Clough Proverbs Lesson 44
Wisdom’s Rewards – Proverbs 8:10-21
Proverbs 8, we are
on the last of the introduction to Proverbs, we’ll probably finish this in
about two more Sunday’s and then we’ll be into the Proverbs proper. Proverbs 7, 8 and 9 are the summary section
of the introduction because they deal with a heightened view of wisdom, or chokmah.
The opposite of wisdom is folly and in Proverbs 7 you recall we had a
very sarcastic picture of the idiot. And
the person who is characterized as the idiot in Scripture is the person who has
rejected the Word of God; the person who has gone on negative volition and who,
therefore, finds himself unable to handle the situations of life.
In Proverbs 8 we
began with what wisdom offers in return and you recall once again in verse 5
how wisdom addresses believers. Remember
this is an address made not to the non-believer but to the believer, [5] “O
simple, understand wisdom, and idiots understand heart,” an appeal to be able
to read your conscience. And we pointed
out that verse 5 is the next to the last sentence in the command, and the idea
is to get the attention of the people before they can be taught. And the idea is that therefore we call, “hey,
idiot,” and the person says yeah, you’re talking to me, and when you’ve got
their attention then you can teach them something. So this is why the people, believers, are
called stupid, simple and idiots in verse 5.
Now this should be an answer to those who dislike this kind of
language. Every once in a while we have
a few people that will say well God is going to deal with you and so forth; and
these are nothing but fairy types who have never studied Scriptures carefully,
and they inevitably suffer any time they meet some kind of a passage like this. But this is exactly what the passage means
and the Holy Spirit wrote it so I doubt the Holy Spirit is going to deal with
anybody, except those who don’t listen and those who don’t adhere to His
original commands.
Now today in
Proverbs 8:10 we begin the second part of this chapter; verses 10-31 deal with
another command section and motivation.
Remember proverbial literature of the introductory type is always made
up of at least two parts, a command and a motivation for the command. The command here is given in verse 10 and the
motivation in verses 11-31. In this
case, however, the motivation is divided in two parts. The first motivation is from verse 11-21; the
second motivation from verse 22-31. This
is a very difficult passage of the Old Testament. In fact, the second part of this chapter, from
verses 22-31 is the most advanced revelation in the Old Testament. This is the most clear form of the Trinity
being revealed in the Old Testament or at least God the Son being revealed in
the Old Testament, that there is in all of God’s Word from Genesis to
Malachi.
The first part,
however, is something else, and so these motivations emphasize different sides
of the coin. The first series of
motivations, in Proverbs 8:10-21 deal with the practical side of wisdom, that
is, that wisdom fits the real world.
This is one of the motivations for seeking it because in seeking chokmah or seeking wisdom you are
seeking something that fits the real world.
And verses 22-31 have to do not with the practical side but this has to
do with the theoretical side. And for
this reason this is one of the rare instances in the Old Testament where you
actually have theory given. Theory in
the sense of modern philosophy because this is the basis for what could have
developed as biblical philosophy; it’s all wrapped up in these verses, verses
22-31.
But Proverbs
8:10-21 that deal with the practical side and it’s verses 10-21 that we want to
deal with this morning. Let’s look at
verse 10; verse 10 is the command, verse 11 is the motivation. Let’s look first at verse 10. We can entitle the entire section, since we
follow the theme of wisdom being portrayed as a female, and once again
Proverbs, before we get into this it would do us well to review something. Let’s look at the believer and God or
wisdom. The believer throughout the
Bible is usually cast as a female and God, obviously, or Christ, is the
male. And the reason for that is not
because God has the same sex difference that man has, because in God they’re
together, what we call and identify as the male type or the female type are
both combined in God as God created Adam once combined. But they’ve been split up in humanity. And so in the human race we have these
qualities diversified by divine decree.
However, they have served as illustrations for certain spiritual
relationships, and the female is the one who receives the love of the male, and
so here the love of God is pictured as that which is initiated by Him and
received by the female in grace. And it
gets quite explicit at times in Scripture.
In fact, there’s a passage in 1 John 3 that talks about Jesus Christ
sperm abiding in the believer.
However, this
imagery is reversed when it comes to wisdom and here the believer is cast as
the male and wisdom comes down here and is represented as the female. Now there’s a reason for this too and that is
to stress the fact that the believer, after he trusts the Lord for his
salvation, he is on positive volition, and God makes available to him all of
His assets by grace. Yet, the believer
must initiate to gain chokmah. In other words, sanctification, Christian
growth, requires volition to manifest itself.
And the way it does is in a male form of pursuing the female, of making
love to the female to get response. And
this is going to come out in this passage of Proverbs 8, where the believer is
characterized as the male, in fact the word for wisdom, chokmah, you can see “a” ending, it’s a female ending; the word is
a feminine noun. So you have the male
initiating toward the female to gain a response. Now all of this is interesting because this
would make absolute nonsense if the
universe were impersonal, they way the Greeks thought it and the way, later on,
the people of our society have felt that the universe is, it’s impersonal. It’s not impersonal; it’s personal because
you get a personal response.
Now Proverbs 8:10,
wisdom, the woman, is addressing the male, the believer, and she says, “Take my
instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold.” The word “instruction” is the word which we
have seen before, and in the Hebrew it looks like this, musar, and it is the word for severe training, the kind of training
you get in boot camp, the kind of training the military gives people. It is a kind of training… the picture of
training, if a military picture is foreign to you then the forty years of
testing in the wilderness that is also characterized as musar. It is a tough,
demanding kind of training.
