Clough Proverbs Lesson 20
Divine Viewpoint Framework of Wisdom – Proverbs 2:1-8
It’s been our
custom to answer questions that were asked the previous Sunday but I have been
blessed with the fact that several people in our congregation who are
interested in the Word of God and who are doing what habitually we encourage
here in Lubbock Bible Church, and that is to apply the Word of God to every
area and just be on the lookout in those areas of reading that are of things
and topics of interest as far as the Bible is concerned. This is how I manage to gain information from
various fields, materials that many of you have contributed. Every once in a while some of these are quite
amusing and last Sunday one of the law students at Tech had been reading
through the federal rules decisions and he encountered a very interesting case;
whereas this doesn’t have any profound theology behind it, it’s very amusing
that this occurred, and that is a case in which a man tried to obtain a suit
against Satan in the District Court of Pennsylvania, December 3, 1971 and it
mentions that a civil rights action against Satan and his servants, who
allegedly placed deliberate obstacles in the plaintiff’s path and cause his
downfall wherein the plaintiff [can’t understand words] to proceed, and so on,
it goes into the various legal terms.
And this particular plea was turned down and the court, when it turned
this down, it’s very interesting, they saw the issue and it’s very interesting
how they did this. This is the court’s
opinion on why they rejected the hearing of the case:
“We feel that the
application to file and proceed must be denied; even if the plaintiff’s
complaint revealed a prima facie recital of the infringement of the civil
rights of a citizen of the
Turn to Proverbs
2. So far in the Proverbs series we have
covered the introduction and two sections of the first large unit of
material. This first unit of material
starts in Proverbs 1:8 and continues through chapter 9 and this entire section,
the first 9 chapters in Proverbs deals with more instruction that
proverbs. I explained the difference
between the two kinds of literature in that instruction is basically
exhortation and it contains imperative moods; that is, there are verbs, do
this, don’t do this, you do this, you listen, you sit down, you listen and so
on: imperatives. Whereas in Proverbs
proper when you deal with a proverb you’re dealing with indicative moods; he
who does this shall benefit this way. He
that does this shall suffer this. And
those are not imperative moods, those are indicative.
Since the school
is no longer teaching grammar and what nouns, verbs, indicative moods and
imperatives I will probably have to do more of this grammar teaching from the
pulpit because you cannot understand the Word of God unless you understand the
fundamental rules of grammar. So
apparently besides teaching people how to think now I have to teach grammar
too, because I found out some people don’t know what nouns are and verbs and
everything else. Somebody came up to me
last week and asked me what an indicative mood was, thinking it was somebody
that was made or something. Verbs have
certain moods and indicative mood is simply the normal straightforward mood of
description; such and such is true or such and such is not true. The imperative is when you command, it’s the
command mood. We’ll have to cover this;
those of you who were educated 20 or 30 years ago will have to put up with this
because now they’re too busy teaching other things.
In the first part
of Proverbs 1:8-19 deals with the exhortation to avoid the wrong crowd and we
said that this was a section that was particularly addressed to the young
person. In fact, all of them are but
this one in particular. Now since today
we deal with the third of these sections, Proverbs 2:1-22, let’s look at these
three and see if we can see an order. By
now you’ve got two sections that you’ve listened to; by now you have studied
the first chapter in Proverbs. Today we
go to the second chapter; can we look back and find a logical order to these
sections or are they just put together helter-skelter. Now it just doesn’t sound right that the Holy
Spirit who superintends the writing of Scripture put Proverbs together in some
sort of a chance arrangement. There must
be some sort of reasoning behind the sequence so let’s look at the sequence
again and I think if we look at the sequence of the large sections we come
across something else that’s very, very interesting, about teaching.
The first section
deals with the wrong crowd and we said the wrong crowd is important,
particularly to the young person because it is the first thing with which
teenagers must deal. For example, when a
teenager seriously considers entertaining divine viewpoint, when he seriously
considers trusting Christ as his Savior and at the same time making Jesus
Christ Lord of every area of his life, what is going to immediately come to the
mind of any red-blooded young person?
What his peers think! So isn’t it
providential that Proverbs begins hitting exactly that point; it hits exactly
the place that would be on the mind of a young person who is seriously
considering going all out for the Word of God in every area because the primary
feedback that that person is going to experience will be what his peers think
of it, and he can become very easily intimidated.
This is why, for
example, often times when you’re talking about Christ, you’re talking about the
Word with a young person they’ll tune you out and it will at first appear that
they have some sort of deep intellectual problem; not at all, it’s not a deep
intellectual problem at all, they’re just simply afraid about what their
friends are going to think, that’s what the problem is. And so isn’t it
interesting that when the father goes to teach his son in the book of Proverbs,
what is the area he touches first. The
entire first section deals with: my son, avoid the wrong crowd.
And then the
second section that we dealt with, verses 20-33, the exhortation to seek wisdom
now, follows very logically from this.
