Clough Proverbs Lesson 75
DI #3: Sins of Thought and Word
There are two
questions that I’d like to begin by answering before we continue in our study
of Proverbs. One: Is spanking a child of
rage of for inconsistent reasons right or are there better ways of discipline
besides spanking. Many college kids
today are very bitter about the reasons and ways that they were spanked. Well, is that one of the overriding
difficulties of our generation? The
answer to the question is obvious that the discipline that is given in
Scripture, the corporal punishment is to be patterned after the musar of God Himself in
So spanking,
corporal punishment, can be administered justly if it is administered consistently
and the way to administer it consistently is to have a prior established code
of conduct for your home. And that means
that you ought have a list, come together, bring the children together, work up
certain crimes and certain punishments for those crimes and let it be clear to
everyone in the house the particular crime and the punishment that’s given and
have it all established beforehand. If
necessary type it out, put in a prominent place on the family bulletin board or
in the children’s room or something and then you’ve got a standard. And then when something happens, you go by
the book. And that does two things;
first it shows the children that you intend to enforce the law, and second, it
tells you that the law is to be enforced, that when you give a command you are
to expect obedience to it and that forces you automatically to give less
commands, if you know that you have to go to the trouble of actually enforcing
these. So it works both ways and it
works a lot smoother… and obviously it works because isn’t that what God did to
the nation Israel, He published the Law, gave it to them in the Pentateuch, and
then He enforced it; that’s the whole rest of the Old Testament. So it shouldn’t be surprising that method
works. If you want details on how to do
this in your home I would suggest Jay Adam’s book, Christian Living in the Home, he has a whole chapter in there with
a chart and everything on how to do it.
The next question
is please elaborate and give Scripture concerning your statement that some have
more God-consciousness than others. I
could give you Romans 1:18 and following which shows that men are slowly
blinded; I could give you Isaiah, all the passages in Isaiah that deal with the
blinding of men’s minds. When does the
blinding come about? The blinding comes
about because of rejection of God. What
is the blinding? A blinding, they don’t
see reality for what it is. And that’s a
diminishing of God-consciousness.
Proverbs, we’re on
the study of the family, we’ve worked with the various rules that Proverbs lays
out for the family. We’ve pointed out
one, the basic one is that family success is equal to the character of the
children, not the amount of education they may or may not have, not the amount
of clothes they have on their back, not how many cars they have, not how much
money they have to spend. The success of
a family in Scripture is directly proportional to the character of the children
of that family.
Then we dealt with
the four principles of biblical learning.
We dealt with the fact that there has to start with a humility before
God; that has to be there. You can’t go
very far without that. Second, you have
to have humility before God’s trainers, parents. Then you have the principle that as you go
on, as your children become older, wisdom leads to further wisdom and folly
leads to more folly. This is why
learning will accelerate as children grow older, or it will decrease and come
to an absolute standstill. Then the last
rule we dealt with was corporal punishment.
Then last week we
started with the various training in the social skills of a family. In the Bible there is a training that goes
on, a training in living but a training in what we’ll call social skills; this
is chokmah, or chokmah on how to get along with other people. And this is taught in the home in the Bible,
not in the school, not in some other place, but in the home, the reason being
that in Israel they did not trust specialists with this kind of training
because this kind of training isn’t specialized training, this is kind of
training that you use in every area of life, you don’t need specialists. You don’t need some education major to tell
you how to do this. All you need are the
concepts in Scripture, and these concepts are going to be given in ensuing
weeks.
Now one area that
we dealt with so far in Proverbs is a very simple principle that underlies this
training in social skills. In fact, this
is the key to your child’s success as he grows older in his ability to move with
a group. And the first principle is that
the character of a group is dependent upon the individual. In other words, the individual contributes
something to the group and what is it the individual contributes? Character!
Now this means true character, now I understand the sloppy use we have,
so and so is a character; we’ve got a lot of characters, but the character the
way we’re using it means his maturity spiritually. And every group needs men of character.
Now back in the
early part of the Deuteronomy series I read this quote, in the early part of
the Proverbs series I read this quote.
I’m going to read it for the third time.
This is Thomas McCauley’s Critical and Historical Essays in which he
comments on the Puritan character, and I read it again so you can refresh your
minds as to how this principle works.
The individual gives character to a group and what McCauley is looking
at is the Puritans giving character to
The Puritans are
hated because they were the only people in this country that had character and
they had toughness and they had a concept of absolute truth. And hell could freeze over before they would
leave their absolutes. They knew that
what they stood for was the truth, and this is the heresy, the major heresy
that you could possibly assert today anywhere you go. People will tolerate you under any and every
circumstance until you let it drop that you actually believe something to be
true, and all other positions wrong, and you’ll find how your popularity grows
or diminishes. If you are in
particularly areas of where we (quote) “freedom of thought,” (end quote), the
freedom of thought, what it really means is there’s no freedom to believe in
any absolutes. It’s a fallacy to talk
about freedom of thought; the only dogma we have is the dogma that there is no
dogma. The only absolute there is is
there is absolutely no truth. And this
sort of thing goes on masquerading under the concept of freedom of thought in
the modern education system. But thank
God for the world the Puritans didn’t listen, didn’t have people like John
Dewey (Ramms ?) to tell them the truth so they went on believing the simple
truth of the Word of God. And McCauley,
who is not sympathetic with the Puritans, who is an historian simply observing
them, says this:
“We speak first of
the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men perhaps which the world has ever
produced. The odious and ridiculous
parts of their character lie on the surface.
