Good morning, everyone, shall we pray? Father, we thank you that we have had the privilege of singing the praises of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that we can enjoy in our hearts the redemption of our souls and know that our sins have been washed away by his blood. We pray that our hearts might be refreshed this morning, but especially that our minds would be fixed upon things that mattered and that are conduct and the way that we set out from this building this morning, when all was said and done, the manner in which we walk in this world in the coming week, this week, we pray that would be guided by your hand.
In Jesus' name, amen. The last time I spoke to you, we had Rahab, a discriminating woman, who realized that the children of God were at hand, and that Jehovah God, the true one God, was the God behind the people that were soon going to be outside the walls of Jericho, a discriminating woman. We had Jael, a decisive woman, who recognized one of the princes of darkness was before her and that she had an opportunity to make a decisive action against evil for the children of God. And we had the queen of Sheba, somebody asked me afterwards, where is this place that she came from?
And I had done some research and I was unable to determine and I don't think that scholars are sure the extent or the location of where the queen of Sheba came from, but nonetheless it is clear that she came from some distance because she had a desire in her heart, she was desirous of something. And I never finished that thought in the last message. It was not helped by the fact that I couldn't read my notes because of my glasses and I had a different PowerPoint presentation on my screen as compared to what was being projected. So I was a bit flustered, but I thought let me continue in my thinking or in my thread of the queen of Sheba because the queen of Sheba had no small interaction with King Solomon, a very wise king.
What was she seeking out in Second Kings 10? Well, let's look this morning at the book of Proverbs penned by Solomon, considered to be the wisdom literature along with Job and Ecclesiastes. And when we come to the New Testament, you wonder where might you find the word wise or the word wisdom that would be in First Corinthians. But also in Matthew, because Matthew's perspective as a Jew was to some extent what he perceived as the wise teachings of Jesus, but the book in your New Testament that is most Proverbs like in fact is the book of James.
Like E, maybe before I go one bit further, I want to acknowledge the mothers in the room and to say thank you for your wisdom, the wisdom of a mother. And I just saw Chris say that to his mother in the back row, Tatsy Andrews. My mother raised eight children and sometimes she could hit the nail on the head with five words that you just have nothing else to say. Mom got me there.
She nailed it in five words and I really need to listen. So thank you moms for being so wise. And that's a very sort of politically wise thing to say. If you're looking for a compliment, men are kind of incompetent when it comes to giving compliments.
But there's a good one to express appreciation for someone's wisdom. I remember when a couple of the grandchildren were coming to greet my wife, one of them stood his distance and the other one ran to grandma and gave her a big hug. And I said that was the politically wise thing to do. And my wife said yes, it was.
So let's think about this. It's quite interesting, isn't it, that the Lord Jesus himself in referring to the Queen of the South or the Queen of Sheba, that she would rise up with this generation and shall condemn it. For she came from the uttermost parts of the earth, so to speak, to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And behold, a greater than Solomon is here.
Jesus was referring to himself. But he also gives us a little revelation here that the Queen of Sheba took no small, no insignificant truth away with her. We can expect to see her in glory. She took no small or insignificant truth away from Solomon.
Now how could that be? I hope to show you a bit of that this morning with the book of Proverbs. You may know if you have a Gideon's pocket New Testament that at the end of that New Testament are typically the book of Psalms and the book of Proverbs. The book of Psalms is guidance for prayer.
It is 150 chapters of material that may help you in your devotional life, in your prayer life. If you're feeling a bit dry, if you're feeling at a loss for words, you might actually pray one of the Psalms. Open the Word of God before you yourself there and meditate upon it and bring it to the Lord. As King David did in the year 1000 BC, 3000 years ago.
The book of Proverbs on the other hand is a series of pithy sayings that have a grain of truth or a gem of truth, I would say a gem of truth, that provide life guidance. So that both of these books, sometimes, you're probably taking no pity on me. Many of you know I retired a year and a half ago and you imagine that I just have more time than I know what to do with. I'm just sitting around at home, just nothing to do.
Well, I have not found that to be the case in the past year and a half. I've had plenty of things to do. And for those of you who are, which is most of you, are still working, the Newfoundlanders would say as busy as all get out. And so having a quick read of something that is beneficial to your prayer life or to your life guidance, there's even professional guidance what you might characterize as workplace guidance.
There's lots of it in the book of Proverbs. So take some of it with you someday. It's good advice and it's more than advice. It's spiritual truth.