That is, remember the theme of last week, verse 20-33, and that is: oh
stupid people, how long will you relish in your stupidity and we said that the
word there in the Hebrew meant innocent stupidity. And the point that was made that a person can
be innocently stupid and that’s all right, but you can’t stay innocently
stupid. Proverbs says for a while you
can claim innocent stupidity but if you don’t take any steps to correct your
stupidity, that innocence disappears into deliberateness, and so the innocently
stupid person hardens his heart against the Word of God and becomes
deliberately stupid. And so you see that
proceeds logically because after considering the wrong crowd, after you’ve got
the young person’s attention, the nest thing to point out is the fact that he’s
got a limited time to react. After
you’ve dealt with the side issue of the wrong crowd and the kind of social
pressure they will put upon you to deny the Word.
And by the way,
for the benefit of young people, don’t feel paranoia about this; don’t feel
like I’m picking you out because actually the wrong crowd influences
adults. This is why we have so few
adults in high places who will have the guts to adhere to the Word of God, it’s
the same peer pressure, they’re afraid of what somebody’s going to think, in
this case the electorate. And so rather
than adhere to the principles of the Word of God they will put expediency above
principle. So young people, don’t be
discouraged, the older people do the same thing, but since this is dedicated to
the young people in Proverbs it’s therefore fashioned particularly for
them. And this second section is to say
well young person, look, you’ve got so many years of your youth left, and when
you finish being a young person and start being an adult, you’ve already basically
decided the direction of your life. And
by that time you have already basically decided whether or not you will be
innocently stupid, deliberately stupid, or deliberately intelligent; one or the
other.
Today we come to a
third thing and this third again logically flows from the first two
sections. And the first section doesn’t
deal with exhortation as such. Actually
this chapter, this second chapter deals with a simple “if this is so, then this
follows.” It’s a simple if-then
passage. So it’s really not exhortation
and it’s almost really not a proverb.
Proverbs 2, the
theme is a reminder of the divine viewpoint framework of wisdom. It is a reminder of the divine viewpoint
framework of wisdom. In other words, in
this second chapter, after getting the young person’s attention off of what his
peers think and onto the question of what is true and what is false, and after
he has dealt with the problem that young person normally has, a limited
opportunity to do this, after all this he says now I want to take you over to
something positive; so far we’ve been negative, we’ve been against the wrong
crowd. We’ve been negative here; we’ve
been against wasting your time. Now we’re
positive and so therefore the 2nd chapter is the first positive
approach that we’ve had in the book of Proverbs. And for you positive thinkers will you please
note how negative Proverbs begins.
Proverbs begins with two passages that are centrally negative instead of
being positive. So it starts what we’re
against. Now isn’t that an awful
negative way to begin? That’s just the
way the Bible begins; that we’re against this and we’re against this and now
I’ll tell you what I’m for; I’m for this.
All right, let’s
look at the content of Proverbs 2.
Proverbs 2:1-4 is one section; Proverbs 2:5-8 is a section; Proverbs
2:9-19 is a third section, and 20-22 is the fourth section. The first section and the second section
we’ll deal with this week; the third and the fourth section of this chapter
we’ll deal with next week.
What is the first
section? The first four verses can be
summarized, the fact that young person, you must pursue wisdom with
determination. You must pursue wisdom
with determination! And the second
section, verses 5-8 is the promise, and if you’ll do that then God will open
your eyes to wisdom and you will know Him better. Now why be reminded of the divine viewpoint
framework behind wisdom? Again because
in the Bible all truth is centered on the divine viewpoint framework, that is,
it is built on a foundation of creation/fall and the flood and the Noahic
Covenant, it is based on faith and erected on these two platforms, the
foundation of a created universe, not an evolved universe, upon a universe that
has fallen, one in which evil is a byproduct and not inherent, upon faith that
is due to God verbally revealing Himself to man’s mind and not by some sort of
sneaky mystical means, upon that foundation and that alone is erected the
kingdom of God.
And the kingdom of
God has as its theme loyalty and discipline.
So from the year 1400 BC when the kingdom of God began in adumbrated
form in the Old Testament, with Moses, until 586 when this kingdom was
destroyed, during this era of history the kingdom of God had as its theme God’s
teaching the first and great commandment and the results that flow from
disobedience to that commandment. So if
wisdom is the application of truth for the glory of God it means we have to
deal with loyalty and discipline, so here the divine viewpoint framework is
brought into the picture. Why is this
necessary? Again, because if you read
Proverbs wrongly you’re going to come out of here with exactly the wrong
concept. If you sit down and you read
Proverbs like you would Ben Franklin’s Poor
Richard’s Almanac or something else, you are going to walk away from this
building today with the idea that all you had is a few pragmatic rules for
success in life. That is not the content
of the biblical book of Proverbs. This
is distinguished from all other proverbs, from Ben Franklin back to Pharaoh, it
doesn’t make any difference, all other proverbs are pragmatic: do this in order
to succeed. The Bible says do this in
order to succeed inside the divine viewpoint framework. So there’s a tremendous difference and chapter
2 will bring this out very well.