And so it demands
that if someone is in the program that they stick with it. And you’ll find in these situations in your
life, if you go our for a team in athletics, or if you’re in the service and
you’re in this kind of a training there’ll always come that time when you say I
can’t take any more of this, I’m going to quit and I’m going to give up, and
I’m going to resign and get out. And
this is one way musar is very
valuable to you. If you have the
experience of athletics, if you have the experience of being trained in the
service, if you have the experience of any kind of severe training it will do
you wonders right here in this point because now you can borrow upon your
personal experience of severe training and understand what the Word of God is
saying. This is where experience does
help understand the Word. And if you’re
used to this kind of thing it’s great; the trouble is, very few people are used
to this kind of thing so they never notice that the Scriptures do teach this,
this severe form of training.
Well, musar, being severe, always tests whether
you are going to be a quitter, and this is what chokmah is in the Christian life; to pass whether you are a
believer who quits, whether you are a believer who when the going gets rough
and when you face adversities and pressures in life you’re going to just quit,
and throw in the towel and say that’s it, God is insufficient for this, and he
was sufficient up to this point but I can’t take any more so I’m a
quitter. This is why evangelical
Christianity is where it is because the woods are full of quitters. Our churches are full of quitters, people who
come every other Sunday or something else and they put on the show that they’re
taking in the Word and shake hands at the door and so on, and they’re not
fooling anybody but themselves, they’re certainly not fooling God, they may be
fooling some of their loved ones but where they fool themselves is right here,
because God is going to bring training your life if you are a believer and
you’re going to be a quitter. You’re
going to go so long and then everything is going to fall apart and you will not
have the spiritual strength to cope with it and you’ll just be this kind of a
quitter. And it’s a very miserable
picture of a believer who quits because they have a little pressure in their
life and so they start crying, why did this happen to me and all the rest.
So watch it and
when you see this passage in verse 10, “Receive my instruction,” this is wisdom
saying look, don’t quit; you’re right in the middle of getting some good
training so keep on with it. The word
“receive” means to take and keep on taking, don’t give up now. You’re in the program, keep with it. “Receive my instruction, and not silver; and
knowledge,” in other words, the verb “receive” imperative, should go also with
knowledge, it’s understood, “receive knowledge rather than choice gold.” And the point that is established in verse 10
is your priorities in life. You don’t
quit something that you have decided beforehand is the number one thing in your
life. People don’t quit on the number
one thing.
And you will find
men, for example, who will work their fingers to the bone for silver and gold,
you will find them giving their life for their business, and you’ll find them
doing all sorts of things, which many times is necessary, except in their
mental attitude, and that’s the big difference.
A man who in his mental attitude is basically after his business in the
sense that he sees business with that, then he is in trouble. He is immediately in trouble. Now you have a right to make profits, that’s
the first divine institution, that’s capitalism and capitalism is taught by
God’s Word. But when you get your eyes
on this kind of thing and this takes precedence over listening to tapes and
this takes precedence over taking in the Word of God, and this takes precedence
over your fellowship with other men, something’s wrong and you’re headed for a
crash.
So we have again
situations in evangelical Christianity where men somehow have a very feminine
image of Christianity and they think it’s all up to their wives to take care of
this and I’ll let my wife teach my children, and I’ll let my wife do this and
let my wife do that, and I’ll, in other words, pass the buck of spiritual
responsibility to my wife. And of course
this is the rejection of the male role and once again dramatizes not
masculinity but it dramatizes the de-masculization of the American male, where
he can’t take it, where he is a quitter when it comes to spiritual things. And of course, we suffer in evangelical
Christianity from this. Where we have a
need for men to exercise leadership we do not have it today and we are
suffering for it. Fortunately for us, in
about ten more years, there is across the nation young men who are ready to
step in and they’ll be ready in about ten more years, so if we can make it
through nine more years of this and then we can get some people who have their
priorities in the right place and we’ll be ready to go again. But for about fifty years in this country we
have lacked male leadership I don’t know what’s happened but somewhere along
the line the American male has lost something and he evidently isn’t too
concerned about getting it back again so I actually believe that the Holy
Spirit is skipping an entire generation and is moving now with young people; he
is moving with them because they are responding to the Word of God, they are
taking in the Word of God on an unprecedented scale, they are not afraid to
speak out, even if it means loss of academic standing or on their job and so
on.
This doesn’t hold
for every situation but generally speaking you talk to pastors across the
country and ask them where is the spiritual hotbed today and you’ll find out
very fast where it is, and it’s very obvious, if you want to test me on it,
just look at the statistics and go looking at population curves on the mission
field. That’s one place you can test;
another place you can test is look at the leadership in local churches and do
it by age and you’ll see another very revealing figure. But this is a national symptom in the present
time and it is a very bad symptom as far as we’re concerned because of the
violation of verse 10.
“Receive my musar, and not silver,” that’s the
priority, and if you have to forsake your business to pick up some extra musar, and some extra doctrine, then
that’s the way to do it, extra doctrine.
So this is the priority, verse 10.
