Hello and welcome back to Proverbs of Life of Lism. This is lesson three. For let's begin in prayer as we always do, the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not to temptation but deliver us from evil, amen. And the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. Well, this is the third lesson, the final lesson of our short study on the book of Proverbs.
Lesson one was an introduction to the book, looking at all the key themes and authorship and theology. Lesson two was understanding, I think, probably the greatest theme of them all, which was Lady Wisdom and her teaching of fear of the Lord and what all that means. But this lesson is going to be, I think, pretty straightforward. I hope it's straightforward.
What I decided to do was entitled this Lady Wisdom's Teachings. And there's a lot of teaching, honestly. There's the book of Proverbs talked about absolutely everything, virtues and vices and habits that we should be aware of and just good advice across the board for living a virtue and happy life, right? So what I decided to do was just pick a top 10.
No particular reason why I picked these 10. Some commentaries, I mean, a lot of commentaries will look at the book of Proverbs thematically. I recommended a couple of them in a suggested reading syllabus that I gave for you at the beginning of this Bible study. But a lot of them will just tackle Proverbs topically because they just are, that's the way it's structured, right?
So I just picked 10 here and there that I thought were interesting and you're going to find some of these topics in other books as well. But there really are, there's just no end to the topics that this can discuss. It truly is an amazing treasury, schmorgasbore of everything that you may want to consider for living a righteous life. So my only fear for this particular lesson, while it's really straightforward with these top 10 topics, I'm going to mention these in just a second, and we'll go through them, is that I don't want this to feel like it's a flash flood.
You know, in a flash flood, when it's raining outside, like, it's actually happened to be raining right now, as I record this for you, you want it to be a slow, steady rain. So all the rain soaks into the ground in the soil and you don't have a lot of runoff. When a lot of rain comes really, really quickly, you got the flash flood, right? And I don't want that to be the case for you.
Like metaphorically speaking, we need to really read Proverbs slowly, which is why there's that good little habit of reading one chapter a day and a few verses are going to really strike you in particular day, and you'll take it with you throughout the whole day, meditate on it, reflect upon it. And in the next day, you got a new chapter and new verses that strike you, and then you circle back around the next month. And that's a really good habit for Proverbs, because they are just these bicola or two line sentences, and they're just going to strike you at different times of your life, right? So when I'm trying to attempt to do right here, it's actually not normal.
It's not right for this particular book. To look at half a dozen or so verses for each of these different topics, this is going to feel like too much too fast. And I'm aware of that, and I hope you don't feel that way. I hope you really enjoy the fact that we can pick out half a dozen topics for each of these, or sorry, half a dozen verses for each of these topics.
But read them slowly, and maybe this will be helpful because if you're thinking about a topic of patients or humility or discernment or marriage or whatever it is, you got a quick cheat sheet here in these notes so you can meditate on these and reflect upon them. So anyways, that was my metaphor that I was thinking about a lot in preparing this lesson was I don't want it to be a flash flood. It really doesn't need to soak in slowly, but nevertheless, we're going to appear and trembling move forward, and look at the top 10 here and these various collections of verses for these topics. So what are we going to do?
Well, first marriage, of course, there's a lot to say about marriage, because as we discussed in previous lessons here, Lady Wisdom is personified in the ideal wife, the woman of valor, the Proverbs 31 woman, is there's a lot to say about marriage. Solomon is addressing his son many, many, many times in chapters one through nine. So of course marriage is a big topic. So that's number one, then of course, first comes love, then comes marriage.
So we'll do a parent or then baby to baby carriage. We'll forget the last little bit of that. There's marriage, and then there's parenting. So a lot to say about parenting.
Friendship is number three. We'll look at some verses for discernment for number four, number five is hard work and diligence. Number six is wealth and generosity. Number seven is pride and humility.
Number eight is anger. Number nine, related to anger is controlling one speech, big topic there. And then finally, number 10 is temperance or drunkenness and gluttony. Right.
So like I say, I preamble there is that there's many more topics that can be discussed and maybe one day we'll do a 100 part series on the book of Proverbs and we can take all the topics that it discusses here and riff on those and really enjoy them. But this is what we're going to do today. So pretty straightforward stuff. I hope you enjoy it.
So here are ladies, wisdom's teachings then for a life of righteousness and joy and peace all rooted in the fear of the Lord. Remember, we talked about that last lesson. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So if you have that disposition of awe and wonder and gratitude and love and devotion towards God, then everything's going to flow from that.
