Clough Proverbs Lesson 44

In Praise of Wisdom – Proverbs 8:1-9

We are continuing our series in the book of Proverbs. Chapter 8 is a very appropriate passage for a time when we’re thinking about the person of Jesus Christ because Proverbs 8 is part of a three chapter set toward the end of the first section of the book of Proverbs. Chapters 7, 8 and 9 form a trilogy, and these have all to do with wisdom. And this section of Proverbs goes as far as the Old Testament goes in answering the problem of (?) and also answering the problem for man’s need for absolutes. Nowhere in the pages of the Old Testament actually does the revelation extend further and beyond the bounds of Proverbs 8; it’s a very important chapter. But it is preceded by chapter 7, and chapter 7, which we dealt with last week, was the picture of folly or the opposite of wisdom. Actually we could entitle Proverbs 7 as the portrait of an idiot because this is how the Hebrew looked upon a person who had no frame of reference, who had no divine viewpoint framework in his soul; he was just classified as an idiot. They did not classify people on the basis of human I.Q. but simply on the basis of the Word of God they really knew; not how much they were acquainted with but how much they actually knew. And since the first 9 chapters of Proverbs are all exhortations to get wisdom, then in Proverbs 7, 8 and 9 we have the culmination of this.

Now just to review again the point of Proverbs 7, we have to go back to why it is that wisdom is needed by man. In the introduction of Proverbs we pointed out that there’s a difference in animal and man according to God’s Word; that animal and man are two categories of creation that cannot be confused. This is what is wrong with evolutionary philosophy that would glide over this difference. It has always been a source of amusement to me that the people who are the most vehement proponents of evolution are always the last people to draw the moral conclusions that man and animals do not differ in any significant way and if you shoot animals during the hunting season there’s no logical reason on an evolutionary base why you shouldn’t shoot men either. But since they are very slow thinkers when it comes to extending evolutionary theory to its logical conclusions, we would expect that, the animal starts out here; this is how we can look upon the difference between animal and man; animal is faced with a situation to which he must respond, and God has made the animals respond in a certain way because they have what is called nephesh or life.

In God’s Word the word “life” does not refer to plants. Now granted, you can argue about the difference between plant and animals in the low levels, in the simple areas, down at the amoeba level and so forth; one cell problem. But apart from that area there’s a clear line drawn between animals and plants in the Scriptures. And the line has to do with the possession or lack of possession of nephesh. Animals have spirit, because they have breath. That is, they exchange oxygen with the atmosphere. And so this means that they have nephesh. Remember that the Jewish thinkers did not think in terms of abstraction; they thought in something concrete and to them did the thing breathe or not; if it had breath it was alive; if it didn’t have breath it wasn’t. For this reason the fetus in a pregnant woman is not living, so only when the baby is physically born is he considered in the Law of Moses under Exodus 21 to be a living thing. So nephesh is there or not there according to whether the animal interacts on its own with its physical environment.

Now that’s true both of animal and man. Well, then what is the difference between animal and man? Man is said to possess an image of God; animals do not have an image of God. What difference does this make? It makes a difference that is observable and here is the difference. When animals face a situation they have been given what we will call instinctive behavior patterns and most of an animal’s life is the story of the outworking of these instinctive behavior patterns. Some animals can learn things and they have also learned behavior patterns, but the ratio of instinctive behavior patterns to learned behavior patterns is probably around 9 to 1 or greater, so that animals basically operate by instinct, not by learning. But when it comes to man, man has very, very few instincts. So whereas the animal has a lot man has very few and his life is largely learned behavior patterns. Man is the only being, for example, than can drink too much water, animals will not, except under certain situations. Generally man has to think what he’s doing when he’s doing such a simple thing as drinking water. An animal doesn’t, an animal has a certain instinct that operates, and granted under certain situations this instinct will mislead him, nevertheless, man has to think on all the trivial areas of life.

So God has made man in such a way that he is robbed of instincts; everything that man does has to be learned. And this is why wisdom is so important because wisdom is accumulation of learning and its application to life. Now why has God destroyed the, so to speak, the inherited behavior patterns and instinctive behavior patterns of animals and in man converted to learning? For the reason that man has a conscience and because man has a conscience he is God-conscious. God-consciousness means that man is conscious of absolutes and that when we look at man’s soul we find that he is made up of certain things.

So we can start off with saying first: man has a body. This body provides him with certain things; God in-breathes a spirit, the result is a soul. And the soul operates with his mind, one of the words for soul in Scriptures is parallel to the word mind, so man has a mind and it’s not just any mind but it’s a mind that requires a conscience. The conscience must have absolutes, and this is what makes man different from an animal; animals do not have language. Do not be misled by this! Animals exchange signals of sorts but they do not have language and they do not communicate concepts; they communicate information but they do not communicate concepts. No animal has a conscience that tells him is this true, is this false; that is solely the possession of man made in God’s image. If that is the case, then all knowledge that goes into the mind must interact with the conscience, and this means that man, when he gains revelation from God’s Word, it comes into the body, the eyes and the ears, and goes through his mind and is evaluated by his conscience. Everything you do, everything I do is evaluated by our conscience.

