screech at us, it'll be fine. Let's pray. Father, thank you as we come into your presence again today on this your day, set aside for your glory and for our good, we pray that you would turn our hearts to your word during this next hour as we begin to consider a portion of your word, the Proverbs in particular, and how you convey to us through these words your wisdom. It's a reflection in part of your character. It is certainly grounded in your law. But it's also a very simple and instructive way for us to learn how to walk in this world as covenant children. So give us wisdom as we begin this study. Give us encouragement as we switch gears a little bit. And I pray that you would apply this to our hearts and minds in Christ's name. Amen. There's just kind of a sense of relief of having finished. Everyone's a theologian. That was a very long study, and you were 19 chapters. You had finished the first 18 chapters before I got here and picked it up in chapter 19. So after 41 chapters and almost 11 months, or about 11 months, we were able to bring that to a conclusion. And at my suggestion and with the agreement of the session, we're going to change gears and do some Bible study for the next few months. My first thought is about three months, maybe from now until February, something like that, just to see how it goes. We're not going to follow a particular study guide or outline. This is going to be a case of me kind of making up the lessons week by week and saying, you know, don't ask me too much about next week's lesson. I have an idea for where we can pick up next week, but after that, you know, I'll know when you know, that kind of thing. Okay. Good. Well, we covered a lot of ground in that book. It's a very expansive book in terms of what it tries to cover, which is always difficult when it comes to theology to try to capture in a few words and each of those chapters only being about three or four pages long. Yeah, you're really just kind of skipping across the wave tops in terms of the subject matter. And so part of what I wanted to bring to that as I picked up that study is to take a little deeper dive in places and especially in places where I think there are significant issues that we're confronted with in the church and in society today. who had been my Sunday school teacher, who was now at Reformed Seminary, who was then at Reformed Seminary, before he came here. And one of the courses was his Greek course, which, you know, I was impressed with what Greek, you know, the structure and stuff like that. I didn't learn much, but I was, I learned some Survey of the Old Testament taught by Jack Scott, who did a lot of PCA Sunday school lessons. And we, we went through probably 53 chapters of Isaiah in that survey. Wow. And I have the notes that I had my Bible, and I was writing notes as fast as I could, as he was turning pages and doing a survey. So surveys are okay. Surveys are good. Give you a feel for what's going on. Well, and what we're going to do with Proverbs is going to be a little bit of a survey, too. This is not going to be a chapter-by-chapter or verse-by-verse study. It's not intended for us to cover from, you know, chapter 1, verse 1 to chapter 31, verse 31, I think it is. But, the general idea that I have for this study after we do a little bit of an introduction, and next week we'll spend some time talking more about the motivation for this kind of a study, for the study of wisdom. is to do some character studies because we encounter some very interesting characters in the book of Proverbs that the lessons often come to us through this book by way of the contrast between characters and most especially the one who is wise and the one who is a fool. So, we'll take it kind of like that. But for today, let's kind of get our feet wet with this. So, I'm not going to follow any single resource for this. I don't have a particular book or commentary that I'm going to try to recommend to you for the study of this book, but I will use the occasion to put in a shameless plug for the ESV Study Bible. This is a Bible that I picked up about a year ago. It was published around 14, I think, so it's been out for a while. And I'd heard more than one pastor over those years talk about what a good resource it is, and I kind of hesitated because I thought it was a little pricey. I did find this hardback copy for about 45 bucks. And I can tell you it's well worth the price. Really good resource. It's obviously not explicitly a Reformed resource, but I'd say it's a very solid biblical resource. I mean it's 2,800 pages. between the text and all the notes, the charts, the maps, the tables. Lots and lots of resources between the covers of that book and I'll be drawing some from the ESV Study Bible as we undertake our study. It'll be an opportunity in my case to make use of this and some other resources I have in my library, commentaries on Proverbs, to kind of put things together. So for those of you who have been here for a while, that shouldn't surprise you too much. 20 years ago when I did my study on creation, It was kind of like that. It was a little bit ad hoc. I did have two or three books that I was using at the time and drawing from, but I don't think when I started that I knew it was going to take 19 lessons to finish it. So it'll be a little like that. We'll have some fun with this. It'll be a change of pace. When we're studying theology, that can be kind of heavy. At times, it can be a little tedious. but