Well, good evening. It's good to see you. We've been talking on Sunday mornings about built to last. Out of Matthew, chapter 7, where Jesus talks about the wise man builds his house on the rock and the foolish man on the sand.
We're going to continue in that series this Sunday. And we will continue in that series as we walk through the Beatitudes right up until September the 3rd. And all of these interwoven pieces are connected together. We need to know all of them.
You need to know all of them. They need to all be integrated into your life. Then after the first week of September, we are going to be continuing in this series about built to last. We're looking at the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.
But we'll be doing that here on Wednesday night. There'll be some other classes that will be offered at that time too. But on Wednesday night here in the auditor we'll be looking at the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. And so just be praying about that and thinking about that as we get close to it.
I'm lucky to be a part of those and are some of these other classes that will be offered. The Bible says that to live is what? To live is Christ. To die is gain.
So if we're living, we're supposed to be living doing the work of Christ. But if we die, it's gain. Amen? Now, I'm just going to say, the dying thing needs to stop for a little while.
We've had too much of that going on. We have another funeral tomorrow. Pat Morelli, many of you know Pat, we're going to be with the Lord and we'll have her services tomorrow at the church on Jefferson Street at 11 o'clock. So if any of you are thinking about dying, no more of that for a little while, okay?
Let's do the four Christ things for a little while here. The book of Proverbs are some of my favorite readings. I probably read through Proverbs six to seven times a year. I try to read through it almost monthly.
I'm not mad dog religious about that and feeling like if I don't do it, I failed or something. But I love to read through the Proverbs. I enjoy just letting that, the words of the Proverbs sink into my life. And I encourage you to begin a process of doing that.
My dad encouraged us two years ago. We continue to encourage you. Really easy. Get up in the morning.
Whatever day of the month it is, if it's the fourth or the third or the second, read that chapter of Proverbs. If you missed the day before just going to the next one, you'll come back around to it next month. It doesn't have to be something. It's not some religious thing you've got to fulfill.
But as you read this, more and more, you'll find yourself knowing it. You'll find yourself saying it. And it becomes easier and easier to know it. I'm going to tell you why you need to read the book of Proverbs as we go through the night.
Now we've been looking at these books. I want to make a couple of statements. We've been studying these things since the beginning of the summer. I find when a book is written to be interesting.
The fact to know that Job was probably written during the patriarch period, during Genesis, I find, is an interesting thing to know. Who it was written to is very helpful. To know that James, to recognize that James was written to Jewish converts to Christianity, scattered around, helps you understand the mentality of who he is writing to. To understand that Matthew is written to a Jewish audience to help show them that Jesus was the Messiah.
It's helpful. It's helpful. I mean, it's not life transforming. It's helpful.
You don't have to know that to get it. It's helpful. It's a good thing to pick some of those things up. And you can get most of these things if you have a good study Bible just at the beginning of each of the books.
Literary styles, I find that slightly interesting to me. I'm going to talk about a couple of the literary style in this a little bit today. The big thing is you just need to understand traditions now. Traditions, this word, good study Bible will really help you.
Traditions, understand the traditions of the day can give you real insight into the stories, help you really capture the fullness of what's going on in the stories. Now, deep dives into doctrinal issues can bring revelation about the greatness of God. But deep dives can also bring great division. Where the church in the world is divided today is over deep dive issues of doctrine.
And I would just tell you what I believe. I believe God makes it clear what we need to know. I think He makes it really clear. I think He knows who we are and He makes it clear to us what we need to know.
And the Bible is written in a way. I want you to understand this. It's written in a way that overlays culture and time. For culture you go into whatever time you go into.
The Bible doesn't need correction. The Bible brings correction. The Bible brings insight. And people can read it.
And when they read it, you'll begin to get it. God will bring revelation. And so we need to look at it. Some things He's made so simple for us.
We can't miss. Thou shalt not steal. Pretty simple. Pretty clear.
Certain things are just so simple. And other things we have to kind of work our way through. So tonight as we look at Proverbs, as I said, it's this great book. I want to talk about authorship here for a minute.