So let's look at marriage then. All right. So a lot of these verses that I'm going to share with you topic by topic are clustered together really, really nicely. Of course, I mean, I'm not going to spend all the time analyzing each of these verses to say is this progressive parallelism or antithetical parallelism.
We're not going to do that. But many of these verses do talk about the same kind of concept in a different way. So I may read a couple of verses here and then make a few comments in the one we want. So that's just going to be the name of the game here today.
So marriage. So of course, it's talking a lot about a good wife and let's just begin with chapter 31 verse 10, the beginning of the poem of the valiant wife, which we discussed a little bit last lesson. But I thought that would be a great place to start. So chapter 31 verse 10 through 12 says, who can find a good wife?
She is far more precious than jewels, the heart of her husband trusts in her and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not harm all the days of her life. What a beautiful verse that is. Now, right off the bat, I want to say, as we're talking about finding a good wife and all the things that Proverbs has to say about wives, of course, 100%, the same thing can and should be said about husbands who can find a good husband.
He is far more precious than jewels, the heart of her wife trusts him, etc, etc. So don't get me wrong, don't get the Bible wrong on this, Proverbs in its own way, encourages both men and women towards virtue and righteousness and fear of the Lord. Remember, Lady Wisdom herself is personified as the ideal woman of worth and a noble woman. So both men and women here are striving to live like the fullness and godliness before God and before fellow man.
All right, so I just want to say that little copy out there. Now, one of the things to remember is, so the first question is who can find a good wife? Well, we're going to find out in this couple of verses where the good wife really comes from. So hang on to that thought really quickly, just for a little bit.
I mean, it says she's far more precious than jewels. That is the connection we spent a lot of time talking about this last lesson. That's described of Lady Wisdom herself back in chapter eight, chapter 16. I'm not going to go through all those again.
But remember, this noble woman, this wife that is so precious is just like wisdom. So a good wife is like holding and possessing and embracing Lady Wisdom herself. And so the heart of her husband trusts in her, the Hebrew word for heart is and that's the center of the person's being the whole self. Imagine a relationship where, and this happens, all right, a lot praise be to God and it doesn't happen sometimes too, which is sad.
But imagine completely trusting your spouse with all that you are. There's not a moment of doubt in any way, shape or form that they wish you harm that they're going to take advantage of you, betray you, hide stuff from you, keep secrets or whatever it might be. So the husband of a good wife prizes his wife and his heart is completely turned towards her in every single way. And she'll do him good and he knows this.
I'll know who do good. And the same thing, of course, again, goes for the husbands. All right. Now, where does a good wife come from?
That was the question that began this. Well, chapter 1822 and 19 for say so, where she comes from. So 1822 says he who finds a wife finds a good thing or he might be a good thing in and of itself, right? She is good in herself.
So he finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. That's awesome. Let me quickly read 19 for as well. How's and wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord.
So these two verses here, 1822 and 19 for really clarify that a good wife comes from God, right? If she is favored from him, a gift, a blessing, a grace from God, it's only God can give him. My parents can't give you this. Of course, parents and fellow friends or family members can make introductions and set you up on a blind date or whatever it may be.
But ultimately, God's gift is a holy righteous spouse. And that's really, really beautiful. And so when you find a good wife or you find a husband, that is a good thing in and of itself. And we're called to treasure it above all else, right?
It's the sacrament of matrimony. It's a sacrament of service. We are through that marriage, through the holy sacrament, learning sanctity. There's a lot to say about that, right?
I always joke. I give my wife plenty of opportunities to be saintly, right? Because I'm so bad. I think a lot of spouses make that joke.
But in any case, this point here is a prudent spouse, a prudent wife, is from God that God gives this great gift. And so this teaches us that, especially for young people, right? It teaches us a lot of things. But for young people, really consistently faithfully turn to God for the gift of a good spouse.
That is really, really important because God desires holy marriages and happy marriages, selfless marriages, joyful marriages. And so if we turn to God, we tell young people, turn to God, if you're seeking marriage, that's your location, ask him for the great gift of a spouse. And he will happily do that for you if you're just faithful and impatient. Of course, sometimes things go wrong.
But by and large, this is a great gift that people need to act the Lord for And the other thing, of course, is that if you do have a good spouse, a wife or husband, treasure it, right? Prize it, protect it, guard it, and thank God for it. How many times do we turn to God and say, Lord, thank you so much for my spouse? This is she or he is a gift from you.
I don't deserve this person. I don't deserve this gift. But you've given my spouse to me and I'm so grateful. So that is a great thing to be aware of.
