Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Okay, so you guys can flip to Proverbs 10.
[00:00:04] We are going to be in Proverbs 10.
[00:00:08] While we go there, I want to reflect on something because as I was reading this and thinking about preparing this sermon, I thought about my father and I just was thinking about how thankful I was for him.
[00:00:23] He is and was and has been a very successful man.
[00:00:28] He's good at what he does. He works at a hospital in Oklahoma City and he's done that for many years. And he's had different jobs and responsibilities given to him. On top of this, he was what people call self made. He didn't come from any wealth at all. And to top it all off, probably the most, the best thing about him is that he is a faithful churchman and he always has been. In fact, he's an elder at his church today. And if I were to compare myself to him, especially growing up as a high school and college boy, in a worldly sense, I might be tempted to feel like an underachiever.
[00:01:09] But I never did. I never felt that temptation because he taught me to work hard, to seek God's glory and not to just mimic whatever he had done and accomplished, which I think is maybe an intrinsic temptation for many people, especially for boys wanting to be like their fathers. He didn't care if I pursued the same career at all, if I pursued anything that maybe even made sense to him. And to be parented like that was incredibly freeing.
[00:01:38] I didn't feel bound to a standard that I wasn't going to be able to meet or that I potentially wasn't going to be able to meet. This feeling of freedom is how we should feel when we read the Proverbs. This is how we should feel. Unfortunately, far too often when we read this book and really dig into it, it can wear us down. It can be exhausting. As we read verse after verse, command after command of things that we fail to do. That can be killer. To just read standard after standard that you don't meet.
[00:02:16] Well, Jonathan Akin writes about this. He says, really there are two ways you can read the Proverbs. And that's kind of our focus, is how to read the Proverbs. He says you can read the Proverbs like a Pharisee and say, I need to do these things in order for God to love me. I need to obey these practical bits of advice because if I do them, God will accept me.
[00:02:40] That is one way to read the book of Proverbs and that is the wrong way. We should not read it like a Pharisee instead, we need to read the Proverbs like blood bought. Christians who say these are not the things that we do in order to get God to love us.
[00:02:58] These are the things that we do because God already loves us. We do not do these things to become his children. We do these things because in Christ we have already been adopted into his family. And now here is how we live our lives.
[00:03:15] There's a huge difference between those two approaches. Reading the Bible like Pharisees will lead you into either misery when you fail or pride when you feel like you succeed. But if you read like a Christian, it will lead you to become wise and joyful. This is what Achan wrote about this, and I think he's right. When we read Proverbs from the vantage point of the cross, something we are afforded now with the Word and all that we know, we can read Proverbs better. We can read it better because the New Testament and the New Covenant which we are in now, help us to understand the Old Testament. It's a general principle. They say later revelation helps us clarify earlier. So the newer things help us clarify and understand the older things because it progressively is revealed and becomes clearer. And so this evening we're using Proverbs 10 as kind of a case study in how we're going to read the rest of the book and how I'm going to preach from the rest of the book.
[00:04:22] There are a few things we will focus on and do. First, we are going to read them Christocentrically so you can think Christ o centrically. If you need help spelling that, we read them Christocentrically. This means we keep Christ central. We recognize that we are understanding these things in light of him, in light of him being the wisdom of God. And we keep him at the center of our interpretation and our application.
[00:04:48] Second, we will move thematically through the chapter.
[00:04:53] A lot of it will be in chunks and in order in this case, but that's kind of what we're going to do for a lot of the rest of the book is we're going to take a theme and we will track it from chapter 10 to the final chapter 31 to see all that is said. That's kind of what you need to do with this book. And then third, we're going to look for stretches of text that are kind of clumped together rather than just one isolated verse at a time. Now, most of the rest of the book, if you've read many of the chapters of Proverbs, you've noticed it Seems like a lot of isolated, unrelated to the verse before and after, little pithy statements, just little two liners here and there.
[00:05:36] And so that's what it feels like. And sometimes that makes it difficult for us to read. You know, how is this verse related to this one? They seem utterly unrelated and they might be. In fact, there's a good chance they are not completely related. But this is what we should expect. Remember, what we've learned in these first nine chapters is that this book is for a parent or a teacher to teach a child or a student.
[00:06:02] And so you can imagine even from your own life, you probably haven't been sat down month by month or week by week and said, okay, this week or this month I'm going to lecture you on greed. And you sit down with your mom and or your dad every day and you get a lecture on greed. And you have that for that month, and then the next month it's on laziness. You know that doesn't happen, right? What happens is you fall short and you get taught a lesson. And then the next day something completely unrelated might come up and you need to be taught a new lesson, and then maybe one lesson you were taught a long time ago, you need to be refreshed upon. And so as you read the book, you can kind of imagine that maybe these are just written as the parent goes and says, well, I just taught my son this. And then the next day he's like, I just taught him this. And so there's a lot of repetition. So it helps to just kind of go through the book that way, looking for what verses contribute to the theme that we're studying.
