Clough Proverbs Lesson 48

Best Man/Best Woman – Proverbs 9

We will continue our study; in fact we will finish the study on the section of the book of Proverbs this morning. The first section of this book dealt with each of exhortations to wisdom. And throughout these exhortations we have seen the verbs are all in the imperative mood, do something, do this, do that. Beginning next week in chapter 10:1, “The proverbs of Solomon,” you will not find imperative verbs, imperative mood; it will all be indicative, meaning this follows from this, this leads to this. The observations on the laws of creation, and we will be approaching chapters 10-22 thematically, which means we’ll not do it verse by verse, we’ll stop the verse by verse as of the end of this week, and next week we’ll begin verses but they will be in themes, dealing with categories of doctrines in chapters 10-22. But this morning we are going to finish chapter 9 and this is the final challenge to the believer with respect to wisdom.

Proverbs 9 is divided into certain sections and the analogy of the right man and the right woman. In Proverbs 9:1-6 we have the right woman or the best woman and this deals with wisdom; wisdom as the best woman of the believer, and I’ll put these in the order I’ll do them, then we’re going to skip to verses 13 and verses 13-18 is the analogy from the wrong woman and then verses 7-12 will be the believer-lover. And this is a kind of lover that you have outlined from verses 7-12. So we’ll deal first with Proverbs 9:1-6; then verses 13-18; then verses 7-12.

Proverbs 9:1-6, “Wisdom has builded her house, she has hewn out her seven pillars; [2] She has killed her beasts; she has mixed her wine; she has furnished her table. [3] She has set forth her maidens; she cries upon the highest places of the city. [4] Whoso is simple, let him turn in here; for him that wants understanding, she says to him, [5] Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mixed. [6] Forsake the foolish, and live, and go in the way of understanding.”

So we have the wisdom acting as the best woman, the best woman of the believer. Now since we are operating off an analogy of the best woman it’s good at this point we review the doctrine of the best woman and the best man. This doctrine is in several parts and deals with the events of creation. First, we have creation proper, and this is the stage of innocence. This is when the second divine institution is in innocence, it is the original design and this part of the doctrine has five sub points.

The first one is that according to Genesis 2:8-9 there was perfect environment. This means that there was no sin, particularly no illness, no deformity, and no physical death. So we have perfect environment in the original divine institution number two situation.

The second point under creation was that Adam had a perfect calling, Genesis 2:15-17, so you not only have a perfect environment, but you have a perfect calling. Adam knows God’s plan; God makes God’s plan clear to Adam, He says do this, don’t do this and so on. So Adam has a very clear understanding of God’s plan. And he has a perfect calling, a calling which will not require him to fight out of a fallen situation; it is an innocent situation. And therefore Adam is status innocence. And to understand the struggle that Adam will have in his non-perfect calling later I’m going to take a (?) at this point and develop, for the benefit of some, since I realized from Wednesday night’s discussion we all are not clear on this. What we mean by “justification.”

Justification, what does it mean? To answer this question we have to do exactly what we’re going here with “perfect calling.” That is, we have to distinguish between innocence and a fallen situation. In innocence Adam does not… repeat, Adam does not possess absolute righteousness. He does not have that in innocence. He has minus sin but he does not have any positive credit to his account. His books are zero; he has no liabilities and he has no assets. So in the status of innocence the record stands at zero and that is the state of innocence. Now in a fallen situation we all have –R, we have liabilities; our books are in the red. But we have no assets positively to over come these. Now at justification what happens is that God not only removes sin by forgiveness and brings our books up to the balance line of zero, but He does more than that. At the point of justification God credits to our account unlimited assets of Jesus Christ. So Christ’s absolute righteousness is credited to our account.

Now what is Christ’s absolute righteousness? It is His perfect obedience. For this reason no absolute righteousness could truly be legally credited to any believer until after Jesus Christ lived and existed in history, because after He lived and existed in history He brought into history absolute righteousness. It wasn’t there before; you never had a man in history that was able to perfectly obey God in experience. Now after Jesus Christ perfectly obeyed God in historical experience, after He defied Satan, after He was perfectly obedient t the cross, we now have a historically available righteousness. It is Christ’s righteousness that is credited to the believer’s account.

Now there are two things that happen to you very close together, within a fraction of a second, when you become a Christian. You won’t feel either of these so don’t worry about feeling them. The first one that happens is imputation; under imputation Christ’s righteousness is credited to your account. Your account reads zero and –R. At imputation God the Father credits Christ’s righteousness to your account and eliminates the –R and furthermore, He does another thing, He credits you with +R. And that is imputation and you don’t feel it, it’s not an experience. It is a legal, moral crediting to your account. And Jesus Christ does that. And Adam did not have imputed righteousness. So in innocence it was a zero but it was not positive yet. Christ gave us the positive righteousness, as a result of imputation the first thing that happens at the point of salvation, God the Father imputes or credits you with absolute righteousness. Then after that you are taken into a court and given a trial and the result of that trial is called justification.

