Choose: Life or Death?
Proverbs 4:10-19
In this section we have an illustration
of how the Word of God is to be passed on generationally. That really forms the
foundation of the first nine chapters as well as most of Proverbs, that these
are the teachings of spiritual principles from father to son. The ideal
circumstance is for the father to be the spiritual head of the home and it is
the ideal situation for the father to take that leadership responsibility in
the home for the training and education of the children for spiritual things.
This can be done in a more formal way,
on a weekly basis, a nightly basis, the reading of Scriptures, talking about
what is read, reading Bible stories, having various discussions as time goes by.
It can also be informal teaching, and this is something that is done not
necessarily in a didactic manner in a lecture format where the father is giving
lectures but, as Deuteronomy 6 portrays it, just as you go through life
circumstances and situations come up that are teachable moments, opportunities
that God brings into the life of a family where advantages can be taken to help
children understand the decision making process that you parents go through in
order to determine what would be the best course of action for the family in
light of the Word of God. And as the family grows what this does is build
within their souls a framework for making decisions in their own life, whether
it is handling finances, how we spend our time, how we evaluate our priorities,
etc. The earlier parents begin with their children the easier it is.
As we look at this next section in
Proverbs chapter four the father again challenges the son in terms of his
decision-making priorities and focuses his thinking upon the issues, once
again, of life and death. As Christians often whenever we see these
juxtapositions of life and death what we often think of it eternal life and
condemnation. But within the context of the Old Testament that is not the
category that they are talking about most of the time. For example, when the
Israelites were entering into the land of Canaan Moses challenge to them was,
ÒChoose today life or death.Ó It was not eternal life as much as are you going
to make choices on a day-to-day basis that are going to enhance your walk with
God so that you experience all the fullness of blessing that God has for you in
life, the fullness of life that God has provided for us. Death, the, is living
a miserable life, a life of conflict, a life of difficulty, a life in internal
unhappiness and misery.
This is not talking about externals
here because as Christians we all go through times of adversity, times of
difficulty, times of challenge. We face a myriad of hardship in life because we
living in the devilÕs world, a corrupt world. There is opposition against us
from Satan and his world system and there are problems just dealing with a
fallen world. The fullness of life doesnÕt mean a perfect life, doesnÕt mean
that everything is going to go well. It doesnÕt mean that most of the time
everything is going to go well. It has nothing to do with the external
circumstances, it has to do with how we face and handle those external
circumstances. Are we going to let the challenges of life run over us, or are
we going to stand form and trust in the Lord to deal with these as they come on
the basis of what God has provided.
The challenge in this next set of
verses is the challenge between life and death. Proverbs 4:10 NASB
ÒHear, my son, and accept my sayings And the years of
your life will be many.Ó The father is saying if you listen to me and follow
what I teach you, then you will have a full, rich life. This is the contrast
between life and death. The challenge is how to live life well, to seize life
and to stay off of the human viewpoint road and stay on the road of divine
viewpoint and the Word of God.
Proverbs 4:11 NASB ÒI have
directed you in the way of wisdom; I have led you in upright paths.Ó We see
this again and again in Proverbs where the fathers says
IÕm teaching you wisdom, IÕm warning you against foolishness. Why? Because he
also says foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, you donÕt have to be
taught how to act foolishly. You donÕt have to be taught how to be wicked; you
donÕt have to get instruction on being a sinner because that is what we are;
that is our default position.
But we live in a world where
increasingly the political philosophy that dominates western civilization
assumes that the role of government is to protect society, protect people, and
to do away with death. Notice that the more that we get away from the Scripture
and the certainty of eternal life, and that death is just an open door into a
heavenly life that people in government are more and more scared of death and
they try to do everything they can to keep people alive longer. Of course, this
is going to go by the wayside once government takes over health care. They
canÕt afford to keep everybody alive until theyÕre 95 or 105 because it gets
too expensive, and thereÕs only limited financial resources so that then
becomes a problem. What we have is the role of government trying to protect
people to make them healthy, not to give them and environment where they can
make volitionally responsible choices to live a healthy life. The government
comes and tries to prevent people from feeling the consequences, the negative
results of their own bad decisions. We have tried to create this utopic society.