He that runs may read them, nor have there been wanting attentive and
malicious observers to point them out.
For many years after the restoration they were the theme of unmeasured
invective and derision; they were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the
press and stage.” See, the media always
does this because again most people who work for newspapers are little two-bit
people who can’t make a living doing anything else. And so they write these articles in the
newspapers. Now if they were smart
they’d be writing books that would endure for years but they’re not so they
write an article that endures for 24 hours, and this is the quality of
nincompoops that write in the press. And
we had people that wrote in the press in those days. And they’re doing the same thing they are today;
anytime there’s somebody with character they have to put them down. “They were exposed to the utmost
licentiousness of the press and stage at the time the press and stage were the
most licentious. They were not men of
letters; they were as a body very unpopular.”
Now you notice this in terms of Proverbs, Proverbs doesn’t teach you to
be popular; Proverbs teaches you to be respected, not to be popular, and you as
a Christian had better choose which one you want because you’re going to have
to. Either you’re going to be popular or
you’re going to be respected and in certain times and places, rarely in
history, respected people are popular people.
But usually that’s not the case; there’s usually quite a difference.
“But it is not
from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learned. Those who rouse the public to resistance, who
directed their measure through a long series of years, who formed out of the
most unpromising of materials, the finest army that Europe has ever seen, who trampled
down kings, church and aristocracy, who in the short intervals of domestic
sedition and rebellion made the name of England terrible to every nation on
earth,” notice the Puritans were not pacifists, “these people were no vulgar
fanatics. Most of their absurdities were
mere external badges. The Puritans were
men whose minds had derived a peculiar character,” and now watch this, this is
a very critical point and this shows you and explains to you in a very concrete
way what Proverbs is driving at. “The
Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily
contemplation of superior beings and eternal interest. To know God, to serve Him to enjoy Him was
with them the great end of all existence.
Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the deity through an
obscuring veil, the Puritans aspired to gaze full on His intolerable brightness
and to commune with Him face to face.
They recognized no title to superiority but His favor. They despised all the accomplishments and
dignities of the world. If they were
unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets they were deeply read in
the oracles of God.” That means that
they read and read and read the Word of God in the home, over and over and over
and over and over and over again until everyone in the family was saturated
with the Word of God.
“If their names
were not found in the registry of heralds they were reported in the book of
life. On the rich and eloquent, on
nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt, for they have seen
themselves rich in a more treasures; nobles by the right of an earlier
creation, priests by imposition of a mightier hand. Events which short-cited politicians ascribed
to earthly causes had been ordained according to them on God’s account. For His sake empires had risen and flourished
and decayed. Thus the Puritan was made
up of two different men; the one of self-abasement, the other proud and
sagacious,” and I want you to notice something else because always the world
confuses this. Now don’t be confused;
the Puritans toward God was very humble, but toward man he was very proud. Now that’s the true order of it. What happens is the reverse of that his human
viewpoint where you become proud toward God and the result is that you become humble
and pushed around by men. The Puritan
was exactly the opposite and this is why people at one time call them humble
before God and yet on the other hand they always ridicule the Puritans as very
proud and very tough people. “Thus the
Puritan was made up of two different men; the one of self-abasement, the other
proud and sagacious; he prostrated himself before His maker but then he went
out and set his foot on the neck of the king.
He’d cry in the bitterness of his soul that God had hid his face from
him, but when he took his seat in the council, or he put on his sword for war,
these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind
him.”
“People who saw
nothing of the godly Puritans but their uncouth visages and heard nothing them
but their groans and their whining hymns might laugh at them, but those had
little reason to laugh whoever encountered the Puritan in the hall of debate,
or ever encountered the Puritan on the field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military
affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose. They went through the world like Sir (?) iron
man palace with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling
with human beings but having neither part not lot in human infirmities;
insensible to fatigue, to pleasure and to pain, not to be pierced by any
weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier,” (end quote). Now that’s what the Bible is talking about;
it’s a marvelous illustration of true Christian character, the Puritans, the
most vilified and hated people on earth.
Of course they are, this is Satan’s world and Satan can’t stand that
kind of character.
So that is what we
mean in the book of Proverbs by individuals giving character to a group. Then we dealt with the second principle and
it sounds to be converse of this and that is that individuals depend on the
group for their historic value. So it
goes the other way, the group back to the individual. And this explains why certain individuals
wind up in mental depression, wind up with inferiority complexes, wind up
seeking psychiatric treatment, wind up on tranquilizes, wind up on all sorts of
drugs, which are not solutions, they’re just band-aids when surgery is
required. All of this comes about
because they cannot gain the respect they know they should have from the
group. And the reason that these people
have inferiority complexes is very, very simple indeed. It’s simply because they are inferior; it’s
not more profound than that. A person
with an inferiority complex has it because he is inferior and he has not the
respect that he requires as a man made in God’s image from the group.