[00:07:03] Now. It is important for us also to look for these little chunks of text that are related together, because the Holy Spirit inspired not just the writing, but the compilation of these proverbs. So we should be sensitive to connections that are being drawn.
[00:07:18] The main idea of this sermon of Proverbs 10 is this. We read and learn from the Proverbs through the lens of Christ. That's that first blank. We read and learn from the Proverbs through the lens of Christ so that we might be driven to joyful salvation rather than legalistic exhaustion.
[00:07:45] Now let's start by looking at a couple of verses in this, and then we'll go through four themes in this chapter and kind of trace them through the chapter. First let's read verses one, and then I'll jump to verse 12.
[00:08:02] The Proverbs of Solomon.
[00:08:04] A wise son makes a glad Father, but a foolish son is a Sorrow to his mother. In verse 12, hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.
[00:08:17] So this first point, the first theme is wisdom for your relationships and how wonderfully applicable this is to all of us listening tonight. Many of you, you live under the roof of your parents.
[00:08:34] You are rightly therefore expected to obey and honor them and please them. In fact, you've probably even heard that phrase, under my roof. You've maybe heard that before. I heard it many times growing up. Well, this is no surprise to us, just as it wasn't to the original audience of Proverbs, that this is an expectation to have good, healthy, wisdom filled relationships, specifically with our families.
[00:09:02] Exodus 20, verse 12. This is one of the commandments, says, honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. And then in the New Testament, Ephesians 6:1 says, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. So we have then on both sides of the cross, before the cross, after the cross, this is an expectation. It's a command. It has not changed. It's an enduring principle forever.
[00:09:31] And so I want you to think about yourself. Consider your life and your relationship with your parents.
[00:09:39] Now, even if your parents would say they love you and are proud of you, and I'm sure that is the case. I'm sure that is the case, would they by chance maybe think of your relationship as a little bit rocky right now?
[00:09:55] I'm sure there is sometimes some strife between you and your parents. And I think in this stage of life, generally it's more possible than ever to characterize your relationship with your parents as being full of strife or a little bit rocky. Even though the love may be there, it can still be a little bit rough. It might not even be that extreme. But there are certainly times where maybe you or a sibling argues and is angry with parents often, even if it's just a little bit, is such strife okay?
[00:10:32] No, I think we all know that that is not okay.
[00:10:37] That brings sorrow to your mother and your father. That's what we read. A foolish son is a sorrow to his mother.
[00:10:46] You might just be a huge failure in this area. Maybe you're not. Maybe you have a great relationship and it's always been peaceful. But maybe you're a huge failure in this area. That's very possible for many, maybe even most of us.
[00:11:01] And that's a problem because we need what to make a glad father.
[00:11:07] But here's the killer.
[00:11:09] Here's what's even worse about this. If we are a failure to this standard. When there is strife, it's actually because there's hatred in your heart.
[00:11:17] There's hatred in your heart.
[00:11:19] If this area is a big failure for you, then let me repeat the second line of verse 12.
[00:11:29] Love covers all offenses. Love covers all offenses. So there's one way to obey and live by these two verses. It is to cover these offenses with love. How can we do that? How can we cover them with love? You must know Christ.
[00:11:47] You must know Him. Through the love of Christ, you can be washed clean. No matter how bad you fail this first standard, you can be washed clean from your sins. Your relationship strife can be fixed and corrected by the love of Christ, because the ultimate reality is that you are stirring up strife between you and God the Father when you have strife with your parents, and that causes the Heavenly Father sorrow. But when covered by the blood of His Son, Jesus, through faith, the Father looks upon you and he covers all of your offenses in love.
[00:12:27] And he is glad to call you His Son or His daughter.
[00:12:31] That is true no matter what. And when you start here, when we start with Christ and our relationship with him, and we let that bleed down and affect the other areas of our life, then we will have wise relationships. We will be freed to live to the standards of this book because Christ has done it for us. And so that is what we want to do. We don't want to bog ourselves down with these impossible standards. We want to look to Christ. We want to have wisdom in our relationships.
[00:13:05] Now let's read a few more verses. Go to verse two and read with me. Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death. The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry, but he thwarts the craving of the wicked. A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.
[00:13:27] He who gathers in summer is a prudent Son, but he who sleeps in harvest is a Son who brings shame.
