Father, thank you this morning that we can be together again to study your word. I continue to pray that you would give us spiritual wisdom as we consider the wisdom that you have given to us through Solomon and through other wise men of the ancient world, that you speak through your spirit in these principles and give us guidance on how we ought to live in a fallen world. So I pray that you'd be with us this morning as we continue to look at your word and that we would continually be turning to you for that wisdom that we lack in ourselves. And we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. So we're picking up kind of where we left off last week. It turns out I had, it's not going to surprise you, about another page of notes from The first message that got kind of pushed to this message today, some of that we've already touched upon, so maybe I can get through it a little quicker than I would have because hopefully it's a bit of review as we undertake our second look at Proverbs. So I'll start with the question then when we talk about a proverb, or what is the form and the purpose of a proverb? To teach us something. Okay, it's didactic, it has an instructive purpose, true. And it, what, we talked some about the form of proverbs last week. poetic structure that not only the book of Proverbs, but also much of what is called the wisdom literature of scripture comes to us in that kind of a poetic form. And then the Proverbs themselves often take a very specific poetic form that we'll look a little more closely at. So in the middle portion of the book of Proverbs, starting in chapter 10, I believe it is, the Proverbs come to us in the form of these short little couplets, one verse couplets. And what is the basic structure and purpose of the Proverbs being presented to us in that particular way? Okay, one, Kirk says, is to help us remember them so that they're memorable. Obviously, if we want to apply something, it helps to be able to remember it. Are there connections in them, so that we can see the connections? Yeah, so when you say connections, connections within the couplet, right? And what kind of connections do we expect to find in a couplet where it's one verse in our scripture, our numbering scheme in scripture, but it consists of two lines? Compared, contrast? Okay, it can do some comparison, some contrast. There are several different ways that that particular form can be used, and that also helps us with the part of remembering it as well, because we can be instructed both in terms of what's required and what's forbidden. Remember, the law comes to us in both forms, right? What are some examples just from the Ten Commandments that contrast the do's and the do not's? How about the fourth commandment? The fourth commandment says, remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. And what does the fifth commandment say? Honor your mother and father, and that's gonna bear on the Proverbs as we'll see today. What about the sixth commandment? It says, you shall not commit Murder, that's number seven. You're in the ballpark. Yeah, it's actually a little easier to remember if you think in terms of the severity of the sin. Murder's obviously a more severe sin than adultery. They're both sins, obviously, but you can think in terms of as you go from the tenth to the first, that each notch up the tenth commandment the sins are becoming more and more serious as we move from the second table to the first table and then up to the very first commandment which is... So you're arguing that honoring your mother's others is more important than not killing? I'm sorry. I certainly am. I certainly am. Because and if you want to go down that rabbit trail we can do that. I'm open to that possibility but think about And look at the exposition, and here's where I'll kind of push that off for your own further study. Go and look at the exposition of the fifth commandment in the larger catechism. And notice this important detail, that the whole structure of civilization hinges on the fifth commandment, of honoring those who are your elders. And of course, this is one of the themes of Proverbs, and we're going to talk about that today, quite by coincidence. Providence, of course. Yes, I would say that is, you know, you literally cannot have ordered society if you do not have a respect for the structures that God has established that include chiefly the family, the church, and the state. Ginger. Can we say it goes, rather than more serious, can we say it goes from seed form to more developed or mature? I would say yes and no, because how does Jesus, for example, expound on the sixth commandment? You shall not commit murder. Do you have to kill someone in order to commit murder? Murder is taking a life. Not explicitly. Be careful. And here's where the Roman Catholic's gonna say, the sixth commandment is you shall not kill and therefore every form of killing is wrong, it's a sin. And that's not correct. So there must be a case where some form of killing is not murder. What is it that distinguishes, for example, the death penalty from a capital crime like murder? Yes, it's an attack on the Imago Dei, but what is the basis, what does Jesus say in the Sermon on the Mount about murder? Do we need to look at that? If you hate your brother in your heart, you have already broken that commandment. Hate him without cause, specifically. Right? That the root of murder is the desire to hurt someone. And what does that also, how does that also connect up the ladder, so to speak? Why