A couple other verses here on the same theme, 12, 4. It says, a good wife is the crown of her husband. But she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones. All right, that's definitely an antithetical parallelism right there, right?
So a good wife is the crown of her husband. It's his greatest joy, right? You imagine the king wearing a crown. This whole idea of a crown is actually really beautiful.
Various commentaries will point out that in Jewish cultural context, when you get married, your husband and wife are often crowned during the ceremony, right? And this verse might be part of the background for that ritual, which is really lovely. It's really beautiful. But a good wife is the crown of her husband.
It's his greatest gift, right? But the antithetical point here is she who brings shame or embarrassment, disrespect, but trail is like rottenness in his bones. And this really touches upon, I'm no psychologist, but I will say, I think this touches upon a lot of what I've heard from good psychologists and marriage counselors that men really desire respect that's kind of built into our DNA. And things won't be because of original sin for sure.
But what I've heard taught many times in different contexts is men really need that respect from his wife and wives really need love from their husbands. Wives want to be cherished and be the most precious thing in his life. The wives want to be chosen above all else in his life, not put after video games, not put after golf or sports or hobbies or whatever they may be, but she really is the his crown, right? That's what women want, which is beautiful.
That's true. And then men, of course, desire respect and for a woman to bring shame to her husband and vice versa, of course, don't get in the wrong. But for a woman to bring shame to her husband, this disrespect especially is where it is like rottenness in his bones. Too often spouses mutually disrespect and shame each other in public.
That should never, never happen. You take care of business behind closed doors, not even for every children. So, you know, it's a big verse. Same idea is in 21 verse nine.
It's better to live in a corner of the house top than in a house shared with a contentious woman. That word contentious there is Madon or Madon in Hebrew. Contention is strife, dissension, verbal quarrelling, argumentativeness. This basically is a lack of peace.
And no husband, of course, ever wants to come home from a hard day's work. And again, the same thing, I would be applied to both spouses. Please don't get me wrong. So no spouse ever wants to come home from a hard day's work and basically find contention and strife and argumentativeness or nagging or whatever it may be.
Having peace in the household is a great gift. Right? So if there's no peace in the household and there's always argumentativeness or nagging or questioning or whatever, it might be better to just live up on the roof. Same idea in 27 15.
A continual dripping on a rainy day and a contentious woman's the same word there in Hebrew or man, of course, a contentious woman or a like. So you know how it is when it's raining and as it is right now as I'm recording, that constant drip drip drip drip like Chinese torture drill or something like that, where there's constant dripping, dripping, it's like, Oh my goodness, I want to pull my hair out, right? Just I want some peace. That's the analogy here.
That's the metaphor. It's constant dripping on a rainy day. It's wet. It's cold.
It's damp. It's, you know, maybe moldy. Who knows? That's what it's like living with a person in your household who brings no peace, but contention and strife.
So these handful of verses here, they're really informative as to the beauty, the joy, the desire for a good spouse, that the good spouse really does come from God, which we should pray for. And if we have that, we should be thanking God for our beautiful spouse. But it also teaches us on the flip side of the coin, not to be to bring shame, not to bring contention, not to bring disrespect to the to the marriage, because that is going to cause problems. We want to be bebearers of Shalom of peace.
So that way, the heart of the husband or the heart of the wife can the lavave, the whole self can completely totally trust in their spouse and relish and bask in the joy of married life. So anyways, there's a half a dozen or so verses for you on some tips on marriage. I know that every single one of these good, good, you know, poets or writers or, you know, speakers or tours can probably take just a single one of these and go on for pages and pages or hours and hours unraveling all of this. But this is the time frame that we have right now.
And I'm certainly not a great orator or poet or anything, but I think it gives us a good idea of what the biblical desire for marriage is, right? God created Adam and Eve, created him to be faithful into death, in the Christ raises marriage to the level of a sacrament, where it's, you know, signifying grace increases through marriage and the selfless acts and the self denial of one spouse to another. And that really is a gift from God. So enough about that, let's move on then to the next aspect of marriage, which is of course children.
And you better believe that there is a lot said about parenting, of course. And really, I had to edit it all of these topics actually for this lesson. I had to edit out a whole bunch of verses, because it goes on and on and on. But here is a number of things about parenting.
The first verse I want to share with you is chapter 3, 11 through 12, to teach the point or to learn the lesson here that discipline, parental discipline of a child is really supposed to be based on the loving discipline of God. So here's what chapter 3, 11 and 12 says, my son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father, the son, in whom he delights. Awesome. The Lord's discipline is the model of all parental discipline.