Now, how does this apply to Proverbs 7, 8 and 9? In Proverbs 7 you have the man who is stupid; this is a man who, actually if you look in Proverbs 7:7 the father is looking to his son and he looks out the window and he describes this idiot, “I beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youth, a young man void of heart,” literally, [8] Passing through the street near her corner; and he went the way to her house.” This is obviously a picture of seduction. [9] “In twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night.” The point there is the contrast between the naiveté in verse 7, “a young man void of heart,” versus in verse 10, I “beheld, there met him a woman with the attire of an harlot, and subtle of heart.” Now the contrast is brought out in the Hebrew by the word leb or heart, and in verse 7 you had a person without anything, and the picture is that he is so stupid that he has nothing in his mind and his conscience therefore cannot operate accurately. Your conscience operates only to the extent that your mind is loaded with some facts for your conscience to operate on, 1 Corinthians 8 and Romans 14 teaches that.

So the conscience in one sense is dependent upon what the mind knows. So here is Mr. Simpleton, he has rejected the Word of God in his life, who has not paid attention to accumulating wisdom, and therefore he has resulted in a situation where now he gets temptation and he can’t handle it. And this whole chapter, as we saw last week, is a sarcastic ridicule of stupid believers, believers who reject the Word, believers who are too interested in running around from one organization to the next and doing this activity and doing that activity instead of study, study, study, study the Word. That’s the issue, whether a believer is studying the Word or not. People who get tired of Bible doctrine are people who are carnal; nobody filled with the Holy Spirit ever tires of the Word of God. The next time you hear somebody say I’m getting tired of Bible doctrine, you are talking to someone out of fellowship, because the Holy Spirit was the One who gave us the Word. Well, is the Holy Spirit going to tire of His own product? Does that make sense? Obviously not.

People who are tired of doctrine are people who are actually rejecting and their souls look like this if we wanted to draw a picture. A believer with Christ in the heart versus chaos in the heart and here’s the picture of chaos in the heart; this is Proverbs 7. It starts out with negative volition, somewhere along the line this believer got out of line, been deceived, been misled, or just simply rebelled against the Lord in some way and they’ve gone on negative volition. The next step is darkness of the soul; the darkness of the soul means that the illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit is cut off because they are on negative volition toward Him.

When they go on negative volition to the Holy Spirit He cuts out His illuminating ministry. Now that doesn’t make the person lower their I.Q. by 30 points, all it means is that all the information they have in their mind and a lot of information here, tremendous amounts of information, information in their conscious mind, information in their subconscious mind, but the Holy Spirit is not guiding them to see what He sees. The Holy Spirit guides us not by giving us new revelation from inside, some sort of a mysticism; the Holy Spirit guides us by selective perception as we’re going to study in Proverbs 8, and this selective perception ministry of the Holy Spirit is cut off when the believer rebels against Him. God is not going to jam Himself upon you; God is stuck with this and therefore if we choose to go negative and we choose to ignore Him, fine, He lets us do it because God respects our choice in our volition.

Now when a believer goes on negative and they begin to get darkness of the soul, immediately you can tell something is wrong with them because they are dull; they’ve lost the spiritual acuity, they can’t go into a situation any more and sense there’s something here. That is cut off and lost. Now so far this is simple carnality but if the person stays out of fellowship, this gets worse. And they begin to suck in human viewpoint, so that all the facts of the mind now begin to arrange themselves inside of a human viewpoint frame of reference framework. This means the rise of doubt and obviously the doubt is proportional to the lack of truth that you have. If can’t sense the truth you’re not going to be confident, you’re going to start doubting this, you’re going to start doubting that, and you’re going to wind up with indecision and be a very indecisive person. Indecisive people are people usually filled with human viewpoint, who could never make a decision in life simply because they haven’t got any faith to make a decision with because they have destroyed themselves and their souls by negative volition.

As a result of this, and if this goes on we really get into what we call compound carnality, and this is distinguished by certain things. First, your human viewpoint begins to get thicker and thicker and thicker, so the area over which you can believe gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Christians who have been in the Word for years can lose it. Being in the Word of God for 5 years, 3 years, 2 years, or 10 years is no guarantee that tomorrow you will not wind up in compound carnality. This is the fallacy of the fact that people who belong to a good solid fundamental church all their lives, and they kind of get cocky about it, that they don’t have to tend to their own spiritual laundry very carefully, and sooner or later you find people with compound carnality in leadership positions in fundamental circles, people who use the language, people who are familiar with what to do and most Christians go along with it, and they’re out of it, they’re in compound carnality.

The fourth step after the rise of human viewpoint and the piling of the mind is gradually a hatred toward God develops. This sequence is taught in Romans 1, it’s taught in many passages of Scripture, and this means basically hatred toward God and secondarily hatred toward people, but ultimately it is a hatred toward God and do you know how you can spot the presence of this kind of hatred? Romans 1 gives you the test; the lack of thanksgiving in situations. Can you honestly thank God for various situations in life? When you find you can’t thank God you’d better do a double check because it may be that you’re already getting a case of hatred. You’re rebelling against God; why did God let this happen to me kind of thing. And this is a hatred toward God and the Bible says that eventually hatred toward, because you undermine his authority, you wind up the victim of idolatry. Idolatry is just that you bow your knee to something other than God, that’s all. And we found this in our evening series with Saul; Saul eventually bows his knee to pseudo authority of the mob. Saul eventually bows his knee to the pseudo authority of his own emotions. This is what usually happens, bowing the knee to emotions. And a person will then begin to ride on their emotions and eventually wind up in total frustration.