Justification is a trial word; it means that you have been brought up to trial on your life. The issue is your whole life, from physical birth until physical death; it is your whole life, not part of your life, not your life lived up to the moment that the trial takes place, but it is your entire life. Understand that; justification does not cover up to time P, which would be called the time present. This is the time in your life, here’s a 70 year long length of lifetime and suppose you’re 30 when you accept Christ. All right, justification does not deal just with the first 30 years of your life; it deals with all 70 years of your life. And the trial is the trial of your life. And because God has credited Christ’s righteousness to your account it means that when you come up to trial God the Father legally recognizes imputation. See, imputation is a point act and justification is the legal recognition of imputation, in that God the Father as judge says, yes, this person, this believer, believer A, now has to believer A’s account absolute righteousness and therefore I look upon their life, say 70 year life span, that life span is righteous in My sight, absolutely righteous. And the righteousness that I see is identical to Jesus Christ’s. Now that is a tremendous doctrine. The reason people have trouble often in the Christian life and the reason people get off in denying eternal security and all the rest of it is because they’ve never understood justification.

Justification is one of the most powerful doctrines you will ever encounter in the Christian life because this says that for 70 years, your entire life span is counted as perfectly obedient. Now how’s that for grace. All the crud, all the sin, all the mental attitude sin, all the overt sins, all the things that you have done, all the things that you will ever do, all the things that you will ever think, all these things are not recognized by God the Father legally. Christ’s absolute righteousness takes it all into account and therefore, because of God’s absolute righteousness credited to your account by imputation, and legally recognized by justification, you have absolute righteousness; you have something that Adam did not have, even in innocence Adam still had not yet received absolute righteousness because he did not have to live out year after year after year after year of his life and obey, obey, obey, obey, obey, obey under pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure. So Adam did not have perfect righteousness; we have perfect righteousness credited to our account.

Justification is a very important doctrine and this is why you cannot lose your salvation. You can commit sin after sin after sin after sin after sin after sin after sin over here and you will never lose your salvation because if you say that you can lose your salvation you violate the principle of jurisprudence known as double jeopardy. You are saying that you can be brought to trial again, a second time, for you life; but you can’t be. You can only be brought to trial for one time at one point, otherwise you violate double jeopardy. So people who deny eternal security undermine God’s justice. It is unjust to deny eternal security. You are saying that the trial that was had was a mistrial so you are attacking the justice of God when you attack the doctrine of eternal security. Now, after we become members of the family, then of course there’s discipline involved, we’re not denying that, but that has nothing to do with salvation.

All right, let’s go back then to the status of innocence, now that we’ve dealt with innocency and we’re going on with the doctrine of the second divine institution to get background for Proverbs 9. The first point is that there was perfect environment for marriage. The second thing was that Adam had a perfect calling. No man ever had the perfect calling that Adam had. Adam had a perfect calling.

Now we go to the third point under that which is Adam had a perfect helper suited for him, for his calling. This is why the woman is called in the Hebrew an ‘etzer, etzer is the legal title of the woman in Genesis. She is an ‘etzer, and an ‘etzer means one who is called alongside to help. So therefore help Adam doing what? With anything Adam wants to do? No, she is an ‘etzer to what God wants Adam to do because you recall after God gave Adam instructions, after the man, the husband, obtained his calling, the husband gets his calling from God, then how is the man, the future husband to be, to recognize his best woman. He recognizes his best woman because she is going to fit to the maximum the calling that God has for him. That means that she is going to be able to the one that can encourage him, she is going to be the one that can compliment him, she is going to be the one who can correct him and so on, and she is going to be the one who can work with him the way God intended his life to run. So the husband recognizes his best woman in proportion to how he recognizes his calling, and men who are perpetually discontent with their wives, and baring some situations, are men who are perpetually discontent with God’s calling.

All right, the fourth thing about marriage in the perfect environment is that you had a perfect family because, according to Genesis 2:24, you had the exclusion of the in-laws. “Therefore, shall a young man leave his father and his mother and they shall be one flesh.” And Adam and Eve had no in-laws telling them what to do in the Garden. And that was one of the greatest blessings they ever had. In-laws have ruined more marriages by butting in; some mother doesn’t realize that her daughter’s now married and she doesn’t own her any more, and that she is now the wife of a man and he is that woman’s lord at that point. And therefore that breaks the authority of the in-laws; the in-laws are not to have authority and they’re not to butt in. And Genesis 2:24 was written to protect the Christian marriage against nosy in-laws.

And then the fifth thing that they had going for them was that they had perfect bodies, Genesis 2:25. They had perfect bodies. So that’s the first category of doctrine under the second divine institution, best man/best woman. That means that in innocence those five points describe marriage.

Now we come to the second category of doctrine and that deals with the fall. What did the fall do to the second divine institution? And under this we have eight points; five points about marriage in innocence; now we have eight points about marriage after the fall.

The first thing that is revealed to us in the Genesis record is in Genesis 3:6 the woman begins to assume the role of the man and the man begins to assume the role of the woman, and that’s always the sign of carnality; always has been and always will be. Where you see some little hen-pecked clod walking about… like I saw, one poor man came to this wedding, I think his wife had to sign a form when he had to blow his nose, but he was going around and his wife was telling him what to do every single moment, and it was hysterical because she didn’t know what she was doing either. So we have, that’s the first sign of disruption in the marriage relationship. And it is the fault of both the man and the woman. It is the fault of the man because he does not aggressively pursue his calling before the Lord; men ask for this.