that's an important topic for us to have. And yet this will give us a way to think in terms of how we apply our theology because Proverbs is a much more, I hate to use the word pragmatic, but it's a much more pragmatic book in terms of what it's teaching us. Pragmatic not in the philosophical sense of pragmatism, Just to clarify, I am adamantly opposed to the influence of pragmatic philosophy, which is kind of a uniquely American version of philosophy. If it works, it's good. That's basically pragmatic philosophy in a nutshell. So it's not that, but it is practical in terms of giving you instruction that you don't have to scratch your head and say, well, what do I do with this? How am I going to apply this? It's pretty obvious how to apply it because it's telling you how to apply it. I would put it like this, that Proverbs is a book that has no hidden agenda. It's not the kind of book that we might puzzle over like the second half of Daniel or the book of Revelation, those middle chapters that we're kind of scratching our heads and going, well, there's different ways that we could look at this. How do we interpret it? And those kinds of things. Proverbs, it's kind of putting our cards right on the table. We know from the very beginning of the book what it's about. That means the interpretation of it is also straightforward. We can think of it as a collection of memorable instruction in practical living and it's intended or it's aimed for a younger audience so you might expect that it's a little bit simplified or oversimplified in its approach. So what we'll notice as we're looking at the Proverbs is that this is not designed to be written with either the kind of theological precision or the logical precision that we have when we're approaching a topic like systematic theology. If we were going to launch kind of a criticism, we might say that Proverbs engages in a lot of overgeneralization and that in the Proverbs we could find room for many exceptions to the statements that are being made in it. So here's one of the first tests we'll apply here that if your response to the general principles of Proverbs is something like this, yeah but what about this? Or what about that? Well I can think of an example where I did this and it turned out well and I can think of an example where I did that and it didn't turn out well. That's not the point of Proverbs. The point of Proverbs is to convey general principles of instruction. And if you find yourself saying those kinds of things, by the way, Proverbs has a label for you in case you're interested. It's called a scoffer, the one who basically despises wisdom and instruction. So we're going to be looking at the first 19 chapters of Proverbs. Go ahead and turn to that. I will read that for us. and then I will, first 19 verses, yeah, sorry. First 19 verses of chapter 1, that will be our text for today. Because there's so much here that, I mean, it's the kind of thing that almost writes itself, so to speak. So Proverbs chapter 1. 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. Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance. To understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Here, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck. My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. If they say, come with us, let us lie in wait for blood, let us ambush the innocent without reason, Like Sheol, let us swallow them alive and whole like those who go down to the pit. We shall find all precious goods. We shall fill our houses with plunder. Throw in your lot among us. We will all have one purse. My son, do not walk in the way with them. Hold back your foot from their paths for their feet run to evil and they make haste to shed blood. for in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird. But these men lie in wait for their own blood. They set an ambush for their own lives. Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain. It takes away the life of its possessors." So keep your finger there. We may come back to that. We'll be referring back to it. I have a series of questions that falls very naturally out of those first few verses. So this will be part of our introduction. Question number one, to whom is the book attributed? To whom is the book attributed? That would be Solomon. That's given to us at the very beginning. To whom is it addressed? Kirk has the answer for that one just a little early. Solomon's son or child, what is the purpose of the book? Yeah, so verses 2, 3, and 4 give us the answer to that question, 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. Okay? We don't have to guess what the purpose of the book is, do we? What is the exhortation given in these opening verses? Verse 5, let the wise hear and increase in learning and the one who understands obtain guidance. Okay? there's the exhortation. Pay attention, in other words. And don't just listen. Don't just listen with the idea of gaining some knowledge that you file away somewhere in your mind. But what's going to be the purpose of gaining the knowledge that the wise man is giving to us? Exegeting means getting the interpretation out of it. Eisegeting means reading an interpretation into it. You said eisegesis. Eisegete, yes. Okay. Yes. So, and my point is that in terms of the exegesis of the text, the hermeneutics, the interpretation of it, it's not that difficult. Because why? These are general principles. They were given to us in a way that is