did Cain kill Abel? Envy. Right, so who was Cain actually mad at, in other words? He was trying to get back at God, as it were. So murdering a man made in God's image is an attempt to kill God by proxy, which makes it a pretty serious sin. But it starts with the desire so that the form of justice that includes the death penalty is preserved. We're not setting that aside. And here's where the Roman Catholics are very inconsistent in their sanctity of life ethic. They think the sanctity of life requires not imposing the death penalty. Which is kind of ironic because locking someone up in prison until they die is kind of the same thing. But at any rate... But let me ask this. Can we put a degree on sin because in Revelations it says Correct, but we also understand that there are differences in the degrees of sin. And we've talked about how when we talked about the doctrine of hell a few weeks ago, we said what? That not everyone in hell is punished exactly the same. You're punished according to your particular sin. That's what justice requires. Not that everybody's punished the same in hell. but that you're punished according to your particular sin and some sins worse than others and deserves greater punishment than others. What did Jesus even say about the scribes and the Pharisees specifically? It's kind of one of those chilling statements. You will receive the greater judgment, right? So anyway, degrees of sin, and again, all sin is sin. It's an offense against God. All sin is a form of rejecting God and rejecting his authority. But the point is that yes, there is, as it were, a precedent. Some sins are worse than others, and consequently, some sins will be punished more severely than others. So how does... Go ahead. You say the Roman Catholics are against the death penalty, but there were periods of time, such as Inquisition, etc., where they were fine with the death penalty. As long as it was Protestants that were being killed, right? Because they were heretics. So there is, even in the history, there is acceptable killing. Yes, probably the Crusades would be another illustration of that. All that does is prove the point that the Roman Catholic system is inconsistent in its understanding. And that's partly because of the misfortune of the King James Version saying in the Sixth Commandment, you shall not kill, rather than you shall not murder. Okay, anyway, sidebar. Where were we? Proverbs, poetic forms, couplets, so parallelism. When proverbs come to us in that parallel kind of form, it can be both for contrast and for emphasis. So typically what you'll see is either the first and the second lines of the proverb are in opposition to each other, that's the contrast, or it could be that the second line of the proverb states the same thing that the first line of the proverb says in a slightly different way and that provides a means of emphasis, right? It's like us putting it in boldface. That must be important if I'm saying the same thing twice in a slightly different way. And even at times repeating exactly the same thing. We did a reading from Psalm 136 a few weeks ago. And what's interesting about Psalm 136? Yeah, the couplets in Psalm 136 are the statement, and then the second part of the couplet is that refrain, His loving kindness, His mercy endures forever. You kind of suspect that that might be an important point in the unfolding history that is laid out there in the 136 Psalm. Anyway, the point is that in that poetic form, You can have different kinds of repetition. You can have contrast. Sometimes the second part of the couplet is gonna provide stronger emphasis than what's in the first part of the couplet and so forth. So you can also have other kinds of poetic forms like metaphors, similes. illustrations. Here's a couple more, and it might surprise you for me to just point this out to you, but it is the case. You have cases of hyperbole. What do we mean by hyperbole? Yeah, some intentional exaggeration. And then what does hyperbole often produce in terms of our response to it? No? pushes you to think and say, wow, that's really out there. Yeah, I get your attention, but do you think when Jesus said that before you try to take the speck out of your brother's eye, you might want to remove the log from your own eye, was that hyperbole or was that meant maybe to have another effect? Perspective, is that the word you're looking for? How about humor? Are we both suggesting that there's humor in the Scriptures, and even some of the way that the fool is presented to us in Scripture? What does it say about the sluggard? He puts his hand in the dish, but he's so lazy he won't even put his hand to his mouth once he's put his hand in the dish. Or the sluggard who says, there's a lion outside. I can't go outside, I can't do anything. I can't engage in some productive labor because there's a lion outside. So hyperbole also can provide some humorous relief at the same time. And again, that's part of what can make these things memorable. The last one that I have in my list here, which might surprise you because in your English Bibles, it doesn't show up, is a form called acrostic. What do we mean by acrostic? It's the alphabet and the first letter going down. Yeah, so when we talk about acrostic psalms, there should be at least two psalms that pop right to the top of your mind when I say acrostic psalms. What are they? The 119th psalm and what's the other one? Top of mind, the 19th. The 19th is also an acrostic psalm. And in that acrostic form, what you're doing