Clough Proverbs Lesson 26
Hymn of Praise to Wisdom; Wisdom Learning &
Emotions – Proverbs 3:13-20
This morning we’re
back in Proverbs having finished the New Testament amplification for a section
of this chapter. Proverbs 3 deals with
the topic of exhorting to the divine viewpoint rather human viewpoint wisdom
and what this means in personal relationships.
So we have the contrast in this chapter between divine viewpoint and
human viewpoint wisdom. The main point
of this contrast between the two is that divine viewpoint wisdom involves a
personal relationship with God and human viewpoint wisdom is an impersonal
relationship with just a set of principles.
This differentiation of viewpoints is a necessary thing for you to be
aware of and to understand, otherwise you will interpret all the rest of this
book wrongly. In order for you to
understand exactly why Proverbs is saying the things it is saying it is
necessary for you to realize that ultimately involved here is our personal
relationship with God. Wisdom is skill
in the using of truth to His glory. And
therefore divine viewpoint wisdom ultimately is concerned with our personal
relationship with the Lord.
We have said over
and over again that in the first twelve verses of this chapter we have a series
of exhortations to loyalty to Jehovah; the theme over and over and over and
over again is loyalty to Jehovah; loyalty here, loyalty over here, loyalty in
some area, to stress so that you’ll never forget that the main issue is our
relationship with Him. Then in Proverbs
3:13-20 we have the passage interrupted by a hymn. The format of verses 13-20 is a hymn and this
particular hymn is a hymn of praise to wisdom.
This interrupts it because beginning in verse 21 the author returns to
the use of wisdom, its exultation, and applies it to personal
relationships. But before he is going to
apply it to the personal relationships in verse 20 he takes these verses to sing
a song in which wisdom is praised as one of the great attributes of God. In do doing I remind you once again that in
the Bible we have a solution to the problem of man knowing something, a
solution that is missing in every other system.
No philosophy, no religion has ever solved the problem of knowing; only
in the Bible do we have an all sufficient solution to this problem.
It looks like
this: God, man, and nature. In the Bible
knowing is a triangle; in all other systems of thought it’s always a straight
line. In other words, man knows nature;
how does he know nature. Well, he just somehow describes it with his
language. But how can he really be sure
that the categories of his brain fit the categories of nature—well, I don’t
know but they just seem to. In other
words, there’s no real basis for knowing outside of a vertical relationship
with God. This becomes very, very clear
when we deal with the very intricate problem of personal relationships, and
therefore in this chapter certain statements are going to be made about wisdom
that will give us confidence, give us assurance, give us encouragement to go on
and use this kind of wisdom in the most difficult area anything and that is
human relationships. Personal
relationships, human relationships, are the most complicated relations inside nature,
and therefore there’s going to be an argument starting in verse 13 and going
through verse 20 that the kind of wisdom that the Bible give is so correct and
fits so exactly the structure of creation that it will apply even to personal
relationships.
The Bible will
present a triangular thing, and here’s the way the Bible system looks. God knows nature because God makes
nature. God created! The Bible in Genesis says “God said, Let
there be” something, in other words, God planned it in His head first, as a
thought, as a thought that could be expressed in language. Then God did, He took that thought that was
described in language and He expressed it by a creative act, and when He was
finished He saw and said something about His creation. He looked upon it and was able to appreciate
it, able to enjoy it, because He could understand it. So therefore this relationship from God to
nature only exists, and I repeat, only
exists in a fundamentalistic literalistic Genesis, where God literally thinks
and God literally makes. If you have
some sort of evolution mixed in here it doesn’t work at all; the whole solution
just falls to the ground the minute you try to let a little evolution slip into
the discussion. If you keep it clear of
all evolutionary concepts and just have God thinking, God making, then we have
a personal God who speaks in language, who makes nature and therefore who knows
nature.
Why is this so
important? Because God also makes man
and God knows man too. God makes man in
His image and therefore both God and man share something in common and that
something is language. Both God and man
can speak; both God and man have absolutes; both God and man know. And since God has made man in God’s image and
shared with man language then the God who makes nature and known nature makes
man and He knows man and man can now know nature too. And therefore the Bible completes the problem
and solves it. But let me stress once
again, if you’re going to fudge with some sort an allegorical interpretation of
Genesis just to fit evolution into the system, then the whole system collapses
to the ground. I’m not arguing that for
this reason you believe the Bible, I’m simply saying don’t steal from the Bible
what belongs only to the Bible. If
you’re the kind of person that likes this but you don’t want to buy a little of
Genesis you’re being dishonest to steal from the Bible things that are only
fitting to the Bible. It’s the Bible
completely or the Bible not at all but don’t steal pieces from the Bible just to
fix up and prop up your own system. This
strictly belongs only to the Bible.
And when we deal
now with wisdom, we’re going to watch how this triangle comes out in this hymn
of wisdom. First Proverbs
“Blessed is the
man that finds wisdom, and gets understanding.”
