Clough Proverbs Lesson 28
Parental Wisdom and Authority – Proverbs 4:1-9
Today we begin a
new section toward the end of the first 9 chapters of Proverbs. These nine introductory chapters are chapters
in the book that are basically exhortation or encouragement to gain and
appropriate wisdom in experience.
Proverbs 10 to the end of the book is actual wisdom; the first 9
chapters deal with an exhortation to get it.
And these sections of exhortation follow an interesting sequence. The first chapter was addressed to the young
people and dealt with the problem of gaining their attention. So the Proverbs 1:8-19 was an exhortation to
avoid the wrong crowd and this obviously deals with something very much on the
mind of young people, and that is what are my buddies going to think about
it. This is the uppermost question in a
lot of young people’s minds; before they will consider whether 2 + 2 is 4 or
not we have to get permission from our buddies.
And because of this mentality the book of Proverbs very realistically
points this out and shows that until you make the break or are willing to make
the break with what your buddies think, you are not prepared to understand,
receive and use truth.
And then in
Proverbs 1:20-33 we have an exhortation to seek wisdom now, the idea being that
if you don’t the day of opportunity will pass and the nation itself can
collapse as a result of its citizens rejecting wisdom. In Proverbs 2 the whole chapter dealt with a
reminder of the divine viewpoint framework of wisdom. The idea was that wisdom is built on
something, it is not just a set of pragmatic rules but is built and tied into
the structure of the universe, how the universe is made. Then Proverbs 3 was an exhortation to a
certain kind of wisdom, divine viewpoint wisdom or wisdom that is personal,
that flows out of a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And that is contrasted with human viewpoint
wisdom that was impersonal and is just simply my relationship with nothing more
than a computer program.
Now in Proverbs 4
through chapter 5, these two chapters together emphasize or exhort the exercise
of wisdom in and through the family.
Both of these chapters give extensive background, not only on wisdom but
also on the mechanics of the family institution, though more detailed
instructions on the family as such will occur later on. These instructions are given beginning in
chapter 4 and they continue in a series of sections through the end of chapter
5. We will take only a small section of
chapter 4 this morning, verses 1-9. All
of these sections in these two chapters can be noted by the fact of how they
begin. For example, Proverbs 4:1, “Hear,
ye children, the instruction of a father.”
Verse 10, “Hear, o my son, and receive my sayings.” Verse 20, “My son, attend to my words.” Proverbs 5:1, “My son, attend unto my
wisdom,” and so forth. So each section
is prefaced with “my son,” and this is one of the criteria we use to break
these sections down.
Beginning in
Proverbs 4:1, “My children,” or “my sons” literally, so a family is
addressed. And as always we have to go
back to this third divine institution.
There are three that we have studied; the first one is volition or responsibility;
the second one is marriage; the third one is family. And in spite of the sociologists, marriage
and family are here to stay, simply because they are part and parcel of the way
people are made. And this stuff that you
hear about in sociology class by some pimply faced individual, a self-appointed
expert who is going to tell us that trial marriages are in or something else,
he knows nothing more about the structure of the universe than this, these
people are obviously proponents of a tremendously anti-biblical position. And both the second and third divine
institutions are under severe attack today. They are not only severe attack in
the divorce courts, they are under severe attack in the academic circles, they
are under severe attack in certain areas of the hippie land and what have you.
So these
institutions come under severe attack and it behooves us as Bible-believing
Christian to be able to say not only they are there and immutable but why they
are there and why they are immutable. It
goes back to the doctrine of creation. God has made His creation a certain way so
that God, man and nature are in a triangle.
God has made nature and He has designed nature and He has designed
man. Man is made in the image of God,
which means man shares language with God, so there’s a two-way communication
going on between God and man. This is
the justification for science; you have God, who has made nature, rationally,
and God who has revealed to man the framework in which He has made nature. And man, therefore, as part of the image of
God can therefore study nature. Man can
study nature only because God has first designed it to be understood by a
rational creature. This includes man
himself and the structure of man.
So when we study
these verses one by one watch out for observations that are made about the
mechanics of the family. What is made
here is a series of revelation about how families are designed and how they
work. Proverbs 4:1, “Hear, ye children,
the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding;” both are
imperatives; it is a command, a command of a father to the children. The third divine institution here, then, is
the basis of authority. And this will
come out very strongly in Proverbs 4.
Logically the basis of all authority is God…logically. But chronologically, that is in your
experience, the first encounter you have with authority is in the home, so that
family becomes the center of authority and this is why the highest authority in
existence, God, is ultimately not called the King. The second personality of the Trinity is
called the King; but isn’t it interesting that the first personality is called
the Father. Why is the first personality
called the Father and the second the King.
If “King” is a description of ultimate authority wouldn’t you expect the
first personality should be called the King?
But He isn’t. He is called
“Father.” Therefore, arguing that in the
biblical view “Father” is the ultimate title of all authority.
To see how this
worked out turn back to Genesis 4:1 and here we have the first family
functioning. “And Adam knew Eve his
wife; and she conceived, and bore Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the
LORD. [2] And she again bore his
brother, Abel. And Abel was a keeper of the sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the
ground.” So you have the first family
beginning to operate. Now, had not the
fall occurred you would not have had death.
If you would not have had death you would have had Adam and Eve, you
would have had Abel, Cain, and on down, all men would be a member of this
family; and who would be the father above all? Adam. Who would therefore be the authority?