And Proverbs
Do you think that
all your human viewpoint social action and all your club work is going to help
in that time? No. Do you know why? Because those young people or whoever it is,
by that time won’t be young people, they’ll be middle aged people at the helm
of national leadership and they are going to need courage in the face of
death. Now where’s your human viewpoint. Playing softball is fine; playing baseball is
fine; playing football is fine, but playing football and baseball isn’t going
to have any relationship to a future situation of disaster. When this country faces a decision, when
Russia or China blackmails us and says you will surrender or we will drop 125
megaton bombs on the United States in the next three hours, you have your
choice and we’re giving you one hour to make the decision, what are you going
to do in a situation like that? If you
have Bible doctrine you’ll say go right ahead because we’re warming up now,
we’re pressing our button. That’s what
the person with Bible doctrine will do, he won’t be afraid of nuclear
destruction, why be afraid of nuclear destruction, it’ll just send you into the
presence of the Lord, be absent from the body, face to face with the Lord. Christians shouldn’t be at all concerned
about that. He should just be concerned
that before he is killed he has a chance to kill them, that’s all. That should be the number one overriding
concern, if the communists threaten nuclear annihilation that we knock them off
first. That’s the only issue.
But in order to
develop a tough mental attitude in that kind of a situation human good in all
the service clubs isn’t going to mean beans; it is the amount of the Word of
God and what are you doing about it?
Wasting time, playing softball, baseball, and so on, or are you trying
to teach doctrine to young people? So
there’s an example today of where our priorities are in the wrong place, it’s
not gold and silver as described here, but the priorities are the same; the
priorities are exactly the same and we’re winding up with the same kind of
thing. What are we going to do when we
get into economic disaster? Price
controls; price controls are anti-biblical.
They’ll never work because they’re a violation of the first divine
institution; they always thwart production.
The Bible is pro-capitalism. Now
in that kind of a situation, what’s going to happen in economic disaster? Do you know what’s going to happen? You can just see the handwriting all over the
wall, we’ll have a whole population that has been used to big brother taking
care of them and they will vote away their freedom for more government
control. I might not be able to have
roast beef seven times a week and I just can’t have my T-bone steak three or
four times a week, so therefore this means I’m going to starve and therefore I
don’t want to starve so I will get the government to support me. You’re going to have those kind of people,
they’re all over the place now and it’s only going to get worse. What are you doing? Playing softball, playing baseball and
playing football. Now nothing wrong with
those things but if that’s what you life is there’s something wrong.
And so we have men
by the hundreds in the city of Lubbock all out for this group, that group, some
other group and where are they when the Word of God is being taught? These little boys that are growing up in
little league, for example, 8, 9, 10, 12 years old, where are they going to be
20 years from now, facing the kind of situations they’re going to have to
face. What are you doing to strengthen
their souls? If the communists come and
say hey, we’re going to knock you out in three hours with 125 megaton bombs,
they’re going to get up and say well, I’m a good softball player. That’s really going to impress them, isn’t
it? Or I play football, I made all the
first downs and so on; that’s really going to be impressive… it will not! Only people who have the Word of God, who can
think in the time of catastrophe, who have the stability to keep their
priorities clear, are going to be the ones that will do anything, everybody
else is going to fall apart and it’s going to be a sad day because like
Jeremiah watched it happened in his day, and Isaiah watched it happen in his
time, we’re going to see the same thing because these commands in Proverbs have
been violated.
Proverbs 8:12, “I,
wisdom, dwell with prudence, and I find out knowledge of witty inventions,”
says the King James in its roaring English.
The word “witty inventions” means practical skill, and both the word
“prudence” and “witty inventions” are Hebrew nouns that refer to skill in the
details of life. This means that the
kind of skill is a skill that goes on and looks at divine institutions one, two
and three; the details of life. All
details of life can be fitted into six categories, according to God’s
Word. The first category is the first
divine institution, it has to do with individual responsibility or volition,
and that was clear from Adam in the Garden.
There God gave man responsibility, man used his responsibility and God
did not take away all the evil effects.
If God handled Adam the way some people would have us handle people
today He’d say oh, poor Adam, you didn’t really understand, you had the wrong
kind of upbringing, and so Adam, I’ll tell you what we’ll do, we’ll just give
you a second chance. Did God give Adam a
second chance? He did not. Responsibility never gives a second
chance. Grace comes in and offers a
solution but responsibility is always a one-shot thing, you’ve got it, that’s
it, you suffer the consequences.
And so under the
first divine institution we have some of the details of life. We have labor, we have economics; these are
details that belong to the first divine institution. So a person who has “witty inventions” it
should be “skill in the details of life,” is one who first of all can analyze a
problem in his life and say now look, does this concern the 1st, 2nd,
3rd, 4th, or 5th divine institution. He can analyze his life, so if he faces a
problem on the job he knows it doesn’t fall in the third divine institution; it
falls in the first divine institution.
And it has to do with volition and production. The second divine institution, the doctrine
of the best woman and the best man, the idea that the Bible proclaims that
there’s a right woman and a right man for each couple and that God has an
interest in these affairs. That is an
issue, the second divine institution.
The third divine institution, education, which does not fall in the
fourth, it falls in the third, that is it falls under the responsibility of the
parents. It doesn’t mean the parents
actually do all the educating but God holds the parents responsible for the education. Here we have the fourth divine institution,
justice, law and punishment, including capital punishment. And here we have again a detail of life
that’s being violated in our day. Here
we have the fifth divine institution which is tribal diversity, the nations are
divided on earth and will be until Christ returns, and you always have the
problem of war and peace. And therefore
someone who is oriented to these details of life will recognize that there are
going to be wars and rumors of wars forever, at least until Christ returns, so
you might as well reconcile yourself that to survive every country needs a
strong military, and countries who do not have strong military and then
politicians who advocate this are basically murderers because they are allowing
their population to be slaughtered. So
we have these situations that occur today, all in violation of “witty
inventions” or practical wisdom.