directly applicable to life. We don't have to say, wow, that's an interesting point of theology. What do I do with that? How do I live in light of this theological insight? It really is starting with how you should live. There's obviously theology behind that, but the point is not to convey theology as much as it is to convey our response. How many different ways is the purpose of the book described? Look at those first. verses 2, 3, and 4, 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. That's a lot of different ways of saying. Right, to understand a proverb and saying the words of the wise. and their riddles. So, many different ways, and here's a general principle, and by the way, the Proverbs and what we call the wisdom literature in the Bible is predominantly given to us in what literary form? I guess it's non-rhyming poetry. Yeah, it's poetic. And then what comes into play when it comes to poetry? How is poetry going to differ from what we call historical narrative? Historical narrative is this happened and then that happened and this guy did this and that guy did that. Yes? Metaphor, hyperbole, yeah. And what we're looking at right here, that's what I was fishing for. What's the significance of repetition particularly in poetic forms like this? It gives emphasis, it adds strength to it and so think of how in the 119th Psalm, David describes the Word of God in so many different ways. He uses probably just about every term that you can come up with for referring to the Word of God. The Law of God is precepts. I can't even remember off the top of my head now. But probably at least six different ways David uses to refer to the Law of God in the 119th Psalm. Similar here that you're seeing a multiple of different ways to refer to wisdom and part of what that helps do is the repetition gives us reinforcement and emphasis but what else does it do when we have several different words we can use to describe or try to describe one thing? Reinforcement, that's the repetition helps to reinforce it Okay, in more than just, in more than one way, let's say. Anthony? Yeah, and we have an expression, we have lots of expressions. It's funny we use them without thinking about it, but we would say that using many different words to describe the same thing allows us to see different facets of it, right? And what does that refer to, that particular idiom refer to? yeah, taking some kind of a precious jewel that's been carefully cut and it has many surfaces on it and you get the fullest view of that gem when you turn it and look at it from different angles and see the different facets of it. And I can use that as just to state the obvious point that part of what is involved in poetic form is lots and lots of idiomatic language. And at times, we can get, frankly, perplexed by some of the idiomatic language that's in the Bible. But what comes to us in the book of Proverbs is still idiomatic, but it's probably in a simpler form so that it's not as perplexing to us in terms of translation and interpretation. At any rate, that becomes part of the structure and part of the purpose of the proverb because what does it do for us when it is stated in those kinds of ways using metaphors and analogies? Yeah, it simplifies. And by simplifying it, what do you think is the overarching goal of wisdom? In other words, here's the picture of a teacher and a student. And if you're a teacher, well, if you're either one, but I'll say the teacher first, if you're the teacher, what is the bane of your existence as a teacher? Yeah, not just explaining it, but having your student retain what it is you're teaching them. Right? And then if you're the student, you're trying to learn what becomes part of your frustration as a student. trying to remember everything you're being taught. So the form that we have the Proverbs is designed in part to be memorable, to be simple and memorable, easier to teach, I would argue, and easier to remember. Okay. Let's see. So verse six. describes different, even referring to Proverbs, we've talked about different aspects of wisdom, different facets of wisdom, but also here's some different facets of the teaching of them. Verse 6, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles. So, several different ways even to describe the structure of the proverb and how it is taught, how it is presented. Okay, this one should be easy and I know there's someone in our audience who's going to know. No, kidding. True. So here's why I would say that when it comes to the Psalms and even other parts of wisdom literature, the book of Job or the book of Ecclesiastes even, the idiomatic references may not be easily understood by us in our present context. But here's part of what's interesting about the Proverbs in their simplicity. they are coming to us in a way that is actually about as universal as possible. And there's even some argument that part of the Proverbs that Solomon wrote or that he accumulated were part of what was basically public information of the day, right? it doesn't seem to be as popular as it used to be but when I was younger it was a popular thing to quote Confucius. Confucius say XYZ, right? So wisdom is not a new thing. There's evidence of ancient wisdom and The book of Proverbs is in the stream of that ancient wisdom, but part of what differentiates it, of course, is that it is part of God's inspired word. We could even talk about things like Aesop's fables and other forms of telling stories and moral