All right, this evening, let's turn to the book of Proverbs, the book of Proverbs this evening, and we're going to look at chapter number 19. Now, we have been going through this, reading through the Bible in the year, and what I've done is we have been reading through the Bible, and let me encourage you. I hope that you're doing this. I hope all of you that bought the One Year Bible with us, I hope you're still on the bus and you're still trying to do that. Or maybe some of you have said, I just want to use that process to go through the New Testament. Whatever you're doing, I hope you're still doing it. And even if you're not trying to read through the Bible in a year, like I told you, there's different ways you could do that. Get on the computer and play it and if you're a slow reader you can get on the computer and play it and it will read it for you. Hopefully you're still doing that. If you've stopped, pick it back up again. Start from the day. Let today be the first day of the rest of your year. And if you aren't doing it, I need to encourage you to do it because there are things that you always pick up when you don't, like Jim said today in his devotion, he had never noticed before that each one of the ten plagues was tied to one of the gods of Egypt. And there's all different types of things that you pick up as you go along. He made mention in there about it not mentioning the firstborn son, that it just said that you're going to kill, that he was going to kill the firstborn. And I'm like, hmm. That's interesting. So I had to go look it up and it doesn't say the firstborn son. It just says, I'll kill your firstborn. So listen, there's all kinds of those little pieces of information that you'll pick up as you go along. So if you aren't doing, if you're not reading through the Bible with us in a year, I encourage you to do that. You can do no wrong by reading through your scripture. I've already got the plan for next year. What we're going to do as far as a church and it doesn't involve encouraging to read through the Bible in a year you may be at the point now that we're in the middle of July towards the end of July that you're tired of hearing me talk about reading through the Bible in a year but you you can't go wrong if you're doing it so So, but as we've done, as we started that process to read through the Bible in a year, I said I wanted to take the Sunday night sermon and preach something that we've read this week and what it kind of fell into was preaching the history of the children of Israel. I just felt like as I went through that knowing that there are some people who have never maybe read through the Bible, maybe were going to read some sections and some things that they had never read before. So I thought I would go back and try to highlight some of those things. Now in our Old Testament reading we're in 2 Chronicles and it's really a rehashing of the history of the children of Israel. And so I didn't really want to go back. The one thing that caught my eye this week was Solomon talking about the mercy seat and the building of the mercy seat and the cherubims. And I was planning on preaching that. But then I remembered that I kind of went through a teaching on the tabernacle and so forth, although I didn't really get into the mercy seat and the cherubim, which would probably be a valuable lesson for me to go and teach. But anyway, just because I'd already been through the tabernacle, I didn't want to go back and do that again. So as I was reading through the book of Proverbs, or reading through our reading in Proverbs, this proverb stuck out to me, Proverb 19, 20 and 21. It says, hear counsel and receive instruction that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end. There are many devices in a man's heart. Nevertheless, the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand. And so that kind of jumped off the page at me, captured my attention and praying about what I should preach. The Lord said, you haven't touched Proverbs yet. Maybe you need to do a study on the book of Proverbs and so that's what we're going to do tonight. We're going to take a look at the book of Proverbs and what I'm going to give you is really an overview of the book of Proverbs. I have two, I've got three study Bibles. I've got the Life Application Study Bible. I've got the ESV Study Bible and I've got John MacArthur Study Bible and I'm going to take the ESV Study Bible and John MacArthur Study Bible and kind of give you an overview of what all they teach and what all they talk about in their introduction to the book of Proverbs. So basically that's what I'm going to give you as an introduction. But let's look at our text first. The first thing is we read verse 20. It says, Hear counsel, receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end. The first thing that we want to note as we're looking at that is we do want to remember that the book of Proverbs is a book of wisdom. We want to know that it's a book of poetry. It's not a book of laws. I mean, you take Exodus chapter number 20 when Moses is on Mount Sinai and he says, This is what God says. That's the book of the law. You can't take what you read in the book of Proverbs and what you read in the book of Exodus chapter number 20 and give them the same place, give them the same value because they're two different types of literature. Neither can you go to the Sermon on the Mount and what Jesus is saying on the Sermon on the Mount about how that we should