Let’s look at
Proverbs 2:1-4. “My son, if you will
receive my words, and hide [lay up] my commandments with thee, [2] So that thou
incline thine heart unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; [3]
Yea, if you cry after knowledge, and lift up thy voice for understanding; [4]
If you seek her as sliver, and search for her as for hidden treasures, [5]
Then…. So verses 1-4 is all if, if, if,
if, if, if, these are conditions that you must fulfill. Let’s look at them in detail.
Proverbs 2:1-4,
“My son, if you will receive my words,” notice it starts with “My son,” we are
back to the third divine institution.
The Bible gives us four divine institutions; divine institution number
one is responsibility; divine institution number two is marriage; divine
institution number three is family; those are the creation institutions. They were instituted at the point of
creation. After the flood then you have
the fourth divine institution, government.
Now, if government occurred after the fall and after the flood, then
it’s fundamentally different from the previous institutions. I want you to notice something that you
should notice again and again in Proverbs.
I realize some of
you education majors may have trouble with this because you’ve been brought up
in an entirely different framework. In
fact, many of your parents are going to have trouble with this because you
function within another framework. But
if you’ll look again at verse 1, notice who does the teaching? The father and the mother, the parents, and
it is the biblical norm that all education, even when it is done by a
professional, must proceed from the authority of the parents, not the state. It is anti biblical to have education
emanating from the authority of the state.
In God’s Word all education is derivative of the family institution and
Proverbs is the proof. Here you have the
closest thing we can come to general education and every place in this book,
from one end to the other, who does it?
It is the parents. Now the
parents may not be capable of doing it themselves but the parents delegate
their responsibility to pros, so to speak, that do it. In Israel all parents couldn’t teach their
children either but who did? The
priest. But as we’re going to see in the
evening series, even Samuel, what happens when Hannah takes Samuel, what does
she do with him? She decides Samuel will
get an education under the priest, but whose decision is it? The priest’s or Hannah’s? It’s Hannah’s. And so everywhere you go in Scripture
education is a result of parental decision, and when you have the state come in
and say we will educate you against your will it is violating the biblical
norms and it’s anti-God.
State education
that dictates to the parents what shall and shall not be should be opposed by
all Christians. The evangelical
Christians today should fight at every point any attempt by the state to usurp
the parent’s authority. And already as
you start this fight you’ll find out how far it’s gone. When government, and we
have certain ex-presidents of the NEA telling us that I don’t ever intend to
have my educational program affected by the wishes of the parents, you’re
having a cocky arrogance that totally cuts across the grain of the Word of God
and Bible-believing Christian have only one choice; we have to reaffirm in our
day that this is the source of education, not this, the third, not the fourth
divine institution is the root of education; all education. But this does not mean the state can’t provide
means, we’re not arguing that, but we are arguing that the control must
ultimately stem from the parents, that’s the point, and if that control is not
there then we have apostasy in the culture.
There’s no choice in this, some of you may not like this but I didn’t
write the Bible; take it up with the author.
“My son, if you
will receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee,” the word “receive,”
take in, and “hide” refers to the way the soul is made, and this father knows
the soul, evidently; obviously Solomon had some good lessons from David and he
knew how the soul looked and so when he says Solomon… David taught Solomon and
then Solomon taught Rehoboam, you must take this in and it says “hide my
commandments with you,” now how does the son hide the commandments of his
father? He has a mind, sometimes you
wonder but somewhere it’s there and the words are addressed to the mentality of
the soul. When the words are addressed
to the mentality of the soul immediately there’s an issue produced by the
conscience. The conscience has residual God-consciousness and the conscience
says is it right or is it wrong, is it for God or against God. Every thought
that you entertain in your mind is being evaluated, silently perhaps, unfelt by
you, but nevertheless is being evaluated and it’s being evaluated by the amount
of God-consciousness that your conscience has.
Now what this
father asks his son to do is to hide the commandments with you. This means son, don’t just let them go into
your mind, memorize them for a good time, don’t just accept them on my
authority. He doesn’t even mean that
either. You can say well as I look at
verse 1 it certainly looks very authoritative to me. Well, in one sense it is but this father does
not want his children to accept what he says just because he says it. This father wants his son to think on what he
has said and test it with his own conscience and the phrase “hide them with
you” means to put them in the depth of your heart and this can’t be done unless
they pass the conscience test. In other
words, unless the son evaluate the content of the teachings, finds them to be
true and then hides them in his heart.
That is what the father expects the son to do.
In Proverbs 2:2 he
says, “So that, thou incline thine hear unto wisdom, and apply your heart to
understanding,” the word “so that” means, and it looks odd here if you think of
it. Look at the last part of verse 1 and
the first part of verse 2; the last part of verse 1 says “hide my commandments
with you,” and then verse 2 sounds out of place, “so that you incline your ear
unto wisdom.” If you look at that you’d
think it should be the other way around, shouldn’t it; incline your ear to
wisdom so that you can hide my commandments with you. So therefore if you look carefully at verse 1
and 2 it seems to be out of order, but it isn’t out of order; it’s deliberately
put that way because what is wisdom.