To substantiate
this I want to show you from the New Testament, turn to Luke 2 and I want to
show you how often this principle shows up in the New Testament besides
Proverbs. Luke 2:52, what does it
say? “And Jesus increased in wisdom and
stature, and in favor with God and man.”
I point this out to you because I want you to guard yourself against
misunderstanding something. This is not
talking about group popularity. Got
it! NOT group popularity, Christ was not
a popular man; He was crucified, you don’t crucify popular people. But Christ was respected by the group and
that’s what this is talking about; “in favor with God and man,” when it says
“in favor with God” obviously it means God’s standards, God’s righteousness,
approved by God; when it says He increased in favor with man it means that He
was in respect to the consciences of men, to the limits that these men had
God-consciousness Jesus Christ was respected, Acts 23:1.
Turn to Acts 23:1
and you’ll see the difference again; not popularity but respect. Paul, making a defense before the council,
said, “[And Paul, earnestly beholding the council,] said, Men and brethren, I have
lived in all good conscience before God until this day.” Now he doesn’t mention “men” in 1:23 but to
show you that is implied in the statement, turn to the next chapter, Acts 24:16
when in a similar context he amplifies what he means, again not popularity but
respect. “And herein do I exercise
myself, to have always a conscience void of offense toward God,” and void of
offense “toward men.” Now was Paul
popular? They picked up rocks to stone
him; he was always facing a riot everywhere he went because the Word of God
divided people. Was Paul, therefore,
popular? Negative. Paul was not popular; Paul was despised and
he tells you that in 1 Corinthians. Yet
how can you say if he was unpopular he was always trying to be “void of
offense,” void of offense before the consciences of the group.
2 Corinthians 4:2,
“But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness,
nor handling the Word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth
commending ourselves to” what? To “every
man’s conscience in the sight of God.”
Not to his hang-ups, or to his idiosyncrasies, but to his “conscience in
the sight of God.”
2 Corinthians
5:12, “For we commend not ourselves again unto you, but give you occasion to
glory on our behalf, that ye may have somewhat to answer them who glory in
appearance, and not in heart,” emphasis on the heart, which here means the
conscience.
Hebrews 13:18,
lest we think this is just confined to Paul; the concern to walk with a clean
conscience in the light of other people, “Pray for us;” he talks to the other
believers, “for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to
live honestly.” And this means in the
sight of all men, of course.
1 Peter 3:16, same
principle, and this principle in 1 Peter is 3:16 is most interesting when it
comes to giving the Christian answer, because just before this verse is an
instruction to believers. “Sanctify the
LORD God in your hearts, and be ready always to give an answer to every man
that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you, [with meekness and
fear].” This means that you are always
ready to fire divine viewpoint at your opponent, and always look upon the
non-Christian as your opponent. This is
a war we’re playing, we’re not playing footsies, and when the Christian lives
he lives in a military environment in which there is a fight for men’s souls
going all around you. And guns are shot
at each other in this war, human viewpoint and divine viewpoint. But it’s interesting that in the middle of
this war and being always ready to shoot a divine viewpoint answer, verse 16,
“Having a good conscience, that, whereas they speak evil of you,” now see, this
verse ties the whole principle, “whereas they speak evil of you as of
evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good behavior pattern
in Christ.” And the point there is that
though the person may outward condemn you, inwardly they don’t. And this will also show up in various things
that I’ve mentioned before.
So here are some
various verses form the New Testament that amplify that second principle of
Proverbs, the principle that besides the individual giving something to the
group the group does give something to the individual. It’s kind of a social conscience that is lived
before.
Now let’s go back
to Proverbs 10:12 and we’ll take up another social skill that should be taught
to every child. Now these first two
principles tell you certain social skills that ought to be taught to children. The first one shows you that that child’s
happiness in life is going to depend on the character of the child and if he
has bad character he’s going to be a bad contribution to any group of which
he’s a part. So the best way to raise a
child is to emphasize chokmah, and
that means two things; emphasize daily intake of the Word of God plus skill in
habitual repetitious application of the Word to life’s situations; over and
over and over and over again. Remember
the admonition earlier in Proverbs; parents just keep at it, hope is on your
side. Even though you tell them to do
something 85 times tell them 86 times.
Keep on, over and over. Actually
being a parent is an endurance context; it’s to see who can wear who out. And this is where you, as a more mature
believer, you have to just be more skillful than your child is; he’s just
trying to maneuver you and you’re trying to maneuver him. Face it, that’s the name of the game and he
doesn’t want to get rid of it and you have a commandment from God to knock it
out of him. And this doesn’t mean
necessarily brutality; it means a consistent loving but firm raising. And this includes all these various
skills.
So you can point
out to him that if he wants something that’s going to contribute to his success
socially it’s going to be character. And
it’s not going to be all the put-on stuff.
Every once in a while you get a few teenagers go on pot or something to
show off; it’s the big thing to do. What
does that prove? Big thrill. You know animals can take pot and if affects
them the same way. So what does this
prove, just because you can go out and have pot? Big thrill?
You have to develop character and all the rest of this stuff is just a
lot of put on and phony stuff. It’s a
cheap substitute for the genuine copy.
And then living before conscience, the child has to learn to live before
conscience because he’s going to live before others. He’s going to have to live before others; his
whole life is lived before others.