Both of these verbs, “find” and “get,” are progressive; that means that
this is a habit, that means that the man spoken of in verse 13 is one who habitually,
daily, over and over is gaining wisdom and is gaining understanding. This is a kind of situation that occurs when
you have a mature believer taking in the Word of God systematically. Now beginning in verse 14 an analogy is
developed but you’ll never understand the analogy and the force of that analogy
unless you get first that verse 13 is talking about something that is not once
and for all; it is something that is habitual.
It refers to a believer who may encounter new situations each day. He comes into the situation, say from Monday
to Tuesday; he goes into a new situation on Tuesday, he has wisdom that he has
accumulated up to Monday. And he is
going to need new wisdom, new insight, to deal with the problem of Tuesday or
he will not have this kind of fulfillment of Christ in the heart. How is he going to get the necessary for
Tuesday? Try to live off the momentum of
Monday, or is he going to cope with Tuesday inside of Tuesday. Obviously the Bible says that he is to seek
wisdom that will be sufficient for Tuesday as well as for Monday. How is he going to do this? By maintaining the hunger attitude of
demanding wisdom and its’ that hungry attitude of daily demanding and seeking
wisdom that is exalted here in verses 14 and following.
The word
“understanding” is a synonym for wisdom.
The word “wisdom” is chakmah;
the best translation of it is skill, skill in living, which means that first
you have to have understanding from the Word of God. You have to have revelation; you’re not going
to get anywhere without revelation.
We’re not operating on somebody’s opinion, or some great thinker’s
philosophical system. We are operating
on the words of the living God who has revealed Himself to us. Starting with God’s revelation we next have
to progress to the point of digesting it and understanding it. To understand revelation, however, requires,
first, the illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit and practice. The Bible says both are required; you don’t
just sit and learn. Now you can sit and
learn certain principles but to get skill in the sense of what the word chakmah means, that doesn’t come by
sitting still; that comes by applying what you know to the situation to watch
how it works.
You often see this
in academic subjects. For example, take
mathematics. A person can sit down and
work through certain of the proofs, or read a book of mathematics, say plain
geometry, you start out with certain axioms, build certain theorems and you can
read through that book and say oh yeah, I understand those, I understand that,
I see how you get it. And you go into
advanced calculus and analysis and work with the theorems there, and say oh
yes, I get it by just reading the book.
But you really don’t; there’s not any real branch of mathematics that
you ever get by sitting just reading; you have to take a piece of paper and
work through the theorems to understand the steps required. Now that is a mental activity, but wisdom
here is a broader term than just mental practice, it means practice in any
area. You practice a musical instrument,
you practice thinking, you practice a skill, carpentry, plumbing, whatever it
is, always practice is required before chakmah
is attained. Now the Bible is simply
saying something here that should be obvious, and that is, it’s true in the
spiritual life. We are exposed to the
great truths of revelation but only as we put them into practice, on a daily
basis, on a systematic basis, applying the Word of God to every area, do we
become full of chakmah, and with the
acquisition of chakmah or skill we
are in the “blessed” state described here.
The synonym for chakmah, understanding, tebunah, emphasizes the same thing but
from the perspective of the conscience. tebunah is a word which emphasizes
discernment and here the emphasis is not so much on the skill but the emphasis
is upon the result of the skill, and that is the ability to distinguish divine
viewpoint and human viewpoint in every area of your life whether it’s in the
home, whether it’s on the job, whether it’s in some academic area, some place,
that requires skill. This truth is
repeated in Hebrews 5:14 where their “senses are exercised” by reason of use,
“to discern good and evil.” All right,
that is the blessing, verse 13: “Happy is the man who habitually seeks, claims
and finds chakmah, and the man that
habitually gets hold of” discernment, or “understanding.”
Now beginning in
Proverbs 3:14 we have the motive. And
in these series of motives we have some very powerful analogies that are worked
out for us. “For the merchandise of it
is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine
gold.” Now this is speaking of profit;
this is an economic analogy; an analogy that deals with the business world. And in verse 14 we have several problems, but
let’s solve the first one. One of the
things that is quite easy to see is that it’s answering the problem of profit
and investment. This is the same kind of
word that would be used if you were dealing with a problem, say if I would
invest $1200 at 6% compounded semi-annually then what will I have after five
years? It’s that kind of a problem, and
what you have is principal plus interest and the word interest is the same word
here as “merchandise.” The word
“merchandise” would be analogous to our word “interest” and it means the return
on an investment. This implies that
something has to be invested.
Now if you’re
going to invest your money in some sort of thing, obviously you don’t
necessarily have a lump sum to invest and you’re going to invest it
systematically, over, say many months, many years. What is called for, then, is a plan of
systematic investment. What happens if
you don’t have a plan of systematic investment?