Let’s look at the
process again. The Word of God is preached, in this case in the home by the
father. The Word of God comes to the
mind of the son; the Word of God goes into the mind of the son, it’s
thought. The conscience, using what
God-consciousness it has, reaches out and identifies it as the Word of God,
because we know from Hebrews 4:12, the Word of God is “living and powerful, and
sharper than any two-edged sword; it pierces even to the dividing asunder of
soul and spirit, and joints and marrow” and what? “becomes a critic of the
thoughts and intents of the heart.” So the Word of God, when it comes into the
mind goes straight over here, is evaluated and is then stored as
God-consciousness. So the God-consciousness in the human conscience now begins
to be built up and strengthened. The
whole human spirit over here is strengthened by this process. As this human spirit is strengthened by the
process, now you can have wisdom; not until. Wisdom doesn’t start the process,
wisdom ends the process. Wisdom is a result, not a cause. The cause if Bible teaching; the result is
wisdom, let’s see how it works.
The Word of God
goes into the conscience and goes into the mind so you begin to have erected a
divine viewpoint framework; this divine viewpoint framework is erected and it
takes time and time and time and time and time.
This is why some of you who trot in here for the 11 o’clock service and
trot on out and you don’t listen to tapes during the week, you don’t read your
Bible during the week, you have nothing to do with the Word of God during the
week, you’re never going to develop a divine viewpoint conscience; you’re never
going to develop any kind of framework and I don’t know why you bother to trot
in here because we need chairs and there are a lot of people here who are
serious with the Word and they would love to come in here and we’ve had to turn
some away.
So let me just
say, if you’re not really seriously interested in developing this over a
patiently experienced long interval of systematic teaching of the Word, you’re
just occupying space here as far as I’m concerned so let’s get it clear between
us that I’m not impressed because you happen to show up once a Sunday a month
or something, you’re not impressing me, you’re not impressing anyone else. We’re here to teach the Word of God and we
have people who have done this and they’ve extended this over many, many weeks
and months and because they have they are slowly developing a divine viewpoint
framework of thought, something that’s totally lacking in fundamentalism
today. Here’s why you have people
frothing at the mouth, rolling down the aisles, getting involved in sensitivity
groups and calling it spiritual life or something and all the rest of it. These
are just gimmicks and they are gimmicks because Christians have not done what
God has told them to do and that is get the Word of God in your mind and in
your soul and you won’t have room for gimmicks.
But we don’t have that, we have vacuums in the soul of believers all
over the place and this makes them susceptible to all sorts of these weirdo
influences, and there’s no solution to it; no good to preach against them, the
only thing you have to do is point out the error and move on with the Word and
30%-40% will fall by the wayside and you just pick up the pieces and move from
there. You’ll always have fallout with the
gimmick crowd.
But the divine
viewpoint framework is to be built up and is to occur in the soul. Now how does this produce wisdom, because he
says, [2] “incline your ear to wisdom,” and in synonymous parallelism with
that, “apply your heart to understanding,” and the word “apply” is the Hebrew
verb which means to turn, turn your heart toward wisdom. And this means you are responsible for this
thing; nobody can do it for you. The
father can’t do it for the son; notice this.
The imperative mood separates the father from his son, the father can
tell his son what to do but the father can’t do it for him, the son has to do
it himself.
Now this is where
some parents are way off the track. In
my counseling I have found a most interesting correlation; the more I counsel
the more I see that the problems people have in their spiritual life are habits
that they have learned from their parents.
For example, we’ll have somebody come in the office and they’ll be
suffering all sorts of mental… depressed and everything else, been on
tranquilizers and all the rest of the treatments, and when it finally boils
down in the final end, what is it? It’s
a habit pattern of resistance against the Word of God in some area.
For example, let’s
take the area of responsibility for your own [can’t understand word], and all
during their childhood when they were growing up they might have gone out here
and got a ticket so what does daddy do, he goes down and gets them off. They might be having a rough time in school
so what does mamma do? She writes a note
to the teacher and says, I fear teacher, my son is having such a rough time in
school, could you please reduce the assignments for him. So what does the kid learn in all this? To avoid and duck out of responsibility and
what’s going to happen when he becomes a Christian and God does not operate
that way. You see, when you become a
Christian you move from your human family… here’s you human family, the third
divine institution, in that third divine institution you have learned from your
parents certain behavior patterns, certain learned behavior patterns. They may line up with the Word in which case
we call them +R or they may be in violation of the Word in which we call them
–R learned behavior patterns, but you’ve learned one or the other, or probably
in most cases we have learned, all of us, a mix, because none of us come from a
perfect household. But nevertheless, we
have learned these behavior patterns.
All right, here we go. –R learned
behavior pattern, I can duck out of responsibility.
Now don’t blame
the parents for this; the parents may be wrong but the child is still held
responsible, the child still has a conscience. So the parents, unfortunately in
this case have worked against the conscience.