This is the influence of progressivism,
socialism, Christian socialism, Marxism; all of these things that have come
along in the last 150 years, all built upon this basic assumption that man is
good, man is perfectible, society is perfectible, and that it is the role of
society through government to bring in this utopic
environment. That is in contrast to the Word of God which teaches that we are
all basically sinners, we have to learn to control the desires of the sin
nature, we have to learn discipline so that we can then have a full, rich life.
The role of parents is to teach and ingrain
that discipline in their children.
It is interesting that there have been
several comments from people this last week from people who said that they had
always believed that everything was either black or white. And yet in Scripture
we read that there are areas of absolute right and absolute wrong, and there
are other areas where the issue isnÕt a choice between that which is right and
that which is wrong, the choice is between that which is good and that which is
better. We can think of that in the life of Mary and Martha, the two sisters of
Lazarus. Mary was the one who liked to hang out at home and take care of
everybody, and she was the one to give the hospitality. Martha was the one who
would sit and listen to the Lord and Mary is the one who would get distracted
with these other things taking care of things at home. She made a choice that
was good. There is nothing wrong with taking care of domestic things at home,
showing hospitality, cleaning, doing all of those things. But Martha at times recognized
that she didnÕt want to get distracted with that because it took her away from
spending time with the Lord and focusing on truth. So it is not a choice
between good and bad, it is a choice between good and better. And as we mature
as believers often our choices are not between that which is right and that
which is wrong, but that which is good, that which is really good, and that
which is wise and skillful in our spiritual life.
So the father challenges his son.
ÒListen.Ó The word in Hebrew is as it is in Greek. The biblical thinking on
hearing isnÕt just to sit and listen and have your auditory nerves stimulated.
We all do that. We can sit there and our brain is a thousand miles away,
thinking about something else, something that is going to happen this week,
something last week, etc. The word in verse 10 for ÒhearÓ means not only to
listen, to go through the physical action of hearing, but to do what is being
said to do; to respond positively and apply and obey what is going on. Hearing
without obedience doesnÕt mean anything. You havenÕt heard if you donÕt obey.
And so the challenge here to the son is to listen and obey what the father
says. The parallel is Òreceive/accept my sayings.Ó The word in the Hebrew is a
word that means to take, or it is a synonym for accepting something into your
life and making it a part of your thinking, a part of your characteristics of
your life.
So the challenge of the father is to
listen and to do as he says, and then the result is given in the second part of
the verse: ÒAnd the years of your life will be many.Ó We see in the New
Testament with eternal life that it is not just life forever with God, but that
concept of eternal life also indicates a richness and fullness of life. In
saying that, depending on their background some people hear wealth, riches,
success, all of those things. That is not what is included in the word. It is a
fullness of life that we reach, the fulfillment that God has for us by living
out His plan and purpose for our life. It doesnÕt have anything to do with the
external circumstances of our life. The thing that makes the difference between
somebody who has a rich life and somebody who doesnÕt is their mental
attitude—how you handle your circumstances, how you are able to face the
challenges of life. Because you are either going to be run over by bad things
that happen in life or you are going to stand up and be able to walk through
the storm with your head held high, recognizing that God is in charge and that
He has a reason and a purpose for you going through those particularly
challenging events. There will be people you can minister to, people you meet
after you have gone through it, and you have to have a bigger, broader picture.
So what the father is telling the son
is, if you want a full life, both in terms of length and in terms of its
richness and fulfillment, then you need to listen to wisdom: the teachings of
the Word of God so that you can have skill in its application.