Now Proverbs 8:13,
wisdom goes on and describes her essence; this is the center of wisdom. “The fear of the LORD,” now that is what she
calls herself. Turn to Proverbs 1:7,
remember back in 1:7 we have the statement about the principle part of
knowledge; it said the fear of the LORD is the principle part of knowledge, or
the base of knowledge, and the word fear in the Hebrew means respect for His
authority. This doesn’t mean the fear
that God is going to come down and clobber you or something; this means a
respect for His authority. And now if
you think categorically you should be able to tie this up.
The third divine
institution, which is the family, is the first place in life where you
encounter the concept of authority.
That’s the first place. And if
you do not understand authority from your experience as a child in the family,
you have got to learn that before you can have a spiritual relationship with
the Lord. Now here is where the natural
and the spiritual tie together and it’s very, very important. And those of you, particularly education
majors, who are being systematically brainwashed to undermine authority of
ideas and absolutes, you listen carefully.
The third divine institution is the place where authority is first
learned in anyone’s life. Therefore,
authority, first of all, comes from the parents. And therefore any program today that
undermines the authority of the parent is anti-biblical. Any program that wants to yank children out
from under the parent’s authority is anti-biblical because it is violating this
concept of authority.
Now the next area
in which somebody encounters authority, let’s suppose we have a person who’s
kind of slow in this area, either because of his home or because of his own
stubbornness, and he goes on through to age 18, and by the age of 18 he has not
yet learned authority in the home and so we know out here, according to this
verse, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge,” we know that in
order for this person to become a Christian and move on spiritually he has to
master the lesson of bowing to superior authority. But he hasn’t learned it at age 18. And along comes somebody and he invites Jesus
into his heart, whatever that means, at age 18, and he becomes a Christian in
spite of that form of evangelism. Now,
he becomes a Christian but he doesn’t grow.
Why doesn’t he
grow? He doesn’t grow because he has no
concept of authority. And so therefore
between the age of 18 and the year X, and we’ll just let the year X be whatever
time he gets with it in his Christian life, if he ever does, somewhere between
18 and X he is going to have to go through a lesson plan designed by God to make
up for lost time. So all of his 18 years
when he was growing up in the home he never learned authority. So therefore, at 18 he goes to college and he
flunks out at the end of the first year because he doesn’t have any discipline
and then he does the best thing, he finally gets smart and he goes into the
army. And in the army he suddenly
encounters something called authority.
And it’s a rude shock, and he writes home, mamma, they yell at me here;
mamma, they cut my hair short. And
mamma, they make me clean my room and make my bed in the morning, I’m not used
to all this hard work. And so he
encounters the concept of authority. And
he also sasses the D.I. someday and he also sees the results of that, and he
begins to learn that authority has to be respected. But just suppose he doesn’t learn all the
lessons he has to learn and then he goes into war, and he notices something
that in a combat situation, without authority, you can’t win, in fact you get
killed, because if you have 5 or 6 men and they don’t follow orders they get
shot. Well, maybe he survived that and
he comes home and finally after about age 27 now he has finally begun to learn
through some very bad experiences the necessity for authority. And then it takes him four more years to get an
adequate understanding of the Word of God, so by the time he’s 31 he finally
has some concept of authority.
Now look at this;
by age 18 he could have had the concept of authority in his soul; it took him
an extra 13 years to get it, the hard way, miserable way, suffering way. Perhaps when he was in the war situation his
buddies were killed because he didn’t follow instructions. Other people have been hurt because he didn’t
understand this concept, but the Lord had a plan for his life that said you will
learn authority and before you can grow in the Christian life you have to
understand the fear of the Lord, and the means respecting His authority.
Now that is what
wisdom is, so if we turn back to Proverbs 8 we see “the fear of the LORD,” that
is all one phrase and refers to wisdom; it’s just another title for wisdom
here. You could replace “the fear of the
LORD” with the noun “wisdom” and you’d have the same meaning. “The fear of the LORD”or“The respect for the
authority of the LORD is to hate evil.” And I like that because in verse 13 you have a
word that is not used often in Christian circles today. The emphasis is always on love, love this,
love that, love the dog, love the cat, love everything else that crawls, and
we’re supposed to go around loving anything and everything. And yet isn’t it interesting that it does not
say here that the fear of the Lord is positive, it is negative, “to hate
evil.”
Now there’s a
fundamental principle involved here that you must master. You cannot love something unless you hate its
opposite; those words form two sides of the same coin. And if you’re going to go loving everything
you destroy the whole concept of love; you can’t love everything. Forget it.
You can only love over a narrow area and you hate outside of that; just
a reflection of priorities. And so here
it is a reflection of God’s priority, “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil,”
and then evil is expanded in the rest of verse 13, and notice again the
emphasis on mental attitude. “…pride,
and arrogance,” these are mental attitude sins, not overt behavior
patterns. See how the Bible emphasizes
the inner mental attitude and not whether you do this and don’t do this and do
this and don’t do this? I don’t smoke
and I don’t dance, and I don’t do this, and I don’t do that, and probably you
don’t breathe. So you have all the
legalistic taboos of do’s and don’ts, do’s and don’ts, and where does the
Scripture put the emphasis? Mental
attitude, “pride, arrogance, and the evil way, the froward [perverse] mouth, do
I hate.” That’s the mouth speaking human
viewpoint. The word “forward,” another
King James translation of a Hebrew word which means twisted, it means to
present the truth in distorted form. So
if you want another word for froward use the word distorted; the mouth that
distorts.