[00:13:35] And then flip to verse 22.
[00:13:38] The blessing of the Lord makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it.
[00:13:45] So here's our second theme. Wisdom for your wealth. Wisdom for your wealth. Now, it can be hard to read verses like these because they honestly don't always seem to accord with reality. This shouldn't surprise us, because Proverbs are general truths in God's created universe. They're general truths. We don't take them each to be an absolute 100% promise.
[00:14:15] Plus, it seems like there's certainly some rich people who gain money via wickedness. Sinfulness, corruption. Have you seen how much money some people in our legislature in Congress make after they get into politics? It's like they know what the stock market's going to do ahead of time.
[00:14:35] Now this happens all the time. People gain wealth via wickedness.
[00:14:41] Plus, aren't there so many Christians around the world suffering and struggling financially good people?
[00:14:53] Luke 6:20 21 helps us understand this.
[00:14:57] Jesus lifted up his eyes on his disciples and said, blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.
[00:15:12] Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.
[00:15:16] So when we read these verses in Proverbs, Christocentrically understanding what Christ has taught on earth, like right here in Luke 6, we understand that poverty and wealth are not just temporary, but they are ultimate realities.
[00:15:32] They're not just temporary. And so the fulfillment of these promises is indefinite. There's not a guarantee that it is. For here and today, the fulfillment of them can be ultimate. It can be eternal.
[00:15:51] God does take care of the needs of Christians. Ordinarily on earth, I have received such care from God. However, I know that the true and the full reception of this promised wealth and prosperity is through Christ in the life eternally to come.
[00:16:12] And because we know this to be the true and final eternal reality, we ought to live in light of this. Now, Christ was diligent and perfect in his works, accomplishing full salvation for all who would believe. And yet his sacrificial death happened in the wake of wicked gain and righteous loss.
[00:16:36] So in what I'm saying, is the pinnacle of Christ's life and ministry, his crucifixion when the work was finished, that was a result of wicked gain and righteous loss.
[00:16:51] Judas received money for betraying him.
[00:16:57] And Judas story, while he receives money, ultimately ends in tragic death.
[00:17:04] Well, Christ the righteous one, was crucified by lawless men. But in the end of the story, what he lives today, he conquered death through it. And so God has and has demonstrated in an ultimate way the ability to take what appears to be unjust, wicked, gain righteous loss, and turn it for the salvation of the world.
[00:17:32] And we then ought to trust in Christ's work. We ought to not be lazy, as we see in verse four, which then parallels with shamefulness in verse five.
[00:17:46] Christ cleanses us from the shame of sin when we place our faith in Him.
[00:17:52] Instead, we should be diligent, which parallels in verse five with prudence or wisdom.
[00:18:00] And we get this wisdom all through Christ. We can have wisdom for our wealth if we trust In Christ to provide.
[00:18:10] Now let's look at the next set of verses. Go to verse 8.
[00:18:22] The wise of heart will receive commandments, but a babbling fool will come to ruin. Whoever walks in integrity walks securely. But he who makes his way crooked will be found out. Whoever winks the eye causes trouble. But a babbling fool will come to ruin.
[00:18:39] The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.
[00:18:46] Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.
[00:18:50] On the lips of him who has understanding, wisdom is found, but a rod is from the back of him who lacks sense. The wise lay up knowledge, but the mouth of a fool brings ruin near.
[00:19:03] And then go to verse 18. The one who conceals hatred has lying lips. And whoever utters slander is a fool. When words are many, transgression is not lacking. But whoever restrains his lips is prudent. The tongue of the righteous is choice silver. The heart of the wicked is of little worth. The lips of the righteous feed many, but fools die for lack of sense.
[00:19:29] So our third theme is wisdom for your words.
[00:19:33] Wisdom for your words. There are numerous lessons about our words in these verses, and so consider how these verses come into conflict with how you use your words.
[00:19:46] And we get a general sense of different types of ways we can sin with our mouths. We get a sense of carelessness from foolish words. These are careless and not thoughtful words. We also see deception is characteristic of sinful words. And now there's an important verse here, verse 11, which actually has the same ending as verse 6. It says, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence. So that's verse 6 and 11.
[00:20:16] We read that the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.
[00:20:21] Now, if you read the esv, raise your hand if you read esv. Okay, so that's most of us. I figured that's what you see. You might see it rearranged in other translations. I'm not quite sure what the variation is, but it is a legitimate way to translate because it's basically just the order of the Hebrew words is how the ESV has translated it. But that doesn't necessarily indicate that's how it has to be ordered. Hebrew words don't have to be in the same order as English words. There's more fluidity and flexibility with that language.