The money never gets saved because something always comes up to take the
money, so you have to have a disciplined program of systematic investment,
otherwise you’ll never get an interest off of the investment because you never
make it.
Now it’s the same
thing in verse 14, “the profit of it is better than the profit of silver, and
the gain thereof than fine gold,” and this would imply that wisdom requires a
systematic investment too. You don’t
get this by just some [can’t understand word] or today I’ll put something away
and then I’ll forget about it for the next few years and then at the end of a
few years wonder why my savings account or my mutual funds aren’t doing better;
obviously because I haven’t put anything into them, that’s why. So here the “merchandise” means a systematic
attempt at investing in wisdom. How do
you systematically invest in wisdom?
First of all, you have to systematically learn the Word of God; you have
to organize the Word of God systematically in your mind, categorically in your
mind, on a daily basis. And you have to
systematically watch how you apply the Word in every area of life.
Then the second
problem in verse 14, besides the economic analogy, is the problem of “it,” why
is “it” a problem? Doesn’t it refer to wisdom?
Yes, it refers to wisdom. The
problem of “it” is whether it is an impersonal it or whether it’s personal, and
particularly female type. The noun, chakmah, is a female analogy; in other
words, this noun is feminine in gender but it has a female analogy behind it
with the believer. And it’s important to
capture this because that’s why Proverbs is taught this way. This was taught to young men and obviously
the way to get their attention was to talk about the girls. And so when the teachers taught wisdom they
used the analogy in a beautiful young lady and this analogy was deliberately
used, it was used in many places besides Israel as I’ll show you in a moment,
but the idea was that you have a relationship; the believer’s relationship to
wisdom as a man is related to his wife.
This relationship is the second divine institution. The second divine institution describes the
respective roles of the man and the woman, and in the second divine institution
the wife is the helper, [quote] in Genesis “suited for the man.”
Now how is the
wife in Genesis 2 suited for the man?
The wife is suited for the man who has first been given God’s plan. God gives Adam a plan for his life and He
says Adam, I want you to keep and till the Garden. Then after God has given the man the plan
for his life, afterwards, not before, afterwards, then the wife is brought in
to help him in that particular plan. And
this is how Adam recognizes Eve as his wife, as the girl that he should…
obviously numerically he didn’t have any problem, he didn’t have any choice. But the principle is that he recognized
something special about her because he first had in his mind what God wanted
him to do, and that he couldn’t attain what God wanted him to do without the
woman. The woman was necessary for the
work of God in his life. So by way of analogy this is developed in
Proverbs. The believer knows God’s
will. He knows that, but like Adam in
the Garden he can’t actually practice the will of God, attain the will of God,
finish out the will of God for his life, without a helper, and that helper is
wisdom.
So in the analogy
that is made, wisdom is reversed with the believer’s role. Why do I say reversed? Because in most places
in the New Testament the believer is pictured as a female and Christ as the
male. The believer is pictured as a
female because the female receives, and Christ is pictured as the male, as the
One who gives. And so the believer,
being grace dependent by faith, is always cast in the female role, except when
it comes to wisdom. Now here the role is
reversed. Here wisdom is cast in a
female role and the believer is cast in the male role. And so the man, the
believer in this case, is to gain wisdom.
And we’ll see as we go through this passage how this interpretation of
wisdom is carried out.
Now how can we justify “it” grammatically in verse 14 as feminine gender, it
could be either, as personal and feminine rather than just impersonal. The answer is found in verse 16 because there
the imagery of the hand, left and right, is made. This imagery teaches that a personal image is
behind chakmah; it’s not just an impersonal
word. So knowing that we can interpret
“it” in verse as “her,” and we should translate it then: “The merchandise of
her”or“the profit of her is better than the profit of silver.”
Proverbs 3:15,
“She,” continuing the personal analogy, “She is more precious than rubies; and
all the things thou can desire are not to be compared unto her.” The word “rubies” is actually the word coral
and it’s simply used in a very beautiful type of jewelry in the ancient world
which was red. And this is something
that is very beautiful, very attractive and verse 15 is simply describing that
that which is attractive in the life, this goes back to Proverbs 3:2-3 talking
about character building, how that the believer’s character is founded and
grounded on wisdom.
Proverbs 3:16,
“Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and
honor.” Now this turns out that verse 16
is a kind of imagery that was used in the ancient world, an imagery that we
find in archeology over and over. In
fact, the Ugaritic people had this kind of imagery and when [can’t understand
word] was dug up in 1929, a Syrian peasant was plowing his field one day and
his plow struck this tablet and people begin to dig where this plow had struck
this tablet and lo and behold, the tablet has writing on it and we discovered a
whole new language never known before, the language called Ugaric. Ugaritic is the actual full name of the
language; Ugaritic is somehow Hebrew written in cuneiform terms. And it’s a long story, a story that confirms
the Bible, incidentally, but on coding in one of these tablets is this picture
of a goddess and this is the way the goddesses would, so to speak, advertise
their products. This is an
advertisement; it’s an advertisement where she holds up what she has to
offer. Now this doesn’t literally mean,
according to the mentality of the ancient world, that they actually thought of
the goddess, necessarily, as a literal woman holding these things up. This is a method of art; this is an art from,
and it’s an advertisement for the character of the goddess.