Men ask to be henpecked when they violate and rebel against God’s calling. When they do not aggressively pursue the will of God then they are… a man is just made to aggressively pursue the will of God. And when a man is not aggressively pursuing it he becomes very indecisive and when a man is indecisive the woman finally can’t stand the situation so she starts to butt into his life, do this, do that, do this, this is what you should do and so on. And this is how it gets started from the man’s side of the thing. He begins to become indecisive and passive because he is out of fellowship and he is not following God’s will for his life. If he is following God’s will for his life he has the confidence that he is right, period, and he doesn’t need his wife telling him what to do. That’s just the way it is because he has the confidence that he is on the right track.

But it is also the woman’s fault and it becomes the woman’s when she, again in rebellion against God, becomes hostile to God’s calling for her husband. And she gets mental attitude sin out of this thing and she goes on negative volition and she begins to manipulate her husband out of the will of God. And this is how the woman begins to become the boss in the home. And so we have the two areas where this change or transition starts. The man is responsible for not aggressively pursuing God’s will. Adam didn’t. What happened here? Adam did not aggressively pursue; what happened? He listened to his wife. She had a problem, Satan got to his wife and convinced her that Adam’s calling was not just; that God was not really a God of love to have given her husband that calling; God was a meany to her husband. God was a bad God and because He gave her husband such a lousy calling in life she should do something about it. She should step in, she should correct the picture, she should change her husband’s calling, she should remold her husband. And so she’s going to step right in there and she really does, and she brings sin into the world. So women, that was how sin came into the world, the first woman who tried to change her husband. She changed the world and she changed it into a living hell. We all suffer the results of the process that Eve began when she tried to change her husband. And we all suffer because Adam was such a stupid clod spiritually that he went along with it. And he was not aggressively following God’s will and he let his wife talk him out of the will of God. So Adam was the first man who was a sucker. And I guess we have all been at times suckers following him.

All right, so that is the first thing under the marriage institution; the first one is that the roles become reversed, Genesis 3:6. The second thing, Genesis 3:7 you have the corruption of the body, the corruption of the physical body and therefore you have problems arise in the area of sex and so on.

The third point, Genesis 3:17, man experiences frustration in his calling because now he is pursuing God’s call in a fallen world system, and so now it becomes tough on the man. He had a calling before but now he has the same calling but in a different world, a world that he has lost control of, a world that rebels against him. So the calling now becomes a source to the man of tremendous frustration. He never can perfectly pursue God’s will and any man who’s really serious about pursuing God’s will, will at times come to be a very, very frustrated individual because of this. And God forecast this and He told us how to cope with it, and He told us the reasons in Genesis 3:17.

The fourth thing that happened is that his wife no longer becomes the perfect helper. The wife no longer becomes the perfect helper in his calling. There will come times when the man, instead of receiving help from the woman, will have to cope with a whole mass of problems over in her life before she can be put into a position of helping him. So in this situation the woman falls out of being the perfect ‘etzer and that is discussed in Proverbs 19:13 and Proverbs 21:9, and we’ll be discussing those later on.

Point five under the marriage, best woman/best man on the fall is that Genesis 3:16 predicts the woman, because of physical deterioration, will now experience a dread of childbirth; because her body is less than perfect she experiences pain in childbirth. And so what was intended to be of tremendous joy to the woman now she becomes ambivalent; she has ambivalent feelings in this area because of the dangers of childbirth, both to the child and to her at the point of birth, Genesis 3:16.

Sixth, the woman experience ambivalent feelings to the authority of her husband, Genesis 3:16. On the one hand she wants to be his wife, but on the other hand she is trapped because she realizes he is a sinful authority. And yet she is in union with a sinful authority and now she doesn’t like that, and the ambiguity is given in Genesis 3:16.

Point seven is that God now permits divorce, which is the right of remarriage. God now permits, but He does not command, He permits divorce and He permits it under various conditions which are stipulated in Matthew 19:9 and 1 Corinthians 7:15.

Point eight, because of death, divorce and folly, the original right man/right woman pattern is broken, so that this pattern that was the ideal one/one situation is now broken because of the fall and we revert now to a best man/best woman situation. Adam and Eve, strictly speaking, were the only ones that had the perfect right man/right woman situation.

So we now come to the third major area under the divine institution of marriage; we dealt with the first doctrinal area, five points under creation. The second area was eight points under fall. And now we come to the last area under grace. What does God do to deal with the second divine institution under the system of grace, four points.

Point one is that grace restrains the effects of the curse. So you have a restraining effect. God does not permit a marriage to become as corrupt as it could be by the normal outworking of the curse. And that should be a source of blessing. No matter how many problems you may have in your marriage just remember something; you are experiencing only a very small percent of the number of problems you could have if God were not gracious and allowed the full effects of the curse to take over in your relationship. So no matter how many problems you have, give thanks. This is a source of giving thanks and responding to grace. You can give thanks for the small percent of problems that you have.