Now the idiot that is described in Proverbs 7 is a young person who has not paid attention to the Word. The idiot is ill prepared to meet situations in life and you can see this because he meets this whore in verse 10 and she has it all over him, and as we described last week, from verses 11 down through, all the details of the Hebrew, how she seduced him, and you’ll wind up in the same situation because you’re stupid and because you cannot meet this kind of situation because you are the kind that will be victims of the group: well, everybody’s doing it, what’s the matter with you kind of thing. And you’ll be real brave and go right along with the group. So this is what your destiny is, Proverbs 7. I noticed a few people absent this week from last week but that’s all right, I said don’t bother to come back if you can’t take the literal text verse by verse. And as we went on we described how in the Hebrew it’s quite clear the methods this woman used to seduce him. And the principle is this: who is doing the teaching of Proverbs 7. Look at verse 1? It’s the father, and the father is teaching his son everything about life including this. And he doesn’t let some book do it, he doesn’t let the public schools have their sweet courses in sex education, he does it himself. And this is the biblical norm and standard that operates in the family where the father teaches these things or the mother teaches these things, the parents do it, to their children.

But the point of Proverbs 7 is that although there’s one illustration which is the seduction illustration, you see how the Word of God picks out something that communicates; you can’t read Proverbs without getting the point, so Proverbs 7 was designed by the Holy Spirit to bring something that everyone is going to understand: seduction. So this is a common every day illustration and it illustrates the problem of minus wisdom and the woman in Proverbs 7 can stand, by way of analogy, for any temptation in life. This is a concrete real illustration from the culture of the times but the principle applies to every temptation. And this is the victim; this is how Christians can become victims to very sophisticated forms of temptation, because they’re not prepared to meet them.

Now we come to Proverbs 8 and in Proverbs 8 we have the opposite. If Proverbs 7 referred to folly and almost personified folly as the seductress, then in Proverbs 8 is the hymn to wisdom. I said Proverbs 8 is the most fantastic passage in the Old Testament and lays the groundwork for all philosophy. The later Greeks had nothing on the concept of Proverbs 8. Proverbs 8 is very difficult and today we are only going to get through the first 9 verses and then we’re going to apply them to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, since this Easter and somehow in church history we’ve gotten the resurrection of Christ fouled up with Ishtar, from whom Easter is named. Ishtar was a sex goddess of the ancient world, and maybe you can connect now why we have the bunnies and the eggs and everything else. But Easter comes from Ishtar and she’s a pagan goddess, and somehow along the line in church history we managed to get Christ in with the love goddess. And it’s too bad but today we’ll just emphasize the divine viewpoint which is Christ’s resurrection. But in order to understand the point of Christ’s resurrection you’re going to have to understand something about wisdom and a title that is applied to Christ in Proverbs 8.

So we’ll start with Proverbs 8:1, “Does not wisdom cry, and understanding put forth her voice? [2] She stands in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths. [3] She cries at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the entrance of the doors. [4] Unto you, O men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of man. [5] O ye simple,” that’s the same word, idiot, in chapter 7, “O idiots, understand heart,” literally, it’s not “be ye of an understanding heart,” in it means understand heart; I’ll explain it in a moment. [6] Hear, for I will speak of excellent things, and the opening of my lips shall be right things. [] For my mouth shall speak truth, and wickedness is an abomination to my lips. [8] All the words of my mouth are in righteousness; there is nothing froward [crooked] or perverse in them. [9] They are all plain to him that understands, and right to those who find knowledge.”

Now the first verse is talking about wisdom and is personifying wisdom as a woman. Notice it is female and it goes back to what we have discussed over and over, which you must understand from the second divine institution, marriage. In marriage the male is the initiator; the female is the responder. That analogy is picked up and used two ways in the Bible. It is used one way that makes Jesus Christ the man and the Church the woman. That’s one way the analogy is used. And when it’s used this way it has reference to the fact that Jesus Christ is the lover and the Church is the one who is loved. Jesus Christ is the one who initiates the love and the Church is the one who responds to the love that Christ gives to her. The Church responds and so this illustration emphasize grace. We, as believers, members of the body of Christ, respond to Christ’s love for us which is we receive grace. Now this is not going to some little group where you hold hands and you flap your tongue at both ends and call that love. You cannot understand God’s love until you have a divine viewpoint framework in your soul. There is no shortcut; I wish it were true but it just isn’t; there is not way to experience the love of God without going through a process of spiritual growth. The reason is that you can’t tell when it is God that is operating. How are you going to respond to Jesus Christ when you’re not sure it’s Christ that’s doing it? The only way you can be sure it’s Christ that’s doing it is to have discernment and that requires maturity. So therefore you can’t get along without the Word of God and having it assimilated into your soul.

Well, this is one way of looking at the sex illustration as the New Testament uses it. Now Proverbs reverses it here; here the believer is cast as the male and the doctrine, or wisdom, is characterized as the female. And you will notice when in verse 1 and 2 it’s female, the woman is doing the calling, “Does not wisdom cry, and understanding put forth her voice? [2] She stands in the top of the high places, and by the way in the places of the paths.” Now we have to understand this because later on we’re going to come to a very astounding New Testament reference to Proverbs 8 and after everything I say today in these first 9 verses is to set you up for a reference to the person of Jesus Christ found in the New Testament. So we’ve got to figure out because later on Christ is going to be equated with wisdom and it’s going to come out the wrong way if you don’t see it, because Christ is going to be portrayed in the female role.