Here you have a kid and he’s having trouble in school. Now I’m not saying that every time the kid
has trouble in school ignore it, I’m saying you know what I’m talking about in
the context here, I’m talking about an obvious case when a kid’s lazy and
doesn’t want to do the work and so therefore you try to encourage his laziness
by something; or he gets arrested or he gets a ticket or something and you try
to get him out of it. What are you doing to him? Here he is and God has given divine
institution number one, individual responsibility and God means for him to reap
the results of his actions so he can learn from it; but what do you do? You insulate the results of this thing so the
kid is on minus volition, he has a rebellious attitude toward the authority in
the classroom, he has a rebellious authority to the cop on the street and he’s
wrong, he’s out of it, he’s anti-biblical. And he’s developing into a monster
because he’s getting these –R learned behavior patterns established in his
soul. So what do the parents do? I feel sorry for poor little Johnnie, and
poor little Johnnie, the policeman growled at him, and the policeman insulted
him, my little Johnnie, so I’m going to go down there and I’m going to talk to
somebody down there about it. So what
happens? We begin to have enforced in
the soul –R learned behavior patterns, you’ve trained the kid wow, I can rebel
against authority and I always get off the hook.
And then later on
what’s going to happen? He’s going to
rebel against your authority; see, the birds are going to go home to roost
someday and the kid’s going to turn around and rebel against your authority and
you’re going to have nobody to blame but yourself; you were the one who taught
him how to escape this problem. So now what’s
going to happen? Now you’re going to
have a rebel on your hands and society is.
All right, the kid goes to college or something and somewhere along the
line, he may be flat on his back with drugs or something but somewhere along
the line he accepts Christ. So he
becomes a Christian, the Holy Spirit gets through if nobody else has gotten
through yet, and becoming a Christian is very easy; becoming a Christian is
hearing the good news of Jesus Christ, realizing that you have no escape from
your sins which are not guilt feelings but moral guilt, and legal guilt before
a holy God, such that if you were to die without Christ you’d go to hell. This issue of sin is presented to the
individual, he sees that Jesus Christ paid for the sins on Calvary and so therefore
since Jesus Christ paid for the sins it means that his soul salvation is
through the finished work of Christ, he believes this, he doesn’t have to do
anything, he doesn’t have to do something, he doesn’t have to get any points
with the church, he doesn’t have to be baptized, all he has to do is receive
Christ as his Savior.
All right, he
receives Christ as his Savior; that’s easy, that’s very easy to become a
Christian and this kid’s used to give me, give me, give me, give me, give me
all the time, he’s been brought up that way, so give me dad, grace is easy for
me and so he just relaxes and receives salvation and God in His grace redeems
him. But now here’s the catch and I tell
you as one who deals in counseling problems all the time and as one who has
talked with colleagues in the ministry, we are seeing more and more and more of
this phenomena, in that people who have become Christians, they’ve become
Christians all right but here’s what happens after they become Christians;
after they become Christians what does the Word of God say? That you are now children of God, you are
members of the household of the faith, and you are members of the family of
God, Galatians 3:26. You are now in the
family of God and guess now who’s your father?
God is, the First Person of the Trinity, He runs the family and you are
stuck now. You’ve been adopted into
another family and this family just doesn’t happen to be run like the one
you’re used to. So now we have a major
problem of adjustment.
And this is why
evangelism in our time is causing tremendously severe mental problems in a lot
of people. I am not saying stop
evangelism; the psychiatrists are telling us this, you’ve got to stop this
evangelism because the more you evangelize the more off-beat mental problems
you’re creating. All these people are
getting problems after evangelism occurs.
Well, the reason is because of what preceded the evangelism; that’s
simple. After the evangelism they become
Christians, they get plugged into a new family run by a new set of rules by a
no nonsense Father. And now what
happens? Little Johnnie comes along and
God tells him look Johnnie, plus volition toward the Word of God, I want you to
do this. And Johnnie … no, I’m not going
to do it, my learned behavior pattern, inherited from the way he’s learned
because after all, what did his mother do when he was in school, what did his
father do when he got the ticket, and so now he comes into the Christian life,
and he’s going to do the same thing, God’s going get me off, after all, I
became a Christian by grace, He overlooked all my sins when I became a
Christian so He’s going to overlook all my sins after I become a
Christian. Well, legally He is but it
just so happens that in experience He doesn’t.
So guess what happens;
we start something that Johnnie never heard of before, something called
discipline. And God disciplines by
severe forms of mental pressures. And so
therefore God says you will get in
line; you are in My family. Now God
loves Johnnie, God died for all of Johnnie’s sins in Jesus Christ. There’s no question that God doesn’t love
him. Now later one when he begins to
feel the paddle is his mind mentally and perhaps physically, when he begins to
feel it he’s going to doubt whether God ever loved him—why did God let this
happen to me, everything’s gone down the drain since I became a Christian,
boo-hoo, this type thing. Well, that’s
true, everything has gone down the drain, all the crud, that’s what’s going
down the drain and God is busy cleaning your life up, that’s the problem and it
hurts. So this point is that God runs
His family according to the norms and standards.