Now that same kind
of imagery is pictured in verse 16.
“Length of days is in her right hand, and I her left hand riches and
honor.” It preserves this ancient Near
Eastern imagery of an advertisement, and she holds up long life and emphasized
in verse 16 is the physiological result of wisdom, also repeating verse 2
again, but the idea of you applying the Word of God systematically affects your
life physically. It means that your body
responds to the Word of God. Maybe
you’ve never thought of it that way before but your body can actually respond
in a magnificent way to the Word of God.
How? It responds through the
conscience in the mind and the emotions.
For example, a person takes in the Word of God, it’s in the mind, he
begins to develop a divine viewpoint framework.
The conscience is always evaluating your behavior by what it knows of
the divine viewpoint framework. So the
conscience is saying does your behavior standard match the standard of the Word
of God, and your conscience and your mind can be [not sure of word], as we’ve
seen over and over.
Now if a person is
seeking wisdom he will automatically be seeking to bring his life into
conformity with the Word of God. If he
does, the tension between the conscience and the mind is lowered. When the tension between the conscience and
the mind is lowered then the emotions keep in their proper place. Emotions obviously are connected to some very
important organs in your body; the adrenalin glands and so on, the various
hormones that are stimulated can tear your body to pieces because they are out
of control, and this is what happens to people who are on negative volition to
the Word of God and habitually their conscience and their mind are in
antagonism, their emotions are out of kilter and generally they live on the
basis of their emotions. It’s whatever
happens to please them at the moment; however somebody says something to them. This is a person that lives on the basis of
their emotions. And such a person is
generally quite miserable, often can be very high and their life is like a
yo-yo, up and down, over and over. One
day they are high, the next day they are low; the next day they’re high, the
next day they’re low, and it all depends on their emotions because that is the
criteria for their happiness.
Now this is what
happens to a person who is lacking chakmah. No skill, the person has no skill in coping
with the situation; a situation comes in, they fall apart with the result is
that all they’ve got is emotions. Now
this is why wisdom offers in her right hand length of days. That means that physical health is a
byproduct. Now don’t misinterpret
this. This is not a justification for a
lot of the weird claims that are made by all the divine healers and it’s God’s
will for you never to suffer, etc. etc. etc.
We’ve just repeated that from verses 11-12, but the point is made that
all other things being equal your body will be in far better shape with a
positive response to Bible doctrine than it will be by your deliberately
tearing yourself apart in your rejection and stubbornness against the
Word. So “Length of days is in her right
hand, and in her left hand riches and honor.”
Proverbs 3:17,
“Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” Now certain critics of the Bible have seized
on verse 17 to say aha, here we have a conflict in Proverbs 3 because it says
in verse 17, “Her ways are the ways of pleasantness,” and then it says in verse
5-6 that her ways are the ways of God.
Now here we have a split, the critics would tell us; a split between the
ways of wisdom and the ways of God, and therefore there’s a conflict and the
man who wrote the first part of Proverbs didn’t agree with the man who wrote
the last part of Proverbs. How do we
handle this? The answer is that this personification of wisdom cannot be
carried too far. The personification of
wisdom is a device to teach God’s wisdom and it is going to be associated with
the omniscience of God and coming up is a very vital passage where the
omniscience of God is made the core and source of all wisdom of man. So the
wisdom, the way of wisdom is [can’t understand word] because this particular
wisdom of verse 17 is not man’s wisdom, it is God’s wisdom.
Proverbs 3:18,
“She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her, and happy is every one
that retains her.” Now the words the
“tee of life” in verse 17 is always a symbol in God’s Word of grace. But it didn’t always refer to grace; originally
the “tree of life” simply meant sustain the creation. Later it came to mean grace, so we’re going
to stop with this verse for a moment and I want to take you through some
references in the Word of God and we’re going to study this imagery, “the tree of
life.”
I want to start
out in Genesis so let’s turn to Genesis 2:9.
The author of Proverbs presupposes we would understand what the tree of
life is and therefore we have to give you background so you’ll understand what
this expression means and how the audience to which Proverbs is written
understood it. Genesis 2:9, here is the
first occurrence of the tree of life.