is starting the first line of each verse with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. So what is the structure of the 119th psalm, for example? It has a series of eight verses divided into 22 parts, each of those 22 parts reflecting the particular letter of the Hebrew alphabet from A to Z, so to speak. We have an acrostic form that shows up in the Proverbs, but your English Bible probably doesn't mention that to you. Any guesses on where it might be? where you find 22 verses in the book of Proverbs that pertain to a certain topic. Proverbs 31, verses 10 to 31, which is the passage that talks about what? You should know that by heart. The excellent wife, right? It's that memorable passage where the writer of Proverbs is spelling out what are the characteristics of the excellent wife. And that is, it's written in an acrostic form. And like I said, in the ESV, for example, it might say that in your footnotes, but it's probably not going to show that in the text. Here's where, by the way, I think it's interesting that the Legacy Standard Bible, which is essentially the MacArthur translation by the Master's Seminary, based on the NASB, shows those forms wherever they show up in scripture. So if you open your LSB to Proverbs 31, it will show the divisions in the verses of chapter 31, according to the acrostic. Anyway, just kind of a footnote. The point is that that appears in a number of places in scripture. And what do you suppose is the reason for that? Is that just poetic artistry? Kirk is pointing at his head again. He's either got a headache or he's got a point. It helps with memory, doesn't it? It's designed to be a memory device. So that becomes part of the clue of how the proverbs are written, how they're structured. They're designed for didactic purposes to teach, but also, hopefully, at least in parts, to be So to make them instructive and memorable, we can think that the Proverbs are similar to the New Testament parables. Jesus speaks on many occasions in the form of a parable. And what is the parable supposed to do? It's the same idea. It's to convey a lesson, usually one major point in a parable, and to do it in a way that is memorable. And I would even say like this, relatable. Because in an agrarian society we shouldn't be surprised that many of the parables are agrarian in terms of the story or the way that they're conveying the lesson through kind of an agrarian way of thinking. Now, the book of Proverbs in our Bibles It is not a singular book per se, it's a compilation of Proverbs. It was put in its final form probably towards the end of the Old Testament period in, you know, the late Old Testament period, maybe fourth century, fifth century, around that time. It's obviously attributed to Solomon, but it's also the case that there are references in Proverbs to a couple of other individuals, who we, well, Hezekiah we know, but Lemuel, we don't know who that refers to, and other wise men, unnamed and unexplained. The point is that it's, and there are scholars who have seen the connection between parts of what's in the Book of Proverbs and what can be found in things like Egyptian wisdom literature that predates the Solomonic period. Is it important for us to know exactly where it all came from, or who wrote it down, or when it was written down, or when it was all put together in the form that we have today? And the answer is no. And the reason is because the Proverbs, and part of the form of the Proverbs, is to be very universal. It's designed to be universal. It's remarkable to think that we are getting a peek into a time in history of 2,500 to 3,000 years ago when we read a book like Proverbs. Same is true when we read the Psalms. So, it's presented to us in a universal form that the particular context of its writing becomes less important to us understanding it because they kind of stand on their own in that sense. Now some will also argue that the book of Proverbs is an instruction chiefly intended for the children of kings. We're children of the king? Yes. That's a good point. We are also children of the king. In other words, put it like this, and this is an argument from the greater to the lesser. If it is the case, that kings, in order to be wise, need to live according to the wisdom that's in Proverbs, don't also the rest of us. It may be, as we would say, that the higher up you go in an organization, the more you should exemplify the standard. But the same standard applies to everyone. And that same thing is true, of course, with wisdom. The one who is the ruler in this case, the one who's going to be king someday, ought to be an example or an exemplar for everybody else, right? That's the best case scenario. Mark likes to say, as the king goes, so goes the nation. What does, in this book, the way that it's conveyed to us as kind of a conversation almost, what does the instruction of the father to the son imply about the adult's duties in relation to his children? That should be a pretty easy one, right? A duty to instruct, and what goes along with instruction? Is it just here's information? Guiding and perception. Discipline? And what do we mean when we say discipline? Because that can be understood very broadly. Keep them straight. Yeah? OK. Consequences. So there being maybe some punitive consequences for disobedience, but instruction is on the front end, isn't it? You give instruction, you make correction. If you're a parent, you know you're constantly correcting your children, virtually every minute of the day. So yeah, the