So here’s the
lesson: If you want to reduce pain and problems in life if the family unit will
run closer to the Word of God we wouldn’t have the mental problems when someone
becomes a Christian because all the learned behavior patterns that should have
been taught in the family are going to carry over and be used by God the Holy
Spirit in the Christian’s life. But if
the family unit has not taught the child these principles, God will teach
them. Now which is easier; to learn when
you’re a child or to learn when you’re an adult. You all know it’s easier to learn as a
child. The same thing spiritually; all
these blessings that should have been learned from age 1 to age… nothing is
learned after 16, we have to leave a little gap, maybe we should make this 14,
but in the first 14 years there should have been basic lessons learned, such as
the problem of authority and so forth, such as the problem of truth, such as I
am responsible for what I do and not somebody else, and a few other lessons,
and you have maybe a set of six different lessons learned here in these 14
years.
So now, if the
divine institution number three is not operating according to the Word of God
because mommy and daddy went to Tech and they got all the good education
courses and they found out why the Bible is all wrong, it’s out of date, when
Johnnie comes in and spits in my face I’m not supposed to spank him, I’m supposed
to sit down and say why Johnnie, I see that you have a problem or something,
and you’ve learned how to operate and you run your family and so instead of
learning the six lessons you cranked out a set of monsters that have learned
two lessons out of six. Now these
monsters get in college and get evangelized and they become Christians and
guess what? They’ve got to catch up on
their homework, and so now the evangelistic process will actually result in
misery to your children… will actually result in misery because they’re going
to come to know Christ and they’re going to experience depression and guilt and
all sorts of things, simply because they have not learned the lessons they
should have learned at home. Don’t you
see the importance of the divine institutions, that they carry over into the
area of salvation? They are all
connected because creation is unity in God’s sight.
This is why we
have this, Proverbs 2:2, “incline your ear,” therefore son, “to wisdom, and
turn your heart to understanding.” The
word “understanding” particularly is a strong word which means discernment; it
has the conscience in view.
Now Proverbs 2:3
in the King James reads, “Yea,” and it’s a strong “if,” in other words, up to
this point we’ve had a simple if; in the Hebrew it looks like this, ‘im and this is the Hebrew particle that
means “if.” But when we come down to
verse 3 instead of a simple “if” we have something in the Hebrew that looks
like this: kiy ‘im and kiy ‘im used in this kind of a context
means all those other conditions were true buddy, but this one is absolutely
the prerequisite. In other words, this kiy ‘im particle intensifies the
previous “if,” if, if, if, if, if but really only if, and probably the best way
of translating verse 2 is “Only if,” in other words, of all the ifs verse 3 is
the most important. “Only if” this is
true, will thus and such follow; “Only if you cry after knowledge, and you lift
up your voice with understanding,” now crying and giving your voice to is
another way, or an idiomatic way of saying what is most on your lips is what is
most on your heart.
In other words, you measure what is really the
root idea of your heart by your conversation.
If you are continually talking about something other than spiritual
issues, now I don’t mean talk about the Bible all the time, you can talk about
any area and talk divine viewpoint, we’re not talking about just talking about
Bible stories. We’re talking about you
could carry on a conversation in economics, you could carry on a conversation
in philosophy, you could carry on a conversation in history, law, you can carry
on any conversation you choose to, in the house, how to run the household and
so on, any area. But the point is if you
continually are cranking out human viewpoint in your conversation that shows
something; it shows you basically that in the depth of your heart there is
something tremendously wrong. And so he
says, “Only if,” and this is addressed to believers, “Only if, believers, you cry
after knowledge, and only if you lift up your voice,” see, he’s not talking
about salvation here, he’s talking about a person that’s already saved but a
person who after he is saved must grow and must move along under the Fatherhood
of God in the family.
Proverbs 2:4, “If
you see her,” verse 4 is parallel with verse 3, in other words, what is most on
your lips. Well, the average thing today is security; security is the god of
most Americans and so also in Israel.
“If you seek her as you do security,” in other words, “silver, and
search for her as for hidden treasures, [5] Then” you are on the right
road. It goes back to Christ in the
heart, the diagram that I showed you.
How does that start? Positive
volition, then after positive volition God enlightens your heart, and after He
enlightens your heart you begin to develop a divine viewpoint framework, after
you develop a divine viewpoint framework you begin to experience the love of
God experientially and then you are fulfilled because you are in the plan of
God. But it all starts down here with
positive volition and the sign, the empirical observable historic sign of
positive volition is are you craving for it and are you craving can be
measured.
See, the Bible is
very, very practical here. It’s not
talking about some far off theological abstraction; it’s talking about
something in every day conversation.