Now we come to a
third skill and these next three are going to deal with the old trilogy, sins
of thought, word and deed, and these skills are to meet all three of these
categories of personal sin in the child; the sins of mental attitude, the sins
of gossip, the sins of maligning, and the sins of overt activity. These have to be identified. Now in some areas, depending on how much
human viewpoint the parent has, they’ll get across of these to the child but
what the parents often fail to do is to get across the sins of mental attitude. Now this is harder and here is where you
really have to know the child because you’ve got to see the sins of mental
attitude. If you go back in Scripture
you know how to spot sins of mental attitude.
Turn to Genesis 4
because here is the ideal biblical picture of mental attitude sin and how you
spot it. Cain will be our model here,
the first murderer, but before the overt sin Cain had a mental attitude
sin. The mental attitude sin always
precede overt sin; mental attitude sin leads to the overt activity, always that
direction. Cain was refused by
God—acceptability, his sacrifice was not accepted. Therefore, in Genesis 4:5 it says, “And Can
was very angry,” there’s your inner mental attitude sin, but then notice the
Bible quickly adds something that tells you how to spot it, “and his
countenance fell.” That just means he
was pouting; in other words, that was an external thing that anybody in the
room could have observed, and the Hebrews in the Old Testament always observed
mental attitude by the face and by various actions. We’ll see one in the Proverbs where that
comes about. But they watched the mental
attitude, although the mental attitude is on the inside it leeks out. Very few people can hide mental attitude
sin. And especially children can’t, they
haven’t learned how to yet; adults have, adults can sit in here at 11:00
o’clock, and oh boy, isn’t this great, and look at it and not be absorbing a
thing. And you can tell because of the
decisions they make, the most screwy decisions, human viewpoint all the way;
like, be careful, you’re studying the Bible too much, they’ll say to some of
their children. You’re turning into a
religious fanatic. In other words,
translated what that means is you know more of the Word than I do and I’m
jealous of it. But they’ll come out with
this kind of stuff, that you can get too much of the Word of God. Well, you can’t get too much of the Word of
God; it’s impossible; you can get a lot of other things but not the Word of
God.
So Cain, then,
“his countenance fell,” and then God responded in verse 6 and He pointed to
something; notice, when God counseled Cain and here’s your model, he said Cain,
“[And the LORD said unto Cain,] Why are you angry?” And then what did he immediately say? “And why [is your countenance fallen] are you
pouting?” So when God came back on Cain
He pointed to the mental attitude sin but He also pointed to his face. Now that provides you with a model of how to
handle a child. You know his mental
attitude sin, you can tell, it’s written all over his face. He sits there at the table like that; well
you know something’s going on wrong, so you say, what is your problem? Why are you pouting? And you nail him; you nail him on the
evidence. The evidence is written right
on his face, and if he doesn’t believe it, get a mirror and stick it in front
of him so he can look at himself, then nobody else at the table has to look at
it.
Turn to Proverbs
10:12, here we go through a series of verses that have to do with the sins of
mental attitude, sins of thought. And
these are proverbs that warn the child.
Remember, Proverbs written to children to develop maturity. These verses, we’ll discuss three that have
to do with the sins of the thought pattern, and they’re all warnings. “Hatred stirs up strifes, but love covers all
sins.” Antonymic word pair; hatred and
love. Now let’s look at those two words
in the Scriptures. Notice, we are not
writing anger at this point because anger, although in Genesis 4 it was a
mental attitude sin, anger is not always a mental attitude sin. You can love and be angry; you can hate and
be angry. The anger is your emotions
mobilizing for a job and oftentimes to do a job you have to be angry. But, hatred and love are something else.
Hatred and love
were also shown in the Cain/Abel story in that Cain hated his brother. Why did Cain hate his brother? He hated his brother, not because of some
idiosyncrasy his brother had; he hated his brother because his brother was identified
in Cain’s mind with +R, God’s righteousness.
So anybody identified with +R is going to be hated. And that’s the biblical concept of hate;
anybody that is identified with God’s righteousness is going to be hated by
those on negative volition. So hatred,
then, is a mental attitude that comes out of a child’s negative volition. The child gets on negative volition; that
means he’s violating his own conscience, he’s fighting his own conscience, and
temporarily he put his own conscience out of the way. But then what happens? In his environment along comes another kid,
or along comes a parent and they have conscience, and they represent a pressure
on that negative volition. And so hatred
begins; the hatred ultimately in Scripture goes back to mental attitude sin
toward God.
Now I can’t
emphasize enough for you to get this thoroughly engrained in the way you
analyze experience because the tendency is with all this psychology and
sociology today to think of hate as disconnected from spiritual
consideration. It is never so, never! The Bible always ties hate to hatred of God Himself. And when you have people hating one another
in this sense, it is theological; it is primarily hatred toward God; hatred—the
child hates authority, he hates someone in authority; he’s not hating the
person in authority, he’s hating the God of all authority. So this is a warning then, in Proverbs 10, to
have various attitudes in the home to cut off hatred. “Hatred constantly stirs up strife,” that’s
the objective, in other words you’re training the child to be socially
successful. And any time he learns a –R
learned behavior pattern of hatred, hatred that begins with hatred toward God
and works out to hatred toward man, then he is going to constantly be involved
in controversies, arguments, fights, and so on.