The book of Proverbs has been described as a collection of collections. There are various writers that are identified as you read through the Proverbs. There are authors that are left unidentified simply saying these are the writings of the wise. However, the main author is Solomon.
Solomon is a guy, as you've heard a little bit tonight, who authored three books of the Bible. He authored Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and Song of Solomon. It is thought that he wrote Song of Solomon as a young man, probably before he was king. That the Proverbs were written in his middle years and began to compile them, these Proverbs in the middle years of serving as king and Ecclesiastes after he was older and made some really big mistakes.
Really big mistakes. Most of the Proverbs that we're talking about tonight are identified as Solomon's and would have been written during his reign somewhere between 970 and 930 BC. Just to give you a little overview of this. As you read through the Proverbs, it makes it clear who wrote white as you get past about chapter 9.
It gives me very, very clear who wrote white. Chapters 1 through 9 are a preface or an introduction to the concept of wisdom. These chapters call us to study, to practice wisdom's rules, and they call us to avoid the pressures of the world that would distract us from wisdom's rules. It warns us about peer pressure.
It warns us about the power of seduction, of pursuing somebody who is not holy and righteous. That somebody, it'll use a wayward woman at times to describe. Don't follow this person. It'll use peers with bad intent.
Don't follow these people. It's warning us to stay away from those things that would influence us to act in unwise ways and it shows the destruction. It's in these Proverbs that we learn to trust in the Lord with all of our hearts, to not lean on our own understanding, but to lean into the understanding of the Word of God. And so these chapters just kind of lay this out for us, time and again, that we are to pursue the wisdom of God and to avoid the things that would take us away from that.
That might be the pursuit of wealth or the pursuit of pleasure. This section many times is represented as a father or a mother to a son speaking and saying, don't ignore my words. Here's the concept of wisdom. We have to know wisdom is part of the character of God.
He's all knowing, this all knowing being, and he's wise in how relationships would work for us and he's calling us to seek and to apply wise principles in our life. It's wisdom literature. So we have this call to pursue wisdom in the first nine chapters. In chapters 10 through 22, we find the first volume of Solomon's Proverbs.
And you begin to read these. At this point, we begin to experience what some call this short sentence saying to Proverbs. In the passage you read through the Bible, you read through and you get divine law, we get revelation through history, we get revelation through songs. Now we're getting revelation through Proverbs, through these simple sentences.
These are unattached to each other. You're not reading a story. You're reading individual sayings. They stand on their own.
It's been described one right up to this way, like a string of mismatched gems. They're all laying there. They're all powerful. But it's not a story.
It's not a story anymore. It's just saying after saying, after saying, after saying, after saying. So the most common of those is these two line Proverbs. And there's several things about the two line Proverbs.
And I want to touch on this just really quickly. The most common is this. You have a first line. The second line builds on the first with slightly different words.
It says it once. And then it just repeats it in a different way. The second one is kind of contrasting lines where they show kind of an opposite way. Here's what the wise man does.
Here's what the foolish man does. Kind of a contrasting picture. One amplifies with a second line builds. And it builds on that first line.
It gives us an even greater picture of it. And then there's comparisons where using illustrations to show the thought. Being able to identify each one of those. Can I just tell you?
It's just not that important. You don't have to read the, oh, that one is, you know, builds on it. Oh, that one. It's really just not that one.
What's important is that you read the Proverbs and you think, okay, what is this saying to me? What is this telling me about life? To be able to identify all those things is not that huge of a deal. Chapters 22 through 24 are these various unnamed authors.
They're just the sayings of the wise. Verse 25 through 29 is the Proverbs of Solomon. Listen, collected by the men of Hezekiah, King of Judah. What they think is that Solomon had this first part of these already compiled and Hezekiah got some men and said, hey, let's go see if we can find anything else that Solomon has written.
And they've kind of compiled all of those things and put them together. And so we have more of the sayings of Solomon. And then chapters 30 and 31 are named authors. And you look right at the very beginning of each of those chapters and you'll get their names.
I would tell them to you, but you'd forget them before you left here anyway, so just look them up in your Bible. That's really important to you. The purpose of Proverbs is what intrigues me so much about Proverbs. It's spelled out at the very beginning of the book.