respond and act as Christians. You can't view the Sermon on the Mount the same way you look at the book of Proverbs, because the book of Proverbs is a book of poetry. And it is a, really it's a compilation of one-liners. You'll see that in a little bit. I mean a proverb, and I'll bring this out in our message a little bit later, but you know a common proverb for us is, You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. I mean, that's a proverb, and we know what that is. And the book of Proverbs is a compilation of those. And so you have to give them and you have to view them in a different way. They're not a law saying this is what you do and this is what you shouldn't do. It's more of an illustration. It's more of a you take what is said and then make it applicable to your life. So the way you view the book of Proverbs is important to understanding What type of literature it is, it is a poetic book, that's important. And the book of Proverbs is written for us so that we can hear and receive instructions. That's important also, so that we hear and receive instructions. It's important that we listen to what's being said and that we receive instructions. The difficult place that you come to in life is when you get to the place where you think you don't need to listen to instruction. But all of us, none of us have all the wisdom we need and we need to listen and receive instructions. How I can go back and listen and think about some of the instructions that my father gave me. when I was growing up and I wish I would listen to it in some cases a little bit more. There are different decisions that I've made in life when I might have made them a little bit differently if I would have followed my dad's proverbs. And so anyway, so we need to listen, receive instructions, and then we understand why you want to receive these. There are many devices in a man's heart. I mean, there's lots of ideas. Men have lots of ideas of how they think that they might live and how they think how they should live. And there's, listen, you just go to the New York Times bestsellers and there's a whole list of self-help books. And self-help books are very profitable for people. They'll tell you the best way to do everything. There's even religious people that try to tell you how to live your best life now, which is not what you ought to be shooting for. You ought to not be shooting to have your best life now. You ought to know that this world is not your home, and you shouldn't be focusing on living a great life now. You ought to be focusing on living a great life for eternity, but that's another point. But I want you to notice what it says. There are many devices in the man's heart. There are many ways that we can try to decide how we want to live, and there's many instructors out there. But the counsel of the Lord, that's what's going to stand. No matter what we think, no matter what philosophy we follow, no matter what ideas that we use to determine the actions of our lives, the thing that's gonna stand is the counsel of the Lord. And so, shouldn't we want to listen to the counsel of the Lord? And I just picked up on this as I was reading this text earlier. Notice it says, in verse 20, that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end. Notice, in your latter end. Solomon wrote the majority of the Proverbs. What do we know about Solomon's life? We know that Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived. We know that Solomon started out with much wisdom. But what about the end of his life? Solomon forsook his wisdom and he didn't follow the ways of God. and his latter end was not as wise as his beginning. And so we want to follow these, the counsel of the Lord so that in the end of our lives we'll be able to stand and that we may be considered to be wise in the last days. And so we understand that these two verses of scripture are encouraging us to follow wisdom. And so Even though we might have many ideas and many plans, we need to understand the wisdom of God is forever. So, let's think about some general thoughts and ideas. And I'm not by no means am I giving you a full and complete introduction because I'm not getting into all of the authors and how many Proverbs they wrote. And I'm not going to get into like Proverbs 1 through 9. And really ending with 9-6 is really kind of an introduction and it has more of the encouragement for you to follow wisdom. And then from 9-7 on is all the different types of Proverbs. There's lots of things I'm not getting into. But what I'm basically wanting us to get to tonight is as we try to understand Proverbs is why it's so important for us. In the ESV study Bible, listen to these notes. It says, a key term in Proverbs is, of course, wisdom. The word can have the nuance of skill, particularly the skill of choosing the right course of action for the desired result. In the conventional framework of Proverbs, it denotes the skill in the art of godly living. Really and truthfully, I had never really thought about the book of Proverbs in those terms. That if you follow the book of Proverbs, it will teach you how to live godly. It will teach you how to live your life in a way that is well pleasing to God. I had never really thought about the book of Proverbs in that way. And so we need to have skill in knowing how to choose the right course of action When we have the desired result, it's sort of like I talked to the men today. We're going through the disciplines of a godly man, and we're talking