Adam. So just because the fall has come
and has destroyed the top most parts of this family as time goes on, still the
structure must be visible from the original creation narrative and that is that
Adam ultimately is the authority. There
is no other authority except him; he is the authority.
So we have
authority in the third divine institution.
Authority precedes government.
Government, in the sense of judicial power, is not brought unto the
earth until after the flood. But in one
sense government was here before the flood, in that the patriarchs, or the
fathers, governed their families. So we
will most likely refer in the future to the fourth divine institution not as
government because government would imply authority began after the flood; we
will use the word “judicial power” because after the flood man was given the
power to execute physical force upon other men.
Here you have the justification for war; here you have the justification
for a military, something that no one likes.
No one likes war but the Bible says that war is a necessary teacher and
it can be a sin for a country not to fight a war if it is God’s will for it to
fight a way. A war that is just it is a
sin and unjust not to fight it. So with
that we will depart from the problem of the military and move back to the
family.
The family is the
source of authority. This means, by
virtue of creation, that if the family falls apart all authority is going to
fall apart including government that is built upon the family. This is something that we suffer from as a
nation today. That is, when the third
divine institution goes authority goes; when authority goes all other authority
goes, including the authority of the teacher in the classroom, including the
authority of the coach on the field, including the authority of the policeman,
including the authority of civil officials.
All authority is gone because the authority was not first established in
the home.
So when we come to
the divine institution of family we are involved in a very fundamental thing
and God, the First Person of the Trinity is named after the third divine
institution, “Father.” In Ephesians
Now let’s turn
back to Proverbs 4. Now we can
understand why education comes out of the family, not out of the state. This also teaches us, incidentally something
about the difference or the similarity between the Creator and the
creation. When God made the creation He
made it with a certain structure so that we could take parts of that structure
and learn about our Creator. Look at
this for a moment. One part of creation
is the family, obviously the father, part of the family. This means that God has designed the
creation, in particular human society, with a certain divine institution which
reveals His character. The family
actually, in its ideal form, is a revelation of what God is like, so that it
should not be hard for any individual born on the face of this earth to think
about something that is true of God’s character. If any person can conceive of an ideal father
he has conceived of God. God is not a
mystery that is totally unknowable to the creation. God has made the creation to fit what He
Himself is like, so that by study of the creation we can turn around and say oh
yes, I know what God is like, God is like this, this, this, this and this. Why?
Because God made this, this, this, this and this for exactly the
analogy. In other words, truth about God
is analogical. Here you have a truth
about God; here you have a truth about creation, and the two fit together. The creation fits with the Creator.
Further on in
verse 1, “Hear, ye children, the instruction of father,” the role of the father
is to give instruction and instruction here is the Hebrew word musar, which would mean severe training. It doesn’t have to always be severe but if
necessary it will be severe which shows, therefore, the father is not in the
business of making friends and influencing people. The father is in the business of training,
primarily, and if his children love him that is fine, but that’s not the
objective of the father. The father’s
objective is not to have his children love him.
The father’s objective is to train his children in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord, and if his children love him fine, if they don’t fine,
but his job is to teach.
So the father’s
role is to teach. Now the fathers in
So in verse 1 we
find not only the family in his office, we find the father in his training, and
hence it was not unexpected but in the previous chapter we encountered Hebrews
12 where God the Father involved believers in a severe form of training; it’s
the same word, severe training.
“…and attend to
know understanding.” The word “attend”
means to give attention and this shows you that no true learning can occur if
you don’t have the attention of certain people.
This is why this business that goes on in Christian circles, every time
somebody says something somebody pops up with an amen… I was recently speaking
at situation where every other word I dropped out of the side of my mouth,
somebody said amen, and had that gone on about five more minutes I would have
stopped what I was saying and told them to shut up and stop being so rude. But this is the highest form of rudeness in
Christian circles, to interrupt a speaker with an amen. That is rude; that isn’t Christianity and it
isn’t spirituality; it’s just rudeness.
And not only is it rude to the speaker it’s rude to everyone else. How can somebody sit in a pew and try to
concentrate with some character flapping his mouth with amen. You know how disturbing that is, you can’t
concentrate with somebody in front of you saying amen, amen, amen, amen going
on half the time. That obviously is a violation of learning principles.
And here it is to
“attend to know understanding,” it means you have to give intense concentration
to it. It also shows by the order here,
“Hear, children, the instruction of a father, and attend” means that certain
discipline precedes learning, that you cannot learn until you have the
discipline to pay attention and therefore some people are never going to learn
anything because they’ve never got the discipline down to pay attention for
more than two minutes. I obviously know
where this comes from; it comes from operation boob-tube where we’re
entertained and if you have to concentrate more than ten minutes that’s all
right, they have an advertising for Fritos or something to give you a break in
your concentration, and then fifteen minutes later it’s interrupted with
something else. And then when you have a
situation where you have to really sit down and pray or sit down and learn the
Word of God and there’s no commercial every five minutes you’re absolutely
lost, you just don’t have that break.
And you’re trained to break your concentration after every five or ten
minutes. This means to give habitual
concentrated attention and this is the secret of learning, of course.
“Hear, ye
children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding.” The word “understanding” biynah, and it means discernment. It means to see the difference between what
is right, what is wrong, what is true and what is false, emphasis on the
discernment, emphasis on the separation of those two categories and being able
to encounter ideas in your own head and in the heads of other people and being
able to pull them apart into these two categories, what is right and what is
wrong.
Proverbs 4:2, “For
I give you good doctrine; forsake ye not my law.” The doctrine here… the word for doctrine
looks like this in the Hebrew, leqach,
it comes from the word that means to receive.