So listen with me. The Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, to know wisdom and instruction to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity, to give prudence to the simple knowledge and discretion to the youth. You got teenagers, they need to read Proverbs. You need to quote it to them.
You encourage them to read it because it'll give them knowledge. Let the wise hear and increase in learning. You're going to get smarter as you read this. And the one who understands, obtain guidance.
To understand a proverb and in saying the words of the wise and their riddles, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools, despised, wisdom, and instruction. So the verses two through six give us this two full purpose of the book. And verse seven gives us this motto of the book. That wisdom, this foundational motto that wisdom cannot be had unless it begins with this deep respect, this awesome look at who God is, this all knowing, all purposeful God, that when we hear what he says, we know his way is better than our way.
His truth is better than what we think is true. And we, we at our own peril, ignore the wisdom he's laid out for us. And we as wise people grasp the wisdom. So this would be a call to us to say, look, no matter how wise you think you may be, you need to know Proverbs.
And if you're trying to get smart, if life is a disaster around you, if every place you look, there are bombed out buildings in your life. You need to get in the book of Proverbs. There's trouble at work, trouble at home, trouble at church, trouble every place you go. Proverbs and James, I would tell you, dive in and memorize them, get to know them, pour them into your life.
I want to learn how to act wisely in life, raising our children, our finances, all of these things. So what we find here is that this is practical wisdom for living, practical wisdom for living is the central theme. Now knowledge is knowing wisdom is applying knowledge. Have you ever had somebody that knew all sorts of stuff and they were just still, just did the dumbest stuff?
I mean, they can quote all kinds of things and still just dumb as a brick. They knew, they had knowledge, no wisdom and how do they were insensitive, they were selfish, they were cold-hearted, they still did stuff they shouldn't do. All kinds of knowledge pour out of them. Wisdom is taking the knowledge and knowing how to work it in life and that's what Proverbs is showing us and will teach us how to do.
It teaches us how to walk in this common sense stuff. Practical application in life is the key. Now, all of us have some wisdom background. You were raised some way.
You've had experiences with others someplace. You picked up things that you've decided to live by somewhere and you've been, well, this is how our family acts. You talk to some families and they act one way and some families another and there's all kinds of ways of how people approach, you know, you're appealing to the biggest problems in the world. They never tell a soul.
They never talk to anybody. They don't even talk about it amongst themselves. They think somehow it's going to go away if they just don't talk about it. All kinds of things.
People who blow up and get mad to get their way, all kinds of things. Some of our backgrounds are foolishness. Some of our backgrounds have great wisdom in them. You've got to be able to identify that.
Your background in life is it filled with godly wisdom or is it filled with worldly wisdom, which is foolishness. It was filled with worldly wisdom. If I want to be in the kingdom, I've got to get a new way of thinking. I've got to get a new way of thinking.
I can't see the world the way I grew up being taught how to see the world. I can't listen. The wisdom of America today, what we're seeing on TV and what we're hearing in the world, it's foolishness. It's absolute foolishness.
And if you buy into it, you're going down a foolish road. You're taking the wisdom of men. They think they figured out a way for their to be peace. They figured out a way for trouble.
And unless you understand it and you get a backbone that helps you say, I'm not going to buy into the lie of this generation, I'm going to trust God. You buy into foolishness. Listen, sexual immorality. The world says it's okay.
The Bible says it isn't. Who is all knowing? Who is all knowing? Who am I going to trust?
Who am I going to put my faith in? Who am I going to follow? Who am I going to follow? And so I've got to look inside the word and discover what I need to know.
Maybe we've ignored good examples around us. Maybe we had great examples. But what you're getting in Proverbs is these line up on lines of a basic baseline of how a wise man acts. And it comes into our family life.
It comes into how we raise our children. It comes into how we work and the workplace. It applies to our wealth and what we do with money. I mean this thing, it covers a wide gamut of all of our lives, how we conduct ourselves in our lives.