As my wife and I have had ESLs over the years going back to our days at Memorial University in Newfoundland, it's we would not uncommonly have the book of Proverbs as the text, we haven't done that in a while, but going through the entire book of Luke. And now we're at the resurrection and it's very exciting. But if you're going to invite somebody to a Bible study, we're going to study the Bible, the Bible. The Bible?
We're going to be thinking about the death of Christ, the Bible and the death of Christ. That sounds pretty heavy. It is heavy. It is important.
But sometimes if you meet a secular person and you say, we're going to be having an ESL study and probably you have Proverbs in your language and we're going to be looking at the book of Proverbs in the Bible, did you know that there is a book of Proverbs in the Bible? Sometimes they will say, no, I didn't know that. My culture and my language are full of Proverbs. And so it can be a way to make part of the Bible more accessible.
And of course, my unspoken agenda is that that book has redemptive verses in it. It has verses in it that point the person to Christ. Because really, the whole book is about the Lord Jesus. And you may find that he is front and center in the book of Luke.
But the word God is not mentioned in the book of Esther. I think three Esther's now in this building. Isn't that something? Yes, and look how God worked through that book in the background in the background.
We can take encouragement from that. And so the book of Proverbs can be a way of reaching out and many cultures have different kinds of Proverbs. I like the African one that says, all stories will praise the hunter until lions learn to write. That's a good one.
The Chinese have a saying of, if you keep walking on the shores, you're going to get wet shoes. Proverbs 4.26 speaks about, are you thinking about where your feet are? Not only literally, of course, but figuratively. What is the direction of your life?
Are you down in a dangerous zone habitually? Is that where you're walking? That's ill-advised. That is a thought there.
The Chinese Proverbs, as you can see in the lower one, it has eight characters. And it's interesting that many of these Chinese Proverbs, they come in a set of four, and they come in a set of eight, and there are others, of course. But the rhythm of these four and eight Proverbs is quite notable. And they are very well-known in the Chinese culture.
And they actually have an entire, almost book behind them. There's an entire story. There's an entire book behind those eight characters, very often. And it's interesting when you think about control of the tongue, which is also spoken about in the book of James, that you know, we have the saying in Western culture, silence is golden.
Oh, where did that come from? I don't know, but it came from the Chinese, because that's a very old one in Chinese culture. And over and over again, you see in the book of Proverbs, one of the characteristics of a fool. A fool is that he runs off of the mouth.
There's no one to stop talking. And eventually he says something stupid. Yep, I think everybody knows about that kind of thing. So we can take these things to heart sometimes professionally and say, you know, I'm not going to keep on talking about that one.
I love the one that says it's 426, 2617. I'll paraphrase it. A man who sees two people arguing, who's walking by, there's two people arguing, I'm going to go over and join the argument. I'm going to get right in there.
That is like a man who sees a stray dog and grabs it by its two ears. That's a pretty good one. Who would do that? Who would be so foolish as to do that?
What a foolish thing to do. I have the same two grandchildren. I'm thinking of one of them would go up and have a cug of dog with three years old. She wouldn't worry.
The other one is eight years old stay away from me. There's no interest in animals or dogs. It's interesting. I don't know why they're differently programmed like that.
I know my brother, David, with Donald sitting right there, he is not the guy who's going to go up to a random dog. And he's even stroking. Not to say, grab it by its two years. It's only an incredibly foolish thing to do.
And what you'll see in the book of Proverbs quite often is that either there is an elaboration or expansion on the first statement or you read the other side of the coin. This is true, but there's another side to the coin here. It makes it very interesting reading. And we see, as I mentioned in James 1, that this is quite a wonderful promise of God.
I don't know whether you have availed yourself of this, but Solomon did. When it became evident that Solomon was going to become king, he could have asked for anything. What did he do? Did he ask for more gold?
Did he ask for more horses? Neither. The thing that he did ask that you would remember is that he asked for God's wisdom. And God was so impressed with that.
He gave Solomon an extra dose, you might say, an extra amount, an extra gift of wisdom. And that's a wonderful promise, because when I look at that King James word, abradeth, God could say to David Hanson, you know what? You don't deserve any wisdom, any extra wisdom at all, because your life is a litany of mistakes. And because your life is a litany of mistakes, you are getting no wisdom from me.
God says, I will not do that. He could do that. In a sense, each of our lives is a litany of mistakes. If you think about the litany of mistakes, I don't think you're going to ask.
James 1, 5 says, ask. God will not bring before your mind the 2,000 mistakes you made in the past 10 years. He will help you. He will grant you wisdom.