Then the father reflects on what he has
done. Proverbs 4:11 NASB ÒI have directed you in the way of wisdom
ÉÓ This is not a passive role of being an example, giving guidance, but it is
giving specific disciplined instruction. The word here translated ÒdirectedÓ in
the NASB is yarah is the root word for the word
torah. We think of that as the law, but is also means
the instruction of God and it has the idea of having a curriculum, having
order, structure. So the father has a set curriculum in his mind for where he
wants to take his children from the time they are born until they leave the
home.
Note: The role of parents is to prepare
to children to be able to live without them by the time they are eighteen years
of age. It is to prepare them to leave the next, not to be dependent upon the
parents for the rest of their life.
In parallel he says, ÒÉ I have led you
in upright paths.Ó The Hebrew word for Òway of wisdomÓ is derekh, the word for
ÒhighwayÓ in modern Hebrew and it means basically the same thing in the Old
Testament—path, road, way. Then in the second line, ÒI have led you,Ó is
from the verb based on that same noun, which means I have caused you to go a
certain way (hiphil stem). The word for ÒpathsÓ is yashar which means to be
level, to be straight, just, lawful. It is also used in Proverbs 3:6 dealing
with the fact that the Lord will make our way straight, will straight our
paths.
The picture we see here is that when we
learn wisdom and seek to apply wisdom, and we make what we thing is the wisest
decision as we go through life and we are trusting the Lord throughout all of
this, then God is the one who straightens out the direction of our life. The
result of this is then given in verse 12.
Proverbs 4:12 NASB ÒWhen you
walk, your steps will not be impeded [hindered] ÉÓ Why? Because you are
trusting in the Lord and He is straightening out your path, removing those
things that will cause you to stumble. The idea of stumbling here is not the
idea of creating a stumbling block. Hindering in the qal
stem means something that is narrow or a distress; in the hiphil
it is to cause something to make it narrow or to cause distress, so youÕre
steps will not be blocked, you are not going to become constricted in your life
because you are going to pursue a fullness of life. ÒÉ And if you run, you will
not stumble.Ó This is the idea of Isaiah 40:31 NASB ÒYet those
who wait for the LORD Will gain new strength; They will mount up {with} wings
like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become
weary.Ó Again and again in Scripture we have these same ideas emphasized, that
if we walk on the basis of the Word of God, i.e. if we live our life making
decisions on the basis of the values of the Word of God, then God works to
straighten out our life.
Does that mean that we
are not going to have adversity? Not at all. It means
that if those things come into our life we know that God has allowed them and
brought them into our life for a purpose, and it gives us an opportunity to
trust Him and to be a witness to others in how we trust the Lord in the midst
of those circumstances.
ÒÉ And if you run, you will not
stumble.Ó The idea of stumbling here has to do with stumbling as a result
of weariness or being exhausted. We are strengthened by GodÕs Word, it is the
same idea as in Isaiah 40:31. This concept of growing tired and weary is then
picked up in the next verse under the idea of the Hebrew word in the phrase Òdo
not let go.Ó
Proverbs 4:13 NASB ÒTake
hold of instruction; do not let go. Guard her, for she is your life.Ó The
challenge here is to hold fast to the teaching of GodÕs Word. Actually it means
donÕt give up, donÕt get discouraged, donÕt give up in
the process of spiritual growth. ÒTake holdÓ is the Hebrew word chazaq which means to grab
hold on to something and to hold to it tightly. There is a sense of desperation
there. You know that if you let go then all is lost, so youÕre not going to
release it. Òof instruction,Ó is the word moser
which means disciplined instruction. Again we get this reminder that this
father has thought out ahead of time the curriculum he wants his children to go
through so that when they come out at the other end as a young adult they are
self-sufficient. He is taking them through a course of training that is
organized and thought out so that they are prepared as adults, prepared
spiritually to face the challenges of life when they become an adult.
There are no guarantees though. There
is a general proverbial truth that you train up a child in the way he should go
and when he is old he wonÕt depart from it. But children have volition, and
when children grow up in a pagan culture, no matter how much you may seek to
shelter them from the pagan culture, it is amazing how kids just seem to absorb
it from the air around them. When they become young adults they often try to
see if what they believe when they are out on their own. They go and sow their
wild oats, as it were. Some go through a period of that and it is not very
extreme. Others never seem to come back from that. Some are like the prodigal
son and go through years of self-induced misery and self-destruction before
they come back. Others may not come back. That is rare, and that is why it is a
proverb, not a promise.