The second point under the second divine institution with grace, in the area of the best man/best woman God provides the best helper under the limitations. So you now have the best partner; the best partner is the best partner suited to your situation in life. Again, it’s only one, it is one person that God picks out, that He personally picked for your situation. For example, you have a situation where you have a marriage and it’s destroyed by death. Suppose you have a man and he loses his wife in death. All right, she dies and so if she was his perfect woman, his right woman, then he no longer has a right woman. So now he’s got a situation in a fallen world where he can’t have that woman because she has died. So therefore God has a best woman under the restraints of the fall there’s a woman here for him, a woman especially designed for him, a woman that is the best one possible, and the only way he can find her is by knowing the Lord. And you have various other situations, not necessarily death but you could have marriage broken down by very foolish decisions and so on, and there God’s grace will provide a best partner.

The third point is every time grace is rejected, when we go negative on grace, then the level of God’s best declines. In other words, the best becomes less-best. It gets lesser and lesser desirable as time goes on, as we reject more and more and more and more grace, and there are times under the third divine institution of family where grace is rejected to the point that marriage becomes impossible.

And then finally, the fourth thing is that grace is possible throughout all situations, even it involves a situation that is so bad that no marriage is possible, grace still copes with the situation.

So you have the second divine institution functioning under grace. And this is how we describe it. Now it’s that institution that everybody knows of and responds to that is used for the analogy of Proverbs 9. Now we are ready for Proverbs 9:1. Proverbs 9:1-6 deal with the best woman for the believer. The best woman for the believer here is chokmah or wisdom. “Wisdom has built her house,” female, and so beginning in verse 1 and extending through verse 9 you have wisdom inviting the believer to initiate love toward her. She is not seizing the initiative; she is making herself available so that the believer can make love to chokmah. How do you make love to chokmah?

The first way of making love to chokmah as a believer is by taking in the Word systematically. It’s not on again off again, like some people, open their Bible once in a while when they have a problem and that’s it. This means systematic intake of the Word by tape, by face to face teaching with an authorized pastor-teacher. It doesn’t count to go to some little group where you hold hands and share ignorance. I think this verse means this; well I think it means this, and so for an hour and a half you sit around sharing stupid opinions with stupid people. That is not taking in the Word of God; that is a lousy substitute for a local church. Now the local church is the place where teaching of the Word is to be done, and so the first way of making love to chokmah is you must take in the Word of God systematically. That’s how you start. And after taking in the Word of God systematically you then obviously have the corollary to the Word which means you have to have positive volition and application. That basically is making love to chokmah. Making love to chokmah is taking her in constantly with the Word and applying the Word and this produces a response, that God the Holy Spirit builds in your human spirit wisdom, chokmah and you begin to have strength, a tremendous amount of strength.

I had an interesting conversation with one of our young people and that was he came out with the fact that the other day he had gone out and got completely bombed out of his mind and it was the first time he ever got drunk and he could still recall divine viewpoint. And of course he was out of fellowship, I’m not condoning the activity but it was just a very interesting observation that divine viewpoint had become so strong in his soul that while he was weaving around, trying to locate the left foot in front of the right he still had a very clear understanding of the Word and felt very miserable; it was the most unpleasant high he ever had with alcohol because the Word of God had so deeply impressed itself upon his mind that the Holy Spirit was after him constantly, constantly, constantly. And he said was just a fantastic experience, not that he’d like to go get drunk again to repeat but that it was an interesting experience that it was so strong that even alcohol just didn’t take it out. And before he would, as a very carnal believer he had a habit pattern of drowning his troubles with this and drugs and so on, and the interesting thing was the that he can’t seem to drown them now because the divine viewpoint framework has so grabbed hold of his soul there’s no way of erasing it. So you see, there’s a danger of maturity in the Word; you can’t get away from it. And you can try everything you want to in your carnality but you’re going to be miserable because the Word of God, once it gets into your soul and you develop that divine viewpoint framework it’s fantastically strong and it takes a lot of carnality to undo it.

So the making love to chokmah is a tremendous process in the Christian life. So here in Proverbs 9:1 is where we read chokmah’s invitation to the believer to make love to her. “Wisdom has prepared her house, she has hewn out seven pillars.” The “seven pillars” are an architectural feature of a well-to-do upper class home in Israel. Now you watch that because there’s going to be a contrast with the love invitation from folly. So watch the seven pillars; the seven pillars mean that her house, the place of making love, her house, is an upper class all the way, and this is one of the features of wisdom and chokmah is that when chokmah connects with the believer it is first class operation. This is luxury, verse 1, it’s not just any house, it’s not a pen, it’s a house with seven pillars, a house that is a mansion. If you want to put verse 1, “She has built her mansion,” she has built that dream house and the house is the place of shelter, it’s one of the necessities of life. So verse 1 deals with one of the necessities of life that wisdom offers, shelter.