Now how’s this going to be? Well, it goes back to a literal Genesis. Adam, at the point of creation was both male and female together. And this means that what we’ve gotten used to, these characteristics being separated, which is God’s order for the day, don’t worry about mixing them together. God’s order is that these be separated. But that’s not true for the whole universe. That’s only true of men and animals; angels do not have the sexual differentiation. The two sexual functions are together in angels. And the functions were together in the original Adam, and the functions were together in Jesus Christ. Now Christ is obviously a man, but in His spiritual role in history He’s the Second Adam. And so, when, for example a girl accepts Christ as Savior she doesn’t turn into a man. Well, that’s because Jesus Christ’s personality spiritually transforms both male and female. So these distinctions that were brought in after the bifurcation of Adam and Eve are things that we are used to, but form illustrations for more general principles in the Word of God, so that wisdom, pictured here as a female receptive role.

Now let’s go through it again. Here is a believer; here is wisdom. What is necessary for the believer to accumulate wisdom? The believer has to do the initiating; that is the point. This is not like being saved; this is not like just passively receiving grace. This is not just like saying Jesus Christ died for my sins, therefore I’ve got eternal life. Now you didn’t do anything for that, you didn’t work for that; if you did you wasted it because you didn’t have to. So you did nothing for that. But when it comes to spiritual growth and sanctification, and the accumulation of wisdom or divine viewpoint framework in the soul, now it’s another story. It’s grace still, this is not sanctification by works because how do you get the divine viewpoint framework? The gracious illumination of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit graciously illuminates but the Holy Spirit… and get this… does not do your thinking for you. In other words, the Holy Spirit sees to it that you see the data, that you see the evidences, that I see the evidences, but it remains for us to use our heads and put it all together. And this means that we initiate.

And the other thing, the other analogy of this is that once you initiate to wisdom, you get a fantastic response. Wisdom responds, it is a personal response and this will become clear as we go through the chapter. But there’s a response if the believer will initiate. This is why even in our own congregation, you can go through and you can find people who are tremendous in their taking in of the Word of God, and there are other people, we have actually three groups in our congregation at the present time. We have a group that’s on very positive volition to the Word, they are studying the Word of God hours a week and that shows they’re on positive volition because they’re not doing it for spiritual exercise, this is not just going through Lent or something and they’re putting in extra time. This isn’t that at all; positive volition has been going on here in these people for 2 or 3 years and they are taking in the Word, constantly taking it in. All right, that’s one group. We have another group over here on negative volition that could care less, and they’re waiting for me to drop dead or leave town and then they can relax and by God’s grace I’m going to beat you out. So that’s two groups; now we have both in the congregation.

We have a whole group of men that couldn’t even send a letter back to the Board to tell them whether they were candidates or not, so we have a lot of that kind. And then in between we have a group of people who are watching; they’re kind of undecided, and they kind of look over here and they see what’s going on and they kind of look over here and they see what’s going on and they haven’t made up their minds which train they’re going to get on yet. Now for those of you in the middle, this passage is dedicated to you. Those of you who are over here on positive volition, chapter 8 you will readily understand. Those of you in the middle Proverbs 8 will be a great source of explanation for certain things that you’ve been observing and wondering about. For those of you on the right, I don’t know what you want to do. If I were you I’d just simply take off and do something better on Sunday morning.

But here’s one speaks of wisdom crying, this is God the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is using wisdom, we don’t want to confuse the members of the Trinity here but the Holy Spirit is working on the nation Israel at this time through wisdom teachers, the wise men or the counselors. And when you read in Proverbs 8:2, “She stands on the top of high places, and by the way in the places of the paths,” that is not talking about some woman that’s literally standing there. That is talking about the teachers that were doing the teaching and they were the agents for wisdom. So we’ve got capital W, Wisdom, and this sets up a question which I’m sure you’re thinking about: wait a minute, what’s the relationship of wisdom to God? And that is deliberately set up for you all through this and it’s going to be answered for you when you get down to verse 22. But wisdom works through wise men; today we would call those wise men counselors. That was a group of people in Israel; you had priests, you had prophets, you had the kings, you had the king’s court and you had counselors. This is one of the titles, by the way, of Messiah. Remember, He shall be called Mighty God, Wonderful Counselor; well, this means that the Messiah will be full of wisdom. So the “standing on the top of high places” means that wisdom is being taught in public, “by the way in the places of the paths,” it is being taught.

Now don’t you see something that’s tremendously different here from what usually goes on in Christian circles? This is where the Word of God goes out where it’s needed. We don’t have evangelistic services for Christians inside the church. The evangelism, as an illustration, should be done outside the Church; this is not the place for an evangelistic service. The place for an evangelistic service is right where you work, right with the person you’re talking with. And this public, “she cries at the gates,” Proverbs 8:3, the gates are the place where the city council met. “She cries at the gates,” it’s an imperfect, habitual imperfect, “She keeps on crying at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the entrance of the doors,” it goes over and over and over and over and over and over again. Proverbs 8:4, “Unto you, O men, I call, and my voice is to the sons of man.” The word “sons of man” beni Adam, and this is a word that is used in Proverbs to mean that wisdom is for all people, Jews and non-Jews, Israelites and non-Israelites and here we introduce the concept that is so tremendously offensive in our own generation.