And you can watch that.
“Hatred stirs up
strife.” You can watch that in the home
situation between brothers and sisters; brothers and brothers and sisters and
sisters. This verse not only provides
you with a warning what’s going to happen if the child gains a –R behavior
pattern of hatred, this not only warns you, this tells you how to spot it when
it’s developing, because one of the things where you have a child that is
developing a –R learned behavior pattern of hate and they can do it very early,
get into a habit of cultivating hatred toward people, and you have to know the
child as to exactly how this happens.
But whichever way he does it or to whomever he does it, when he develops
this mental attitude hatred it will always manifest itself by strife. It’s always there; in other words, where
there’s smoke you look fire, and where there’s always hatred and animosity and
strife and fighting and bickering, then you’ve got a problem and you’d better
find out what the problem is before it hardens into a whole pattern or way of
life for that child. It’s much easier to
root it out at the very beginning than it is to let it gel and let it solidify
and then you have a problem.
Then the last
part, “love covers all sins.” Now the
word “cover” means, it doesn’t mean compromise; the word “love” as it is used
here to cover, means that love solves the things, it acts as a peacemaker. I’ll give you two passages in the New
Testament as specifics on how you can direct your child to specific responses
in this kind of a situation. How does it
mean that “love covers all sins”? Well,
it starts with the individual, the forgiveness, the attitude, the mental
attitude of forgiveness. Turn to
Ephesians and we’re going to take some specific Scriptures that you can use
with your children, and when you work with a child in this situation, if you
have to sit them down, get the Bible out, open the Bible and read to them this
passage, then implement it. Show them
where the rule comes from; it doesn’t come just from momma and daddy, it comes
from the Word of God. And that’s the
role that is being used.
Ephesians 4:32, if
you see the bickering start, start training them how to handle it. You can say well, it may get ridiculous, I
have problems, say with my child, and I’ve had to do this two or three times a
day and this has gone on for a week or so and no results. All right, you are forcing them to be face to
face with a specific of the Word of God; not a generality, a specific, and
here’s one specific in 4:32. “Be kind
one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s
sake, has forgiven you.” So the first
procedure is to see if the child can simply forgive the other child; no more
than that, without any further development, to see if just plain forgiveness
can be there. And you can tell if a
kid’s putting you on or not, just ask him.
Do you think you can forgive so and so?
Really. And you can tell by the
attitude and so on if you know your child.
If he yea, yeah, yea kind of thing you know he doesn’t. All right, so now you’ve got to do something
else. And the something else is
explained in two passages of the New Testament.
Matthew 5 and
Matthew 18. Let’s turn to Matthew 18:15,
this is the procedure to use if the first one doesn’t work. Here is how to solve the problem biblically;
how to correct the pattern, how to head it off at the pass. This isn’t going to come natural; it’s very
hard to do. “Moreover, if your brother
trespass against thee,” so let’s set up an illustration, here’s your child,
we’ll put Y, there’s yours and here’s the other one, and the other one has
wronged your child. You’ve talked to
your child and he can’t forgive him, he’s started to develop a bitter mental
attitude and you as a Christian parent are upset because you’ve seen, all
right, now he’s starting to get a bitter mental attitude as a result of this
and I know if I let this thing go on it’s going to solidify and we’re going t
have problems. So let’s see what we can
do about it; we’ll go to Matthew 18:15, “Moreover, if thy brother trespass against
thee,” there’s the situation, “Go and tell him his fault between thee and him
alone,” you don’t bring the neighborhood into it. You train your child, all right, so and so
wronged you, where did he wrong you?
Oftentimes you’ve got to help him, where was it that he wronged you
state it to me, verbalize it to me.
Okay, so you’ve got it verbalized, now you go and you go talk to him
alone; just go talk to him and tell him that he did this, “and if he heart
thee, then you’ve gained a brother,” that means the relationship is
restored.
Verse 16, “But if
he will not hear you, then take with thee one or two more,” now in the
interpretation of this passage deals with the thing in the early synagogue
assembly of believers, and it obviously goes into the synagogue in verse 17 and
so on. But the point is that you
initiate to the person. This is your
child, this is the other child, of course your child doesn’t hit, in this case
he hit him, so he goes and he talks to him about it; he talks to him, he just
goes and tells him this. Then if the
child doesn’t indicate that he’s sorry at all about and just the hell with you,
then the end of verse 17 tells you the attitude, “let be unto thee as a heathen
and a publican,” now again, that’s not a republican, that’s a publican, and
verse 17, this is talking about the basic attitude in a synagogue. Now how would we apply that in this
situation? To apply it in the situation
means that this child just simply will not play with him until it’s straightened
out. So you straighten it out or we just
don’t play any more, that’s all. And now
you’ve precipitated an issue; you’ve precipitated an issue and by helping your
child out you stick to the rules. Now
what usually happens here is oh, we’re going to play and then tomorrow they’re
playing, see. But to train them properly
you stick to the rules and make it stick.