duty to instruct and to guide, that obviously is a parent's responsibility in relation to his children. Second part of the question, is that duty limited to fathers? Oh, absolutely. Oh, Kirk must be one of those patriarch guys or something. It's amazing he only had about two hours a day to do it. But he still had the responsibility to do that. And if it was the case in the fairing household when the children were young, that it was in fact Lisa who was with the children most of the time, did Lisa during the time that she had with the children have a duty to instruct her children, even if her husband was not in the room at the time? Yeah, do we have some biblical evidence for that? I don't know, maybe from the book of Proverbs. Notice how, and again, I'll point out to you how in the fifth commandment, what does it say? It says, honor your father and mother. So there is a duty for children to be under the authority of both of their parents. And so here where we see it in Proverbs, in at least three different verses, Proverbs 1.8 explicitly where he says, hear 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. And then again in Proverbs 6, verse 20, my son, keep your father's commandments and forsake not your mother's teaching. Bind them on your heart, always tie them around your neck. It is interesting that quite some time ago I had a friend from the CREC church ask me, so what do you do when your sons turn 12 and they don't have to listen to you anymore? And I said, they do listen to me, and they have to listen to me. I'm still their parent. Well, don't they only have to listen to their father? No. I don't know how that's even a controversial question, especially in light of just even the two verses that I shared with you. But now fast forwarding to the end of Proverbs at great chapter 31, what does it say in verse 26? Referring to the excellent wife, she opens her mouth with wisdom and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She's not just a manager of her own household, but she is a teacher in her own household. And we deduce from that that she's a teacher both to the children that are under her care as well as those household servants that are under her care. So both parents have a duty. We would say that the final responsibility falls upon the husband to ensure that the teaching is the right teaching. but that it is the responsibility of both parents, because they're not all both with the children all the time, to be teachers to their children as they're raised up. Now, looking at it from a different point of view, what does the relationship of the teacher to the student imply about this young man's posture toward his parent or teacher? That's just kind of a fill-in-the-blank on the basis of what we just said. Acceptance, respect, understanding, follow the instruction. Yeah? And why would you follow someone's instruction? Is that a courtesy? Because they're over you. They're your instructor. They have the authority. Yes, and if one has authority, what does that imply about the other one? It's hard to say this word out loud, I know. We're so conditioned against this concept. Submission. What does the fifth commandment say, basically, when it says, honor your father and mother? What does Paul say even more explicitly? Children, submit to your parents in the Lord. You respect the authority of your parents by submitting to the authority of your parents. That means submitting to their instruction for one thing, which is for your good, and putting it into practice. Anthony. Well, parents are in the place of God in His birth, the child. they're representing God to the child. Yeah, so that suggests that there's maybe another authority relationship there that's kind of behind it. Which means that the parents, when they instruct their children, are doing what? They're obeying God. Which means they are? Instructing their children in caring for God. They are submitting to God in caring for their children. I know it's a hard word to say. Ever since the fall, that's been a really hard word to say. But throwing more into it, it is easier to instruct when there is mutual respect. A parent respecting their child and not exasperating them. Right, that's part of the commandment, is it? Yeah, and it flows a lot easier when you have a good relationship as opposed to a, I'm going to crack the whip and you're going to do it. Right, that's authoritarianism and scripture very strongly stands against that kind of... That's kind of the other side of the wrong idea of submission. You will submit to everything harsh, etc. Yes, and here's where our confession makes it clear in liberty of conscience that submitting to those who have authority over us is not an absolute. And in fact, it says that if you think that the one you submit to has absolute authority, you have denied liberty of conscience. Interesting. Go look at chapter 20, fascinating. I don't think we can understand, especially the arguments over the relationship between church and state, without understanding the primacy of conscience. That for conscience sake, we submit to those who are in authority over us, but we do not submit in the absolute sense of a blind obedience that simply puts conscience aside and says, whatever I'm told to do, I will do, even if my conscience tells me it's wrong. Anyway, this is your fault, you get me on all these side trails and it's hard for me to get through my notes. Isn't that what we do in the fall, blame somebody else? Everything goes back to Genesis chapter 3, of