I know of nothing about Christianity that is more offensive than this, and that is that there is only one truth. “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes unto the Father but by Me,” period; not by Buddha, not by Confucius, not by Mary Baker Eddy, not by anybody else, it is by Jesus Christ. Now this is not religious bigotry; if you see this as religious bigotry you are a relativist because for you there are many ways to God and for you, because you believe this without any evidence I might add, you have somehow picked up the belief that there are many different ways to God. Actually there’s no evidence for that; there’s only one way to God. The universe is run on physical principles that are definite and so in the spiritual we have spiritual principles that are definite and that’s the definite one. And when wisdom in verse 4 is crying to the sons of beni Adam, the sons of Adam, it means that she cries to all men; she cries to the Buddhist; she cries to the man who believes in following the ethics of Confucius; she believes in crying to the Hindu; she believes in crying to the screwed up 20^th century Americans; she believes in crying to all people, no matter how fouled up they are, wisdom calls to the beni Adam, to the sons of men.

Now this is most interesting, that this is a public cry. It is an invitation for all men out where they are. Now we’ve had an interesting phenomenon here apparently in Lubbock, and that is that as believers have become more and more trained we have noticed an interesting thing. Without having any evangelistic program, without having to say if you will knock on five doors this week we’ll give you 25 big brownie points on Sunday morning, if you do this and you do that then you’re going to get stars on your little chart in the pastor’s office or something, without going through all of that, with doing just one thing, training people to see their faith is based on evidences, we’ve had people here that have given testimony in public in open give and take discussions where they were challenged and so forth. Now how did that happen? It happens when believers stop being chicken and do you know where the believer stops being a chicken and starts being a man? When the believers knows whereof he speaks. And when the believer is sure, like this wisdom is (?), I talk to the gates, I talk to the city council, I don’t care who I talk to because no man anywhere has an argument that can refute this position. I am utterly confident that I could go to the ends of the world and never encounter an argument that would refute Bible fundamental Christianity. I will go into any field.

This is the confidence that every one of you who is a Christian this morning ought to have, that you have a confidence, it doesn’t mean that you know all the answers but it means that you know enough of the answers so that you are confident that you go into any field of endeavor, into any area of society and stand there and never be afraid that somebody is going to come up with a counter argument to make everything topple to the ground. Until you think that way, until you have that kind of confidence, forget witnessing because you’re not witnessing, you’re just responding to group pressure. You’re just in with a group of believers that are hustlers and they’ looking at you and they’re gauging your spirituality by how many people you talk to a week. You can forget all that because you’re doing it as unto men; you’re doing it as unto the group. When you are trained and have the confidence to move you know what? God always opens the doors. He always opens the doors. This for a pastor, it goes for anybody, if you just get trained the doors automatically open, you don’t have to go knocking on them. They automatically open.

God is in such need in our day for believers who will be trained and prepared He more than gladly will open doors for you. Don’t worry about that, that’s the least of your trouble. You leave that in the Lord’s hands, He’ll open the door. You just go through and get the training and the training and the training and the training and the training that you need, and when you’re trained God will do it. When you have the confidence to cry at the gate, when you have the confidence to go to the entry of the city… do you know where the entry of the city was in the ancient world? They have these walls around the city and there’d be certain entry points to the city and right around the entry points they would have the place where the council met. The reason why the gates were the place where the council met is because that was the place where the news came in the ancient world. They didn’t have radios, didn’t have TV’s, that one reason why they were so smart, and they had news couriers who would come and they would bring the news and stop at the gate; for one thing, most of it was walking, and they were tired and they’d have a well there and they’d stop and chit chat and say hey, did you see what was going on in Bethlehem in yesterday or something. And this is where all the news started, right at the gate of the city. Now that is the place where the Bible teachers were, according to this verse. They were not stashed away in some catacomb; they were out in the rough and tumble and the give and take. And that’s the place where every wise believer should be. This is aggressive evangelism actually; it’s spoken of in verse 3-4. It’s not only evangelism in the sense of witnessing to the non-Christian; this is also evangelism, if you want to call it that, to the believers to get with it, to share things out of the Word and so forth.

All right, Proverbs 8:5, “O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools” or idiots, “understand heart,” the word “understand” comes from the Hebrew word, bin, and this word means to see between. The emphasis is seeing between things, and the idea is to see between that which is right and that which is wrong, that which is true, that which is false. In other words, to see the issue, that’s the way we’d say it today in our 20^th century vocabulary, see the issue. So you can’t see the issue without a framework, so “understand” means see the issue wisely. “…and you fools,” now why is the name calling in verse 5, see, that’s not even me, that’s the text. Simple and fools, why the name calling? Because it’s accurate, that’s what they are. Every believer is a fool until they obtain doctrine and not just obtain doctrine but let that doctrine get on positive volition, the illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit, and the erection of the divine viewpoint framework, when a person gets up there then they stop being a fool. But the actual very unflattering name for believers in the Bible are idiots and fools until they attain a divine viewpoint framework. And that’s just the way it is, I didn’t write it. And this is what is wrong, you see, with certain groups that somebody trusts the Lord and five minutes later they are president of something. Now that is taking an idiot and putting him in charge of a leadership position. You don’t put idiots in leadership positions. [Tape turns]

We don’t need any more idiots in leadership position, we have enough. So the non-idiot begins right here on Christian growth. Up until that point the believer is disqualified from holding leadership positions, period. So don’t hustle and wrestle people in your local group to be leaders of something when they have none of the Word. We have had some very perceptive men, young men and older men in this congregation, who refuse to run for the Board on the basis, not just that they didn’t have time, this is a legitimate reason, but some of them recognized that they honestly saw that they did not have enough of the Word and I respect them for that decision. I respect them because I also know that those very same people who said that are people who are busy correcting it. Now I would mind if they just sat there and did nothing about it, but I just happen to know of that in three or four cases, I watch them very closely and they are in the process of attaining a divine viewpoint framework, and they know that on the Board or any other place they would not have the discernment to make keen decisions. And I appreciate that. That’s a very good point and they have recognized truth about themselves. The Bible doesn’t mind you being an idiot as long as you recognize it.