Suppose it’s a
reverse situation; suppose now this kid has hit this one; that sometimes does
happen. Turn to Matthew 5:23, now this
is why only parents are the qualified teachers of children because only parents
are around when these things happen. Now
this is what’s so foolish, that the schools are going to teach our children
social skills; sure they are, they teach them a lot, how to get away with
stuff, how to violate authority, all sorts of social skills. But the parent is the one who’s going to be
around when this stuff pops off. This is
why it behooves every parent to know the Word of God cold because it’s not
going to happen during your quiet time, when you’ve got everything organized,
all the notes, everything on how to do it, and then finally, after you’ve just
stated it, you notice it happen. It
doesn’t work that way. It works usually
while you’re getting supper, while you’re under the car fixing something,
anytime that it’s terribly inconvenient it’ll happen. So that’s why you have to know the Word and
be able to apply it rapidly.
Matthew 5:23,
“Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother
has something against you,” in other words, you’ve wronged the other
person. Then, [24] “Leave there thy gift
before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled t thy brother, and then
come and” worry about the gift. See the
order; principle, again, the interpretation differs from the application I’m
giving you, we’re just applying these Scriptures, not interpreting them. And here again you teach the principle of
reconciliation. Now those verses give
you some ideas on specific things you can do to train, this is all part of
training a child to handle situations.
Now if children could be trained in this, then when they get older it
would come automatically. And think of
how much easier it would be existing socially if they were used to doing this,
and it didn’t come… well, I don’t know whether I’m going to do that not kind of
thing. Well, it comes that way because
you’re not used to doing it.
Let’s turn back to
Proverbs 14:17, two more verses on this problem of mental attitude anger, this deals
with two kinds of patterns. You see,
hatred can break out in two patterns, and now this verse is going to give you
the two kinds of patterns to look for in a child because his hatred will spill
out in these two different ways. The
first ways is in verse 17, the first part, “He that is soon angry deals
foolishly,” now that’s the classic instance of short temper, a kid blows up and
explodes, that’s one way it’s manifested.
You’ll notice that pattern developing and that has got to be dealt with
because obviously, “foolishly,” it’s related to what you feel and it just
simply means he’s never going to accomplish anything for the Lord with this
kind of thing going on. It’s a permanent
impediment to his progress.
Now the last part
of verse 17 is the other way children can show anger and hostility; this is a
completely different pattern but at the base of it still is the same mental
attitude sin. “A man of wicked
plotting,” literally, “is hated.” Now
that’s when the kid does not blow up.
That’s when the kid plays the poker face and then when everybody isn’t
looking, pow! See, he’s got a little bit
more clever skill in how to handle his anger and how to vent it. So that’s the plotter, that’s the sneak. So one kid will just let it all hang out and
you know that, or the other kid that tends to be sneaky, worming around, lying
his way around, maneuvering, that kind of thing. And you have to watch for that pattern and
the base of that pattern is mental attitude hatred; same thing.
What are some of
the mental attitude’s that are behind this thing? Let’s think of this for a moment. What is going on in the head when this
happens? What is this mental
attitude? Could we write it out and
actually see it. Suppose you have two
kids playing out in the yard or something; you have one, they get in a big
hassle, the hatred develops, and we say the hatred basically is a hatred
against God, not necessarily just the person that’s involved. Why?
Suppose the child is involved, he wants to play game A; his playmate wants
to play game B. Now he is facing a cut
off to what he wants to do. Now that is
a very theological problem because that basically is going to be the story of
the rest of his life. There is going to
become event after event after event after event in his life where he is going
to want to do something and is going to be frustrated in it. He’s going to meet people that don’t agree
with him; meet people that frustrate him and so on. It might be that he could be justified in
wanting game A instead of game B, maybe game B is more dangerous or something,
you could argue. Maybe he was justified
in choosing game A and not game B. The
point still remains though, he wants to play game A more than he wants to work
with the person at hand. And this
ultimately goes back to selfishness and pride toward God Himself, it’s what he wants.
Now that looks
very innocent, the whole thing is kind of innocuous, but watch where it leads
35 years later, if he still wants to do what he wants to do regardless of
somebody else. How’s he going to get
along in business, in the military, in education? How’s he going to do that? He won’t, he’s developed folly, a bad mental
attitude.
Now one more
verse, Proverbs 15:18, same principle, showing you the same results; like the first
verse, Proverbs 15:18 is both a warning and a detector. It is a warning in that it tells the child,
look kid, develop this attitude and this is what your life is going to be like. And it also tells you how to stop the
attitude. “A wrathful man stirs up
strife; but he who is slow to anger appeases strife.” It’s the same principle of 10:12 and it deals
with the same process. “He that is slow
to anger appeases,” and the Hebrew verb to appease is the word that means
quiet, and it’s in the hiphil form which means cause to be quiet or
listen. Now what is that but the process
of reconciliation? Now if you don’t
believe that people don’t learn this you should be in my counseling and listen
to some of the marriage counseling that goes on. People that have been married for many, many
years still don’t know how to handle this kind of a thing. Now you see why the Bible says we’re not
educated? See, the Jews wouldn’t be
impressed with PhD’s, they’d be impressed with skill and when they look out and
they say hey, look, what is this, people 35 and 40 years old and they don’t
know how to handle a problem like this, what is the trouble. That is more important to the Old Testament
believer than sheer knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
Now there’s
another pattern that we want to start, we won’t have time to finish it, besides
sins of the thought and that’s sins of the tongue. So let’s look at Proverbs 10:11. Now isn’t it interesting that children are
taught to read and to write but they’re not taught how to speak, how to tell
somebody something, and if you’ll look, oftentimes, at a situation that’s
developing, one reason why the kid blows his stack is that he doesn’t know how
to explain himself to the other person.