And this verb emphasizes something fundamental to this passage, it’s a
word to receive, it means that this is teaching that is received and it points
to authority of tradition. Now this I
know is just deliberately going to grate some of you but this is what the Bible
is claiming in Proverbs 4, something that just goes against everything you’ve
been trained by the school system to believe, and that is the authority of
tradition. Three generations are represented
in these verses because in verse 1 it says “Hear, ye children, the instruction
of a father.” Verse 3, “I was my
father’s son,” verse 4, “He taught me….”
So three generations are present, the grown father, the father, and the
son and you have the transmission of truth down through three generations. And so there’s a conservativeness of family
tradition.
All… and this is a
hard, hard statement, but do you realize that in spite of the 20th
century that all basic learning is by tradition. Example: language. You cannot learn a language unless there’s
another human being there to teach you and you have inherited the tradition of
the one who taught you to speak; you have inherited the tradition, not only of
pronunciation but you have inherited the tradition of the way he thinks. Language flows with the kind of thinking
someone does. For example, in Genesis 11
when the nations are divided between Shem, Ham and Japheth, we have the
linguistic diversification so that you can trace down through history three
distinct ways mankind thinks. All those
populations think differently and they think differently because their
languages are different. So if you come
out of one family learning one language and somebody else comes out of another
family having learned another language, you two will not think exactly alike;
you have inherited not only a language, you have inherited a vocabulary and
therefore thought concepts. So the basic
tool of all learning, language, is tradition, you don’t invent it yourself, you
inherit it totally from your parents or whoever it was that taught you
language.
You also inherit
history; history is a result of tradition and since history is the result of
tradition then revelation is also a result of tradition. Revelation is not something
new that science discovers every generation; it is something that is passed
from father to son, father to son, father to son. It is tradition, and it is a basic operation
of tradition. The basic tools of how to
accomplish civilization are results of tradition. Without going any further we can say that
this idea of the father in verse 2 giving good doctrine and therefore the son
should listen to it, is that the father gives tradition to his son and the son
gives tradition to their sons. Tradition is passed and is the foundation of
learning.
It says, “For I
give you good doctrine; forsake ye not my torah,” or instruction or
guidance. “For I was my father’s son,
tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother.” Solomon, in his family, “I was my father’s
son,” the emphasis is on the second generation and by saying that “I was my
father’s son” with “for,” verse 3 begins with “for,” there is a reason why
verse 1 should occur. Why should the
hearers of the book of Proverbs listen to Solomon? Because what I give you I was taught by my
father. Therefore isn’t this arguing
that one reason for someone accepting the truth of this is because my father
taught it to me. Now that sounds very
vanilla and very bland compared to the way we usually learn things in our own
generation, but this is a fundamental rule of learning. You learn all basic things by tradition. Each generation adds to the tradition only
that much; sad to say our own generation has added nothing, it has mostly
destroyed the tradition but has added very little in our generation.
But each
generation of mankind was to add this.
Let’s go back to Adam; we have the whole human race coming out of Adam,
each generation was to subdue the earth and each generation was to add to
wisdom, so the first generation had that much, the second generation that much,
and you have an expanding area of knowledge.
Now let’s take the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth
generations. Suppose we are in the sixth
generation from Adam; now suppose we come along with some sort of a rebel here
on negative volition and he isn’t going to learn any of the tradition of his
fathers. This means that all of this is
missing and rejected by the rebel of the sixth generation; it means that the
rebel of the sixth generation turns his back on a tremendous reservoir of truth
that has been accumulated by hundreds of years of experience. By turning his back on this reservoir of
truth, and here obviously the works of God that these generations have seen,
all that goes out the window and here is the rebel who is going to learn it
completely on his own. And what
happens? In one lifetime he can learn
about that much. So what has he
done? He has replaced a tremendous
reservoir of truth with a little piddly amount that he has come out with. This is the danger of overthrowing
tradition. Tradition is a powerful tool
of understanding and it is a fundamental one of Scripture, and that’s why verse
3 begins with “for.” You listen to me
because, this is family tradition.
Proverbs 4:4, “He
taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words; keep my
commandments, and live.” Now the word,
“keep my commandments and live,” this expression, refers to this concept of
life that we have seen over and over and over again. It is the idea that in the Bible there are
degrees of life. On the first hand
there’s the obvious physical life, breathing.
The second form of life, the next higher level of life would be
God-consciousness; when the person realizes, as a growing infant, there’s such
a thing as a right and a wrong, he enters into a new area of life. The third time there is an expanse in the
area of life is when the person hears the gospel and responds. And then the fourth time is when the person
becomes a mature believer. And so you
have degrees of life and keeping “my commandments” means each one of
these. Obviously “keeping my
commandments” would include the gospel.
Who is to do the evangelizing of the family? Obviously the parents.
Child evangelism
and other organizations have been raised up to handle children of non-Christian
homes… non-Christian homes. And yet what do we find? We find Christian parent after Christian
parent trotting off their little kid off to a CEF [Child Evangelism Fellowship]
meeting some place because they are too lazy or incompetent to teach the word
to their own children. Child Evangelism
should be focusing on the children of the non-Christian homes, but they have to
diddle around with all the children of Christians because the Christians are
too lazy to do it themselves, or incompetent to do it themselves. Of course, this is a violation of the third
divine institution and you have it right here; these commandments are to be
given in the home and those commandments include the gospel. And if the parents
can’t lead their own children to Christ there is something sadly wrong. Fortunately it hasn’t happened too often
since I’ve become pastor but once in a while someone will come in and say could
you talk to my son about Christ. No I can’t. Why?