Then Proverbs 9:2 deals with the other necessity of life, which is food; food and shelter. So, “She has killed her beats; she has mingled her wine; and she has furnished her table.” “She has killed her beast,” means that she has prepared her meal, T-bone steak, seek. They didn’t have price ceilings on beef and so therefore wisdom went out and provided the best beef available. And says that “she has killed her beast, and she’s mixed her wine.” That is the best wine, it is mixed, she’s mixed her drink is what it’s saying, pardon me for some of you, a shocking expression, but in verse 2 it’s talking about mixing drinks. Now to correct you lest you draw some wrong conclusions, this is not talking about something, a bloody Mary or something; this is talking about mixing wine with spices. In the ancient world the good wines would be mixed with spices; the alcoholic content was not like most of the alcohol that we have in our culture, there is more alcoholic content. But the mixed wine is a sign of luxury, again, along with the seven pillars this is a sign of prosperity, blessing and luxury. “She has mixed her wine, she has furnished her table,” this means she has set the places. The word “table” is not a table; this is the same word used in Psalm 23, “thou hast prepared a table before Me in the presence of Mine enemies,” it’s not talking about a dining room table with a table cloth on it; what that’s talking about is a mat; it was laid on the floor and people who would come to dinner would lie down and recline around the edge of this mat. It is a mat here. “She has prepared her mat.”

So the picture is tremendous here. The picture is in a tremendous country estate, luxurious estate, she has a tremendous feast, she has the best wine, the best steak, and she has furnished her table, it’s an elaborate place setting. So this is what wisdom offers the believer; it is a tremendous attraction to the believer to make love in this situation. And so this is the offer of wisdom to her.

So in Proverbs 9:3, she sends out the invitations, “She sent forth her maidens;” these were the girls who would send out and invite the guys to dinner. Again, no average Jewish family could afford this kind of thing; this was upper class picture here. “She has sent forth her maidens;” not every home had maidens like this, this was an upper class situation, “she cries upon the highest places of the city.” She makes known, in other words, her desire for believers. She, in other words, is seducing them, in the proper way. She is seducing the believer to make love to her and she is using the necessities of life, shelter and food, provided abundantly as a come on. And that is what she is doing here on the highest of places. The highest of places refers to the times and places in the city where the most important (?) would be disseminated. So this would have the attraction. Today if you wanted to contemporize the translation she’d be doing it on the media. She’d be doing it in the place of discussion. She’d be doing it in the public place where all believers would hear, she would have a maximum audience. So she offers them a development of Christ in the heart.

Now what is it that is Christ in the heart? Let’s run through this again. She is offering this to the soul of the believer. And I want you to look at this because, even though we’ve gone through this time and time again, we must couple it now with Proverbs 9:1-3 and those nouns that refer to luxury. The seven pillars of verse 1, the mixing of the wine in verse 2 and the sending out of the maidens in verse 3. A wise believer is one who has Christ’s personality fully developed in his heart, or developed to a maximum in his heart. This means, in a primary level, he gives thanks. This is a process repeated in many different areas of life. Thanksgiving, and this is one of the areas, one of the tests you can tell whether you’re on your way. If there are some areas in your life where this can’t happen right now, you know those are areas where you are lacking in spiritual growth at this point. This is why we often say in the chart of the divine institutions, that we have so designed the divine institutions in this particular illustration around the clock, and you’ll notice, maybe some of you that there are some markers here along this chart, and those markers are put in for things now we’re going to start to develop in Proverbs. You can have a maximum….

Before we get into this, remember the circle that I’ve often drawn that when we accept Jesus Christ God the Holy Spirit puts us in union with Christ. That’s the center of our eternal fellowship. That never changes; that circle is the same radius forever, and you can’t get out of that circle. You share many things with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit has done for you. But then the bottom circle is the circle of temporal fellowship, and this circle changes with your growth. When you first become a believer the circle of your fellowship is very small; the area over which you can trust the Lord is about that big, it’s like a mustard seed, Jesus Christ says. But as you grow spiritually this circle expands outward with growth. Now, if you’ll look at these areas of divine institutions of how Proverbs we’re going to divide Proverbs up, this basically is the bottom circle divided into sectors.

Now, you can take one sector of your bottom circle; suppose you are a very good parent, perhaps you had a tremendous father and mother and you’ve got a lot of chokmah in this area. In your bottom circle you can trust the Lord in that area very much; you have control of your home and you have orientation in your home and so your bottom circle is quite large in that sector of your life. But there will be other sectors in your life where you can’t trust the Lord. You may have a very good marriage to go along with that home, so you may have a good area of trust in the Lord in this area. But it may be that you happen to be a very lazy irresponsible individual, you have a lot of trouble with money and so in this area your bottom circle is about like that, it doesn’t go out very far. Your responsibility in the church is very small, so your bottom circle isn’t very much in that area. You may be very mixed up in your politics; you may have a lot of socialist, welfare scheming in your thinking, you may be very pro United Nations and World Council and all the rest of it, and so you have a very small area of faith there. You may, however, be very strong in the area of justice in the nation. So your circle looks something like that. It takes on not a perfect shape of a circle but it depends on the sector and you may grow very much…