Verse 3 could be paraphrased: what’s the spirit behind your every day
conversation, that’s the point… that’s the point, and you can measure from
there. So verse 4 is an illustration. Solomon knows that most people in his day
worshiped the god of security and so here’s two tests that you might use to
apply verse 4 in your life: how do you seek security. In other words, there’s nothing wrong with
seeking the silver in verse 4, that’s not condemned, notice that; that is not
condemned, to seek the silver. What is
condemned is when you don’t seek wisdom as you do seeking the silver, that’s
the point. And so how would you seek
silver? It seems to me there are at
least two questions that would enter into one’s mind as you begin to seek and
compare how you seek security and financial security versus how you would seek
wisdom. The first thing that would
constantly enter into your mind is am I doing the wisest thing necessary to get
my money; am I being as efficient as I can in earning my money, or are there
better ways of earning my money. You men
who have businesses, you’re always asking yourself this: is there some way you
can eek out more profit out of your investment and this constantly becomes a
theme that you’re thinking of. There’s
nothing wrong with that.
The point the
Bible makes, however, don’t you ever think that way about the Word of God? Doesn’t the thought ever cross your mind,
men, during the week, do you think about the application of the Word of God in
your life as much as you think about making more profit in your business. That’s what verse 4 is saying. And what it’s
saying is that if you are really seeking wisdom you will ask yourself during
the week, as well as on Sunday morning, you will ask yourself: am I applying
the Word of God as thoroughly and consistently as I can in all areas of my
life. That’s what this means, “seek her
as silver, search for her as for hidden treasures.”
Another question
that would enter into the mind of persons seeking for money and security would
be you’re never satisfied with your existing salary; you always want a
raise. You’re always preparing for
more. You’re never satisfied with a
salary that you had three years ago, you always want a raise. There is nothing wrong with that, but what
this verse says, don’t you ever take that thought pattern and apply it to the
Word? Don’t you three years from now want
to be more wise than you are now? Don’t
you crave for spiritual growth? That’s
what Solomon is saying. “Search for her
as silver,” that’s the way you should search for it; he’s not condemning the
searching for silver; he’s saying just use that as an illustration of how you
should be searching for wisdom.
Then Proverbs 2:5
introduces a series of results. “Then
you shall understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God. [6] For the LORD gives wisdom; out of His
mouth comes knowledge and understanding.
[7] He lays up sound wisdom for the righteous; He is a shield to them
that walk uprightly, [8] He keeps the paths of judgment and preserves the way
of His saint.” Verse 5 means that a
reward that you will experience from this attitude, again, this is not
salvation, this is post-salvation growth.
Verse 5, “Then,” Christian, born again believer, if you will search for
wisdom, “then you will understand the fear of the LORD,” now what does that
mean. That means you will discern; the
word “understand” here means discern of see it.
For example, you
go out in your business or you go out in your home or you have a problem with
your sons or daughters or something and you obviously want to know God’s
will. This is a verse that promises
guidance. That’s what it’s saying; you
will be able to pick out where, and sense by your conscience applied with the
standards of the Word, you will have a sensitivity to where “the fear of God”
would dictate. Now you have to be
careful here; some have gotten the idea that God is going to tell you what color
necktie to wear in the morning or what color dress to put on and so forth. Now the little details of your life are left
to your own creativity. In Genesis 2
when God said to Adam, name all the animals, Adam didn’t say hey God, this
thing that’s got four legs on it, what do I call it. Adam didn’t work that way, did he? Adam generated the name himself; it was
Adam’s name. Adam creatively named the
animals and so God expects us to creatively handle the details of life. He
doesn’t expect us, God, do you want me to wear a green dress or a purple
dress. Those are little details and he
leaves it to our creativity as God did the naming of the animals. But that doesn’t mean that He doesn’t give
guidance in the big decisions or the significant ones. He’s willing to do that and that’s what this
verse means. You’ll discern the fear of
the Lord and you will find the knowledge of God.
[6] “For the LORD
gives wisdom; out of His mouth comes knowledge and understanding.” The word “mouth” is a word that refers to the
Bible. The Bible is the mouth of
God. We know this because in 2 Timothy
3:16, “All Scripture is God’s breath,” it’s what is breathed out by God, it is
associated with His mouth and so what this verse says is that God will give you
wisdom out of the Word. This means that
you don’t have to go to some crackpot to have your palm read, and you don’t
have to go to some other gyp artist or phony to have cards read or something
else. You’ve got all that you need in
the Word of God and so this says God will give it to you; He doesn’t give it to
you any other way. You can flap your
tongue at both ends and go through all the routines of the tongues crowd and
everything else and God is still not going to give you wisdom. This verse says God gives you wisdom from His
mouth and that mouth is the canon of Scripture, period over and out!
[7] “He lays up
sound wisdom for the righteous,” the word “lay up” means He treasures that, and
this is a fantastic promise for you as a believer. What verse 7 means is that God has invested
lots and lots of funds for your account ahead of time. This is a word that means to invest in the
ancient world. God has prepared for you
wisdom and how stupid to walk along in the Christian life and never cash in on
your inheritance. That’s what this is
saying. God has promised you wisdom.