Because that’s your job. I’m not
going to talk to you son about Christ, I’ll talk to you on how to tell him but
I’m not going to do it, that is the parent’s job, it’s not my job. I’ve got plenty of things to do besides
trotting around talking about Christ to the kids; it’s not my job as pastor, my
job is to train the parents so they do it.
I’m not going to do it and every once in a while I get ruffled feathers
about it. Too bad, that’s the way the
third divine institution works and I intend to work the way Scripture
works. So the authority fits in with the
father and the mother.
Another little
notice that is often overlooked, back in verse 3 we have the mother
mentioned. It’s most interesting that
she is mentioned because in verse 4 she is dropped out of the text. Why?
The solution comes by what is said of the father and the mother in verse
3. “I was my father’s son,” there’s the
authority line, here you have the father and his genetic relationship is
mentioned, he is the son. But then when
he talks about his relationship to his mother it says he was “tender and
beloved in his mother’s sight.” So you
have the mother here, she loves her son very much, and here’s a principle in
the home; the mother cannot teach the child the Word of God unless she has the
authority of the father. In other words,
the mother may be actually the one who does the teaching but the father has to
back her up with his authority. She
can’t operate in an environment without his authority. So this is why even in verse 4, though the
mother and the father are meant, because they’re both mentioned in verse 3,
when it comes to verse 4 it’s male, he does the teaching. This doesn’t mean that he has to do all the
teaching but it does mean that the mother may love her son very dearly but the
mother isn’t going to accomplish beans with her son unless she operates within
a framework of the father’s authority.
If the husband can’t give her the backup and can’t give her the authority
of her children there’s very little a mother can do about it… very little! It’s a very sad situation, but there’s not
too much she can handle. Her son can be
in all sorts of trouble, she can love her son very much but as long as the son
is getting his image of authority from the way his father acts and the way his
father acts toward him, mother might as well just talk to the wall than try to
do anything about it. She can do some but ideally this is not the way it
functions.
So in verse 4 it
shifts back to the father is the one doing the teaching. Again, it does not mean the mother doesn’t do
the teaching; it means that when she does it’s operating under the authority of
her husband.
Proverbs 4:5 is
what Solomon’s father, David, taught him. The first thing he said was “Let
thine heart retain my words,” memorization was involved in this kind of
learning process. Solomon had to
memorize Scripture, Solomon had to memorize doctrine. Solomon had to memorize many historical
facts. David required that of
Solomon. And then in verse 5 David said,
“Get wisdom, get understanding; forget it not, neither decline from the words
of my mouth.” Here we have the emphasis
on the volition of Solomon. David is saying now look Solomon, I can sit here
and beat my gums from not until the Messiah comes, but it’s not going to do you
any good until you exercise choice as a responsible creature operating in the
first divine institution, and get with it.
Now here you have
a most interesting thing. In these three
verses you’ve watched all three of the divine institutions operate and notice
how each one flows from the other. In
verse 5 we have the volition addressed.
The father cannot chose for the son, but volition must be there before
the other two institutions work. A marriage
can’t work until both husband and wife choose to make it work. In marriage counseling, marriage counseling
can go on for hours and days and months and get absolutely nowhere if there’s
no choice. Why? Structure of creation; which is the first
divine institution? Marriage or
volition? Let’s turn it around, let’s
pretend marriage is the first divine institution. Do you what that means? That marriage would determine how you choose;
the structure of marriage itself would determine choice. That’s not the way it is; choice determines
marriage. So the first divine
institution must function in order to get to the second.
Now in verses 3-4
we saw how marriage must work in order to get to the third. The mother may love her son but the son
cannot be taught until the son is taught under the authority structure of the
father and that can’t be functioning until a marriage works. So you can’t get
to the third divine institution until the second one is operating. That is why we have numbered these divine institutions
the way we have; the numbers mean the sequence and you can’t skip from one to
three, you’ve got to go trough the second to get to the third. So the way to tube out something and the way
Satan usually attacks, he attacks the volition by confusing doctrines and so
on.
Now David
addresses the volition of Solomon and therefore David respects the first divine
institution when he says now look Solomon, I’m your father, and I can teach you
many wonderful things but what I teach you isn’t going to solve anything until
you get with it Solomon, and here’s the limitation of the parent’s
responsibility. This may be good news
for some parents, and that is that you are not totally responsible for your
children because the first divine institution precedes the third. So your kids can go out and do all sorts of
things; they may be doing it because you haven’t trained them adequately and
then you are responsible. However, they
may do it because they’re rebelling against your authority and violating
everything you’ve taught them, in which case you are not responsible. So you are not always responsible for what
children do.
Proverbs 4:6,
“Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee; love her, and she shall keep
thee.” Now here we go back to the
imagery that is used over and over again in the book of Proverbs, and that is
there is an analogy with the third divine institution. You have the father, you have the mother, and
you have the son. The father has a
helpmeet in the mother. She is the means of getting the job done, with the
children, with God’s will in their life.
Proverbs says the believer has a helpmeet in wisdom and wisdom gets the
job done in the Christian life. The Christian
life isn’t going to go anywhere without wisdom.
The believer’s helper is wisdom.
And this is why wisdom is always pictured as female in Proverbs, a
reversal of the imagery in the rest of God’s Word. In the rest of God’s Word the believer is
always pictured as feminine. God is
masculine. Why? Grace; the male does the initiating, the
female receiving, God does the initiating in love, the believer does the
receiving by grace, he receives grace by faith.