about at this point rearing children. And I talked to them about when we're making decisions about how we're going to discipline our children, that one of the things that we should consider is the end result. If I make this decision concerning my child, what's going to result? from that decision tomorrow? What's going to result five years down the road? What's the result of that going to be 10 years down the road? We ought to, in making our decisions, be paying attention to the end result of our actions. And the book of Proverbs is going to help us choose the right course of action to obtain the desired result. MacArthur, in his study of the Bible, describes Proverbs like this. Proverbs contains a goldmine of biblical theology, reflecting themes of Scripture brought to the level of practical righteousness. I had never thought about Proverbs being a book of teaching us practical righteousness. It does that by addressing man's ethical choices calling into question how he thinks, how he lives, and how he manages his daily life in the light of divine truth. So we understand as Christians that we should manage our daily life according to the divine truth. And the book of Proverbs will help us do that. Again, it addresses our ethical choices. What is the right thing to do in a situation? You can't have circumstantial ethics. Situational ethics, I guess. In other words, it's right to do this or that in this situation, but it's not right to do it in this situation. In other words, your ethics shouldn't change based upon the circumstances that you're in. Your ethics should be the same no matter what. For example, let me just give you a little example of this. If you're going through the drive-through at McDonald's and they give you back one penny too much in change, you should return that. If you go through McDonald's and they give you $10 too much change in return, you should return that. If they give you $100 too much in change. You should return it. It doesn't matter if it's a penny, a hundred dollars, a million dollars. Your decision on what's the right thing to do, the value of what they've given you back, the amount they give you back too much, has no bearing on what you should do. You should return it no matter what, even if it's a penny. And so that's situational ethics. You do not change your thinking on ethical situations based upon the circumstances that you're in right now. And so Proverbs helps us think about our ethics and how we live our lives and our practical righteousness. What we need to see is that Proverbs is giving us directions for living our daily lives. and gives us directions on the right way to follow God. As I was studying this message, and I told you this this morning, but as I was studying this message and began to think about how much practical righteousness is given to us in the book of Proverbs and how that it is teaching us, the book of Proverbs teaches us how to follow God, and if we would apply Proverbs to our lives, we would be able to follow God more closely. As I began to consider that, I began to think about how that maybe we don't give Proverbs enough attention. As a matter of fact, I thought, you know what? It would probably be good for our teenage classes to go through the book of Proverbs verse by verse. It might be good for our adults. And by the way, men, that might be the next thing we do. How many of us go to the book of Proverbs and look in the book of Proverbs and even pay much attention to the book of Proverbs? I'd say rarely do we look in the book of Proverbs. But there's a lot of wisdom in the book of Proverbs, and maybe we should follow it a little more closely. And if we would follow the book of Proverbs a little more closely, maybe our ability to walk with Christ, we might be able to follow Christ a little easier if we paid more attention to the book of Proverbs. Now, Proverbs carries, covers a wide array of topics in our daily life. It tells us about being diligent and being lazy. It tells you the value of being diligent and the hardship of the lazy. It tells you about friendship, about your speech, about marriage. You know what? One of my favorite proverbs, or a lot of men's favorite proverbs, not necessarily mine, but anyway, it's better to live in a corner of a rooftop than with a brawling and a contentious woman. So it tells you about marriage. But anyway, I didn't hear any women saying amen on that one. I didn't hear any men saying amen either, Anyway, it tells you about how to have domestic peace. It tells you how to work at getting along with others. It tells you how to have good marriage or good manners. It tells you about eternity and so many things. Practical things in your everyday life were found in the book of Proverbs. In each of these areas, it offers wisdom for realizing the life of the covenant in details. In other words, it comes to show us the value of godliness in every way, in every day, and it holds the promise for the present life and the life to come. In other words, if you look in a book of Proverbs and you find a proverb and you live according to that, And you say, I'm living my life according to this proverb found here. Do you think that when you stand before God, God's gonna say, now you shouldn't have done that. No, if you live your life according to the proverb, you know that God's gonna be well pleased with that. In other words, somebody say, well, I don't know if God's pleased with my life or not. Get into the book of Proverbs. Live your life