“Out of the ground God had made to grow,” this is a pluperfect in verse
9; every once in a while some critic will say there’s a conflict in Genesis
between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 because in Genesis 1 the trees and the plants
are made first and then man, but here in verse 8 you have man made and then in
verse 9 you have the plants and the trees made, so there’s a conflict between
Genesis 2 and Genesis 1. The answer is
that the Hebrew tense in verse 9 is pluperfect and it simply means that out of
the ground God had made, this is giving the background. “God had made to grow every tree that is
pleasant to the sight, and good for food,” and then it says, “the tree of life
also in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil.” Now most of us have heard about
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and it’s very well known how Adam
and Eve ate of it. But how many have
ever understood the tree of life is also there in the Garden of Eden. The tree
of life was to sustain man before the fall and therefore at this point the tree
of life cannot refer to grace. Why? Grace doesn’t begin until after the
fall. Grace is love toward one who has
sinned and since no one has sinned before the fall we can’t have grace; you can
have love but you cannot have grace.
Therefore the tree of life originally does not refer to grace; it refers
to God’s sustaining love for His creation.
The picture is the Creator and the creature; the creature being
dependent upon the Creator.
Genesis 3:22,
after the fall what happens? In verse
22, “And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know
good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree
of life, and eat, and live forever, [23] Therefore the LORD God sent him forth
out of the garden of Eden, to till the ground from where was taken. [24] So He drove out the man; and He placed
at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned
every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” In other words, here originally it was a
source of sustenance; after the fall it was excluded; the human race was
excluded from the tree of life and therefore the only way the creature can now
be sustained is by grace. Man is
excluded from a free right he had originally by virtue of his creation to tap
in on the sustaining love of God. He is
cut off and the tree here is literal, it is a literal tree, don’t allegorize
this, it means nothing if you allegorize it, you can’t get anything, once you
begin allegorizing this [can’t understand word] I can read anything into it I
want to. The only way you can control
the interpretation is to say there was a tree there that was literal, that had
man eaten of the tree he could have attained immortality. This is why man was originally moved out of
the Garden; he was booted out because after he had fallen, if he had gone in to
eat of this he probably would have lived forever as a sinner. And this would have been sort of hell on
earth. So God actually, in mercy,
excluded the full access to the tree of life.
The point I’m
making here is that the fall, the tree of life now is something that is only
attainable by grace, so that eventually in history there will be another tree,
the cross of Jesus Christ which will take the sins of the world, your sins and
mine, upon Himself, they will be judged upon the cross, outside the city of
Jerusalem and when that is finished then man can enjoy the sustenance from the
tree of life; only by God’s grace. The
cross of Christ is an answer to the tree of life.
But that’s not
all; the Bible continues speaking of the tree of life and in Revelation 22:1-2
we are once again back to the tree of life.
Here, after evil has been purged from the universe, after the solution
has been made and finally accomplished, we have the tree of life returning back
to its original position and that is sustenance. “And he showed me a pure river of water of
life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the
Lamb. [2] In the midst of the street of
it, and on either side of the river, there was the tree of life, which bore
twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of
the tree were for the healing of the nations.
[3] And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the
Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve Him.” Unfortunately the tendency is for many
believers to think of the eternal state as one in which we are independent of
God. Because we have our resurrection
bodies we are now independent creatures; because we have our resurrection body
we now have all knowledge. But that’s
not the case. Don’t you see there’s a heresy
here in a lot of Christian thinking?
Tremendous heresy!
In the eternal
state we are still creatures and what does that mean? We are still dependent
upon the Lord moment by moment for sustaining.
Now this may come as a shock to some of you because you have confused
creature dependency with grace dependency.
The two are different. Originally
all creatures including Satan are dependent upon God for their existence by
virtue of creation. After the fall, we
[can’t understand word] in on the right to be sustained through the cross of
Christ and grace. Grace provides the
means but the net result of it all is still the tree of life. We are still dependent. Taken back to the simple picture of the
Garden of Eden it’s as simple as it was there; God has a tree, before the fall
everybody could walk up to the tree and eat, any time of the day or night;
after the fall man is excluded and can only reap the benefits of the tree as
God deems necessary. In other words, the
tree is no longer accessible except by grace.
Grace is not independent of creation; grace restores the original
creation situation. So the tree of life
came to mean, down through Israel’s history something more than just the
original tree in the Garden. It came to
mean the spruce of all life and that would include the physical life as well as
the spiritual life. The two are webbed
together under the analogy of the tree of life.
Now if you turn to
Proverbs 3 and this tree of life expression is applied to wisdom, we’ll be able
to understand that this is simply saying there will be prosperity in one’s
physical and spiritual life providing … providing certain conditions are
satisfied; there’s a catch in the agreement, there’s some fine print in the
contract so read carefully. The next
phrase is: “to them that lay hold upon her, and happy” or “blessed is every one
that retains her.” Both the verb to “lay
hold” and to “retain” are Hebrew participles.
Hebrew participles are continuous action; they can also be when used in
noun form the character of one marked by this kind of thing. So we have the character of the person.