But in this relationship it is reversed. The believer is now the male
and wisdom is the female. Why? Because
the male must exercise his choice to pursue after wisdom in order to get a
helper, in order to run the Christian life the way God wants him to do it. So
the initiative lies with the believer, and this is a vital principle of the
book of Proverbs, over and over, wisdom is not automatic. Because you become a Christian doesn’t mean
you’re going to grow in the Christian life.
Growth in the Christian life is not automatic.
Now for some of
you who trot in here every other Sunday at 11:00 o’clock and never listen to a tape
between then, never open your Bible or something, this may be bad news for
you. But if you’re in that state you
need some bad news because you’ve got worse bad news on down the line if you
don’t get it from me, and that is that you are not going to grow in your
Christian life unless you exercise initiative to get somewhere where you’re
getting some Bible teaching and I mean consistent Bible teaching. I know some people that drive 99 miles each
way to come to this church on Sunday.
Now if they can make it 99 miles each way every single weekend, not that
this church is so great, it’s just that they want the Bible teaching, if they
can exercise their volition to do that I don’t find any other excuses
comparable. We have people driving 20,
30, 40, 50 miles because they are hungry for God’s Word and they put God’s Word
first and all the parties second. We have some people Wednesday night, people
come over and they want to party it up, sorry, we have Bible class, do you want
to come; no, bye, bye, we’re going. And
that’s the way it is, it becomes a way of life and as a result these are the
people that are growing. Others are
listening to tapes, regularly. What does
this mean? They’ve put the Word of God
first and it’s paying off; it’s paying off in dividends in their life and you
can tell the difference. And the people
who lull around, you can tell them too.
The results pay off.
So the emphasis
here is that the believer must initiate; this is not received by [not sure of
word, sounds like faith] this is had by choosing to go out and get it and this
means getting your bodies and minds physically located some place where the
Word of God is taught. For example, you
often hear this excuse, well I went out to my car this morning and I had a flat
tire, and that must mean that God’s will was that I not hear the Word. How do you know Satan didn’t stab it with a
hammer and nail last night? That’s not a
legitimate deduction; they’ve got a flat tire.
So what, walk, get a bicycle or something, but do something. That’s the initiation that’s spoken of here
in Proverbs.
“Forsake her not,
and she will preserve thee,” the idea of the word “forsake” means that the
person has gone along with wisdom and has abandoned wisdom. This is an interesting concept, “forsake her
not.” This means the believer has gone
on and even approached maturity for some time and then once having approached
maturity has slipped back; that’s the forsaking. This means that whoever is addressed in verse
6 is a believer who already got the wisdom to start with and then after they
had it they let it slip. Now what does
that teach? That not only does it
require initiative to get it in the first place, it requires initiative to keep
it. [can’t understand words], practice,
practice and practice and practice, always the initiative of a believer, over
and over and over and the moment you stop it the moment you forsake it. And the result, by reversing the first phrase
of verse 6, if you do forsake her, she will not preserve you. Maybe you can get the truth of verse 6 by
saying it backwards. “Forsake her and
she will not preserve you.” That’s the
destiny of the believer and it means the believer will fall apart in the
Christian life. Again, here’s the
believer, here’s his helpmate; here’s the Christian life, forsake the helpmeet
and you’ve flunked the Christian life.
The Christian life demands constant input of wisdom, constant practice
over and over and over and over again.
And this is the only way the Christian life moves on. “Forsake her not, and she shall preserve you;
love her and she will keep you.”
And then in
Proverbs 4:7 David hits the nail on the head.
Up to this point he has addressed the volition, up to this point he’s
made it at least semi-obvious that he’s after Solomon to move, move son, let’s
go. And so he says it except the King
James blows it in the translation [7, “Wisdom is the principle thing;
therefore, get wisdom;”] What it means
is the chief thing of wisdom is get wisdom, it should be this way: “The chief
thing of wisdom is get wisdom.” In other
words the idea here is that wisdom is not automatic again. And David says to Solomon, listen Solomon,
you’re not going to get it by osmosis, you’re not going to get it by lying down
and dreaming in the temple and hoping it leaks into your frontal lobe; it
doesn’t work that way. The only way
you’re going to get it is to move. All
right, “The chief thing of wisdom is to get it, and with all thy getting,” that
is with everything else you get, “get understanding.”
Proverbs 4:8,
“Exalt her, and she shall promote thee, she shall bring thee to honor when thou
dost embrace her.” Now these are done in
the analogy of the home and marriage.
Here’s the believer, here’s wisdom.
The analogy is the husband and the wife; “exalt her and she will promote
you.” “Exalt” means honoring, it is a
word very similar to what Peter uses for the man to honor the woman in 1 Peter
3; same mechanics down here, same mechanics up here. The institutions are in parallel. The husband honors the wife; the believer is
to honor wisdom.
Let’s turn to 1
Peter 3:7 and see how the husband honors the wife. Keep in mind the analogy and the parallelism
between the family and marriage and wisdom and the believer. “Likewise you husbands, dwell with them
according to knowledge,” the man’s knowledge, “giving honor unto the wife as
unto the weaker vessel,” and then notice the context of this honoring, “as
being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers be not hindered.” Now this verse is loaded; there’s only one
part of the verse that I want you to see this morning and that is “being heirs
together of the grace of life.” The
honoring of the wife is linked with the heirship or the inheritance of the
grace of life, and it is tied to the fact that the husband who honors his wife,
when the third divine institution functions smoothly, will produce offspring,
it will produce many other things but it will also produce offspring that are
raised the way God originally designed them to be raised, in other words, there
is fruit in the relationship that is profitable.