I like to ask this question. What is the difference between intelligence and wisdom? A person in the Bible that had intelligence was a very evil man named Heyman in the Book of Esther. Clever fellow.
Would you rather have a clever leader, an intelligent leader, if you had to choose? Or would you rather have a wise leader? Which one would you rather have? No, why do you say that?
I would do. I would rather have a wise leader. In Canada, we had a man who was an astronaut and who had a PhD in engineering. And he was passed over for leadership of the Liberal Party.
I didn't bring any water. Intelligent, I suppose. So he composes music, years of study of engine. Passed over.
Because there's more to leadership than just being clever. In fact, if anything, I think the average person would say, that guy's super clever. You just gave me a reason not to trust him. I don't know what he's going to be up to, but I probably won't see it coming.
And I'll regret that I ever voted for him. So wisdom, I believe, is intelligence with a moral component. Someone who is both moral and can apply, you might say, intelligent principles, but that are anchored and rooted in what is moral, what is righteous, what is God honoring. That is wisdom.
And that's a much better thing to ask for. So we come to the grand lady who came with a fantastic entourage. And you saw this picture a couple of weeks ago. Thanks so much, Henry.
And we might ask what, indeed, was she seeking? It's an interesting question in particular, because the situation that she was in did not need more servants, more money, more horses, more anything. So here's a person who has realized that there's more to life than all of the even political power, even the riches, even the control, the material wealth. There must be more to life than that.
And she was dead right. Absolutely correct. There is more to life than having gold and servants and power and control and comfort and luxury. Most certainly, there is.
What did they talk about? How did she pick Solomon's brain? Solomon documented his wisdom in the book of Proverbs. And we see that the desire, I hope, the desire of the Christian.
And I suspect the desire of the queen of Sheba was to receive the instruction of wisdom, things that to do with justice and judgment and equity in the best biblical sense. It's important to have a teachable heart. It really, really is. It requires a measure of humility.
And without that measure of humility, our heart, my heart, your heart, is not very teachable. I believe she came to that place of saying, there's definitely, I might be, the most splendidly dressed person for 1,000 miles circumference. And it isn't very significant. I have realized that it isn't very significant.
I want to receive the instruction of wisdom. What's the first lesson? We know this verse, at least we should know this verse. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
The fear of the Lord, reverence for God, being in awe of God. That is the starting place, it says, four verses later. I guess to some extent, it is valid and good to debate atheists. But I'm sure people like John Wells have debated more atheists than they could possibly count, that there is a sense in which you have run into a brick wall at the get-go.
And if that brick wall were broken down, you would find that there's a cul-de-sac with a dead end. It's a brick wall and it's a dead end. There's a sense in which the atheistic point of view is a non-starter when it comes to true wisdom. The Queen of Sheba needed to know Jehovah and she knew it.
She knew it. How many conversations did they have? It was a true report she concluded. That's a painting by Sir Edward John Pointer.
Probably painted 150 years ago or so. The half has not been told. But the telling, the telling part, those conversations that they had, that was the greatest transfer of riches. You can read about the gifts that they exchanged.
A lot of money involved. And the showing of respect. The Book of Proverbs itself indicates that gifts can be a way in to begin a conversation. And she knew it well.
And she brought lots of gifts. And they had a lot, I think, of meaningful conversations. In the Book of Proverbs, you can find the word wise 90 times. And you can find the word fool 101 times.
And most of your New Testament usages would be found for both of those words in Matthew and in 1 Corinthians. Part of the necessity or instruction toward wisdom is indeed to avoid foolishness. Avoid grabbing the dog by the ears. Avoiding walking where you're perennially going to be in a bit of a quagmire and not making much progress.
But this morning, I want to think about the wise man. And the wise woman, especially since its mother's day. And I begin with, I just want to have a selection of verses here. I have to move along as quickly as I can.
This is a verse that meant a lot to me after I was saved in 1977. I had tried everything. I had been academically successful. And I found it quite meaningless.
And then after February 1977, I got involved somewhat in a student group. And that student group is essentially banned. They are banned from university campuses in large measure. The things that we did on campus are now banned.
But that group encouraged me to do something very simple. And I had a good mind in those days. Memorize some verses, would you? Trust in the Lord with all thy own heart and lean not into thy own understanding.
And all thy ways acknowledge him and he will direct thy paths. I'm just a stupid guy. I need that. I need God to direct my paths.
I'm not sure about my life. I'm not sure about relationships. I'm not sure about career. I had a lot of hiccups in those two categories, you might say.