Now what is the
character of this person to whom wisdom is the tree of life? It is a kind of a greedy person, actually,
the word there is a greedy grabbing, that means to hold on to something firmly
and solidly; it means to pursue after it with determination. Another expression of it would be in Proverbs
2:4, remember where it said “that you see for wisdom as silver, and search for
her as money,” there’s that same determination. What does that mean then? It means that this wisdom, this fulfillment
in the top floor of Christ in the heart, fulfillment, love, remember, divine
viewpoint framework and so on. That top
floor is only received by effort. Now
here’s where we have to be careful. The
Christian life is built on a grace principle, but grace never means zero
effort. Grace and works as motives are
distinguished in Scripture. But
remember, and this is why I have not said the faith-rest technique, I have said
the faith technique, because I want both parts of faith to be here; faith is
doing and faith is resting. Abraham did
certain things while he was believing, didn’t he? Didn’t he physically move out of Ur while he
was believing? Sure he did. Was Abraham resting? Yes he was, because he knew even though he
moved geographically he still couldn’t attain the promise of God unless God did
a miracle. But nevertheless, Abraham
just didn’t sit and cruise in his summer palace in Ur while he was waiting for
God to drop grace in his lap. God, in
grace, provided Abraham a means of doing and Abraham still did.
And so in Proverbs
3:18 the tree of life is available to certain believers. Remember all of Proverbs is written to
believers; what kind of believers?
Believers that have strong positive volition, that’s what. And positive
volition that will not turn away from problems.
I’ve drawn this illustration before, I’ll draw it again; certain ways
that we all have of solving problems.
One way is to hit the problem and go around it, like a block in a
football game. Another way is to come up
to the problem and say well, that’s not really my problem, my problem is over
here and so I’ll solve that problem, and that’s just a decoy. [short blank spot in tape]
… and so as long
as you’re solving this problem, this problem will never be solved. And then we have another way, somebody coming
up and then turning around like this, complete fade out. And these are all gimmicks and devices that
we all use each day of our lives when we are faced with a problem.
Now the person who
grasps wisdom and lays hold upon wisdom in this clutching way is the kind of
person that will see a problem and will not know what to do with it. They will be just as confused as all these three. Let’s take three believers here; believer
one, believer two, believer three, and all these three believers are confused;
all these three believers face the same problem; all those believers are
frustrated, all those believers are maybe angry at the moment and all these
believers do something that dishonors the Lord, and all of those three
believers never get wisdom. Why? Because
they never try it out; you’ll never know it unless you try it. And so these believers are chicken to try
what they know to be the Word of God.
Now here’s a believer that comes up to his problem and he’s just as
confused as the other believers.
Believer four, this is the one described in verse 18 as grasping onto
wisdom.
In other words,
this believer is grasping so hard to wisdom that instead of bypassing a problem
they’re going to have the guts to go through the problem, just like that. And that’s what’s going to happen to the
problem. And out on the other side of
the problem, do you know what’s going to be an added blessing. That person will have gained the experience
in using the Word of God to solve something and that experience cannot be
communicated to you by any pastor, by any teacher, or anybody else. That kind of wisdom you only get one way;
taking the Word of God through your problems over onto the other side and when
you get on the other side you’ve got it; nobody can do it for you. I can’t do it for you; the person sitting
next to you can’t do it for you. No
matter what the problem may be in your life as a believer, there’ll never be a
problem that wisdom can’t handle. And if
you’re going to be the clutching, grasping kind of believer you will grasp
wisdom harder than you’ll grasp your fear of meeting the problem.
So for example,
take these believers; say believer number one, what happens? Believer number one, that’s what happens
holding “W,” he’s holding wisdom. So
he’s has wisdom, as it were, in his hand; so he comes up to his problem and
he’s a little chicken to apply the Word of God to the problem; it’s easier to
bypass it. So what happens? Boom, he drops wisdom and goes around the
problem. Same thing with believer two;
he comes up with wisdom in his hand, but he doesn’t do anything with it; gee, I
don’t want to really tackle it the Lord’s way, this might involve a hurt to my
pride; this may involve something else, I won’t do it that way, I’ll fake it
and I’ll really struggle with this problem over here, [can’t understand words]
problem. And then the third believer
walks up and he has wisdom in his hand, and he drops it. So you have wisdom dropped here, wisdom
dropped here, wisdom dropped here; believer four has wisdom in his hand and he
has got enough confidence in the framework of wisdom given in Scripture that
there must be a solution to this problem and I’m going to slug it out on God’s
basis. It may take me some time but I am
not going to get in this habit pattern of chickening out when it comes to a
problem; I’m going to go through it the Lord’s way.
Now every group of believers is going to have this problem and every group of
believers is going to face situations where they’re going to have to apply the
Word and go through the problem. I just
want to share a little problem that I see cropping up in our own congregation
and I want to fill you out before it gets any further along and further
developed and that problem is the problem that every church has; it’s unique to
Lubbock Bible Church but it’s the problem that we can try solution number one,
number two and number three to and get away with it; but if we try all these
three solutions and get away with it we still won’t have grown. If we’re going to be honoring to the Lord
we’re going to have to go through the problem the way the Lord says and on the
other side you’ll have the claim to wisdom.