Proverbs 8:14, is
further the description of the essence of wisdom, “Counsel is mine, and sound
wisdom.” “Counsel is mine” means that
wisdom is the source for advice. Now
when you look at any kind of advisor in life he is going to have some sort of a
framework that he uses. The Bible
specifies the only legitimate framework for advice is by divine revelation of
the Word. Therefore, in terms that some
of o you have had in your courses is psychology and counseling, the Bible is
pro-directive counseling and against non-directive counseling. The Word of God does not sit there like some
non-directive counselors and you come in and you come in and you have a
tremendous problem, and you say oh, I’m depressed, and the counselor says oh, I
see you have a problem. And then they
say yea, I did this and I did that. Oh,
you did that? And this gets to be a ping
pong ball game that is bounced back and forth, your problem is bounced between
you and the counselor and this is called non-directive counseling. The Word of God doesn’t do that. You come to the Word of God and it says do
this; it gives you some instruction, so there you have a directive type of counsel.
Proverbs 8:14,
“Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom.” And
here again the word for “sound wisdom” means success, practical wisdom, all
this emphasis on the practical details of life.
“I am understanding; I have strength.”
Now this is an interesting concept, verse 14, because in the ancient
world there was no such thing as counsel without authority. Counsel always had authority. This is why, if you’ll turn to Isaiah 9:6 and
you look at the coming Messiah He is called by certain titles that depict His
essence or His character. He is called,
“Wonderful, Counselor,” and one of the characteristics of Jesus Christ is that
Jesus Christ is looked forward to here in verse 6 as the One who gives
authoritative counsel, not just good advice, authoritative counsel. Now why did authoritative counsel carry such
weight in the ancient world? Look at it
very simply; here you have a problem in life, we’ll call it this problem, and
you come up to your problem and you wonder what to do with it. If you have divine viewpoint advice you are
going to have a solution to that problem.
In other words, the advice has power to it.
Therefore, going
back to Proverbs 8:14, when it says “Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom. I am understanding, and I have power,” it
means power to solve problems. That’s
the power or that’s the strength mentioned and this is why you cannot give
advice unless you know the Word. This is
why some of you have a spiritual gift called in the New Testament, now many of
you and this has been exciting to watch, have discovered in the last 6 or 7
months your spiritual gift. Several have
discovered 2 or 3 spiritual gifts. And
that’s very good. And there’s been
several of you who have come to me and have spoken about the fact that you
think that you have the word of wisdom, which as I explain to you in counseling
and in some of the classes, word of wisdom means that you have the ability to
give advice in personal situations, not that you play Ann Landers or something,
but the idea is that you are able to give some divine viewpoint on personal
situations and it seems like you have a special capacity in this area. That would indicate you have the spiritual
gift of the word of wisdom.
Now look,
spiritual gifts are only a capacity but they are not a sign of
spirituality. A spiritual gift, let’s
get this because I’m going to make an application here in a moment, spiritual
gift is a capacity but it has no… it can be either carnal or spiritual. It can be used in a human viewpoint sense or
it can be used in a divine viewpoint sense; the capacity can be used both
ways. All spiritual gifts are only
capacity and you can use these capacities rightly or wrongly; this means if
it’s tongues, for example, as it was in Corinth, it can never be a sign of
spirituality, never! No spiritual gift
is ever a sign of spirituality, never has been and never can be. Repeat: no spiritual gift can prove
spirituality because… you take the other gifts, can a person with the gift of
teaching use it wrongly? Sure can. Because he has the gift of teaching does that
make him spiritual? It does not; it
doesn’t do a thing for his spirituality.
So spiritual gifts, then, have no relationship whatever to
spirituality. forget it, and this is
again, a sign the charismatic people don’t know what they’re talking about when
they make tongues a spiritual gift, the modern thing called tongues; it can’t
be a sign of spirituality because no spiritual gift is ever or ever has been a
sign of spirituality.
But, spiritual
gifts have to be developed, so we go now here, besides the capacity, a
spiritual gift must be developed. Now
let’s go back to the believer who has the word of wisdom. You have discovered a capacity to give
wisdom; you have insight into people’s problems and it seems like you can say
look, that’s the problem with you. A
person may come to you and they may suffering from depression and everything
else and you say listen, your problem isn’t depression, your problem is right
over here, in some area of disobedience to the Word of God, and that’s your
problem. And all of a sudden they say,
you know, that’s right, that’s where it all is.
And so you notice that you have this capacity. But the capacity has to grow and therefore
you have to develop in your soul a divine viewpoint framework to handle the
problems of life. And it means,
therefore, if you have the spiritual gift of the word of wisdom you will take
time to study the Word of God so that you will be able to give wisdom that is
grounded on the Word. And that makes, in
particular the heart of your study, and you Bible study program should be
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs.
Those three books are critical for anyone with the gift of the word of
wisdom because all three of those books deal with the details of life from the
standpoint of wisdom.