like the book of Proverbs says and then you won't have to worry about it. And so we need to understand that. So what we find out as we study the book of Proverbs, by the way, the majority of this, I want to give credit where credit is due, and I think I've already done that, but just in case, again, the majority of these thoughts that I'm sharing with you, I have a few of my own thoughts sprinkled in here, but the majority of these come through those study Bibles that I already shared with you that I studied. The book of Proverbs demonstrates clearly that God's will is intensely practical, applying to every aspect of people's lives. So there's no aspect of our lives that God is not concerned about, and probably you will find a proverb that speaks to that area of your life. So the book of Proverbs is practical and God's will is practical in our lives. A life lived according to the Proverbs will be a happy life. A life lived by God's will, the book of Proverbs, will be a useful life. And a life according to the book of Proverbs in practical righteousness will not just happen You must seek after it. You must study, pursue it, discipline yourself to walk therein. And so we need to understand. You know, I was trying to think of one that comes to my mind, and it's really not from the book of Proverbs, but every out of word is going to come into account. And when I thought about that, I began to think about some things, some words that I said and the way that I spoke. And I had to learn that, you know, I had to discipline myself to pay attention to the words that I say. and the way that I respond to other people. I've had to think about those things in my life, because I read the principle in the word of God, and then I looked at my life and said, my life does not measure up to what the word of God is saying here, and I need to pay attention to that, and I need to change. So you need to study it, you need to seek after it, you need to pursue it, and you have to discipline yourself in order to live practically and righteous. Now, as you go through the book of Proverbs, there's some characters you're gonna come against. You're going to see the wise, you're gonna see the fool, and you're gonna see the simple. The wise person is the one who embraces God's covenant and learns the skill of living out God's covenant in everyday situations. Let's just look at some things. I was trying to think of just some some passages of scripture or some proverbs here that would be practical. First thing that came to my mind, the first word that I thought I could search really easy and find some proverbs is the word turneth. I know that's a word that you're going to find in a book of proverbs. So let's just look at a few proverbs and let's look at each one of these containing the word turneth and see if we can find some practical places in our lives. Proverbs 15. Proverbs 15.1. It says, a soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger. So if you ever found yourself in a situation where you could really... But you choose to respond, what does it say? Softly. Perfect example of that was a church camp. You know, when they found the glass bottles in the bathroom and when they found the toys in the cleaner thingy, I really wanted to blow up. And I really wanted to lay somebody beneath the sweet peas, as mom used to call it. But I chose to answer softly. In other words, I discussed without raising my voice. That was a place, what would have happened if I would have come in and I would just begin to read everybody the right act and begin to tell them how wrong they were and how really what I would have done 10 years ago is I'd have shut the pool down myself and I wouldn't let you have it back the rest of the day no matter what the camp had said. That's what I'd have done in the past. But anyway, I didn't do that. I answered softly and I just followed the camp's guidelines. But that's a place where I could have come out and really, And it would have done no good. But I think, because we answered softly, hopefully it didn't make you mad. And think about that also. If you go to someone, I mean, if I go to Kimberly and I'll say, now Kimberly, one of the things I told you when we got married was the only thing I cared about was supper being on the table and my underwear being clean and my socks being folded and in my drawer. And you're not been doing that, Kim. That's a true story, by the way. That's what I told her. I said, Kim, I really don't care about the house. I'd like to have supper on the table when I go home from work. I'd like to have clean underwear and my socks folded in the drawer. I don't know where that came from, but that just, you know, that's just me. But if I come in and said, now Kim, I've been to my drawer three times and there's no clean socks in there. Now what's the matter with you? How come you're not keeping my socks clean? What kind of response do you think that I would get out of her if I did that? Besides an iron pan up beside the head. Would it accomplish anything? That wouldn't accomplish anything. But if I handle that in a different way, you know, Kimberly could say, Mark, how come you ain't took out the trash? You know, you need to take out the trash. She's got it figured out. All she has to do is go over there and tie it and start taking it to the door. She doesn't have to say a word. Give me that and I'll take it out. You know what I'm saying? How you respond. So here's a place where we say a proverb speaks to your