course. The curse that God placed on the woman was what? The language is a little ambiguous, but we compare chapter three to chapter four, we can kind of figure this out. Your desire shall be for your husband. Meaning what? Desire to have headship over him. And he shall rule over you. And so the tension there is between A wife submitting to her husband when she really wants to be the one in charge, and a husband ruling over his wife without becoming harsh. And for those in any position of authority, what does Jesus say about those who are in positions of authority? What is their sin? Those who rule lord it over you. What does that kind of language refer to? What does that mean? Yeah. What's another word for that? Tyrant? Yup. Abusive. It becomes an abusive authority at that point. If you are ruling in a manner that's harsh or ruling in a manner that is contrary to what your office requires. That's another way to think about it. And it's not loving. Yeah, that is not loving. And just like in the house, The children are required to submit to their parents and the parents are required to teach their children. But that shouldn't be done with a spirit of harshness. We're warned against basically being antagonistic or overly strict. So there has to be a relationship here because there's an authority structure parent to child That means the parent has a position of authority, the child has a position of submission. How is that contrary to a child's sinful nature? This one ought to be easy. Lisa was the first one to laugh when I said that. That's because I just spent a week with a two and a half year old. we're going to anyway. It's funny how by the time they learn how to talk they're already learning how to say no. First two words that a child learns are no and mine. That's a little Yeah, I get that, but you know what I'm saying. I'm teaching you a parable. Because I guarantee you one of the first things a child is going to learn how to say is no and mine. And it expresses what? Yeah, our children are innocent. We want to say they're innocent. It really reflects the whole world revolves around me. And that's... What's that called? I keep telling everybody that the difference between an adult and a child is we are more creative about hiding the idea that the whole world revolves around me. Oh yeah. Yeah, we're born narcissists. We're born idolaters, loving ourselves and not concerned about anyone else's welfare. I like to tell the joke that there's no child who ever woke up in the middle of the night and lying there in his bed thought to himself, I'm hungry. I haven't eaten in a couple of hours. But man, mom and dad are so far behind on their sleep. I know they need the rest. I'm just going to lie here quietly. Yeah, that doesn't happen, does it? You get the idea. And the point of parenting in no small part is helping train the child or discipline the child to overcome that selfish nature. How do humility and submission go together as we start to unpack the Proverbs? Because that idea of humility is going to be a recurring theme in the book of Proverbs. Think in terms of the opposite. What is the vice that's in view? Pride. Yeah. Pride. And what does pride say? I'm the only thing that matters. Yeah. And more specifically, no one's going to rule over me. I'm going to rule myself. So pride scorns authority. It's also going to scorn instruction, because why? Pride says, I don't need to learn anything. I know everything I need to know. And nobody needs to tell me anything. My view is the only correct view. Of course. And what happens specifically in the culture that we live in today which tries so hard to deny the objectivity of truth. And when I say objectivity of truth, I mean that truth is a singular thing. If truth is not a singular thing that's out there somewhere that we can point to or we can find it if we're looking for it, where am I gonna find truth now? I am it. Sure. I'm going to look on the inside, and I'm going to find my truth on the inside. And I'm going to live by my truth. And how often do you hear that kind of language today? It may be true for you, but not true for me. Exactly. But the funny thing is, you may say that, Steve, but as soon as I state my truth, you're going to try to tell me I'm wrong. That your truth is right, and my truth is wrong. Isn't that funny how that works? Some will even say, that may be true. And Sproul will tell them, it does matter to you whether you think it's true or not. And why is that? Because this is our truth. What is truth? Yeah, somebody asked that question famously a couple thousand years ago, huh? What was the answer to that question? Lord Jesus. For this reason I was born, for this reason I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Anybody who's of the truth listens to me. That's where he says what? I am the truth, capital T. Am I the only one then that runs into people who frequently say, well, it's true for you, that's fine, that's fine for you, whatever makes you happy. I know you're, or something like, I know you're right, but I'm going to continue in my ways because if I think about it, it makes me crazy. Those kinds of things. That's not somebody who's actually trying to determine or stand their ground on their truth. That's somebody who denies it altogether. But let's imagine you're having a conversation with someone who says, this is my truth. You've got your truth, I've got my truth. If you were to try to correct that person and say nicely, you're wrong, this is what's true, what's the response going