Now turn back to
Proverbs 4 and see what the parallel is; the believer and wisdom. If the believer exalts wisdom, then wisdom
like the wife, will promote him. Now in
the ancient east a wife was measured, in part, by whether she had male
children. And when the wife would have a
male child she would sometimes be said to promote her husband in the sense that
she would exalt him, cause him to be raised up by the production of a male
child. So also this verse would argue
that if this verse is exalted by the believer then the believer plus the wisdom
will produce fruit, the fruit of the Holy Spirit. [Tape turns]
…visible beauty;
beauty that is attractive to both Christian and non-Christian. There’s an external result of the application
of wisdom in the believer’s life. What
does this mean? It doesn’t mean that the
unbeliever is going to, every time he sees a wise Christian is going to accept
Christ. But it does mean that every time
the unbeliever sees a wise Christian he is faced with real evidences of God, He
is there and the validity of the gospel message, and he will respect this. Many men have found, for example, on the job,
that by a consistent Christian witness sometimes they’ll fail a promotion
because they don’t go to all the hot clubs and so forth and make out with the
boys and drink themselves under the table and so forth, and all the other
things that go on with it. They may not
get the promotion but it’s been my observation that many of these men, some in
civilian life, some in the military, are very often looked up to and respected
by their peers and when there’s a job to be done, do you know who they go to
see? The Christian. Why?
Because even though they can knock him and make all sorts of cutting
remarks behind his back, when it comes down to the nitty gritty of getting
something done, who’s [can’t understand words] one? The Christian. Now that is the kind of honor that the Bible
speaks of. It doesn’t imply
automatically you’re going to get promoted on your job if you apply wisdom; it
does mean, however, in the areas that truly matter, in the hearts and minds of
men’s consciences, there you will have honor and that’s the honor that the
believer has, or should have, should strive for.
Proverbs 4:9,
“[She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace;] a crown of glory shall
she deliver to thee.” Now what is the
crown of glory? There are a lot of
pictures and a great picture that goes with this and I want to go to three
verses in the Old Testament where this crown of glory is used and each time we
see it we’ll notice another thing about it.
Turn to Isaiah
62:3, the crown of glory that wisdom gives to the believer’ let’s look at what
the crown of glory is; is it just a picturesque way of speaking or does the
crown of glory refer to something real and tangible that you can get your hands on? This is said about the city of Jerusalem. In the third verse we have the crown of glory
but look at verse 2 to get the context.
“And the Gentiles [nations] shall see thy righteousness,” now that’s the
city of Jerusalem, they will observe it in history, they will see your
righteousness, “and all kings thy glory; and you will be called by a new name,
which the mouth of the LORD shall name.
[3] Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the LORD, and a
royal diadem in the hand of thy God. [4] Thou shall no more be termed Forsaken,
neither termed Desolate; but you shall be called Hephzibah, and thy land
Beulah; for the LORD delights in thee, and thy land shall be married,” that is,
will be fruitful.
Now what does
verse 3 teach us about the phrase, “the crown of glory.” It obviously means manifested historic
blessing that is visible to those around, tangibly, blessing in physical health
it could be, it could be blessing in mental attitude, blessing in business, but
it is basically a spiritual blessing manifested in one of these other areas,
but it will be visible, both to the person who is blessed and to the person who
observes. And this historic reference is
to the millennium when Jerusalem will be blessed and verse 2 teaches that one
of the things the Gentiles see is the righteousness of Jerusalem, that is, she
is living in accordance with righteousness.
Now why is this important?
Because all men have a conscience and since all men have a conscience,
whether they are believers or unbelievers, carnal Christians or spiritual
Christians, the conscience is always measuring the standards of truth of God,
and so we have the person out here with a crown of glory. That is something in his character and life
that the conscience of other people look at say you know, that’s right, I may
laugh at that person and I may make a few snotty remarks but you know, deep
down I know he’s right. Now that is what
is spoken of as the crown of glory. The
Gentiles see the righteousness of Jerusalem, maybe they make little cracks
about but in the millennium they won’t make too many cracks about it, but they
see it and they know it’s right.
Turn to Jeremiah
13:18, this is a prophecy that is reversed to the first one; it’s talking about
humbling. “Say unto the king and to the
queen, Humble yourselves; sit down; for your principalities shall come down, that
is” apposition, “the crown of your glory.”
So what does the crown of glory here mean? The crown of glory obviously means an overt,
tangible evidence of the authority of Jerusalem. And here we have something more than just
something that appeals to the conscience of the non-Christian, here we have an
evidence of a standing with God. You see
when it says “your principalities shall come down” it means the rulership, it
means the visible political power that the Gentiles will see; that political
power will be weakened.
Now what kind of
power does the Christian have today that would correspond to the political
power in the Old Testament? Obviously it
would be spiritual power over the principalities and the powers of darkness;
that is, in the angelic conflict, the war with Satan and his demons. And here we find believers having an
authority in this area, and that authority is part of the crown of glory, that
the believer has a magnificent [can’t understand word] in this area. Few Christians even know how to use it but
you talk to missionaries that are on the field and they’ll tell you, how one of
the greatest openings for the gospel in native villages oftentimes is the fact
that a missionary will walk into a village that has been in bondage to spirits
for ages, in terror of these things, [can’t understand words] children, run
them through fire and let them burn to death; this kind of thing has gone on
for generations and then some time a Christian missionary walks in and they say
hey, you didn’t kiss the feet of so and so over there, he’s the big idol and
the missionary doesn’t bother it and they expect lightening to come and knock
the missionary down and lightening doesn’t come. And they can’t understand how this missionary
has no fear to these spirits of bondage. Why should he? He has a vital relationship with Christ;
Christ is above all principalities and powers.