That's really, really important because, as we're going to see in the next number of verses here, we are called to discipline our children. In fact, if we don't discipline our children, that's a sin of omission. So when we discipline our children, however, it must be modeled after God's own loving discipline. He is the perfect heavenly Father.
Too often our own parents, when they disciplined us, we can all tell stories, I'm sure, of how our parents did it wrong. Like maybe a lot or maybe sometimes it sticks out in our brains where our parents disciplined us, but it wasn't real discipline. It wasn't rooted in love and care and concern and desire for our well-being, but it was rooted in anger. And maybe, oh gosh, God forbid we can remember stories of how we ourselves as parents reacted out of anger, frustration, or whatever it may be, and lashed out at our kids because we lost our temper, and it actually is not disciplined.
It wasn't actually constructive. So God never fails. God has the heavenly Father. He never fails us.
Everything he does is for our good. And so that's the model that we need to have for our own children. Look to God as the model of discipline, and gosh, God's discipline is spoken of everywhere in scripture. I have a couple, just a couple quick references for you in Deuteronomy 8, 5, and Hebrews 12.
I'm not going to read those because we'll never get done with this lesson. But God's discipline is heavenly, fatherly, paternal, everywhere in the Bible. So as a father, discipline is the son of whom he delights, so God disciplines us. But God's God is the model.
That's the most important thing here. And discipline must be rooted in love. And with that in mind, we can tackle some other verses here. So the next three are kind of pretty much the same idea.
So I'm going to read them together and then I'll say a couple of thoughts. So chapter 29 verse 17 says, discipline your son and he will give you rest. Shalom, peace. He will give delight to your heart as a lovely one.
Discipline your son and he will give you rest. He will give delight to your heart. Next 1918, discipline your son while there is hope, do not set your heart on his destruction. And then finally 26 verse, sorry, 22 verse 6, a bigger part.
Chapter 22 verse 6, train up a child in the way that he should go. And then when he is old, he will not depart from it. So these three verses, 29 17, 1918 and 22, 6, all kind of have the same idea of you need to discipline your son. And if you do, if you put in the hard work and it is hard work, I'm a parent of three, you know, anybody who's a parent, or honestly, anybody who's a child, which is literally everybody, right, can probably speak to the fact that disciplining and raising children is very, very hard.
But if you put in the hard work, and if you're patient and if you're consistent, if you don't give up, then the fruit of that is rest, it's peace. It's going to be delight to your heart. The word heart is always found in the Proverbs here, because what we're talking about is Lady Wisdom speaking to the heart where the, again, the lavabe, the center of your being is blessed through Lady Wisdom's teachings, right? So if you discipline your son, you're going to have delight in your heart.
And then there's these exhortations, do it while there is still hope. Well, when is there still hope? Well, on the one hand, you can say, this is when the child is young. When a child is young and very impressionable and very much directed by his parents or his family's admonitions and directors and whatnot, then there's definitely hope that when the child is older, then he is going to stay in that.
In fact, that's what that last verse says, when he's old, he will not depart from it. So while there is hope, while he's young, then he is going to be better off, because he's going to have the habits for the rest of his life. And so if you don't discipline your son while he is young, while there is hope, you're going to set your heart on his destruction. So do you want your child to be strong and do you want him to be self-respectable and a contributing member to society and all the rest of it and a violent means to have the faith?
Then you've got to discipline him. If you don't do that, you are setting your heart on his destruction. So that's the sin of omission, right? If you do not discipline a child with love and care and attention and consistency, then he's going to go astray.
And I think we can all look around us in the society that we live in and see many different examples of children who do not have discipline from their parents. If in what happens is all too ugly a scene, right? Okay. If in the other thing here is one more point about these three verses, it says, train up a child and the way he should go.
Well, that way is God's way. So remember how we talked about this in the last lesson. The two ways, the two ways is one of the overarching themes of all the Bible and Proverbs is depicted as the way of righteousness, lady wisdom or the way of unrighteousness, which is lady falling. So what we need to be teaching our children is the way that he should go.
There is no other way that Jesus Christ. There truly isn't, right? So when we train a child to go walk a life of holiness and virtue and good habits and being just everything that God has in store for this child, according to God's grace and providence, then he will not depart from it when he's old and we will not set our hearts on his destruction. So a lot of wonderful things in these verses.
Now these last three verses here, I've grouped together because he's talking about discipline more specifically, especially that famous rod, right? We have the line spare the rod, spoil the child that comes from Proverbs. So let me read these three verses for you. Then we'll catch some themes.
22 15 says, fally is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him. That's interesting. I'll come back there. So next one, 1324, he who spares the rod hates his son, that he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.