And it says if you do this, you're building your life like a wise person. If you do this, you're building it like a foolish person. And so we need to go into this book and say, okay, what have I been taught through my life? How do I approach life?
What's embedded in me that is really a weed that needs to be rooted out and cast out of my life and I need to learn to walk a different way. So it talks about how we talk to people, how we respond in moments of anger. Something that I try to teach, my kids as they've grown up is this great passage where it says that a man who doesn't control his emotions is like a man who lives in a city without walls. And everybody goes, well, I live in cities up.
You've got to understand the day. And that day if you live in a city without walls, you are susceptible to the enemy sweeping in and killing all of you at any moment. And he's saying, listen, if you don't control your temper and your emotions and all that, you are susceptible to the enemy bringing destruction at any time. At any time.
And so we learn. We get this picture that he gives to us. So everyone, listen, everyone can learn if they open their hearts to Proverbs. And I would say Proverbs and James.
If you read Proverbs, James is the Proverbs of the New Testament. You read Proverbs and James. You're going to start putting your life in a new order if you start obeying these things. You're going to start saying, oh, I'm doing that right.
It's going to give you confidence. You're going to say, oh, I got that all wrong. I better start doing this other thing. Here's the trouble.
We can think we have common sense and our life is a disaster. We think we've had bad luck. We think people treat us unfairly. We think things have just happened.
We question why do things always happen to me? And the answer, you know what the answer is? The answer is why do things always happen to me is because I set myself up for things always happen to me. Now occasionally things happen to us because somebody else acts foolish.
But if it's in my life everywhere, the common denominator is, who is it? It's me. I'm the common denominator. If it's in my life, you're the common denominator if it's in your life.
And so we've got to do it. It looks like, man, look, everything in my life is a disaster. Every place I look, there's potholes. I need to learn how to redo some things.
And whatever that is, whatever level, whether you're a beginning Christian, or you've been a Christian for years, you may have had a lot of background on how to walk wisely. You may not have had any background on how to walk wisely. The word of God is going to give you background on how to walk wisely. So here's the next part.
The beginning of wisdom is fear of God. This is a righteous respect of the power, wisdom, and judgment of God. Now most of us, we hang this on the fact that he is a judge. Or we hang our life on the fact that he is loving.
Oh, you know, I actually tell me once, they were getting ready to do something. It's just horrendous. It's just horrendous. Listen, I know he doesn't do this.
And they said, God's got to forgive me. He's loving. I'm going to do it because God's going to forgive me. I said, God can't be mocked.
Your mocking is loving all this. But here's the deal. Hang your head on this a little bit. God is wise.
God is wise. He'll show us things. I don't want to hang my life on anything but the word of God. Who I want to be is a full fledged Christ follower.
I mean, I'll be around some of this. Yeah, we're Johnson. So we do it. You know what Johnson's are?
We're sinners. Far from God. In need of deliverance. That's who we are.
Don't hang any pride on who your family is. The Bible says boast in this that you know the Lord. Boast in his power. Boast in his strength.
Because all of our stuff is junk. We're going to get that out of our system and be people who boast in the Lord. He is wise. He is wise.
So we want to follow him. The all knowing means he knows it all. All motives, all outcomes. The right way to do everything.
He's not trying to, this is what blows me up way about God. We talked about this a couple of times. He doesn't think like we think. You know why he doesn't think like we think?
He's got it all figured out. He knows everything. We're trying to figure it out. He knows everything.
He knows the end of it all. He's laid it out clearly for us. And Proverbs is a place where we grow in his wisdom. We get to be more and more like God.
We get to be more and more walking in wisdom as we walk in the will of God. So this book is here to give wisdom to the young and the lacking. That may be the young person growing up. It may be the young Christian who's just learning.
It may be the person who's been a Christian for a long time and is just saying I need to get serious about God. It will give wisdom to us. This book will instruct the wise to be wiser still. That's why we keep reading it.
Listen to what Proverbs 4 says in verse 18. But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn which shines brighter and brighter until the full day. He says listen, as you've learned to walk in righteousness, this whole thing is about growing wisdom. As you grow in wisdom, you learn how to apply wisdom, you begin to walk in righteousness, your life gets brighter and brighter and brighter.