So here we have the same thing.
The political
power of Old Testament Jerusalem analogous to the spiritual power of New
Testament Christians. A third element in
the crown of glory besides the blessings, besides the authority is in Ezekiel
16:12, here we have something very similar to the first on but in Isaiah the
emphasis was more on the blessing, in Jeremiah the emphasis was on the
authority, in Ezekiel 16:12, “And I will put a jewel in thy forehead, and
earrings in thine hears, and a beautiful crown upon thine head,” is
beauty. So there’s blessing, authority
and beauty tied with this crown of glory.
Let’s turn back to
Proverbs 4 and finish that text. In
Proverbs 4, if the believer makes love with wisdom and produces the fruit, then
wisdom gives to the believer beauty, “ornament of grace,” character, and a
crown of glory; the believer has authority, he has blessing, and he has
beauty.
Now there’s one
further thing that will complete the first nine verses of Proverbs 4. This whole thing has been wisdom transmitted
through the family unit, tradition, that the children must yield to the
tradition of the father, that’s why it says, “Get wisdom” son, now you listen
to what I have to say. Now all of that
is very fine but you say why is all this necessary? Why does God insist that wisdom be
transmitted through the third divine institution? A hint is given to us when God gave the Ten
Commandments. I want to conclude this
morning by turning to a passage that is often overlooked that’s packed in
between one of the Ten Commandments.
Turn to Exodus 20:5, herd God reveals something about the family unit
and how it works in history. Modern day
psychology has uncovered many facts as well as a lot of fantasy, but one of the
facts that modern psychology has undeniably discovered was a fact that could
have been discovered years ago by a careful reading of the Bible, and that is
that children inherit ways of thought and attitudes from their parents, even
though the parent was unconscious at the time of ever teaching this to the
child, but the child automatically carries over. This is why often the cliché is to a guy if
you want to know what a girl is going to look like in 20 years look at her
mother. And why? That’s wisdom because obviously that girl has
learned certain attitudes from her mother and it’s going to show up in her life
and it’s going to be very hard for her to change out of those attitudes. She can, but normally she won’t. Now it’s the same thing with a boy, he’ll be
influenced by the father so when the girl dates the guy she ought to look at
what his father looks like; is he going to turn out like that? If he is then she’d better, maybe, take a
second look. But this is a way of
measuring, getting a little objective view on things, by looking at the parents
and finding out what they’ve done with their lives.
In Exodus 20:5 two
things are said, both in the last part of verse 5 and the first part of verse 6
that gives us a revelation of the structure of the third divine institution
mentioned in Proverbs 4. The reason why
wisdom is transmitted through the family is that the family is a tremendous
vehicle for the transmission of truth through generations. The family has been designed to do this and
not only has the family been designed to transmit wisdom, the family will also
transmit apostasy. Thus it says in verse
5, “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to idols, nor serve them; for I, the LORD
thy God, am a jealous God, and I visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me. [6] And showing mercy to the thousands,” and
it shouldn’t be “of them,” it is understood in the original Hebrew of verse 6,
as you can compare yourself if you read Deuteronomy, it is understood that
“showing mercy to thousands,” not individuals, but generations, “to the
thousands of generations of them that love Me, and keep My commandments.”
You look at that
and you say well, isn’t that awfully unfair, for God to visit the sins of the
fathers unto the children. That’s not
what it’s saying; you have to look again.
What is it saying? “Thou shalt
visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children of them that hate Me.” The fourth generation of them that hate me;
let’s take a case in point. Let’s take
generation number one; we have negative volition developed in the father and
the mother of this generation. The father
and the mother of this generation have a mental attitude of hatred toward
God. Now when I speak of hatred toward
God don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about some legalistic thing about they
chew the wrong brand of bubble gum or they smoke or they have a few immoral
problems or something like that. These
may be sins but when God speaks of sin in this Scripture in this context it’s
not talking about the immoral things that you love to dream about and wish you
were not a Christian so you could do.
These are talking about basic attitudes of rebellion and some of the
most religious people have this attitude.
This is a self-righteous attitude and you can have people on negative
volition and very moral lives, so don’t go prodding skeletons out of the
closet; this is not what we’re interested in, a skeleton hunt. We’re interested in inner spiritual attitudes
that get started in these previous generations.
So let’s start,
here’s a family, the first generation develops a negative volition toward God;
they are very religious, let’s put that in there, they are very moral, they
show up in church all the time but they have no understanding spiritually of
the text of Scripture, they could care less about application of the Word of
God in all areas of their life. They’re
just interested in putting in their time and so on, and so we have sort of a
self-righteous attitude. So the second
generation comes along and they’ve been raised, and maybe the parents have said
look Johnnie, you must go to Sunday School, I demand that you go to Sunday
School, so Johnnie trots off to Sunday School, and all four or five years he’s
like this because he has to sit in Sunday School because his parents made him
do it. And he, of course, borrows his
attitude because he knows his parents are sitting in the pew with the same
waiting, all tight and tense and so on, and they can’t stand it until 12:00
o’clock. So Johnnie watches his parents
tell him kid, you’ve got to go to Sunday School, I know it’s bad but you’ve got
to go, or something like this. And they
sit and watch the parents do the same thing so what happens? They start developing a mental attitude,
negative volition, and have the parents sat down and said Johnnie, you will now
develop negative volition? No, nothing
of the sort, it’s just leaked into their head, just by watching their parents
act they have inherited a way of thought and an attitude toward God.