Proverbs 8:14
again, “… I have power,” that means I can solve problems. [15] “By me kings reign, and princes decree
justice. [16] By me princes rule, and
nobles, even all the judges of the earth.”
All right, verses 15 and 16 mean that no person can enter into the
fourth divine institution and do a good job without using principles of divine
viewpoint wisdom. Now this is
interesting. You will have people and
you will frequently meet people on the job, and in life and elsewhere, who are
not believers. But nevertheless, they
are wise unbelievers. And the first time
you notice this it’s going to shake you up a little bit because you’ll notice
some person over who’s a believer, and they are just plain stupid. But nevertheless, you know they are a
believer, stupid but believer. And then
over here you’ll notice some smart unbeliever who’s just absolutely
brilliant. And he is very wise; wise in
some area of life. For example, this
person may be an excellent military leader, he may be an excellent economist,
he may be an excellent politician.
Why? Because living in God’s
world he has picked up the principles for…
[Tape turns] … so
you can have a very wise person, that’s what’s mentioned in verses 15-16, the
idea and argument here is that if these princes reign, the idea is that they
reign properly, if they are successful princes and kings, and judges, then the
reason for their success is their conformity with me, says wisdom.
All right,
Proverbs 8:17-21, the last section of this part of chapter 8, here is wisdom’s
response and here is where we get into her femaleness. Here is where she is responding to the
initiative of the believer. “I love them
that love me, and those that seek me early shall find me.” Here she is responding; “I constantly love,”
the word love is imperfect, a habitual imperfect, “I go on loving them that
love me,” “them that love me” is a participle for motion picture tense, it goes
on and on and on and on. In other words,
those that pursue after me I love. So
here you have the believer, the believer is on positive volition and he’s
constantly seeking to enlarge the area of his faith.
Let’s look at it a
way we haven’t recently, when you become a Christian God puts you in union with
Christ; that relationship is eternally secure.
However, at the same time you have a relationship to Him in time, and
this means that over a certain area of life you can believe. Now let me show you what I’ve discovered some
believers right here doing; it comes out of my own counseling experience so
therefore given the sample of counseling I figure it’s about 25-30% of you this
morning that are making the same mistake, so let’s review something at this
point. When you become a Christian that
bottom circle is about like that, it’s very small. It’s VERY small; this is why no new believer
should ever be put in leadership positions.
But it’s very small. As you grow
in the Christian life, positive volition, enlightening ministry of the Holy
Spirit and your divine viewpoint framework grows, as you begin to mature, what
happens to this circle? It gets
bigger. That means you can trust God
over a larger area of life. All right
now, suppose you’ve grown up to here, suppose now you’re about one year old as
far as Christianity is concerned, you’ve been a Christian for a year. You’re walking along and you come into a
group of Christians; this is evidently how most of this is happening around
here; you come into a group of believers and you look over there and you see
some person that must have a circle this big.
And then you look over here and you see somebody else the same way. All of a sudden there comes upon you a
temptation to fake it and the temptation is to live as though you too have that
large circle.
Now here is where
some of you are way off the track, and let me show you what happens to you or
what will happen to you if you’re this kind of a believer because I’ve watched
it happen right here and I’ve got proof before my eyes. But this circle, you’re believer number 1 and
here’s believers numbers 2 and 3, and maybe they’re your roommates, so it turns
out you’re surrounded with them all the time.
And they don’t mean it, and perhaps they’re not even aware of your own
spiritual condition. Maybe they’re not,
and so they go on and they trust the Lord for this, they trust the Lord for
that, they trust the Lord to get them a summer job or something, again
properly, it doesn’t mean they just lie on their back and wait for it to drop
on their chest or something, that’s not the point. But they are able to trust the Lord for
finances.
Some of you in
business, perhaps you’re in business with a group of believers and you see
these guys and they’re able to believe like crazy, for sales, for certain loan
transactions and so on, and you sit there and you wonder how the heck do these
guys trust the Lord for that. And so you
talk with them and all of a sudden, the group pressure comes upon you; watch
it, it is subtle, the group pressure comes upon you and you want to start
mimicking the stronger believers without going through the process they had to
go through. Now just look at believers 2
and 3, maybe they are 10 years old in the Lord; maybe for 10 years they have
spent enlarging their circle; maybe they had to do it through large testings in
their lives, for many things in their life.
Maybe they had to pass through some tremendously severe pressures to get
to where they are in the Christian life today.
And you look at them and you feel condemned. Why, I feel like a clod, I feel stupid, I
feel condemned, I feel wimpy in front of their eyes. Well don’t!
See here is where subtlety you’ve abandoned the grace principle.
Watch how it
works. You’re in the middle of a group,
here’s your circle, here’s their circle, and you start comparing and you say
now look, look at them, I want to be like them, I want to be acceptable with
them, I want to enjoy the same things they enjoy, and so you start to try to
leave the concept of grace because grace you got this far, so you cross off
grace and you start on works, and the first thing you try is human viewpoint
human good fig leaves, just like Eve and Adam.
You feel naked around these kind of people and so you want to put your
clothes on and you go to your closet and get a good pair of human good fig
leaves out and wear them around. And
sooner or later you begin to convince these people; why, did you see so and so
has grown so fast spiritually in the last week, and it’s just amazing to look
at this thing, and everybody thanks God for this great growth and so on. It’s not growth, that’s just fig leaves that
you put on to fake it with the rest of the believers. You see, that is not “speaking the truth in
sincerity.” Do you know that word
“sincere” in the New Testament? That’s
what this is talking about, it’s being violated here.