And that’s why he’s blowing up; he gets so frustrated because he can’t
get his point across. Maybe it’s to you
or to somebody else. And so sometimes to
solve the problem very easily you sit down and just show him how to say what is
on his mind. That has to be taught. For example, suppose we communicated in
writing and we didn’t talk, it was just writing, we had to write a note and
hand it to somebody. Now can you imagine
the frustration of a kid that didn’t know how to write? What would be his problem? He’d want to get out something, he was angry,
he wanted to express a need or something to you and he couldn’t because he
didn’t know how to write, a piece of characters all over a piece of paper,
what’s all this, frustrated. All right,
same thing, he doesn’t know how to get it across. So watch for that; does the kid know how to
talk, just simply talk, to explain something.
And oftentimes the way this comes out isn’t when he’s telling you what
was on the commercial in TV, that’s easy, where it comes out where there’s a
little emotional problem, you know, he went in there and he put his foot
through the boob tube and you didn’t hear the crash or something and he come
down with this (?) between his legs and wants to announce the fact. Now in that kind of situation, then you’ll
see it flop all over the place. There
again it goes back to the tongue and how to use it.
So it shouldn’t
surprise us that Proverbs has a lot to say about skills of the tongue. Proverbs 10:11, “He that winks with the eye
causes sorrow,” this is Proverbs 10:10 but it’s an introduction to verse 11,
“but a prating fool shall fall.” This
introduces us to the attitude behind what is said, and that comes out in verse
11, “The mouth of the righteous man is a well of life, but violence covers the
mouth of the wicked.” And the word for
“violence” is the key to understanding this passage. The violence here equals what we would call
rebellion, which is related to human viewpoint autonomy. Now that sets it in an altogether different
light. This verse is not teaching that
this person is an anarchist that’s running around with Molotov cocktails
wanting to blow up the establishment.
That’s not the kind of violence mentioned here. The violence is rebellion against authority,
that’s what’s spoken of, a rebellious attitude toward divinely given authorized
standards.
So “the mouth of
the righteous is a well of life.” What
is a well of life? Again, that which is
divine viewpoint. The well of life is
that which provides nourishment. Do you
know what a well would be used for?
Where was this written? In a hot
climate. What was a well? A place where you went when you got
thirsty. That’s why Jesus with the well
of water with the woman at Samaria tied it to eternal life, it’s to salvation,
that which saves, that which nourishes.
And so the well here, “the mouth of the righteous” one, the mouth of the
person, the word “righteous” means adherence to standards, is a well, it
supplies nourishment to other people.
And what supplies nourishment but divine viewpoint. “But violence,” that’s human viewpoint,
rejection, rebellion, encouraging others in their rebellious attitude to God’s
authority, “violence covers the mouth of the wicked.”
Proverbs 11:9,
this is an education to the child how he can destroy and hurt people with his
mouth. “A hypocrite,” now this is a word
that means an apostate one, I don’t know why they translated it hypocrite, it
means an apostate one, it means a person who has apostacized from a standard; a
person who has turned away from a standard.
The standard would be his own conscience, he’s out of fellowship. A person, “A hypocrite,” one who has turned
away from God’s standards, “with his mouth destroys his neighbor; but through
knowledge the just shall be delivered.”
This last part of verse 9 refers to the process of reconciliation that I
showed you in Matthew 5 and 18. The
first part, though, is simply a warning of how people can be destroyed.
Proverbs 11:13,
this is learning a little about character and reliability. “A talebearer reveals secrets, but he that is
of a faithful spirit conceals the matter.”
Now again that’s not talking about compromise. That is talking about private affairs. The talebearer in the Hebrew is a goer-about,
that means… it’s a participle, it’s part of his character. This person has become ingrained with this
character which warns you, this is again learned in childhood. And where do kids, you suppose, pick up the
habit, of yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, now where do you suppose they
learn that? From watching the parents. That’s where they learn it. They hear the parents talking about everybody
behind their back, all the gruesome details, and so what do they do? The same things with the kids their age. “A talebearer continues to reveal,” that’s a
participle, he habitually “reveals secrets, but he that is of a faithful
spirit,” and that’s an amen, “a faithful spirit,” that’s talking about a
reliable spirit. This is the basis of
true friendship. And you might point
this out to a child, that the only way he’s ever going to have some close
friends is to have a faithful spirit, a reliable spirit, so people can talk
with him without him yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak all over the place. Nobody that yaks like this will ever have
close friends.
Proverbs 12:18,
these are pretty obvious, all these ones on the tongue but I want to take you
through whole a whole raft of them here in Proverbs to show you the biblical
mentality. “There is one, he speaks
rashly,” that’s a participle, one who speaks rashly, “like the piercings of a
sword, but tongue of the wise is health,” and it’s a noun, it’s not an
adjective, it’s a noun, it means “it is a therapy, it’s the word therapy, that
verse teaches the child to think before he opens his mouth as to how it’s going
to hurt or heal. See the word sword;
that means to cut. And the word health
is the word when you take herbs and you place on a cut, we had that once before
in Proverbs. So the picture is think
before you speak, whether it cuts or whether it heals.