What is this
problem I refer to? It’s the problem of
differentiation in growth rates. Let’s
look at it for a moment. I have to be
careful how I present this or I’m going to misrepresent what the problem
is. But let me just say we have many people
in all age levels in this congregation who are growing like weeds,
tremendously, fantastically. So what I have to say is not a categorization of
any particular age groups. But in
certain circles where we have fellowship I’ve noticed something happen; I’ve
noticed this in the Wednesday night fellowship; I’ve noticed it in the women’s
groups; I’ve noticed it in the men’s groups.
I’ve noticed it in our prayer groups.
And here’s what happens, and this has happened before so let’s see if we
can go through the problem and not around it.
We’ll have a group
of younger believers, and both sides must watch what’s happening here. We have
a group of older believers and they begin to have fellowship one with another,
and then they begin to notice a few problems crop up. Again, keep in mind, there are two other ways
of solving the problem, bypassing it; the only God-honoring way is to solve the
problem. Now the tendency is, and has been,
that in some of these groups that I have mentioned, the four areas that I have
noticed this, we have younger believers who… some of whom, now there are some
younger believers that are out of it, but there are some who are strongly on
positive volition, who want more than anything else to know the will of God,
who will make sacrifice to get that information, who go out of their way to
seek information from the Word, and go out of their way to seek information on
how to apply the Word of God in situations.
Then we have a lot of older believers and we have some of them on
negative volition….
[Tape turns] … now
that is a defeatist attitude. Let me
just first work on this attitude and then I’ll show you a bad attitude that
develops down here too. This attitude
would say that it is impossible for me to grow spiritually as fast as they can,
they have more time to devote to this, I’ve got all the responsibilities in my
business, all the responsibilities in my home, these kids have more time on
their hands than I do. I thought that
would be a legitimate explanation but just for the heck of it I investigated
some of the schedules of some of the people that the old people said had all
this time. One particular person after
going to Wednesday night prayer group goes to a job and works until 2:00 o’clock
in the morning and has to get up for a 6:00 o’clock class. Can it be that he has more time than
somebody else? No, that’s not true, so I
don’t buy the excuse that more time is available. Time is not the reason. The attitude is the reason; these are just
excuses. Isn’t it really, when you get
down to it in certain of these circles an attitude; an attitude of passivity
that I am hopeless and that they’ve got all the opportunities. Now I know where this attitude comes from and
you know where it comes from, don’t you?
It comes from the American culture; ours is a youth centered culture and
the youth have all these opportunities and so on, and we don’t, and this has
rubbed off in our Christian thinking.
Just look at the
word Paul says about this in Titus; Titus is another person that approximates
Proverbs and wisdom and how to handle a situation. Paul sees the same thing on the island of
Crete. In Titus 2:1 he gives
instructions to a pastor that faced this very problem and in these instructions
he’s pinpointed it exactly, how this attitude can arise among older
people. It says in Titus 2:1, “Speak
thou the things which become sound doctrine; [2] That the aged men be sober,
grave, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience.” But the first three words are all words that
are directed against the danger of passivity.
For example, “be sober.” What is it the opposite of? Letting go mentally, just saying I don’t
know, I don’t understand it, I’m too old to learn—forget it! Now Paul said Titus, watch it, because you’re
going to have older believers that are going to develop that mental
attitude. Cut it off, they are to be
alert and there’s no reason if they’re indwelt by the Holy Spirit they can’t
learn like anyone else. Why does God the Holy Spirit indwell every believer,
not just believers under 17? Go has
indwelled every believer. Why? To teach.
W
hat else? “Be sober and be grave, and be
temperate.” The word “temperate” means
to be patient. The older believer does
have a harder problem; do you know why he has a harder problem? Because he has a backlog of
responsibility. An older person is more
fixed in life; that is true and for him to progress an inch in life compared to
an inch down here requires far more adjustments because of the backlog of
responsibility. That is correct. BUT, cursing is always turned to blessing in
God’s Word so when the older person, the older believer involved in more
responsibility moves an inch in the Christian life he also, because it’s harder
for him to move an inch, at the other end of the problem has far more wisdom
after he’s moved his inch than the young person in moving his inch, because
it’s taken a lot more for the older believer to move an inch. But when he gets through moving his inch he’s
got a lot more wisdom that a younger person because he’s had to cope with a lot
more things.
So the Word of God
doesn’t allow us to have this attitude.