[Tape turns] … why you cannot judge a believer’s maturity only in some areas. A believer can be very mature in some areas and be very immature in other areas, and this is why we’re going to study Proverbs along the lines of these divine institutions beginning next week with chapter 10. But suppose you have this circle now; wisdom is inviting you to be giving thanks; in this circle, this particular believer I’ve pictured here, can give thanks, he’s on positive volition in the area of marriage and sex; he’s on positive volition in the area of his family, he’s on positive volition a little bit here in the area of his responsibility for judicial authority, he respects the authority of the court and the authority of the policeman and so on. But here he’s very bad in the area of job, and all he does is moan, groan and complain all day and he has a very bad attitude over here and he can’t give thanks in this area, or doesn’t. So that goes along with his bottom circle, it’s very small in this area. In his church he never exercise his responsibility; he joined the church about five or ten years ago and that was it, and since that time he hasn’t shown up for any kind of a voting situation where the Holy Spirit depends upon his vote to guide the church, he could care less for this, he doesn’t give thanks for it and so on, so he’s on negative volition in this area. And he may be all fouled up over here and on negative volition here.

So you see, depending on the area of your live that is under observation at one moment in time you can have various levels of maturity. You want to understand that; it’s an important concept. And it will help you because this is where we have a little king-of-the-mountain-ism going on in our own congregation. Where we’ll have something like this happen; we’ll have a believer whose bottom circle may look like this, here’s the center of where it should be and it’s kind of lopsided. They’re mature out in this area and they meet some believer that’s like this, their circle is like this, so they’re mature over here, the other believer is mature over here, but this believer looks at that believer’s maturity and says see, I’m mature over here and believer B isn’t; believer B is a very immature believer and so I look down my long nose at him.

And so you begin to have animosity and jealousy develop between believer A and believer B because believer A is mature in this area. Suppose on the chart it’s in the area of family; and they say you know, believer B is so… they can’t run their home, their home is a mess, did you ever see the way they discipline their kids, they never discipline their kids, their kids are always running around breaking things and so on, tearing the place up, there is no authority exercised in their home, it’s horrible. And so they get very proud and very self-righteous and say well, I’m more mature than they are because we have discipline in our area. But what they fail to realize is that believer B has tremendous responsibility on the job; believer B is very mature in this area, and so when it comes to a job situation believer B is more mature. And believer B, meanwhile, is looking over at believer A and saying huh, look at that, look at how he performs on the job, he can’t even punch in right, he gets the card in backwards every time. So they look down their long nose at believer A.

And so what happens; you begin to have animosity and carnality develop over a stupid issue like this which is nothing more than relative differences of maturity. And you can take two believers who are mature in two different areas and have a regular cat fight on your hands because they’re pitting their strong points against the other one’s weak points. Now they’re both out of line. Every one of us have areas like this, that’s every one of us, and we have our strong points and we have our weak points and if you’re going to go around this congregation comparing your strong points with somebody else’s weak points, you’re in trouble and you’re out of line and you’re causing trouble. And you’re going to get double trouble from the Lord as I will show you later on in Proverbs. You’re just asking for trouble. So a word to the wise, just mind your own immaturity. You’ve got enough over here to get your circle a little bit more symmetrical and lined up in some of these other areas and I would suggest to you that that’s going to take enough of your time; you won’t have time to be concerned with other people in those areas. So that’s the situation of being in fellowship and having this bottom circle and giving of thanks.

Now the believer who is mature, suppose now we take one sector of that circle; suppose this is the sector of job responsibility, all right, they can give thanks. Here’s what Christ in the heart looks like in this area of life. You have this believer, they give thanks, they have now enlightening ministry of the Holy Spirit working in the area of their job; they have sought God’s will on the job and they have been led by God on the job, and so since they have been led by God on the job and have worked with Him in this area they have confidence that the Lord is leading them.

Now, the next thing, beyond this we have the development of the divine viewpoint framework. As they have grown on the job they’ve got the divine viewpoint of the job, they recognize certain things about the job; they recognize that this job is something that God has given them; they recognize that their promotion isn’t going to come because they brown-nose everybody or give gifts like Jesse in the book of Samuel and you found out last Sunday night what that did. So that kind of stuff doesn’t work; your promotion comes from doing your job as unto the Lord.

All right, then after the divine viewpoint framework you begin to develop this love. And that’s the thing that everybody wants and no one has because they’re trying to get it here instead of here. They’re trying to get it at the first of the process instead of at the last of the process. So we have all the flapping of the tongue at both ends and so on, trying to counterfeit this kind of love. All right, the love expressed on the job is compassion to other employees and employer relationships. This person is very well liked, they get along fine; occasionally they have their theological differences and so on. And then you have fulfillment and that is where this believer is content and fulfilled doing his job because they do it, not because they’re working for men, they do it because they do it as unto the Lord.

So here you have Christ in the heart in that one sector of life. Now that is what wisdom offers the believer, and that’s why she says in Proverbs 9:4, “Who is simple, let him turn in here,” the word “simple” in the Hebrew is peti, and peti is a word that we would call naïve; it is a word that means naïve; it doesn’t mean somebody that is strongly carnal. It does not refer to negative volition, it just simply refers to a child, really; you can have adults that are children, they’re just that naïve; peti is a noun that refers to a person that can be taught. They are open to anything, positive or negative. They are gullible, they are naïve. And so, “Whoso is simple, let him turn in to me; for him that wants understanding, she says to him, [5] Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mixed,” in other words, make love to me. Proverbs 9:6, “Forsake the foolish, and live, and go in the way of understanding.” It’s her invitation.