So just relax, and
if the other believers look down their long spiritual nose at you, you just
remind them, they got there by grace. So
you relax when you’re around these people and don’t try to fake it. I’ve had some people facing disasters in
counseling recently because what has happened, they’ve faked it and faked it
and faked it and all of a sudden they’ve got themselves into a situation that
came up, a big problem came up and they couldn’t face it without letting their
fig leaves off, and then pride came in, well I can’t show these people how I
really am; if I show these people how I really am then my great concept of what
a fantastic Christian I am is going to go down the drain. Well, if it’s human good it deserves to go
down the drain, let it go down the drain.
If these believers are operating on grace they’ll know it and they’ll
sympathize and they’re recognize the whole situation and if they’re not
operating on grace forget it; they shouldn’t be your friends any way. So you just relax in grace. Just a word to the wise, don’t get into this
situation because I’m warning you, I have gone through enough counseling hours
in the last 2 or 3 weeks with this problem, it’s come up again and again and
again so I know it’s going on in this congregation. So if you feel that you can’t trust the Lord
over these areas then stop faking it and start taking in the Word of God
systematically and soon you will find yourself trusting in these areas
automatically. But it takes time.
And that’s why in
Proverbs 8:17 you’ve got a promise; look in verse 17 at the promise. Wisdom “loves you,” if you love her, and if
you’ll start initiating toward her you’ll get a response; she’ll respond to
you, and you don’t have to get your eyes on other believers round about; forget
what the other believers want. This is a
kind of pseudo legalism that got started here, you just relax about it. “I love them that love me, and those that
seek me early,” that means before the sun rises, now you can take you choice of
how literal you want to take this, “shall find me.” And there’s a promise for you, so don’t try
to fake it; don’t try to mimic stronger believers, you just relax and grow at
your own rate. It’s the same thing in
physical life, through the teenager years, all sorts of things begin to happen
and you get some girl or some guy and they feel out of it, just because the guy
can’t shave when he’s a freshman in high school or something it’s a
disaster. It’s not a disaster; it saves
a lot of time. So just relax about
it.
But you see, the
tendency is an adolescent is to get panicky about this, to say oh, gee,
everyone else is shaving and I’m not. Of
course now days you won’t have to worry because you just grow a beard, but the
point is that you get your eyes on the group.
Now look, God made your body and He will take care of it at His
rate. Don’t you ever downgrade something
God has given you. You have no right to
do that physically and you have no right to do that spiritually, and for the
loudmouth in your social group that doesn’t like it, you just have to learn to
handle that crowd. They’re ignoramuses
anyway, and anybody that starts making fun of somebody like this is just a slob
and should be treated as a slob, they’re low class and they ought to be told
they are low class and treated like low class people, which they are. So you don’t yield to group pressure and it
operates in the physical ream, and I’m sad to report that I notice now it’s
operating in the spiritual realm too, where we have believers trying to fake
it; just relax, you’re going through spiritual adolescence, you’ll shave soon.
Proverbs 8:18,
“Riches and honor are with me; durable riches and righteousness.” That’s the promise. And then a tremendous promise in verse 19, “My
fruit is better than gold, yea, than fine gold; and my revenue than choice
silver.” Now here is a very interesting
concept. The word “fruit” means that
wisdom cast as a female becomes pregnant, sorry we’re into one of those
passages again, but I didn’t write it.
The fruit doesn’t mean a fruit like you’re thinking, a fruit here means
that wisdom has been impregnated by the aggressive believer; the believer has
made love. Remember verse 17, “I love
them that love me,” and so a result of that is the fruit that is produced in
verse 19. This is actually opposite to
the picture that you usually get in the New Testament. Here the fruit is borne, not by the believer,
but by wisdom. And the child or the
progeny that is born to the believer is not the nature of Christ in Him,
pictured here, but this progeny is the rewards of wisdom, the rewards for
production. One of these rewards we’re
going to see tonight with David and Goliath, tremendous reward. It’s the concept that when you make love to
wisdom, one of the rewards that you’re going to get is promotion. And this goes whether you’re on the job,
whether you’re in school, whether you’re in a Christian organization or
whatever, it is the concept that you have a calling in life, and you’re at
phase one of that calling and it’s pretty crummy. As it were, you’re just sweeping out the
warehouse and choking in the dust. But
you do that job as unto the Lord and the Lord sees that and you constantly seek
the Lord’s will, you constantly seek after wisdom, you’re going to get
promoted, phase two. And you don’t have
to agitate and agitate for higher pay; you don’t have to agitate and agitate to
get a better job; the Lord will promote you.
Joseph had to
learn this in a dark dungeon in Egypt.
Joseph was down there and he had two characters that were down in the
jail, one was the cook and the other was the butcher. And these men were down there in jail and
finally the Pharaoh called them back out of jail to himself, and Joseph’s last
words, as the guard came clanking down, he opened the gate, took these two guys
out and Joseph said hey guys, when you get to Pharaoh would you tell him I’m
down here please, put in a good word for me, here’s my resume, give it to him,
I’ve got a lot of skill. And for two
years these two men completely forgot about Joseph. They never remembered to tell Pharaoh about
Joseph. Two years later the situation
came in and for two years it took God to teach Joseph a lesson, and after those
two years Joseph was promoted, not just out of the prison, he was promoted to
the (?) of Egypt, now how’s that for a promotion, it can’t get any better. And that’s what God did; finally Joseph
recognized that the promotion came from Him.