Proverbs 15:1, how
to fire up other old sin natures. “A
soft answer turns away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger.” Again, do you see, as we pointed out earlier
in Proverbs, cause/effect, cause/effect, cause/effect. What is wisdom? Learning cause/effect. What is wisdom in special skills? Learning cause/effect. What is wisdom in learning social skills of
the tongue? Cause/effect. And any number of times you can call a child
off to the side and maybe he’s had a disagreement. Well, son, what did you say to so and so
before he did that? Well I said…. What’d you say? I told him to get lost or something. Oh, well then point out, cause/effect,
cause/effect. Same thing.
Proverbs 16:28,
teach him the danger to his friendship and other friendships that a loose
tongue can cause. Verses 28-30, “A
froward [perverse] man sows strife, and a whisperer separates good friends,”
very good friends, this is the word that means very close friends. Now how could very close friends be split
apart? By lies and
misrepresentations.
[29] “A violent
man entices his neighbor, and leads him into the way that is not good.” Actually it’s the word deceive and that is
the theme of lying. See, the theme here
is that a false tongue lies and misrepresents, and there’s all sorts of
repercussions. Children are not going to
learn the effect of lies, you have to point it out to them or they will learn
later on in life when it’s too late. But
you head off a lot of misery by explaining cause/effect.
[30] “He shuts his
eyes to devise froward [perverse] things, moving his lips to bring evil to
pass.” This is the plotter and this is
the verse that tells you again that the Jew looks at the face, because the
expression “shuts his eyes” means to wink the eye, but the winking isn’t the
winking like we think of it, the winking is the lowering of the eye. In other words, you can’t look the person in
the eye, that’s what he’s saying. And
the Jew noticed this as a mental attitude.
You should say, you know, even though the mental attitude is on the
inside we can tell what the mental attitude on the inside by what’s going on on
the cover and here are two things, “he that don’t look at you with his eye,
moving his lips,” now it’s not moving either, it means pursing his lips. Have you ever watched this? You watch somebody that you know real well
and watch how they hold their lips when they’re angry, and you notice this, not
only when they’re talking, just when they’re… just watch their lips when they’re
angry and you’ll see there’s a complete difference. Now the Jew spotted this, he looked at the
eye, he looked at the lips, and from Genesis 4 he just he looked at the whole
pattern of the face. That teaches you
how to biblically read mental attitude sins.
They are going to show up on the cover.
Proverbs 17:9,
this talks about how to conservatively deal with problems in friendship. “He that covers a transgression seeks love,
but he that repeats a matter separate friends.”
In other words, if there’s something going the norm is always have a
minimum number of people exposed here.
That’s what James says, “Confess your faults one to another,” he doesn’t
mean a public testimony meeting where you get up and say oh, I sinned, I did
this and I did that. That’s just sharing
dirty linen with the group. That’s
what’s wrong with these sensitivity groups that you have; they violate the
biblical norm that only those people directly involved are to know of it; no
one else. And the more you spread it
around the more anti-biblical you become.
That’s not sensitivity, that’s desensitizing people. The word “repeat the matter” means he goes
out and tells others when he should have dealt with it himself.
Proverbs 18:6, “A
fool’s lips enter into contention, and his mouth calls for a beating.” Now that shows you again a guideline in
disciplining of the children, pointing out the corporal punishment that they
receive because of the lie, because of the misrepresentation, actually that
corporal punishment is less injurious than their words. And this comes out again and again in
Scripture. [7, “A fool’s mouth is his
destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul.”]
It comes out again
in verse 8, “The words of a talebearer are wounds, and they go down into the
innermost parts of the belly.” And
that’s the principle here, that’s why corporal punishment is called for in
verse 6. That doesn’t go down into the
innermost parts of the belly, that’s just on the gluteus maximus and it hurts
and stings for a while, but the wounds from the mouth can’t be eliminated this
way. They go deep down, and the word
“the innermost parts of the belly,” this is the third time we’ve encountered it
in the Proverbs series, that means to the inner depth of all the soul, that’s
how far they go down. You see why the
biblical mentality here, warning people to how far this thing goes.
Proverbs 20:19,
this is a tactic, besides corporal punishment, “He that goes about as a
talebearer reveals secrets; therefore, meddle not with him that flatters with
his lips.” That might suggest a form of
punishment, isolation from the kid, isolate him from the friendship for a while
until he learns that you’re isolating him now but later on adults are going to
isolate themselves from him for doing this.
That might suggest a point of punishment.
Then finally,
Proverbs 21:23, this sort of summarizes the whole point the Bible is
making. “Whoso keeps his mouth and his
tongue, keeps his soul from troubles.”
That would be a very excellent memory verse for small children that are
having trouble in this area. Just have
them memorize this verse, have them repeat it.
“Whoso keeps his mouth and his tongue, keeps his soul from troubles.” Teach him the Word.
Next week we’ll
deal with the sin patterns, overt behavior, and then we’ll start in with the
orientation towards sex in the family as it is given in Scripture.