Now compare her invitation with the invitation with the invitation now given in Proverbs 9:13. This is the foolish woman, this is the opposite of wisdom; this is the person who is taking the place of human viewpoint. This is the appeal, the seductive appeal of the world system to the believer. You see, there’s no room for naivety in the Christian life. Believers who do not have a divine viewpoint framework are going to be suckers for anything that comes along. And the word here is the open-minded one, the peti, but here in verse 13 the peti is being made love to or being solicited or being seduced by the foolish woman. The word for “foolish” here is not peti but kesil, and this Hebrew word means to be hardened. So this woman is not a naïve woman, this woman is a woman who has hardened her heart; she has been on negative volition with the result is that she has darkened her soul, with the result that she’s on completely human viewpoint and with the result that she hates God and is very frustrated. So we have the process setting in and it’s a picture of temptation in general. Temptation comes as a seductive woman in Proverbs. And it is a picture of the believer open to anything and everything. The kesil ish, the hardened woman, “is clamorous; she is simple,” and that is not the same word as kesil, “she is simple and know nothing.” She knows nothing, that means she have very little access to the truth, she is the person that could put on a big phony front but when it comes to really knowing something she is stupid. And it’s only the stupid that do not see her stupidity.

Proverbs 9:14, “She sits at the door of her house, on a seat in the high places of the city.” Now the word “house” is a simple house, it’s not the house of verse 1. The wisdom in verse 1 is offering a mansion but the kesil ish, the foolish woman, all she has is a regular dump. So notice the contrast now; it’s the subtlety of the proverbial literature because what the author is trying to get you to see is that temptation, while appealing to the same instincts in the believer and making the same kind of pitch has nothing after all. There aren’t riches here, and so the kesil ish, or the foolish woman is looked upon as poor, whereas the chokmah is looked upon as a lady of wealth. So she sits in the door of her dump, “on a seat in the high places of the city.

Proverbs 9:15, “To call passengers those who pass by], who go right on their way.” And she offers, notice, compare verse 16 with verse 4, “Whoso is simple,” it is still pitched to the peti, here’s the same word, p-e-t-i, it is that word referring to a simply stupid believer, a believer without any doctrine; a believer who is therefore open to the pitch and the believer who is peti, as we found out in Proverbs 1 and Proverbs 2 cannot stay in the status quo of peti. The believer who is naïve is going to go one way or the other but they will not stay naïve. There is a time limit for naiveté in Scripture. And this is what, to my mind, is one of the most serious dogmas of Scripture, and that is that there is a limited time in one sense, you cannot stay in status quo. Every one of us every moment of every day of our lives is going up or down but we are not remaining constant. Don’t you think you’re going to coast on Bible lessons that you learned three years ago; those aren’t going to do you any good. You have got to be taking in the Word constantly, over and over and over, there’s no such thing as momentum in the Christian life. So you just forget it if you think you’re going to just suck it up and go out on the desert without any oasis around. You have to have the Word of God constantly, by tape, by face to face teaching, in some way. So this is the invitation.

Proverbs 9:16, “Who so is peti, let him turn I here; and for him that lacks understanding,” see it’s exactly the same repeat of verse 4, the same invitation, just a dumber one giving it. It’s given to the same person. And then here’s the appeal; contrast this with verse 5-6; in verses 5-6 it was an appeal to that which truly nourishes, and what is it, “come eat of my food, and drink of the wine that I mixed.” Now look at something or you’re going to miss this. In verse 5 what is it that is being eaten? In verse 5 it is steak and mixed wine. Now look at what the foolish woman offers in verse 17; bread and water. You see how this is cleverly worked? It’s the sarcastic attack on what folly really provides, bread and water. Now just look at that. If you went into a restaurant, provided you had the money, what would you pick? You’d be stupid to go into a restaurant and pick out bread and water when you could have steak and wine.

All right, so what’s happening here? “Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” See, it is just foolishness; in other words, here’s the seductress, and she says hey, I’ve really got a deal for you, and she dresses it up and the seductiveness covers up the fact that all it is is bread and water; it’s not even steak and wine. So it is an inferior quality, but the peti, the naïve believer who walks into the situation is so enamored with the seductive line that this woman approaches him with that he forgets that all she’s got is bread and water.

Now behind this is an imagery of the right man and the right woman. It’s talking about the sexual response of the best woman to the believer versus the wrong woman to the believer. The wrong woman can’t respond like the best woman can. That’s the picture behind all this food thing. And so the point of the text is that this invitation has nothing to it. Proverbs 9:18, here’s the peti believer, the author’s commentary on the stupid believer. “He does not know that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell.”

Now you can see this operating today; we have a lot of young people in school and so on that are believers and they are naïve believers; and they get around a gang, and they are the only believer, they think, in the group, probably the rest of them are out of fellowship believers, but they think they are the only believer in the group and so they get intimidated. A lot of young people do this, teenagers particularly. They live for the group; the rest of them are doing it and I feel out of it, and so on. You see there they’re naïve; whatever the herd does I do and I’m afraid to stand up to the herd. Now that’s very typical of a teenager; teenagers, this is just that time of their lives when they are susceptible to a group.