And so here is a person that recognizes it and the reason they recognize it is because they respond to it. You see, this is why the name is used in verse 5; it doesn’t say I call you simple ones, it says “hey simple,” that’s what it’s saying. Now in order to respond to wisdom you have to turn around, are you calling me? See. And so that’s why it’s addressed in the vocative and why you have this, “hey idiot, (?)” That’s the point, in other words, this is a name calling that’s placed into the text so that the believer will recognize his stupidity and he can’t go any further than verse 5 until he recognizes he is an idiot.

Now at verse 5 comes with a choice; do you or do you not recognize that you’re an idiot? If you go on fine, “understand heart,” that’s what it says. That’s the word from the Hebrew; “understand heart.” This means going back to the soul and discernment, it goes back to the conscience thing again. One of the signs of maturity is that your conscience becomes sensitized. Now this doesn’t mean you have a guilty conscience over everything you do; it just simply means you can spot false guilt from real guilt. I have found in my own counseling ministry that a lot of Christians are suffering from pseudo guilt. It’s just a satanic thing; one of the things you can spot, pseudo guilt, this is a satanic deception that’s come upon your soul, where you feel guilty about something and you can’t find out what it is I feel guilty about, I just feel guilty about something. Watch that; that is satanic. When God the Holy Spirit convicts you of something, He is the spirit of truth and He will always tell you what it is you’re guilty of. And it won’t be ha-ha, you’re guilty, kind of attitude. It will be a gentle pointing out firm, but there will be a gentleness with it, you’re wrong here, you’re wrong here, and generally if you pray that the Father would illuminate your heart to where you’re wrong, something like Psalm 139, “Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts,” ask the Lord to open this and study the Word at the same time, because that’s the way He’s going to do it, then the Holy Spirit will give you a concise conviction. That is true conviction of true guilt. But this vague guilt, if you have that you are talking about something else and that’s not what I mean by a bona fide guilt. That’s just something satanic that’s thrown in there, just picked up from somewhere, either through doubt, or false doctrine at some point.

So a person who’s mature, his mind is constantly reading his conscience. That’s the point here, “understand the heart,” in other words, be sensitive to your conscience. Now this is not… please, please, please don’t misunderstand; this is not mysticism, being guided by a feeling. This simply means that your mind as assimilated the Word. Here you have… you are under the ministry of a pastor-teacher, it comes from the central nervous system to your brain. The doctrine is stored in the brain and it’s organized there. Now, your conscience immediately begins to give you an okay as to what is true and what is false. And so you take what your conscience says is true and you begin to set it up and you begin gradually to build up bigger and bigger a divine viewpoint framework. But you do it as the conscience… the Holy Spirit works through your conscience, and says that is right, that is right, that is right. You’ll have a sensitivity, and that’s what it means. It says, “Stupid one, understand your heart.” This is not talking about I.Q or academics; a lot of believers get inferiority complexes because they never graduated from college; some believers have never graduated from high school. Listen, I’m here to tell you, you’ve got a blessing. If you’ve never gone through college you probably have an advantage of picked up very little human viewpoint. So don’t go around with your head hanging down off your shoulders, ashamed because you never finished college; you’ve got a blessing and you don’t even know it. Look at some of the clucks around you that went to college. So don’t you ever feel ashamed because you never finished college.

Proverbs 8:6, “Hear; for I will speak of excellent things, and the opening of my lips shall be right things.” Don’t you notice the trend that sets in now at verse 6? Every verse, verse 6, verse 7, verse 8, verse 9, all of these verses emphasize the conscience. They are all nouns that have to do with the fact that when wisdom speaks, wisdom’s appeal is to the conscience. To the intellect, yes, but beyond and through the intellect to the conscience. “I will speak of excellent things,” that’s purity, “and the opening of my lips shall be right things,” all of that is emphasis on conscience.

[Proverbs 8:7] “For my mouth shall speak truth, and wickedness is an abomination to my lips.” And the word “wickedness” is interesting here because this shows you something that wisdom is not. And this is again something where you can measure your own soul and there’s a tremendous picture behind this word “wickedness.” The word “wickedness” is rasha‘, and this is used in the Hebrew, if you’ll turn to Isaiah 57:20 and I’ll show you a picture of wickedness, as the Hebrew of the Old Testament he had a word picture here behind wickedness. I take you to this word picture because I want you to get this word picture fixed in your mind that you may recognize when you are taking in divine viewpoint. This will be a subjective thing; it will be something that you will sense in your soul.