[00:20:59] And so it could read like this. But violence covers the mouth of the wicked. So this word could be flipped. Violence covers the mouth of the wicked. I'm going to argue that this is actually a better way to understand this verse because it Parallels the next verse. The next verse has the same sort of structure and word order. And it says, love covers all offenses. And I think what Solomon is doing here in this composition is trying to compare these.
[00:21:34] Violence is a covering of the mouth of the wicked, but love is a covering over all offenses.
[00:21:45] He's comparing these two things, violence and love.
[00:21:49] One is characteristic of a sinful mouth, and the other is what atones for sins.
[00:21:56] And so again, think of your own speech, how your mouth is characterized. Do you speak good words or bad words?
[00:22:06] Are your words verse 20 of Little Worth, or are they choice silver? How would other people describe them?
[00:22:16] Do you babble on and on? Maybe you know someone who just loves to hear himself talk.
[00:22:22] Maybe that's you. Maybe you like to hear yourself talk.
[00:22:25] And if you're honest, would you be labeled a babbling fool? Are your words many? Verse 19 says that many words bring about transgression. Now, I don't think it's necessarily saying if you speak often, you necessarily sin often.
[00:22:41] But I think what is important here is we practice restraint and thoughtfulness with our words.
[00:22:47] One time a friend of mine asked another friend. This other friend is quieter. He spoke little. And he was asked, why don't you talk very much. Kind of a weird question to ask, in my opinion. But he was asked that question, and he had, I thought, a profound answer. He said, I want my words to have significance.
[00:23:09] He knew if he babbled on and on, then he would receive less attention when he spoke. But if he chose his words well and thoughtfully and placed them well, then people would listen intently to what he had to say. And I can attest, when he spoke, everybody would listen.
[00:23:29] Now, maybe your words don't show such discipline or restraint, but they are instead careless.
[00:23:36] You have foot in mouth syndrome.
[00:23:43] Now, there are other ways in which we can sin with our mouths. There's slander, gossip, saying things about people that isn't necessarily verified, even if it's just because you heard something. There are all these ways that we can do pour things with our mouths. The way you use your tongue directly reveals your heart. That's why I want us to think about this. The way you use your tongue directly reveals your heart. It is like a window to your heart.
[00:24:16] And this should be sort of troubling, especially if you struggle with your words.
[00:24:23] We saw in this section that we just read, we saw a rod is for the back of him who lacks sense. A babbling fool will come to ruin. Whoever utters slander is a fool. And we read, fools die for lack of sense.
[00:24:40] If your words reflect your heart and you really think about your words, what does that say about your heart?
[00:24:49] Verse 20 says, the heart of the wicked is of little worth.
[00:24:55] The faith in Christ is the only way to have that heart renewed, transformed, made into something of worth.
[00:25:05] You on your own with behavior modification, can only put a bandaid on your tongue, which doesn't work anyway. That's all you can do until Christ comes into your life to radically change that heart, to change the spring and the source for your words.
[00:25:24] And we want him and need him to do that, because Christ exercised the perfect restraint of words. His words were perfect. They were timely, they were full of truth.
[00:25:36] And so you must restrain your words so that you can more accurately reflect the Savior, if He is your Savior.
[00:25:45] So we want to have wisdom for our words.
[00:25:49] The fourth theme is wisdom for your eternity.
[00:25:55] Wisdom for your eternity.
[00:26:01] Look at verse 16.
[00:26:04] The wage of the righteous leads to life, the gain of the wicked to sin. Whoever heeds instruction is on the path to life. But he who rejects reproof leads others astray. Jump to verse 24.
[00:26:20] What the wicked dreads will come upon him, but the desire of the righteous will be granted. When the tempest passes, the wicked is no more, but the righteous is established forever.
[00:26:32] Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to those who send him.
[00:26:39] The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short.
[00:26:44] The hope of the righteous brings joy, but the expectation of the wicked will perish. The way of the Lord is a stronghold to the blameless, but destruction to evildoers.
[00:26:55] The righteous will never be removed, but the wicked will not dwell in the land. The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom, but the perverse tongue will be cut off.
[00:27:07] The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, but the mouth of the wicked what is perverse.
[00:27:15] So this is wisdom for your eternity.
[00:27:19] This final part shows something that we will see constantly in this book.
[00:27:27] And we, indeed we have already. We are taught not just how to be wise, but why we must be wise. We see the cause and effect of both righteousness and wickedness. Those two paths characterize the whole book, after all. That's why I said the theme of this book is choose the path of wisdom, which is the path of Christ.