tales and moral examples and those kinds of things. So here's Bill's question. What is the theological basis for receiving the instruction of this book? Yeah, this is one of your favorite topics actually. No, it's something that you have paid particular attention to and you've told us about how you've even made a catalog of this particular statement. Yeah, the theological basis for receiving the instruction of this book is found in verse 7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Now here's where most of the English translations are going to render LORD in small caps. What does that refer to? Correct. It's God's self-revealed name. Okay? Why is that significant compared to just God? I could point you to the first two chapters of Genesis, for example, where in the first chapter we see God, Elohim, and in chapters two we start to see what? Yahweh. Why the change? What does it signify when the text begins to refer to God by His personal name? His covenant name. In other words, this is God basically speaking to His covenant people. God reveals Himself to His people by His covenant name. That's going to become an important basis for understanding this book that God is speaking through these Proverbs to those who are part of His covenant and obviously that implies that there's regeneration in there and the work of the Spirit, the sanctifying work of the Spirit, and it's going to be part of the way that we can distinguish between those who are scoffers, who reject instruction, and those who receive instruction and respond to it. Important detail. It's the kind of thing that in most English translations we're accustomed to seeing LORD in small caps, and here's where I give a little bit of a nod to the Legacy Standard Bible, which explicitly translates the covenant name of God as Yahweh, where it appears in the Old Testament. And I think it was the ASV that first translated God's name as Jehovah. Not necessarily a great translation of his covenant name. Yahweh is probably a better translation. At any rate. The point is that when we see the Lord, this is God's personal covenant name, He's identifying Himself with His particular people as their covenant God. So we spent a lot of time talking about covenants and covenantal theology in our study of systematic theology. Here's an important theological ground that God is expressing Himself and His covenant relationship to His people that the fear of the Lord, who are those who fear Yahweh? Yeah, those who are in covenant relationship with Yahweh as Savior are those who will demonstrate that fear of the Lord. So we'll take some time to unpack that idea next week and pick up some places elsewhere where it is presented to us because it is, as Bill has pointed out, you've found it like how many different times in different books in the Bible? Lots. So dozens of times that idea of the fear of the Lord, the fear of Yahweh, it's one of those themes in Scripture and it's a theme that helps provide the framework for this book. Now, I have, this is my personal commentary, it's not something I read in a book somewhere, so take it for what it's worth, but this is something that I've observed in the study of Scripture. That often times as you're reading, especially certain books of the Bible, you will come to a verse in that book, it doesn't have to be necessarily in any particular place, beginning, middle, or end, but a verse that gives you what I call the cipher, the basis for understanding that book. And one of the best examples that I can think of right off the top of my head is one that you're familiar with. It won't offend your sensibilities for me to say this. When we take the book of Judges, what would you say is the cipher for the book of Judges? How are we to understand the book of Judges? Anthony's hand went up first. Yeah, and that's repeated at least three times in the book of Judges. In those days there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. So, for example, recently Doug Wilson is trying to take the example of Deborah as a judge in Israel and say, well, you know, she was one out of twelve, so maybe there's room for a certain percentage of women in some leadership in the church. You wouldn't try to make that interpretation in the book of Judges because the point of the book of Judges is what, Anthony? What did you just say? Repeat it. everyone doing what is right in his own eyes. So don't try to take too many examples especially when it comes to ecclesiology from the book of Judges because the whole point is that that was a period of several hundred years of essentially anarchy where Israel was apostatizing repeatedly. God would use the surrounding nations to antagonize and persecute the Israelites and they would finally cry out and say, give us some help down here. And so he would send them a judge and give them some relief for some period of time, sometimes for several decades. And that's the cycle that you see in the book of Judges. But the understanding of that book is in that statement. Everyone is doing what is right in his own eyes during that period of Israel's history. So that's my, I'll use that as a go-to example of what I mean when I say that you can often find what I would call ciphers in the scripture. There's little, sometimes it's just like a little verse or a little statement. It's like, oh, that statement helps me understand what's going on in the context of this passage or this book. And here's what we have here. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. that's going to help us understand the whole motivation behind the book of Proverbs and the wisdom literature generally. We see that also, I probably will look at Job 28 next week as part of our lesson for next week. Job is considered part of the wisdom literature of scripture and Job 28, if you want to go take a look at that, is a fascinating description of And it's an analogy between the kind of effort that's required to find and to produce and to refine things like precious metals and jewels and all kinds of things that have material value and then contrasting that and using that as the basis for talking about wisdom. And Job concludes that chapter with this very statement that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So that is a recurring theme, not just giving us the basis for what we see in Proverbs, but as a basis for understanding the wisdom literature more generally. Now take a look at verse 7 again. Let's get something else from verse 7. What is the contrast that this book is going to put in front of us as we read and study this book? Yep. Yeah, prosperity on the one hand or blessing on the one hand, death, destruction, you know, physical and financial calamity on the other hand, and part of the poetic structure here And this is what we'll see over and over again. We see this also a lot in the Psalms. You will have what's called a couplet. So it's this verse. It's one verse, but it's in two statements. And then we look at those two statements and we're going to find either the second statement reinforces the first one, just stating it a little differently, or the second statement does what? Like in this instance. Yeah, it's a contrast between this and that. The contrast between the one who fears the Lord, who gains wisdom, and the one who despises wisdom and instruction. So, notice that kind of structure, not just within the Proverbs, but in the poetic literature generally, because you'll see that many, many times in the Psalms, especially the contrast in the Psalms between the righteous and the wicked. And so you have these extreme kinds of contrasts that are intended to do what? That gives us an unmistakable distinction between the two sides. I would also say that covenantally it points out to us that there are only two options. You're either wise because you fear the Lord or if you despise wisdom and instruction you despise God and That means you're either under his blessing as one who fears him or you're under his wrath by one who despises him. And as we've said in covenantal theology, those are the only two options. Nobody can be neutral. But poetically and in terms of literary structure, it gives us a contrast so that we what? So it reinforces the point when we have those kinds of extremes of contrast. So we talked about the different ways wisdom is described, wisdom, instruction, words of insight, instruction, and why he's dealing in righteousness, justice, equity, prudence, knowledge, discretion. My question is, do you think there is a moral aspect to wisdom? In other words, what is the connection between wisdom and the law of God? Ginger. I'm looking at Deuteronomy 4.6-8, Deuteronomy 4.26. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, and so part of what's being described there is how the nations see basically the behavior of the Israelites. It's not enough to say well we have our own God of Israel and he's got his laws and we have certain beliefs about that but there's a connection between, there should be a connection between what we believe and what we do and that's even visible, observable to outsiders and that's an illustration of that principle. So the connection between wisdom and law, pretty obvious. Proverbs is not, it's got law in it, I'll put it that way, and there will probably be a few things that we pick up that are very obviously connected to the commandments. But it's not an exposition of law per se. It's, I think, better described as an application of the law. So there's a moral principle in it, and we are to follow the moral principle. If we study the law alongside the Proverbs, then we can more easily understand why the Proverbs exhort us to conduct ourselves in a certain way. Another comment? Okay? We could put it like this that the two great commandments are what? Yeah, love God and love your neighbor. So personal holiness and what I will call awkwardly neighborliness. Right? Summation of the law in two somewhat awkward words. So this is coming to us as a book of instruction. What does the idea of instruction in wisdom imply about learning generally? For example, what are the different ways you can learn? Experience. Okay. Education. Okay. Okay, yeah, like that. That's true. Let's boil it down to these two to look at the contrast. The point of the Proverbs is to teach you from either someone else's insight or someone else's experience so that you don't have to do what? Yeah, you don't have to learn it by your own experience and, I'm putting Bill and Kirk's comments together, and suffer from it. And some of these things are very serious things that you don't want to try to learn by experience. The idea is that there is knowledge and wisdom in how to live That is gained in part from experience but also gained in part from training and that is, I'll call it awkwardly, a received knowledge. What is the point of teaching young people? That there is a knowledge that you have that they don't have and they should be