Well, this is the time in your life, teenagers, when you ought to learn something about chokmah, you learn at this time in your life to stand up to the group because if you don’t learn how to stand up to the group now you’re never going to learn how to stand up to the group and you’re going to be like some of the adults in this country, they can’t stand up to groups either. That’s why we have everybody voting for anybody what parts their hair on the right side of their face, because we have adults that are just like sheep, they’ll follow anything any where, anything that moves, and they have never learned from teenage years on up to break away from the crowd when the crowd violates the Word. They have never generated the spiritual guts that it takes to do that kind of situation. And you’re not being strong when you go along and you allow yourself to be intimidated by some loudmouth. Well, all the guys are doing it; so what if all the guys are doing it. So this temptation is to the stupid believer and he doesn’t realize verse 18.

Now squashed between these two areas, verse 1-6 and verses 13-18 I skipped a section, And in Proverbs 9:7-12 is a set of characteristics of the people who can respond. Now this is very interesting because in verses 7-12 is a list of characteristics of people who can and cannot be helped. And you look at some of these characteristics now because this will tell you that there are some people in life that cannot be counseled, and cannot be helped, no matter how miserable they may be. It’s a hard lesson to learn but you are going to have to learn it and it’s hardest to learn when it’s your husband or your wife or your children or you parents, someone you love very much. And if they are in the status quo of verses 7-12 you are going to have to recognize that there’s only one thing that you can do in that situation, turn them over to the Lord and trust Him with it, until they come around. They are not ready to be helped; you are hurting them by trying to help them. You let them go to the pig pen.

Let’s look at this, Proverbs 9:7, “He that reproves a scorner,” it’s a participle, “he continually tries to reprove a scorner,” and the word “reprove” here is the word to train, it’s yasar from which we get musar, it is, “He who tries to strictly discipline a scorner, gets himself shame,” this means that a person, it’s not referring to parents with young children, but as the children get older and they develop the status of scorner, the Hebrew word is lutz, and it is a person who is on negative volition, and on rebellion, and they could care less, they are defiant against all authority. And the Bible says if you’re trying to continually train somebody like that the only thing you’re going to get is shame; you’re going to be embarrassed, it’s a waste of time, turn them over, just kick them out and get rid of them, just like the parable of the prodigal son, he took off and he let him take off, and that’s all you can do when they get in this kind of a situation.

“He that tries to train a scorner will get nothing but shame, and he that rebukes,” the word “rebukes” is verbal counseling, the first verb means corporeal punishment, the second one is verbal counseling, the two used in training up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And this is a time when you can’t and don’t bring up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. When they develop into a scorner attitude, age 15 to 16 to 20, if you haven’t done anything by then that’s all, they’re on their own, they’re going to be on their own, and you might as well just let them go to the pig pen until they come to themselves. A scorner is not any rebellious person but it’s a person who is continually rebelling, rebellious and hardened their heart, and this is the point where nothing can help, no counseling can help. They’re not going to listen to you. “He that rebukes,” or tries to verbally counsel “a wicked one receives himself a blot.” In other words by your association with them people are going to say huh, you’re his counselor, what’s the matter with you? So you might as well just save yourself some embarrassment and let them just go.

Proverbs 9:8, “Don’t reprove a scorner, lest he hate you; reprove a wise man he will love you.” These are the extremes, the scorner here is one on compound carnality and negative volition; the other one is on positive volition and is going on with the Lord. The wise man will always respond to counsel; he may not agree with you but he will love you for your concern and he will listen to you. The scorner you might as well forget about

Proverbs 9:9, “Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser; teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.” And then verses 10, 11 and 12 go back to the first divine institution at its base and it’s this point where this section of the book of Proverbs stops, the first divine institution. It comes back where we started.

Proverbs 9:10, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,” the word “fear” is the word for respect, the respect of God’s authority is the beginning of wisdom. You cannot gain wisdom unless you submit to authority. You see, wisdom is actually bowing to the laws of creation. That’s what wisdom is; we’re going to see this beginning in chapter 10. So it’s bowing to the laws of creation, and that means you have to submit, and submit involves swallowing pride. And so therefore the respect of the Lord’s authority, who is the Creator, is the beginning of wisdom. You’ve got to respect His authority. “…and the knowledge of the Holy is understanding. [11] For by me thy days shall be multiplied, and the years of thy life shall be increased.” In other words, you conform to the laws of creation, you reap the results of the benefits of this conformity.

And then Proverbs 9:12, the final point, “If you be wise, you shall be wise for yourself, but if you scorn you alone shall bear it.” This is individual responsibility par excellence. Here you have the person who is on positive volition, and in the final analysis is this: you’re not going to hurt or harm or bless anyone but yourself. “And he that is a scorner, he alone will bear the results of his folly.” And so a person can sit there and go negative to the Word, ridicule the Word, okay, but the results you’re going to reap yourself.

With our heads bowed….