Notice Isaiah 57:20, “But the wicked,” the ratsa‘, the people like the wicked ones, “are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters case up mire and dirt. [21] There is no peace, says My God, to the ratsa‘, to the wicked. And one of the characteristics of human viewpoint is that you never seem to be able to get it all together. This is one of the characteristics; you’ve got a piece here, a piece over here, and it’s just chaotic and your mind just feels like its jumping from one thing to the next. You never get anything tied together. That is human viewpoint. That is one of the things you will sense about the way your mind thinks. When you start to take in divine viewpoint as we’ve had the testimony of so many here, they always say one of the things that comes out again and again in the experience of our ministry here has been that when the divine viewpoint begins to take hold in the soul, all of a sudden they notice that they are better students. Not necessarily that they get better grades because oftentimes there’s a time problem and so on, but the idea is that the subjects suddenly become interesting to them. All of a sudden they have something that they can plug into, whereas before it was just a lot of a pile of facts over in history and a pile of facts over in physics and a pile of facts somewhere else, now we’ve got a framework to tie it all together. Now does this strike you as strange? Of course not. If the God who created us and created the outside world is the One who’s giving us the wisdom, why wouldn’t He give us the key to hold it all together? Does it seem strange to you, that the Creator of the universe did not give man made in His image the key to put it all together? Of course He would. And so one of the symptoms of rasha‘ then is an unsettledness, a deep unsettledness, and this, later on, under certain conditions can produce what is known in the world as mental illness. But “the wicked are like the troubled sea,” they wave back and forth, unstable.

Turn back to Proverbs 8 and we’ll finish these last few verses so we can point things to Jesus Christ. Proverbs 8:7-8 speak of the mouth of wisdom, which means that wisdom is revealing things here; you see more than just the wisdom teacher; the passage is building up to a climax at the end of it. Verse 9, the key verse, “They,” what is “they?” “They” are the things that wisdom is teaching, the concepts and the truths, “They are all plain” to two kinds of people. Now let’s look at these two kinds of people. To whom is divine viewpoint plain? One, “him that understands, and right to him that finds knowledge.” Both are participles and both have reference to the fact that at the point of positive volition the Holy Spirit begins to enlighten our hearts and then we move up to establishing the divine viewpoint framework in the soul. This part refers to those who are understanding or beginning to understand. The Holy Spirit is gripping their souls, through their spirit, to illuminate their mind, to say look, do you notice this, do you notice this.

I cannot dogmatically say, but I have come to the conclusion from my own experience, from passages of Scripture and from my counseling experience that the Holy Spirit does this by selective perception. The Holy Spirit does not give us new truths but He selects either the horizon of our vision, things that catch our eye; oftentimes I give you the illustration of the two men walk down the street, one was a coin collector, one was an entomologist, a man who studies bugs. And they were walking down the street and one heard a cricket, it was the entomologist, the other one heard a dime fall out… it was a busy street, cars going all the way, busses and everything else, but the one man heard this faint sound of a cricket. The other man didn’t hear that but he heard a dime fall out of somebody’s pocket and jingle on the sidewalk. Now why in the chaos of the noise, when the high level, you had a high decibel environment, with tremendous noise levels, why did these two men pick out those signals? Because they were keen to receive them. Do both men hear this; sure they did, if you had a tape recorder and you had been there with a tape machine, both the sounds were on the tape track. Why is it then that one man heard the dime, the other man heard the bug? Simply because one man anticipated and was interested in that; the other man was interested in another type of sound and he heard it.

Now that is the way the Holy Spirit works in our heart. This is why you see and need the illuminating ministry of the Spirit in your life. He is the One that makes you interested. And when He makes you interested then you begin to see things like this. The Christians that are growing like weeds are this way because the Holy Spirit is working to develop an interest and they begin to see things all over the place, in their life, answers to prayer, you name it. But the Holy Spirit is not mystically revealing something new to them.

Now we come over to the New Testament. Now we said so far that wisdom is more than just the wisdom feature; wisdom is developing to a grand finale at the end of this chapter. We can’t get to that grand finale this morning so I want to anticipate it. Turn to Matthew 23, this risen Christ we all speak of, who is He? There are various ways to look at Christ. The word “Christ” is the word “Messiah.” It means the anointed one or the chosen one. Christ is not Jesus’ last name. It’s His title. Because He is God there are an infinite number of angles that you can come up to His person with. So don’t think you can understand Christ by just looking at Him as priest, by just looking at Him as King, by just looking at Him as prophet. There’s an infinite number of angles around the infinite God to which we can look at Him. One of those angles is the angle that we’re about to study now, the wisdom angle. This is a new one to most of you; most of you are not used to thinking of Christ this way; you’re used to thinking of Him as the great priest, or the king, you’ve heard sermons in this before and so on.

But we’re now at this point in Proverbs where we can introduce another way of looking at Jesus Christ. Wisdom, in the Old Testament, tried to solve the problem of the framework of the world, the cosmos. We would say today it’s related to philosophy. They tried to get all the big answers together. That was the thrust of wisdom. Now that means that if the Old Testament is a preparation for Jesus Christ then somehow… somehow that wisdom motif is going to start pointing to Jesus Christ sooner or later because they are not independent themes in the Old Testament. All the Old Testament points to Christ. If that’s the case, how, then, does this wisdom motif start to point to Jesus Christ? That will be our subject in the next 2 or 3 minutes, very briefly and then for the ensuing Sundays as we continue with Proverbs 8.