A promise is that if you train up a
child in the way he should go there would be no exception. A proverb is just
simply one of the general truths that if you teach them and train them in the
way they should go them most of the time, even though they may depart for a
while, they will return. That is why it is the book of Proverbs, not the book
of Promises. So the instruction is a guided, disciplined instruction. When we
learn we have to go through a guided path of instruction. This is why in Bible
class it is important that we have a pastor who teaches through the Word in a
regular manner.
The phrase Òdo not let goÓ is the hiphil imperfect of rafah which has the idea of
sinking down, dropping something, becoming disheartened or discouraged. In
other words, take firm hold, or strongly grasp disciplined instruction and donÕt
give up. ÒÉ Guard her, for she is your life.Ó It is the source of life.
Then in contrast to following the
instruction of the father we have the warning against following the natural
inclinations of the sin nature. Notice there is nothing here about listening to
instruction, it is assumed that without instruction this is the way a person
will go. Notice there is a progression here much like in Psalm one. Proverbs
4:14 NASB ÒDo not enter the path of the wicked And do not proceed in
the way of evil men. [15] Avoid it, do not pass by it; Turn away from it
and pass on.Ó
So it is entering, walking and travelling in a certain direction. It is a
progression from just a sitting position to fully entering into something. The
prohibition is, donÕt enter into the path of the wicked. ÒWickedÓ is a general
term used in the Old Testament to describe the whole range of the sin nature
and sins. It is used 266 times, mostly in wisdom
literature, but it is used elsewhere as well. And it is used as a synonym for
almost every word for sin, evil and iniquity in the Hebrew. So it is a general
term that covers the whole realm of the activity of the sin nature. DonÕt
enter; donÕt make the choice to even walk through the door of that path. Then
further, donÕt walk down the path in the way or the direction of evil. The
command is to avoid it, ignore it, to let it go. DonÕt travel on it.
The reason for this command is given in
the next two verses. It expresses the core nature of the person who is wicked,
that their nature is such that this wickedness has taken control of their soul.
These are the ones who have entered the path, are walking down the path, and
they have given their life now to the path. It is a progression, it doesnÕt
happen all at once. We dabble in sin a little bit, then
we get comfortable with it. At first we might have been shocked, we dabble in
it, then we are doing it all the time, and the next thing we know it is a part
of our life. Once it takes over a personÕs life they are characterized this
way: Proverbs 4:16 NASB ÒFor they cannot sleep unless they do evil
ÉÓ Their whole being is caught up with living in wickedness. So they canÕt even
relax until something wicked has been done. ÒÉ And they are robbed of sleep
unless they make {someone} stumble.Ó This second part extends the idea from
simply doing evil to getting somebody else involved. They want a companion in
their evil. Here we have the word kashal in the Hebrew, which
means, to stagger from weakness or weariness.
Then the wicked are described as having
totally assimilated evil in their life. The next verse uses a picturesque
metaphor of eating and drinking, which is often used in Scripture in order to
express the fact that someone has taken—just as we eat food and it is
converted into energy and the nutrients go through all of the body and become
part and parcel of our nature—evil and it has entered into the total
experience of the wicked person and they have made it a part of their own.
Proverbs 4:17 NASB ÒFor they eat the bread of wickedness And drink the wine of violence.Ó Eating and drinking here
covers all the aspects of taking something in, and it marks an intimate and
real partaking of everything that wickedness and violence brings. This is not
talking about eating wicked bread or violent wine. It is the bread related to
wickedness and describes the nutrients that are absorbed from the bread, and
the wine is characterized by violence. So it is the wickedness and the violence
that is coming into the life of the person.