This gets brighter. The wise man gets wiser. Brighter and brighter and brighter because I'm growing wisdom. That's why I want to be Proverbs all of my life.
Keep giving me revelation. Keep teaching me things. Now listen to verse 19. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness.
They do not know over what they stumble. The wicked go around. The wicked are people who ignore God's word, ignore doing it God's way, do it their own way, and they've got this mess on their hands, they're falling down with these messes all around. And they don't even know why.
They don't know why. Why are all my kids acting this way? They don't even know why. Why is this happening?
They don't even know why. They're stumbling around the dark because they've never learned to walk in obedience to God's will. They've walked in the foolishness of this world. This is why we need to read the book of Proverbs.
This book will help us in our life. And that's why we tell you. Read it. Read it.
Continue it. So let me give you a couple of things. How do you Proverbs? Now listen, you hear this.
Proverbs is good advice. We've got to remember it's not necessarily sin. I mean, there's Proverbs in it that you can read that if you don't get sin. But if you choose not, Bible, the Proverbs call us over and over again to get good counsel to fill our life with good counsel.
If you choose to go through your life on your own and not get good counsel, you just won't get the benefit of good counsel. It's not going to send you to hell. You're just not going to get the benefit of good counsel. You're going to be on your own.
So many, many times throughout this book, it's just good, simple advice to us on what to do. Proverbs are not necessarily promises. They're generalities. And you can't hold it.
In this way, what is this guy said? He got to go read Ecclesiastics. He got to read Job. He got to read some of these other books because he began to understand that sometimes bad things happen to us.
And our call, here's our call that you learn in Philippians, we're called to live for God's glory no matter what we face. Health and sickness, good times, bad times, wealth and poverty. We're called to live our life for God's glory. We belong to Him.
He doesn't belong to us. We are His tool to use any way He wants. He is not our tool to use any way we want. We're to live for His glory.
Now, if you apply the principles of Proverbs, it's going to help you even in bad times get through them quicker. Walk through them faster. Get to the other side of it. Proverbs shows us how the kingdom of God works, how God's kingdom works in our life.
There's many scriptures to do this. Proverbs shows us how the kingdom of the world works. Proverbs reveal the difference between wisdom and foolishness. And Proverbs at times gives us promises.
Now listen, let's close this in just a minute. The Proverbs look like rain. When the rain falls, does your neighbor who is a heathen, does his grass still turn green, his grass still gets greener because of rain falls. The guy who loves God and applies the wisdom scripture to his life, his life's going to get greener and better.
The guy who doesn't love God but applies wisdom to his life, his life's going to get greener and better. These promises encompass all of this. Now, nowhere here is to say you have to be a Christ follower for these things to work. Now, the very base of it, really, you've got to have a fear of love of God.
But there's a lot of things in here that you can pick up and just as common sense begin to live them. And life will be better. Some people, that's what's going on in their life. They've learned someplace about a good, strong work ethic and they work hard and they apply themselves and they get better and better at their skills and they work at things and they succeed in life.
It's a principle of proverbs. It's a proverbs principle about working hard and developing your abilities and things get better and better for them. And that happens, guess what? That happens to the guy who doesn't know God and doesn't even know it's a principle of God.
It happens. It takes place in his life. And so as I understand that and I walk through that, I want to apply the principles of God to him. So let me give you, I'm just giving you several things here.
So we're going to just take about two minutes and I'm going to read through a couple of scriptures. Put the first scripture up on the screen for us. Word sharpens iron and one man sharpens another. That proverb fits, if you look at these five or six things here, it's a good advice proverb.
Hey, you want to get better at things? You want to sharpen your life? Get involved with other people. Get involved with others who have the same desire and let that person show.
You want to be a better athlete? Get with a good coach? If you want to grow in faith, get with other good Christians and they'll sharpen your life. Throw up the next scripture for us too.
Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaining? Who has wounds without cause?
Who has redness of eyes? Those who tear along over wine, those who go and to try mixed wine? Listen, if you let alcohol begin to really rain and ruin your life, you're going to have some problems come up. But stuff can't rain and ruin your life.