everyday life and if you follow what the proverb says, it makes an impact. Let's look at another one. I'm trying not to linger too much on these, but Proverbs 17.8. A gift is as precious as a precious stone in the eyes of him that hath it. Whether soever he turneth it, it prospers. You know what? How precious is a gift? A gift is precious no matter what it is, no matter the value. If someone gives you a gift, that holds a special place for you. because it's a gift. Some of the most precious things to you hold very little monetary value but hold great sentimental value because maybe they were given to you by your mom or your dad or your grandma or your grandpa. And so you treasure that gift. And so what's that tell us? Number one, if you receive a gift, treasure it because it has value. Someone thought enough about you to give that to you and they thought that you would enjoy that. Second of all, learn to give gifts because you can make an impact on someone's life if you take the time to consider them and to give them a gift. So you see, we could take these things and go a long way with them. Let's look at another one. Let's go to Proverbs 26, 14. Again, just random verses that use the word turneth in it. As the door turneth upon his hinges, so doth the slothful man upon his bed. The slothful hideth his hand in his bosom and giveth him to bring it again to his mouth. The sluggard is wiser in his own conceit. So notice, let's just go back to the one that uses turneth. As the door turneth upon his hinges, so does the slothful upon his bed. What are they saying? If you lay in bed all the time, you're slothful. And then you got to go and look through the book of Proverbs and see all the negative things it says about the slothful man. But there you go, it's encouragement not to be swathful. If you like to lay in a bed all the time, this is encouragement not to do so. And we could go on and on, but let's look at one more, Proverbs 28 and 9. He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be an abomination. Hmm. You don't listen to the word of God? Will God listen to your prayer? but you see what we're talking about if we would look inside the book of Proverbs and we would listen to the book of Proverbs and pay attention to the book of Proverbs we will be wise because we will learn how to take the Word of God and apply it to our lives in a practical way and it will it'll make our life happier it will make us a better in certain situations. So that's the wise person is the one who looks into the law of the Lord and applies it to their lives. That person is going to be the wise. The fool is the one who says, I don't care what the Bible says, I'm going to do what I want to do. Or I don't care about the book of Proverbs. I don't care if it is full of practical instruction. I ain't going to look at it, I ain't going to listen to it. That's the fool. is the person who is not firmly committed either to wisdom or folly. He is easily misled. Let's look at Proverbs 14, 15. He is easily misled. He doesn't have any principles. He doesn't have any convictions about the way he's gonna live. He can go this way or he can go that way. It doesn't really matter. The simple man believeth every word, but the prudent man looketh well to his going. The simple person is the one who has no convictions that will follow either way and that is what the book of Proverbs is talking about. It says this, his problem is that he does not apply himself to the discipline needed to gain and grow in wisdom. He just takes anybody's advice. He's a waffler that someone might say. He waffles on every decision. He has no convictions. So that is the simple person. Also as we look in the book of Proverbs another thing that we want to see is that the book of Proverbs is a book of comparisons. And what has to happen is we have to look at the comparison that's given in the book of Proverbs and then learn how to apply that proverb to different situations. in our lives. In other words, and I've already used this one, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Now as you read that proverb, are you thinking that's talking about being a wrangler on the ranch? And is that applicable, is that specifically speaking to a cowboy on the ranch? Or do we understand this? You can teach somebody the right way, but you can't make them follow it. See, that's what a proverb is. A proverb tells you the principle, and then you need to think about, well, how does that apply to me in my life? What does that mean? I can lead a horse to water, and you can't make him drink. So you take the proverb, and then you look at circumstances, and it helps you to understand how to apply that proverb in different situations in your life. Also, you look through the book of Proverbs. Let's turn to Proverbs 26, reading verses 4 and 5. There will be some apparent contradictions as you read through the book of Proverbs. It says in Proverbs 26, four, answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. So, when a fool is in his folly, do not answer him. But look at the next verse. Answer a fool unto his folly. So it tells you both things. It tells you not to answer a fool in his folly. Then it tells you to answer a fool in his folly. So there appears to be a contradiction. This is only contradictory, though, if we forget that there are proverbs and not laws. In other words, the specific verses apply to different situations. There is a time when you ought to answer a fool, or that you should not answer