[00:27:52] We have two paths, righteousness and wickedness, which goes through Christ and our sinful nature. And so we see here how to be wise. There are consequences.
[00:28:04] There are typical consequences endured in this life and ultimate consequences endured forever. We need to remember this ultimate reality and current reality. When we read these, and we read several examples just now, I want us to notice just a couple so we can have time to talk about them.
[00:28:27] First, in verse 24, what the wicked dreads will come upon him. But the desire of the righteous will be granted.
[00:28:36] So what the wicked dreads will come upon him. Imagine your worst fear, your greatest anxiety.
[00:28:46] It's a very real possibility that God allows that fear to come true.
[00:28:51] That's what this seems to say.
[00:28:54] What the wicked dreads will come upon him.
[00:28:58] And he might just allow that so that you will be broken and will be driven to the feet of Christ.
[00:29:05] Maybe, but that's not always what will happen. But your worst fears will be nothing compared to the eternal reality of this dread he's talking about. If we never put our faith in Christ, then your worst fears will be nothing compared to it. Nothing at all.
[00:29:27] Eternity under God's wrath and punishment is much worse than all of the things that make you the most anxious combined, all in one place.
[00:29:39] But this leads us to the good news that Jesus is pleased to rescue you from that you are not siphoned off and you don't have to go there. You are not compelled to it. He is pleased and happy to rescue you from that faint. His arms are wide open to receive you.
[00:30:02] And as you are changed bit by bit into his image, then your desires align with his. And when your desires align with his, whatever you ask, he will give you it gladly. This is the power of the Christian life, the power of faithful prayer. And this is why we must turn to Christ. This is a strong warning. In verse 24.
[00:30:28] The desire of the righteous will be granted, whereas the dread of the wicked will come upon him.
[00:30:35] The second verse I want us to notice is verse 30.
[00:30:40] The righteous will never be removed, but the wicked will not dwell in the land.
[00:30:48] So this imagery of the land, hopefully it's making us think of something. If we are familiar with our Bibles, we're going to be thinking about the nation of Israel. We're going to be thinking about the promised land, the land which God brought his people after he delivered them from slavery in Egypt, the promised land.
[00:31:09] Now there is a new covenant, right under Christ. We're in a new covenant. There's a new covenant parallel for this. This would be what we call heaven or the new earth.
[00:31:22] The wicked will not be in heaven.
[00:31:26] The wicked are those people who, for example, they hear even these proverbs that we've read tonight, and they choose again and again to ignore them, to continue on the path of wickedness rather than the path of Christ.
[00:31:42] And so we must not be like the wicked. Though we're all born that way, we are all born on that same path. Christ calls you to turn from it, to turn around, to take the way, the path of Christ.
[00:31:57] If you do turn to him, he's here's the promise. You will never be removed. That's what verse 30 says. The righteous will never be removed from this land. You cannot be lost. You cannot be removed. God is merciful to continually forgive you.
[00:32:17] Because as we read in His Word, specifically this book, we should be aiming at becoming more like Christ. Not all at once, but bit by bit. Not to the point where we dread and are beaten into submission as we see standard after standard that we fail. But as we trust Christ in His finished work, we are able to freely become more like Him.
[00:32:41] Even when we take one step forward, two steps back, we can trust this promise in John 6:39.
[00:32:50] This is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.
[00:33:02] No one is deported from this land.
[00:33:05] No one is there by mistake.
[00:33:09] Christ has brought them all in through faith and he will keep you all safe and secure. You cannot be lost by the grace of Christ. You do not need to worry about him losing track of you, letting you wander off.
[00:33:26] But you should seriously consider if your sins are being exposed by this book. If you read proverb after proverb, or even just a couple, and you think that you really don't match up, you should seek to live holy to the Lord. And if you don't trust Christ, then consider all the ways that you do fail according to this book. All the ways that you do not meet the standard of Christ, you have no hope to meet it. You can't do it. You need the finished, perfect work of Christ and it's freely offered to you.
[00:34:03] So trust Jesus through faith and he will clothe you with his righteousness and he will walk with you on his path to glory. Let's pray.
[00:34:15] Father, we thank you for your word and how it points us constantly to the cross. We can see evidence of your perfect plans outworking that. Even in proverbs we see pointed fingers and arrows to what would be the cross one day.
[00:34:32] God. We pray and ask that anyone in the room that doesn't trust in the Lord would do so tonight. Return to Christ in faith and God. Any of us in the room that are burdened by the weight of our sin, trying to meet a standard that we cannot meet.
[00:34:51] Lord, give us faith. Increase our faith that we may lean on the finished, perfect work of Christ. We pray this in his name. Amen.