receptive to receiving your knowledge so that they don't do what? I mean what does every parent wish for his own children? Yeah, don't make the same stupid mistakes I did. That's the general principle. God gives people to parents. Yeah, to pass that along. Some of that comes from experience. It may be personal experience. It may be observation. You see what happens to other people. And you see how they fall into the traps of deception and disobedience and the effect that it has, but you're trying to pass something on to your own children so that they don't make those same mistakes, whether you personally did it or not. Why are the young exhorted to learn from the elder? Because that's the picture here, a father speaking to a son. Obviously a father is a generation older than the child he's speaking to. He's more experienced. He's made mistakes. He knows the consequences of foolish behavior, foolish choices. He knows more than the child does and what does every child think about his parents? I know more than they do, right? It's usually the other way around. Why do you think it might be unwise for the young to learn from the young? Yeah, as Jesus says, if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a ditch. And this is why I'm kind of universally opposed to the idea of youth ministry because it's usually somebody who's about 20 years old who's trying to teach kids who are 15 years old and that's just a bad idea. Anthony. Yeah? And that hearkens to the promises of blessing under God's law, doesn't it? Long life and not necessarily, you know, there's never a promise of being fantastically rich, but there's a promise of having enough of what you need. And again, when it makes those kinds of statements, what's implied by the opposite? that failing to do that can easily bring you to personal, spiritual, financial ruin, all of those things. You can even put your own life in danger by your own folly. So just for the record, you know I'm against the principle of young people teaching young people. Not a good idea. That's not the picture that we have in this book, that it is not only the experience and the wisdom of the elder teaching the younger, But also, there's an authority between a father and his son, isn't there? So it's not just a difference in age or experience, but there's also an authority that's underlying a father teaching his son. And in fact, the Proverbs are going to talk about that, aren't they? That there is a duty of parents to instruct their children. What does it tell us about the default setting of a child if it's necessary to teach him wisdom? That's probably a good way to summarize it. They don't necessarily come out wise, do they? They may come out wise in their own eyes and the Proverbs talk about that guy, but you don't want to be that guy. You want to be one who's in a position to receive wisdom, to be taught, to be instructed, and to be formed and shaped in terms of your character by the wisdom of your elders. Go ahead. Food and comfort. there's a principle here, a guiding principle of wisdom, that there must be something that is objective and knowable and teachable, or else this is really just kind of a fruitless exercise. That there is some content, and it's meaningful content. And part of what I intend to convey by that statement is that this book was compiled somewhere around 2,700 to 3,000 years ago. Different time, different place. And the wisdom that's contained in it, we wouldn't even try to argue, is somehow limited to that time and place or what came afterward, but we could go back even further if we wanted to, couldn't we? Because there's a universality in the way wisdom is being conveyed to us. We could easily say that those men of old, those who feared the Lord and who called upon the Lord and worshipped the Lord, the ancients, the patriarchs, they were exercising that principle of fearing the Lord as the beginning of gaining wisdom. Abraham, for example, was a man of considerable wisdom. Not infallible, certainly, but he was a man of considerable wisdom. And then Job is a similar contrast because although we can't precisely date the time of Job's life, we can probably ballpark it around the time of Abraham which is somewhere around 2000 BC. And so part of the wisdom that comes to us through the wisdom literature of scripture is coming to us through the life and the words of Job who lived literally a millennium before Solomon began to write these things down. Okay, timelessness. In other words, it's objective and it's lasting. It's something that is not limited to a certain time or place or cultural context. But then we have to take the cultural references, and especially things like agrarian references, because we're not an agrarian society today. but take those references to be able to understand the lesson that's being conveyed in it, because whether you use an agrarian way of demonstrating it or an industrial way of demonstrating it, it's the same underlying principle. Why is such instruction necessary? And here, let's consider at least these two things. We've talked about the first one. that we are inherently foolish, and we're inherently foolish not by virtue of youth per se, but by virtue of what? Yeah, the fall. The fall has made us all universally foolish. And the other reason why we're going to see instruction as necessary is because, and we even got a little bit of this in the portion that we read this morning from chapter 1, that there's a certain attraction