And I think the hiccups were due to the fact that I wasn't really listening to the Lord when, in fact, the Lord's guidance was perfectly well available. And his spirit was sometimes clearly leading me away from what I was doing. And I used to say to God, are you going to speak to me in an audible voice so that there's no mistake here? I think that's a terrible and arrogant thing to say.
In my experience, God clearly leads you in your heart and can clearly lead you in your inward impressions away from things that are not the right path. And in my faithlessness, I denied that this could happen, not all the time, sometimes. It never turned out well. I think if I had been more of a man of prayer, the importance of prayer was emphasized last week.
The importance of meditating on verses like this was emphasized last week. If I had been more like that, I would have had a smoother and more godly road. He can lead for as many as are led by the Spirit of God. They are the sons of God.
I've told you before that the life of Martin Luther, as he struggled with the scriptures, brought up in the Catholic Church, as he struggled with the scriptures. How does this, what? How does this, it doesn't add up, it doesn't compare. And some of that is just clear black and white print that is contrary to the teachings that he grew up with.
And some of it is subjective. And this verse, he said, I know nothing about this. What is with me? For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
I don't know anything about this. Am I a son of God? That's a subjective thing, perhaps. But it's stuck with him.
And it was one of the verses that God used to bring him around and begin the Reformation. Here's another aspect of this. You may think that you have some wisdom. You may have a lot.
You probably have a lot more than I do. But this verse says, the tongue of the wise man, the tongue of the wise, sorry, the tongue of the wise uses knowledge a right. But the mouth of the fool pours out foolishness. The tongue of the wise, the wise man's tongue is selective.
He may have a reservoir of wisdom, but he's wise enough to be selective in how he uses it. Even the Lord Jesus said to his disciples, I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear all of them now. There is, as it says in Ecclesiastes, a word in season. You may have some wisdom.
Is it in season? Is it at the right time? That's a separate question, but an equally important question. We should not be like a fool who, once he gets started, it's a bit like looking at the breach of an embankment dam.
That's something that I've formally studied. How does that happen? Well, you know, you have the picture of the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. It's actually founded on good engineering assumptions.
If that, it's a phenomenon known as piping. If you let that grow, it's gonna be completely out of control. Don't let the tongue get out of control. My third verse for a wise man.
The wise shall inherit glory. What? Now that's interesting. Here is redemption showing a little bit of hint in a book written a thousand years before the Lord Jesus.
Glory? What's that about? That's a good one to raise in an ESL. What could this be?
And of course, the unregenerate soul that does not know the Lord God has no idea what is being talked about in this biblical glory. The glory of God, the future glory, the afterlife. And you mentioned these things and they go, oh, never thought about that possibility. Well, it's time you did.
Do you think that there's an afterlife? Yes, but I don't want to think about it. I'm sure John's encountered that too. I suspect that there is and I do my best not to think about it.
Well, it's not all bad news, right? You can inherit glory. One of the ways that the Bible teaches us that you as a believer will inherit glory is that you will be like him for you. She'll see him as he is, as he is.
Five times in the book of 1 John. As he is. What a wonderful little phrase. Those three words as he is.
Wonderful three words. Glory, a place with Christ. To enjoy his glory and to have a body that's transformed and healed and whole. I'm looking at my son's cast over there.
Things happen. There is glory. But then this also alludes, does it not, to the other thing that may happen. Shame, how does that make sense to say that you are promoted, you know, in a professional situation?
Yeah, I've been promoted. More pay, more responsibility. Maybe not so great, but more pay, promoted. To shame.
Oh, you're dead. You look back at your litany of sin and mistakes, half of which were known to God and obvious to God and you just actually were quite smug about them. You thought, isn't that delicious, that sin? And now you are promoted to shame out of the presence of God and you get to think about that for the rest of eternity.
All of your blindness and your pride and your smugness about your sin, things that nobody knew that you did. Now they're up front and center. There's a promotion to shame that you need to avoid. That you must avoid.
I implore you to avoid because the alternative is there. You can be promoted to glory. You can become like the Lord Jesus. We can be like him, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.
Now it's 20 after and I am on slide 13 of 25 slides. Now this passage is for your digestion on Mother's Day. And this is the virtuous woman spoken of in Proverbs 31. And there is one thing that I will say without I was going to read this entire passage as fast as I could.
But I'm going to go to the end of it and summarize for you what a wonderful woman and what a wonderful mother is like. We read in that passage in Proverbs 31 which you should read. She's virtuous, she's hardworking for her family. She's beneficial to the family's financial situation.