What kind of wisdom do you suppose God has promised you? Think of how clever God is in history and you
watch this. You have some vexing
problem, you don’t know how to go from point A to point B in your life; you’ve
got a problem there. God says look, I
have laid up for you riches of wisdom that you can get hold of. You can’t get hold of them, however, unless
you satisfy the first four verses. But
satisfying those first four verses, craving after it, seeking it, then you will
learn it and you will develop this.
But it you stop
and think, I think of three examples of God’s wisdom in history, think of the
wisdom of how God engineered the cross. Satan thought he could get Christ on
the cross. But Paul tells us in 1
Corinthians 2 had he and his underlings really knew what was going to come off
he’d never have pulled off the crucifixion because God outsmarted Satan at the
cross. Satan tried it, God outmaneuvered
it. I think of two modern illustrations;
in the 19th century Hudson Taylor, with the China Inland Mission was
desperately in need of funds; some English businessmen gathered all they could
get together to send Hudson Taylor some funds and it wasn’t enough for Hudson
Taylor’s need but they sent it anyway.
And so it was on the boat, and it took a long time for the boat to go
from England to China but by the time the boat had gone through, all the way
around the African continent, all the way over to India, by that time, the time
between it left England and the time between it arrived in China, the
international balance of trade had shifted so that the funds increased in their
value, so that by the time the funds got to China they equaled perfectly Hudson
Taylor’s needs. Now there is an illustration
of how God was able, so to speak, to manipulate the entire international
currency to meet the need of Bible-believing believers in China at that
time.
The story is told
of Dallas Seminary, back in the 30s, during the depression, when a great, great
need was felt for funds and there were always bills laid around. And so the faculty got together in prayer;
Dr. Chafer was there, Dr. Ironside, and others, and they began to pray that God
would provide the money, the funds, and they were going around and finally
Ironside got up and said, Father, You own the cattle on a thousand hills, now
how about selling a few. Before the
prayer meeting ended somebody walked in with a check from a man who had sold
cattle in Fort Worth and it’s amazing to watch even God’s sense of humor the
way He answers these kinds of prayers.
So there you see
God answering prayer, fulfilling perfectly the needs. Now that is the kind of wisdom that is
promised in verse 7, “He lays up sound wisdom,” the word “sound wisdom” is not chakmah,
it’s tushiyah and this is the word in
the Hebrew which means that kind of wisdom I just illustrated to you, the
wisdom that is needed to get through the practical situations in life.
“He is a shield to
them that walk uprightly, [8] He keeps the paths of judgment, and preserves the
way of saints.” From the middle of verse
7 to the end of verse 8 deals with one common theme; a very much needed theme
in our own generation and that is the theme of mental stability under
pressure. You might ask, what is “shield
to them that walk uprightly” for? Those
that walk up rightly are those that are satisfying the conditions of verses
1-4, but what does it mean “He keeps the paths of judgment?” The word “judgment” mishpat in the Hebrew is the word that means decision. It can mean legal decision or just every day
decision in your life, so let’s just say every day decision. “keeping the decision” means “keeping the
paths of decision” means He will cause you not to panic in your decisions, so
that when Satan puts the heat on, the nutcracker technique, Satan will feed you
from human viewpoint here and here you are and on this side he’ll bring some
pressure in. So if you don’t yield to
his human viewpoint he’ll put enough pressure, deprivation of loved ones, perhaps
have a few friends say nasty remarks about you, it could be any kind of
pressure, whichever works well on you he’ll find it and will bring pressure in
and there you are, stuck between the two. And what’s the tendency? To foul up your decisions, to panic, to yield
to the pressure and make your decisions conform with human viewpoint.
And so what this
promise is in verse 8, “He keeps the paths of decision,” means he will keep you
from making stupid decisions under pressure.
That’s his point, and that’s why He is called in verse 7, “a shield to
them that walk uprightly,” the same kind of word used in Ephesians 6, the
shield wherewith we quench the fiery darts of the wicked one. God Himself is the shield, and therefore,
verse 8 at the end, “He preserves the way of His saints,” “the way of His
saints” would be the Christian life and preserving the way would mean He
preserves the Christian life from getting involved in all sorts of human
viewpoint decisions, etc. etc. etc.
What have we
seen? In Proverbs 2:5-8 we have seen the
promises that wisdom can do for your life; but verses 1-4 we have seen the
condition and it goes back to positive volition. It was easy to become a Christian, you accept
Christ as your all sufficient and only Savior; that decision is easy but after
you are regenerated you are placed into a new family with a new set of parents
and now you’ll be subject to a new ballgame and wisdom does not come
automatically. We’re not teaching sanctification by works; but we are saying
that without that burning zeal for this, and not just burning zeal at the end
of the sermon but burning zeal during the week, constantly at a consistent
basis, always keep in mind verse 4, the zeal in seeking wisdom as you would
have zeal in running your business, obtaining security, whatever, that zeal,
the consistency that’s like that. When that is satisfied in your life you will
begin to develop this wisdom and God will make Himself known to you in many
marvelous and wonderful ways.