for this foolish behavior, isn't there? There's sometimes some kind of temporal or physical short-term reward, I hate to use that word because if you're engaging in sin you can't really think of it as a reward per se, but it's that thing that makes that disobedience or that foolishness attractive to us. Yeah, it's the reward of man, as Ginger says. The thing that popped into my head just now is the redneck expression, here, watch this. In the category of what we call famous last words. Here, watch this. You've never seen anybody do something like this with a bicycle before or a skateboard or whatever. We are drawn to foolishness in no small part because our hearts are foolish by virtue of the fall. So we have to be warned against doing those things that we want to do and those things that may have an attraction to us because of the benefits that we think they will produce for us. When we instruct in wisdom, it should convey to the student a greater totality of the consequences of his choices. In other words, it's easy to say, well, you know, I want to steal that bike over there because I want that bike and I want to ride around on it. Okay, so you get the short-term benefit of having that bike, but what's the problem? The long-term consequence might be that you get arrested for stealing that bike. I would also argue that part of the lesson that we find in this book is that some things, and here I'll just say adultery as an example because the book of Proverbs is going to talk a lot about adultery, that some things should never be learned by experience. You never want to learn that kind of thing from experience and the warnings against adultery are very graphic in terms of things like you're basically going down to the grave if you go to the adulteress' house. Those kinds of descriptions. Another lesson that we also see in that little passage that we read this morning is that if you're part of a group it can also exert enormous pressure on you as an individual. What are we hearing? if they say, come with us, let us lie in wait for blood, let us ambush the innocent without reason and so forth. Yeah, you have that thing that we call peer pressure and at those moments it's going to be very hard to resist temptation but the important thing is that you do not fall into, as we would say, don't fall into the wrong crowd. As we go through some of these things I want you to notice how wisdom is going to be described as a form of riches and if we look at Job 28 next time then it will emphasize the point because he uses the first half of that chapter to describe every kind of riches and how to obtain those riches and how difficult it is and how much effort we go to find those things. It's really quite remarkable insight into the understanding that the ancients had if this was 4,000 years ago of how you obtain things like ore out of the ground that you can smelt and turn into things like copper or iron or bronze. It's amazing to me to realize that they had that kind of metallurgical knowledge. At any rate, the point is that wisdom is being compared to the kinds of things that produce riches, spiritual riches obviously, but can also lead to material riches, material success, let's put it that way, that you don't conduct business in a way that's unethical, for example. I saw a video just this week of a person who went into a grocery store. Did you see it? She goes into a grocery store. She's, it amazes me that people post this stuff on the internet, but here's a self-produced video of this woman who goes into a grocery store and she's showing how she saves money in purchasing meat. She goes to the meat department She picks out the pack of meat that she wants that has a price on it, let's say $20, and she goes over to another package of meat that has a price of $10 on it, pulls the label off of the $10 meat and puts it on the $20 package and then pays only $10 for a $20 pack of meat. And the expression that came to my mind which I posted in response to that was, you shall not move an ancient boundary stone. Now, that's kind of an idiomatic expression, but what does it mean? Well, there's that. Don't cheat. Yeah, you're defrauding someone if you're trying to claim that your property goes over the boundary marker onto their property. That's theft. Absolutely. That's another one. And I like that one because it points to, it's like, you know, in commerce, and in commerce, it applies both to the product and to the money that you use to transact commerce, that you don't have different weights and measures, either for measuring out the product, or for measuring out the money that's going to pay for the product. Anyway, we can explore those kinds of things. We are out of time. I've made a mark here in my notes. Since this is kind of an open-ended lesson or study, I can just kind of push this down to next week, and that'll be the first part of next week's lesson, or I can figure out how I want to incorporate that. So, we will continue next week, but this gives us a good starting point, and I wonder if Anthony would be willing to pray for us as we dismiss. in Christ, we thank you for the lesson that we've received this morning from your word. Father Robert, we ask that you would prepare our hearts as we move into our time of corporate worship and that you would be honored and glorified and exalt yourself upon us, Father, that you would give us receptive hearts to receive your word and may your spirit apply to us Amen. Thank you.