She is kind, she fears the Lord. I look back at my own young life as a teenager. I really should have been a lot more considerate of my mother, I should have been kinder to my mother. She was a believer.
That's an interesting story how my parents got together. Maybe I'll tell you sometime about the hospital bed where my father met my mother as she was a nurse. I believe her and he was a new immigrant. Came to Canada in 1953.
And she is called blessed. Phoebe and I attended the birthday party of a lady who had turned 100, not that long ago. Peggy Richie, her husband was an elder at Guelph Bible Chapel. And there were people there from Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and the list was on just to fly in to Guelph, Ontario, to wish Peggy Richie happy 100th birthday.
And she never had children of her own. But she was a blessing to all of those people. It was quite a nice gathering. And blessed, we thought about the meaning of that at that meeting.
We thought about why is she blessed? That's interesting. We thought about this question. Why would you call someone blessed?
Because they have blessed you. And where did that come from ultimately? Came from God. God blessed that lady.
Did she keep all the blessing to herself? She did not. She reached out and she had probably hundreds of Chinese students come over to lunch after Sunday morning meeting over a period of many decades. She outlived her husband by about 25 years, oh, 15 years.
Sorry. She was a blessed woman. Rise up and call her blessed. Rise up and call your mother blessed.
Especially, lovely to know if your mother knows the Lord. And so let us continue. What about the next life in the last few minutes here? These are portents or harbingers of the gospel.
That was my secret agenda in inviting people to ESL. I want you to think about these verses. You might say the gospel according to Solomon. He that covers his sins shall not prosper.
But who so confesseth and forsakeeth them shall have mercy? That's speaking a thousand years before Jesus said in the beginning of Mark, we leave and repent. When John the Baptist said, repent a thousand years before those statements. Solomon pointed out that the harboring of sin never pays off.
And we're sitting here this morning and we're going, obviously, obviously. Come on, do we do it? Why do we try to say no one knows. I can smugly keep this to myself and maybe enjoy it.
And I'll just keep it to myself. Nobody know. You think God doesn't know? Harbering sin, thinking that we can cover it.
The best thing to do, the necessary thing to do, is to confess it to God and forsake it and repent. And what is the result? From trusting in Christ, the result is the mercy of Christ. That's how you can enjoy the mercy of Christ, is to repent before God and trust in his Son.
Can anybody make their own heart clean? That's a good question. Can you cleanse your own heart from sin? You might try to amount to big reformation campaign in your own life, turn over a new leaf as they say.
But something much more profound is needed as far as God is concerned. And that is repentance and faith. And God will give you the pure heart. Because who can actually say, I've done it?
Would anybody dare to say, I have made my own heart clean? I hope not. I don't think anyone can. I can't.
If my heart is clean, it is because of the blood of Christ. And I love these two verses. These are my last verses this morning. The name of the Lord is a strong tower.
And the righteous runs into it and is safe. Do you know anything about that? In the Bible, and to some extent, even in modern Western culture, the idea of the name of someone speaks to the character and reputation of that someone. Who has a better character and reputation and is more admirable than any human being who ever walked this earth?
That's the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the admirable one. The book of Proverbs has many statements about what is admirable, like your first Philippians 4-4, what we should think about, and what is foolish. And sometimes, in our desire to know the protection of God, we have a sense in which we must flee there.
From the tower of Christ, you can see a long way. If you're in the tower of Christ, you are safe. There is no safer place. The world will try to beat the daylights out of you.
It'll try to beat you up spiritually and beat you up in every way. What you need to do is flee to that strong tower, climb it, and get some perspective on life. That is the gift of the Christian to be able to take refuge. Whether it is the refuge of the first time you come to God for salvation, or whether it is the 407th time of going to God for refuge.
God is our refuge. He is our shield. He is our strong tower. At least he can be.
And if there's anyone here this morning who does not know what it means in their own soul to flee to the refuge and the tower represented by the Lord Jesus Christ, come and talk to one of us perhaps after the service, or go home and read your Bible and find out more about the wonderful person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Shall we pray? Father, we thank you that we can reflect upon your word this morning. Help us to be guided in our hearts and our actions and our words and our minds that we might honor you.
There's anyone here who knows not what it means to find refuge in Christ. May that person begin that journey. And go to the Lord Jesus, seeking cleansing, cleansing from sin in the heart. We ask this in his name.
Amen. Thank you for your attention.