The temptation of alcohol is for it to rule you, for it to rain in you. We find the same temptation of money for us the last after it begins to control us. And so here's the warning. Don't long for this.
Don't seek out for this. Just get away from it. It's a good advice. The freer you are from it, the better off that you can be.
Proverbs 22 verse 29. You see a man's skillfulness work? He will stand before kings. He will not stand before him.
Again, a good advice passage. Get good at something. Be skillful at something. Proverbs 21, 13, whoever closes his eye to the cry of the poor, will himself call out and be unanswered.
This is how the kingdom of God works. God's telling you. This how my kingdom works. If we stand up here and we say, listen, there's people in the tsunami and we're going to send money to help them.
And you ignore that? God says. For Jesus's sake. My kingdom says, if you ignore not going to ignore you, they're crying out for help.
I want to use you to help them. Say, why don't I have a lot? You don't have to give a lot. You don't have to give what God tells you to give.
Are you with me? Are you getting this? Amen. It's a kingdom of God.
You'll find as you read through here, kingdom of God principles that if you apply them and do them, they work in our life. Many men proclaims his own steadfast love but a faithful man who can find. This is how the kingdom of the world works. It's not supposed to be in the kingdom of God.
We're supposed to be faithful friends to each other. People who can count on each other. If you walk out in this world, you're going to find a love and you're going to find somebody who keeps their word and is faithful. So when somebody lies to you, when somebody in the world lies, I'm not surprised by that.
When a Christian lies to you, I'm so shocked. When the world acts like the world, they're going to act like the world. Let me read one more. I'm going to go.
This is the kingdom of God principle. The kingdom of God principle. Whoever is generous to the poor, lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deeds. Let me jump down to Proverbs 15, 28.
The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer. But the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things. What's he showing us here? The difference between wisdom and foolishness.
He's given us his kind. Here's the wise and here's the foolish. Proverbs 14, 29. Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.
The difference between wisdom, how to live my life wisely. The difference between wisdom, how to live my life wisely and how to live my life foolishly. I learned as a young man. I learned as a young man.
You can lose your temper and go safe and find out later. You're just completely wrong. You never found out you're just completely wrong. You feel foolish?
You know why? Because you were foolish. You feel simple, isn't it? You feel foolish because you were foolish.
You think, man, I wish I had asked before I spouted off. I wish I had got a little more insight to what was really going on before I said anything. I wish I had asked a couple of questions before I said, well, I had that a couple of times dealing with the youth groups. I was just jumping right in the middle of it and halfway through it, I discovered it wasn't what I thought it was at all.
I had to back up and apologize to everybody and fix all the wounded feelings and get everything right. I was dead wrong. I was just dumb. I should have.
Because you want to seek to understand before you speak. It's foolish. This is what Proverbs will teach us. Help us learn.
Keep us from making mistakes. So God's given us a way to have common sense and know how to live rightly among each other. And I would encourage you to look at this wisdom literature and begin to get a grip of it. When you begin to look into Ecclesiastes, we may talk about this a little bit Sunday, begin to look into Ecclesiastes.
You see a guy who is supposed to be very wise looking for answers in all the wrong places. He lost his fear of God someplace. He lost his fear of God someplace. We don't want to be.
We don't want to live that. When you look in Job, you begin to understand a little bit about suffering and why suffering happens in this world and the concept of why do Christians, what are bad things happen to Christians? You begin to understand a little bit how God works with us and you may like it or not like it, but you begin to understand it better. Alright, let's stand together and pray.
Father, help us to walk in your wisdom. We thank you for these great books that you've given to us. And we look at Proverbs tonight, Father. It gives us very practical insight and wisdom.
And I pray, Father, my prayer is that for anyone who doesn't have it, that a new hunger to read through the Proverbs, to understand chapters one through nine of calling us to pursue wisdom. And as we get to chapter 10, we begin to get these Proverbs, these sayings. They'll show us how to live our lives and protect us. Just to walk in that strength we pray in Jesus' name.
Amen. Hey, love you. God bless you tonight.