a fool because you don't want to be persuaded to follow him. And then there is a time that you ought to answer a fool according to his folly so he doesn't become prideful in his actions. So based upon the circumstances and the situations, for example, if a fool would tell you Come on, let's stick our hand in that electric socket. And I know it has 440 volts of electric on it, but grab a hold of both of those wires. It won't hurt you any. Yeah, we ought to be smart enough to know that I shouldn't follow that fool and his folly. But then, another person might come along and might say, It's okay to counsel a woman by yourself behind closed doors. I can do that and I don't have any problem with that. I'm not going to follow that fool and his folly because I don't want to get caught in a bad situation. You see what I'm saying? One time I'm not going to answer the fool. I'm not going to follow his advice. and do what he says and the next time I'm not going to do his vice and I'm not going to do what he says. You see what I'm saying? Depends on the circumstances, how you apply that to certain situations in your life. So there is no contradiction there in those two verses. Another example, in English someone might say something like this, many hands make light work. In other words, If you got a job to do, like passing out 37 food boxes, it's better to have 20 people helping you than four. Many hands make light work. But then you also might hear someone say, too many cooks spoil the pot. You can have too many at times also. So they seem to be contradictory, right? One's telling you the more you have, the better. Over here it's saying the more you have, the worse. That might seem contradictory. And so as you go through the book of Proverbs, you might see proverbs that seem to be contradictory. But remember, you have to pay attention to the context. You need to pay attention to the circumstances and understand specifically what that proverb is speaking to, which brings us to the point of context. It is important to remember the context of the proverbs. The first thing you need to understand, for example, who is the proverb speaking to? There are times that the proverb is speaking to the princes in the court. And so some proverbs would be applicable when the prince is in the court. And then the other proverb is talking about an ant gathering food for the winter. So you can't apply the proverb that's speaking to the prince in the court and the animal in the animal kingdom, you can't apply the proverb in the same way. So you have to know the context of the setting where the proverb is spoken. Another thing about context is remember this. The book of Proverbs, you shouldn't read it and it contradict the rest of scripture. If you read a proverb and it seems to contradict principle you find in scripture somewhere, you need to pay attention to your interpretation of the proverb. Thirdly, there's a historical context. Which means there's some things that are applicable to the day in which they were written and they might not be applicable to us. So you gotta know that context. And then the final understanding of the book of Proverbs is this, that their Proverbs are divine guidelines and wise observations and they are teaching underlying principles. They are not inflexible rules or absolute promises. They are teaching us principles and that is so important for us to understand. Through wisdom is in-house building and by understanding is it established. And so we must understand they are principles being taught and not absolute truths. So as we come to this closing thought on the book of Proverbs, hopefully this has given you some insight and really one of the things that I hope that it does for you is that it encourages you to maybe say, you know what, maybe I ought to begin reading through the book of Proverbs and seeing the wisdom that's there because the book of Proverbs is full of practical righteousness. But I want to share these closing thoughts from the ESV Study Bible when it says this. Proverbs often seem to be mere observations about life, but their deeper meanings will reveal themselves if the following grid is applied. When you read a proverb, you should ask, what virtue does this proverb commend? What virtue does this proverb commend? Second of all, what vice does it hold up for disapproval? What vice does it hold up for disapproval? And third, What value does it affirm? What value does it affirm? So if you ask those three questions, what virtue does this proverb commend? Second, what vice does it disapprove? And third, what value does it affirm? If you think about virtue, vice, and value. you think about those things you can come to a proper understanding of a book of Proverbs and you can apply it to your life and you can come out on the backside of reading the proverb and applying it as wisdom to your life it'll change your life and it'll make your life well-pleasing to God and you can know that the end of your life you'll hear how God is pleased with the way that you've lived your life. Heavenly Father we thank you for your book and We thank you for those men that have come together and studied this book and given us wisdom and understanding so we know how to live according to your book. And Lord, according to your will, help us, Lord, to follow your teaching so that we can be found living lives that are well-pleasing to you. Thank you for your truth. In the name of your son, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.