It can be applied to business; it can be applied to any area. You do a good job as unto the Lord and the
Lord will open the doors and advance your business and He will advance you
personally in your calling, whatever it is, providing you’re on the right
track. “My fruit is better than gold.”
Proverbs 8:20-21,
“I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of
judgment.” Purpose clause, verse 21,
“That I may cause those who love me to inherit substance; and I will fill their
treasures.” Notice the purpose in verse
21, and then back up to the cause in verse 20.
What is it that is necessary to arrive at the purpose of verse 21? That “I lead in the way of righteousness, and
in the midst of the paths of judgment.”
Do you know what that’s talking about?
It’s talking about God’s call in your life, and it means that you may
have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, different ideas about what God wants you to do. The “paths of judgment” means the paths that
have been marked out. Say, for example,
path number 4 is God’s will for you, but you don’t know that yet; you’re just
looking at all the possibilities. Now
what wisdom promises here is that as you accumulate a divine viewpoint
framework you will naturally be led to path 4; there will be just circumstances
that come up, there’ll be certain ideas that will clarify in your mind, the pieces
will fit together and actually find you’ll find the fourth path not by trying
to find it but by merely trying to know the Lord in a better and deeper
way. And as a result you’ll be led here,
and you’ll be in the paths laid out by judgment, you’ll be in the paths of
righteousness, righteousness for you.
And if you are in
that, then Proverbs 8:21, “I may cause those that love me,” I emphasize again
the word “those that love me” are Hebrew participles and refer not just to
believers but to special believers; believers on strong positive volition, who
routinely and regularly make it a habit of taking in the Word. Those are given the promise of verse 21, not
all believers. “I may cause those that
love me habitually to inherit substance; and I will fill their treasuries,” the
point there is blessing, blessings in time, blessings in eternity. Let’s look at some of the kinds. When you accept Christ, we call that phase 1,
justification. Phase 2 or sanctification
is from the time you accept Christ until the time you die, and then phase 3 is
eternity.
Now during phase 2
or sanctification you have many temporal blessings. These temporal blessings sometimes are
unrecognized until you get away from them a little bit. Some of these temporal blessings that God
will give in your life are actually suffering situations that will lead to a
tremendous mental attitude. Other
situations, God will give you prosperity; He don’t always do it but He will
give you prosperity in certain areas of your life, it may be financial but not
usually. The reason for this is he can’t
trust you with money. And there will be
some other areas that He can trust you with.
He will bless and these become what we call temporal blessings, but the
real blessings are in eternity, the rewards for service done during phase
2. Those are your blessings, and with
all due apologies to the hyper Calvinist you are given credit for using your
volition to secure these rewards. God
doesn’t give rewards to Himself; He gives them to you, to believers who have
gone on positive volition throughout phase 2.
Next week we’ll
begin with verse 22, and to conclude today I’d like you to turn to Ephesians
1:17 to show once again that we are approaching the passage that reveals in
Jesus Christ and in Ephesians 1:17 we have this brought up into our own age and
era. This is a prayer made for all
believers. Now please notice, the fact
that Paul has to make this prayer proves that all believers don’t enjoy
it. This is not automatic; this doesn’t
come automatically with the salvation package.
This is prayed, an additional prayer, “That the God of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and
revelation in the knowledge of Him. [18]
The eyes of your heart,” literally, “being enlightened; that ye may know what
is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance
in the saints, [19] And what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us
who believe,” now that is God’s will for you as a believer.
Paul has made this
prayer for you already, that you might have a spirit, that means your human
spirit will become wise. But in order
for your human spirit to become wise, you have to do something. Now to see clearly the relationship, think of
the Ephesians to whom this letter was written.
Did Paul trust them to come to a knowledge of Christ all by
themselves? He did not. Why didn’t he? He wrote the letter to them, didn’t he? If Paul had let the Ephesians come to their
own conclusions he’d have said okay, Ephesians, just come to your own
conclusions and then you can grow in the Christian life. But he doesn’t do that, he instructs them
using what? Scripture! Therefore, what conclusion do we come
to? In order for you to become wise you
have to have two things. You have to
have the spiritual work of the Holy Spirit outlined in verse 17, that I can’t
give you, you can’t give yourself, no one on earth can give you this. No one in heaven except God can give you
this. This is a work of the sovereign
Holy Spirit in your life. That’s where
we’re utterly dependent upon grace, totally for that.
There’s another
element, however, and that is Scripture.
You must also have Scripture there; it’s like a camera, you have to have
two things, light and film. The
Scripture is the film but the film has to be exposed. You can have a camera, take beautiful
picture, you think, without any film in it; you’ve got lots of light, the Holy
Spirit is there waiting to illuminate your heart; like the camera without any
film. But if you don’t have Scripture
you have nothing for the Holy Spirit to use as light to develop, but if you
have film then you’re all set to go.
This is why we say you take in the Word of God over and over and over
and over and over and over and today you don’t know all these things. We have people come in here all the time and
they say how can I understand all this, this is deep stuff. Well, it’s not deep stuff, it’s God’s Word
wrote to the average believer in the first century. You just stick it out, take it in and in and
in and in and finally the Holy Spirit will illuminate it.
With our heads
bowed…