I mention this because there’s definite evidences in every group that we
have; now this is not serious, as I said, it’s not serious yet but here’s what
I’m trying to cut off; he gets a bad attitude developing that’s defeatist, or
passive, or in some cases might be due to pride, I don’t want to try because I
might not appear as good as the younger person. Don’t worry about it; if you
fall flat on your face the Lord picks you up just like everybody else. Don’t let pride get in the way. But here’s what happens; the young person
sees this, and we’ve already had in past years a few depart because I didn’t go
along with this concept, and that is the heck with it, we’re not going to wait
for the older people, we’ve got our spiritual battles to fight and we’re just
going to go on and fight them and we’re going to prepare the way we want to
prepare, period, over and out, and to hell with the older people. Now is that the attitude described in Titus
2? That doesn’t fit the New Testament either.
Paul doesn’t say to Titus, look, you take all the young people and make
one church for them, take all your older people and make one church for
them. Is that what he says in Titus
2? Huh-un; he says you work through
this.
For example, in
Titus 2:3-4, he talks about the area of the women; “The aged women likewise,
that they be in behavior as becomes holiness, and not false accusers, not given
to much wine, [teachers of good things,] [4] “That they may teach the young
women to be sober, to love their husbands, and to love their children.” You look at verse 4 and you say oh, how
mundane, how plain can you be? Because
it goes back to wisdom; let’s look at it.
Wisdom honors creation first, then redemption, and whatever you claim as
spirituality down here, ultimately must always be channeled through the
creation ordinances. And if we’re really
experiencing growth and sanctification it will always glorify the divine institutions
of family and marriage and nation; God will always use sanctification to
support His original created design. And when you begin to see a kind of
situation develop where the younger people will develop the tendency, we’re not
going to wait for them, they had their chance, we’re going our own way, you’re
having a violation of the channels of authority from creation, and that is not
the work of the Holy Spirit.
So what I am
saying by way of final application to those who would hold onto wisdom in the
middle of a problem and in particular in this problem in our congregation, is
that the older people must awake who are in this, not all of them are, this is
not a blanket assumption, be careful, but those where… [small blank spot]
I know many who
refuse to take positions of leadership in this church and I’ve asked them and
they have actually refused to take leadership positions because they’re waiting
for an older person to take it. You
might not believe this but that’s the truth.
Why are they doing that? Because they know enough of the Word to know
that they aren’t equipped to handle it either.
So there’s a great deal to be said for wiping out this defeatist
attitude; it’s not Scriptural and if it persists then young people develop this
I’ll go it alone. Do you know who would
be interested in exploiting this? Satan,
and it’s a perfect place where Lubbock Congregation is open to a satanic
attack. And every time you as an
individual go back to this kind of a thing where you get out of it by number
one, number two, number three, you are simply setting in motion behavior
patterns that later on Satan can use to split.
I don’t mean, necessarily, a church split but I mean just spiritually,
where you reach a plain of growth and can grow no further and can go no further
because the Holy Spirit wants unity and He wants the institutions
respected. And he wants both sides to
grow together and they can’t grow independently.
Let’s go back to
Proverbs 3:19-20 and finish the section, the final motivation for the blessing
upon the man who would seek and praise wisdom.
“The LORD by wisdom has founded the earth; by understanding has He
established the heavens. [20] By His
knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew.” Both verses 19 and 20 deal with His creation
again and show that the reason why the man is blessed is because the wisdom
taught in Scripture dates from creation, and what do our learning in all areas
in the Word of God have to do with you are built. Let’s take one simple illustration. All the
Bible’s instructions on sex, that sound so out of it, when we get to these
instructions… I’m slowly accumulating in my office references from medical
works where it is now being discovered that if you follow the instructions the
Bible gives you, those instructions parallel your anatomy, and parallel the
physical world. And that where you
violate the Scriptural principles in this area, promiscuity and otherwise, you
have serious physiological reactions that are only now beginning to be discovered. Why do you suppose that is? Do you know why it is? The same God is teaching us this is the same
God who made us that way. And this is
why it says, “The LORD by wisdom has founded,” in other words, the same wisdom
that you’re trying to learn, it’s by that same wisdom that He founded the
earth; by that same understanding He established the heavens.
And then finally,
verse 20, how man is sustained in history; “By His knowledge the deeps are
broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew.”
The first part of verse 20 refers to pre-flood irrigation; before the
flood of Noah there was no rain, Genesis 2:5 and during that time period in
history God warmed the face of the earth in some way, not well understood, and
of course persisting down, in the present Middle East water still from artesian
sources and so on occur. And then the
clouds drop down the dew, it’s not dew and it’s not a conflict in
Scripture. The word “dew” can be
translated small water particles and it just refers to light rain. The clouds drop down rain, and so it refers
here to the post-flood; after the flood of Noah you have the rainbow, the
beginning of rain and the post-flood economy and so this is the second way the
earth is sustained. Why verses 19 and
20? Verse 19 is wisdom in creation,
verse 20 is wisdom in the sustenance under Proverbs. So both 19 and 20 refer to how we are built
and how we run.
Next week we’ll
begin with verse 21 applying all of this to the problem of personal
relationship.