And then finally, 23 verse 13 and 14, do not withhold discipline from a child. If you beat him with a rod, he will not die. If you beat him with a rod, you will save his life from shayol, which is the realm of the dead. So all three of these verses are talking about the rod, the rod of discipline beating him with a rod, you know, who spares the rod spoils the child.
This says he who spares the rod hates his child or hates his son. All right. So first and foremost, what is this rod? All right.
What I think is going on here, and I'm not the only one is that the rod is discipline itself. It's not necessarily talking about like a wooden stick, a broom handle, or you know, all the awful things that sometimes children are beaten with. Now, I think what's going on here is that the rod is discipline itself. Now, that doesn't mean that corporal punishment and some way shape or form is wrong.
It can be wrong, of course, of course, you can go too often and then discipline becomes abuse and abuse is never okay, whether it's physical abuse, verbal abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse, obviously, all of that is horribly wrong and very, very damaging to an innocent child. However, corporal punishment, even a light swat on the hand, you know, something like that, or on the rear end, but the lab is not condemning that because if it's done out of love and it's measured and it's thought through, that can be a good thing. So it's not necessarily saying corporal punishment is the way you go all the time, and you got to beat your child into an inch of his life. Of course, that's not the message, thanks to God.
So the rod is discipline. So the rod of discipline can be anything, maybe it is a slap on the hand, you know, or maybe it is a swat on the rear end, but more often than not, in my experiences of other three children, you really don't actually need corporal punishment. I abandon that like with my first child. Like there's just no need.
I found personally. Some kids need it. Look, maybe I'm lucky my kids don't need it. All I need to do for like one of my kids, I'll leave them nameless is just take away dessert.
Just okay, no dessert for tonight and their world is over, right? Or just make them go to their room and just sit and read for a while. Their world is over, you know, so there's many, many ways that discipline a child. It doesn't have to be corporal punishment.
In fact, I personally, that's the last resort. It is a fair resort if done lovingly and with a measured hand, of course, but in my opinion, it's the last resort. So these three verses here are talking about discipline, driving away the folly and the heart of a child. That's a great verse, I think, for original sin.
We are all born of Adam and Eve who've plunged humanity into spiritual exile. So we're deprived of God's sanctifying grace. So we are prone to sin so easily. And you see this in kids.
I mean, they're super adorable, super cute. You just want to pinch their little cheeks. But on the other hand, they're little terrorists, you know what I mean? They're little terrorists.
And you're like, what is going on with you? Because folly is bound to the heart of the child because of original sin. So discipline will drive it away. So discipline is moral and intellectual formation.
All right, that's the faculties of the human soul is the intellect and the will to form the intellect and the will is what discipline is all about. So this and then, of course, I'm always a big proponent where this is true in family life, in the church, in job places, wherever the legal system, if a law makes no sense, if a law doesn't have a purpose for some good of some kind, it doesn't need to exist. So every time I tell my child to do something or don't do something, it has to have a purpose. If there's not a purpose, if it's random, it doesn't deserve to be uttered, right?
And the purpose for all good laws is moral and intellectual formation. That's the goal here. So driving away folly through the rod of discipline to for moral and intellectual formation is the name of the game. All right, so if you spare that rod, if you spare discipline in general, like we saw up above, you hate your kid, right?
How can any parent who really loves their kid, let them get away with terrorist like behavior? I always make the joke about the rest of the we have domestic terrorism policies. That's what discipline is domestic terrorism is that's kids, right? In many cases.
So you've got to be able to, if you love them, form them and love them to discipline them. And it's not going to kill them. That's the other point here. It won't kill them.
If you discipline them, not only are you going to help them grow up to be outstanding citizens, members of the church, godly men, most importantly, you're going to save them from the realm of the dead. You're going to save them from eternal destruction, because a lack of discipline, because folly is bound up in the heart of a child, that can lead someone to go really, really far astray and do very, very bad things. So there you have it. There's a whole bunch of verses on parenting.
Oh my gosh, we've only done two topics here and already half an hour is gone by. We may be here for a while, so you have to pause it and go grab yourself some dinner or whatever and turn back. But okay, let's get going on now with friendship. Hey, this is Dr.
Nick. Thank you so much for listening to this course sample. If you enjoyed it and want to listen to the entire lesson, please become a student over at scripture and tradition.com where you can listen to this entire course, but also all the other courses that we have available in the S&T audio library where you can listen to them on demand, however, and whenever you want. So thank you so much.
God bless you and keep setting your vital.