In Matthew 23:34 Christ makes a statement about Himself. And I want you to notice what the statement says and then I’m going to take you to a parallel reference where we are introduced to this new angle about the person of Christ. First, though, you have to know Matthew 23:34. “Wherefore, behold,” this is at the end of Christ’s ministry, and this is a beautiful verse to cure all hyper Calvinists because it certainly shows the individual responsibility here. “Wherefore, behold, I send you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them you shall kill and crucify, and some of them you shall scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city. [35] That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of the righteous Abel unto the blood of Zechariah, son of Barachiah, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. [36] Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.”

Now those are words that Christ spoke just before He was killed. Who was it that sent the prophets in the Old Testament? Was it Christ or was it Jehovah? It was obviously Jehovah. Then doesn’t this say that Jesus is Jehovah? Yes. Here is one of those verses where Christ’s deity comes out in a very sneaky way. But He has put Himself in the place that only could be occupied in a monotheistic culture by Jehovah, the one God. “I” he says, “I send you the prophets.” Now did or did not all these prophets, from Abel, as he points out here, to Zechariah, did they or did they not have a coherent message? Didn’t they all supplement one another; they weren’t chaotic. They didn’t clash with one another; there was a constant unfolding theme, wasn’t there.

Okay, now Luke reports the same thing that Christ said, perhaps here or on another occasion, but he reports it differently. Hold one hand at Matthew 23:34 and turn to Luke 11:49. Notice what 11:49 says, “Therefore says the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall say and persecute, [50] That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation. [51] From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zechariah.” Now don’t you see what Christ has tied Himself to? “The Wisdom of God,” and so now we have a new title that’s new to most of you, is that Christ is known, and I’ll show you other places where Paul picks the same theme up in his later weeks, “the wisdom of God” is Jesus Christ. What does that mean? What does that tell us about the person of Christ? It tells us that Jesus Christ holds the answer to every intellectual question. That’s the astounding implication of this title; there is no need to pursue philosophic questions outside of the person of Christ. He is the ultimate answer. This is why the Gospel of John begins by calling Christ the Logos of God; that was a tremendous term used in the ancient world to summarize everything; the arche. These two words are used or Christ in the New Testament, so He becomes the center of it all.

Now is this just rationalistic speculation? Is this just something that (?) out of the clear blue? One further reference in the New Testament and we’ll be done, 1 Corinthians 15. When Christ claims to be the answer, he claims to give us answers that we can believe on the basis of historic revelation; not mystical revelation nor speculation. But when Christ gives us an answer it is an answer based on historic evidence, and since today is Easter you might as well be reminded that the big thing about Easter is that it historically occurred. You’ll probably hear people say well, it doesn’t make any difference as long as you believe in the idea of the resurrection. Well, baloney, who cares about the idea, there are lots of ideas in the world, The Wizard of Oz is a great idea too but who cares about The Wizard of Oz or the magic fairy or something else, or the Easter bunny. The difference between the Easter bunny and the wizard of Oz is that they didn’t rise from the dead on the third day with evidences. That’s why Christ is the answer and here in 1 Corinthians 15 I want you to notice the tabulation of the evidences.

1 Corinthians 15:4, just briefly, “He was buried, and He rose again the third day according to the Scripture,” so therefore it fits rationally and logically with the Old Testament development of the theme. [5] And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve.” [6] “He was seen of five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present time, but some are fallen asleep. [7] He was seen of James,” etc. etc. etc. Does that sound like the apostle Paul said oh, just go believe? Does that sound like that’s his message, wherever you go folks, just believe. That’s not the message of the apostles; you can argue with the evidence, but my point to you is that they believed it, they believed the evidence was sufficient and they never offered an invitation to accept Christ apart from evidence. Christianity is not believing something into thin air. Christianity always is I believe because I know. And that is the great offense.

Christ, the wisdom of God, is the answer to all problems and the answers that he gives us to all problems are like this: He gives us evidences that are visible. And we should have the same attitude in verse 17, notice what Paul is saying; this should be your mentality this morning, “If Christ is not raised, your faith is in vain, ye are yet in your sins. [18] Then they also who are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.” Do you think Paul would have bought the modern, well, it’s just the idea of Christ is such a sweet think, sort of like The Wizard of Oz and the Easter bunny? Do you suppose he would have passed on that? No! He’s quite willing to say in verse 17 if the historic basis wrong, take it to the nearest ash can and trash it. That would have been Paul’s attitude, and that’s why he says in verses 18-19, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” He doesn’t believe that Christianity is so good I’d go on believing it anyway. Like I was speaking at one Christian meeting and I mentioned verse 19 and I got interrupted right in the middle by one of these “amen” groups, so busy saying “amen” that they couldn’t think what I was saying, besides being rude and interrupting what I was saying. And I got to the point, do you think that Christianity is so good that you’d believe it anyway, even if I could prove it to you that it was historically invalid and false, “Amen, amen, amen.” And they were going on like that. Well, that shows you what kind of an outfit. Now would Paul? Absolutely not. If you could show Paul the evidence was wrong for the resurrection, the seal was not on the tomb, that the Roman records of the trial were forged, then fine, forget it and go back to basket weaving or whatever I did in Galatia before this whole thing started.

And finally, down in 1 Corinthians 15:32, again do you see Paul’s attitude. “If, after the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantage [doth it profit] me, if the dead rise not?” Is the Easter bunny here? No. If the dead don’t rise, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Paul was quite willing to accept the only logical conclusion—the heck with the whole thing. So it’s either the evidences are true and we can believe them or they are false and you ought to do something about that too.