eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.”
And then Proverbs 1:32, “Fro the turning away of the simple, “and here’s the
concluding thing, the thread that ties this whole thing together. Remember I said those three words? “Innocently stupid, deliberately stupid; the
warning is yes, innocent stupidity is excusable; deliberate stupidity,
huh-un. And so here “the turning away of
the simple shall slay them,” the word “turning away” is a Hebrew participle and
it refers to a believer who comes to the Word, who hears the Word, but who
refuses to apply the Word. In other
words, nix on the wisdom, nix on the application, and therefore he develops
negative volition, negative volition, negative volition, negative volition,
negative volition, negative volition, and he develops a hardened behavior
pattern. The “turning away,” the Hebrew
participle refers to this process, “turning away” continually, over and over
and over and over and over again. And so
it says take those innocently stupid people and give them enough time and
what’s going to happen? “They’ll slay
themselves, because the carelessness of fools shall destroy them.”
But to conclude on
a positive note, verse 33 says, “But whoso hearkens unto me shall dwell safely,
and shall be quiet from fear of evil.”
And this promise of verse 33 was given in the middle of a disaster. Remember in only a few years, in 930 BC you
would have a civil war. There would be
people who would fight in that civil war and life; people who would sustain
themselves through all of the crisis; people who would lose everything they had
financially but after the war was over they’d pick themselves up and move on;
people who would see their loved ones shot down, so to speak, in front of them
and they would survive. And this verse
promises that even in the middle of that disaster that happened within that one
generation of the writing of this chapter, if only the individuals, and notice
this verse 33, it’s directed to the individual, not the nation. “Who habitually hearkens unto me shall dwell
safely,” the word “hearken” is a participle, it means continually, so like the
other one, turning away, turning away, turning away, turning away, turning
away, this one, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
it’s a pattern. It’s not just once, not
just twice, it’s an habitual disciplined response to the Word, in every area of
life, whatever the detail is, it’s always the Word first.
“Whoso hearkens
unto me shall dwell safely,” and that historically was given and promised in
the generation that would pass through disaster and there would be people that
would pass through disaster; there would be people that would have the skill
and the wisdom to meet the crisis because they had prepared for it years ahead
by taking in the Word, over and over and over and over and over again. “And shall be quiet from fear of
evil.” I think it’s interesting that
this chapter concludes not with “they shall be quiet or safe from evil,” but
“they shall be quiet from the fear of evil.”
Do you know why that’s there?
Because the way you suffer most and the way I suffer most is in the
mental attitude. That’s where it all
starts. You can sustain evil, you can
sustain adversity, but when fear grips your mind you lose all control. Everything’s shot then.
If you conquer the
fear you can handle the rest. And so
therefore this great promise is saying if you have a habitual pattern of
erecting Christ in the heart, habitually responding to the Word of God,
“Therefore, I will pour out my spirit unto you, and make known my words unto
you,” you will develop a divine viewpoint framework that will enable you to
analyze the situations of life; in situation A, in situation B, you have the
divine viewpoint framework to handle it and now you know what God’s will is in
situation A, situation B, situation C and you chose positive, positive,
positive, positive, positive; I choose to apply deliberately the Word of God in
this situation; I choose to apply the Word of God here; I choose to apply the
Word of God there, and what happens? You
begin to experience a deepening love affair with Jesus Christ. The Bible describes this in Ephesians 3,
“That you may know the love of Christ that passes all understanding.” It’s always painted as a result of this, and
you don’t get it by bypassing this either, like a lot of people think, I don’t
go for all that teaching doctrine. Well, how in heaven’s name are you ever
going to get so you love Christ. You
only love Christ as you pay attention to what He’s told you. You don’t love God unless you know Bible
doctrine and don’t let anyone ever sell you on this point. That is a heresy
that’s going around today. Just love the
lord, and kind of float from one room to the next. That’s ridiculous; the only people that know
Jesus Christ are people who know Bible doctrine period, over and out. This stuff, Lubbock Bible Church teaches
Bible doctrine but we hold up Christ.
Which Christ? How are you going
to tell which Christ you’re holding up unless you go back to doctrine; doctrine
is your frame of reference; you can’t even handle a situation and I know they
can’t because the very same people that say that are the people’s whose kids
are in counseling. Isn’t that an
interesting connection?
So we have love
and then we have the fulfillment; now that’s Christ in the heart. That’s Christ in the heart and that’s what
wisdom promises and that’s what it means to be free of fear of evil; “perfect
love casts out fear,” remember that text in the New Testament. Do you know what that really means? That’s not auto hypnosis; that means that you
have love with the Lord and you are so confident that He’s going to take care
of you in the situation you do not fear.
That’s what “perfect love casts out fear” means. It means an almost audacious confidence. In fact, at times I have watched this in this
congregation with some of you; some of you have caught on to this and I have
watched some of you face disaster situations and pressures in your life, and
I’ve also watched other believers around you respond and it’s been very
interesting because I have had one or two people come and they have interpreted
your faithfulness and your confidence as arrogance. How can so and so be so cocky? How can so and so be so arrogant? They’ve misinterpreted it but they’ve seen
something, that in the middle of the situation you just don’t move, you’re just
like a rock and you keep on moving. Now
this will be misinterpreted by a lot of numbskulls floating around. Just risk the misinterpretation and go with
the Word.
With our heads
bowed….