So Johnnie goes
out and gets married so John and Mary start raising a family and we will leave
Mary in a neutral background; Johnnie inherits everything from his parents and
so now they have children; third generation.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch when everything is going on at the second,
God is beginning to discipline that first generation. So the first generation is raising the
second, they begin to have problems of business reversals that they can never
seem to understand why it always happens to them, and they begin to have ill
health, not that these always are disciplinary but sometimes are, and you begin
to have these things and they always seem frustrated. How come, I lead a nice life and I am always
frustrated in everything I do, and so on.
It just may be discipline for self-righteousness. So discipline goes on in the first
generation. And this verse says that
that discipline will be carried on and intensified to the third and fourth
generation when the third and fourth generation persist in the family behavior
pattern.
So the second
generation, John goes out and he marries Mary and they begin to raise a family,
and John imports into that family the same attitude he picked up in the first
generation. And they don’t become
Christians but they’re still religious and moral and then John goes into
business and has a number of reversals, he goes out and drives a car and
collides on Route 289 and so he has problems.
So he begins to get disciplined more; his automobile insurance is more
than his father’s, and he has a lot more problems and discipline than his
father did. So the discipline is intensified in his generation. And they raise children and their children
pick up the same thing. So by the time their children go up they see that
father John is sitting here, very moral and righteous, and he goes to business
on time every day but he’s so unhappy, boy, he’s a frustrated old
fuddy-dud. All he does, he puts out for
other people, he never gets anything back and I’ll be darned if I’m going to go
into that kind of a life.
So along comes
Mike and Mike is in the third generation and he decides well listen, my father,
John, tried everything he could, he was religious and moral and what did it get
him? It didn’t get him anywhere. Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to raise all the hell I can, if I’m
going to be unhappy I’m going to go to hell happy. So he goes on and he turns into some sort of
a clod and so the third generation he really gets it, nothing goes right. He gets divorced and remarried 4 or 5 times
and his children fall ill or something and he experiences tremendous things and
then he notices something begins to happen.
He isn’t a believer either, he’s on negative volition, he’s experiencing
discipline, and say he has three children.
One child gets killed in Vietnam or something and another kid gets in
some car accident or he just goes out and gets lost some place, and maybe he
has a daughter and she married somebody and divorces and marries and divorces
and never has any children. And nobody
ever seems to notice that at the fourth generation that family line is stopped;
it’s been cut out of history. And I really seriously believe that if some
people would do a serious examination of their families they would see this
happen more often than you think, that certain generations are torn from
history and generations that have persisted in a negative volition toward God,
God allows to go on just so far, no more.
And you say well
isn’t that unfair because here is, we’ll call this family S and over here we
have family R, and family S sits here on negative volition, negative volition,
negative volition, and finally they phase out in the fourth generation, no
children left in the fourth generation, they’re just killed off in history and
these people were moral, he was moral, he was moral, he was moral, and he was
immoral, this person finally, but they were a relatively good group. And they look over here and they see somebody
on negative volition, all sorts of immorality, they have children and maybe a
few accept Christ, some don’t, and this family goes on and they have more kids
than rabbits in Australia, and you wonder what’s going on here, how come God
doesn’t cut them out of history? Look at
all their immorality and so on. Fine,
but one thing they didn’t have and that was a self-righteous attitude toward
grace. Inside that family unit, even
though many of them were unbelievers and rank ones, people you wouldn’t even stand,
people you wouldn’t even want to see in your club, nevertheless inside that
family the attitude of immorality never got so bad that grace was killed
off. In other words, physiologically and
psychologically it was possible to have people out of that family believe in
Jesus Christ and receive grace. So when
you look at this and you see the morality, you tend to judge it very
legalistically, oh, look what they’re doing, this is [can’t understand word],
yeah, but one thing they’re not doing and that is rejecting God’s grace. And the children, though they may have picked
up bad habits from their parents, at least did not pick up one, and that is I
will do it myself, I don’t need grace, I’ll put on the religious phony front
and I’ll put on all the self-righteousness and I don’t need grace. So that family goes on even though it’s
filled with unbelievers God lets that family go on because it is still
theologically possible for the children to believe the gospel. Over here a family filled with self-righteousness
and legalism, outwardly filled with religiosity, filled with morality, and it’s
cut off. Why? Because that family has inbred a tradition of hatred toward grace
and God will not permit it.
And this is what
it means, and don’t think this applies to Israel. Verse 5 and 6, read it again,
“I, the LORD thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers
unto the children,” what does that mean?
He was that way before He gave the Law too. Verse 5 and verse 6 describe the character of
God to all families, in Israel or not; this is a universal law of the
creation. God will not permit the third
and fourth generation to exist unless attitudes are straightened out. This is why he says in verse 6, “And I show
mercy unto the thousands of them that love Me,” it may mean that very few in
each generation in verse 6 are actually believers, but at least within the
streams and flows of the family tradition it is possible for believers to come
out of that flow.
I hope from this that you have seen the seriousness of the family. We’ll review this again and again as we go
through chapters 4 and 5 in Proverbs.