Often we have verses in Scripture that
express this idea of eating and drinking as taking something into someoneÕs
life. For example, in Jeremiah 15:16 NASB ÒYour words were
found and I ate them, And Your words became for me a joy and the delight of my
heart; For I have been called by Your name, O LORD
God of hosts.Ó Jeremiah is reflecting upon the words that God has revealed to
him. ÒI ate themÓ means that he believed them and made
them part of his life.
God uses the same
metaphor in Ezekiel 3:1 NASB ÒÉSon of man, eat what you find; eat
this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.Ó In other words, assimilate
what I have revealed to you and then on that basis go and relate to the
Israelites what I have revealed to you.
It is used in the New
Testament in John 6:51 NASB ÒI am the living bread that came down
out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the
bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.Ó The idea
is taking in Christ and it is a metaphor for belief, as we will see.
The parallel in Proverbs 4:17 says,
Òdrinking the wine of violence.Ó The word for ÒviolenceÓ there is the Hebrew
word hamas. This isnÕt the word for the party in the Middle East,
the HAMAS Party. That is an Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance
Movement. This is just an ironic similarity here that the Hebrew word for
violence is hamas, and it just means that sin leads to some sort of
violence, whether it is in the soul or out of the soul. What happens when you
start down this process is you just get a little bit and you want more until
this sin dominates your thinking.
Alexander Pope expressed it in a
couplet in this way:
ÒVice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.Ó
We get familiar with sin, we get
comfortable with sin, and then we embrace the sin.
One more note on this metaphor of
eating and drinking. This often confuses people. For example, in John 6:51
people ask what Jesus meant when He talked about eating this bread, meaning
himself, drinking His blood. That has been used by the Roman Catholics to
justify transubstantiation in the Mass. But of we look in John 6 we see that
the idea of eating and drinking is just a picturesque way of talking about
believing.
In John 6:40 and 47 (all the same
discussion, the same bread of life discourse) Jesus says, [40] ÒFor this
is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him
will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.Ó
In John 6:53 Jesus said, ÒTruly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the
flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.Ó
Eating the flesh, drinking the blood is just a metaphor for talking about
belief. Belief is accepting something as your own—accepting the truth.
John 6:47: ÒTruly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.Ó
Verse 54 uses the eating and drinking metaphor: ÒHe who eats My
flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last
day.Ó Often metaphors are further explained when we just look at the passage
and come to understand some of the parallel terms.
The result of taking in
the Word of God and following the path of wisdom is that it illuminates the
path around us. It illuminates our lives and it illuminates the lives of those
around us. Proverbs 4:18 NASB ÒBut the path of the righteous
is like the light of dawn [Heb. bright light], That shines brighter and
brighter until the full day.Ó It increases. That is the idea of wisdom on the
spectrum. As we grow and mature we make wiser and wiser decisions. The term
Òfull dayÓ seems to have the idea of until we stand before GodÕs judgment
seat when this life is over. And so the path of the just continues to
illuminate those around them until their life comes to an end.
This is a thought that is expressed by
the apostle Paul in Philippians 2:15, 16 NASB Òso that you
will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above
reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you
appear as lights in the world ÉÓ This is a great verse for this generation. We
live in a crooked and perverse generation but we need to grow and mature so
that we can shine as lights in the world. How do we do that? By Òholding fast
the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to glory
because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain.Ó
But in contrast to the illuminating
walk of the wise believer we have the darkened walk of the disobedient believer
or the unbeliever. Proverbs 4:19 NASB ÒThe way of the wicked is like
darknessÉÓ The word here is a thick darkness such as descended upon Egypt as
part of the ten plagues. The same word is used here in the Hebrew. It is a
thick darkness in which there is no discernment of anything. ÒÉ They do not know over
what they stumble.Ó This is the same word we found earlier in verse 16 where
they want to make others stumble.
So the choice is ours. This is what
this section is all about. Do we want to choose life or do we want to choose
death? Our life is the result of the decisions that we make. We are the result
of our decisions.