to be? How dare you? Yeah, so the one who claims to have the truth is going to reject what you claim to be the truth. In other words, they're going to make a distinction, this is what I'm saying, that when you believe something that they believe, they're going to reject what you believe in favor of what they believe, and in doing so, what are they basically saying? I'm right and you're wrong. So she's nowhere, just nowhere. And you go around and around in circles. Maybe I shouldn't be saying this right before Thanksgiving because you may be faced with the dilemma of sitting around the table at Thanksgiving dinner and wondering what you're able to say without setting the house on fire or causing a family feud. That's what's wrong with America today. How so? The inability to talk about things? If you try to talk to your, in our case, our grandchildren, it's total rejection. That's just exactly what we're saying here, this relationship between the elders and the younger, that the younger will just reflexively reject what a parent or a grandparent is trying to teach them in the way of wisdom or instruction. Other comment? Did you have something to add? Well, I just have kind of a go-to scripture for that, which is when the disciples said, Jesus, don't you know you offended them? So he already said it. They show their offense. And he said, leave them be. The blind lead the blind to a pit. At some point, if they're headed to a pit, at least there's that little bit of hope that they might realize it before they get there. but otherwise there's really nothing you can do. Yeah, and so remember how we kind of introduced the topic of Proverbs last week? That Proverbs, or wisdom generally, reflects something that we could call received wisdom. It's wisdom that comes to you from someplace else, from outside of you. And what is part of the benefit of having a received body of wisdom? You don't have to go through it yourself. Yeah, you don't have to fall in that ditch. Somebody can say, here's what's going to happen if you keep going that way. I'm telling you, that's what's going to happen. And isn't much of what Proverbs has to say, this elder to the younger, to his son, basically saying, don't do these things, don't fall into those traps. Don't go down to the prostitute's house because it's a graveyard. You may not come back from that, in other words. You can't afford to learn everything by your own experience, because some of what you would learn by experience is going to be ruinous. OK, go ahead. The normal youngster, and I say that's anybody that's under 30, generally They don't accept their peers or their older grandparents or parents' opinion because it's irrelevant to them. They want to do their own thing because that's what they want to do. It just keeps going back to the sinful man. You're not going to convince someone of their wrongdoing by trying to persuade them. It doesn't work. Well, you look through the history of Israel, and God repeatedly had to tell the Israelites how many times they were wrong, and Israel just kept saying, never mind, I don't care what you're saying. They were not unusual. Not just children, what do adults do when they see a wet paint sign? You have to touch it, right? If you want to see them at the Thanksgiving table, you have a tendency to tippy-toe around issues, you know, just like you were saying. You've learned from your experience with the members of your own family, you know, what is safe to say and maybe what's going to start a brush fire if you bring up a certain subject. There is also wisdom in appropriate places and times. Right. It's not necessarily that you want to bring up any topic at any point in time. There is discretion. And part of the lesson of wisdom is it's described as discretion. We could describe it like picking your battles. That's an analogy that we will use for that. determining when and where, under what circumstances you might have a certain conversation with somebody, not necessarily at the Thanksgiving dinner table. But there might be a time later, let's say, when you're outside on the back porch. Why do you think that in this book that the fear of the Lord is described as the beginning of wisdom? Acknowledge the author. and then you can accept the statements and truth from the author. Okay. Wisdom is a thing. It has a source. Wisdom, we could say, pertains to character. And so whose character is perfect? God's character is perfect. we should be willing to receive wisdom from our creator. And here's a case where the parents, in a certain sense, are intermediaries. They are conveying God's wisdom communicated to them through scripture, also through experience, to their children in hopes of preventing their children from making some of the same mistakes and falling into some of the same traps. perhaps that they themselves fell into or that others have fallen into by virtue of ignoring wisdom. How does God motivate us? How is He the motivation for wisdom? Discipline. Is there something more to it? Right. And what is cheap in the end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Glorifying God is doing what He tells us is right. And so that probably connects to a love for God. That if we love God, we will be motivated to be wise. How is it that He is the source of wisdom? How does His wisdom come to us? Kind of answered that. at least in part. That's the very thing we're looking at, right? And then when we veer, hopefully we experience the pain or the suffering that causes, and that gets our attention, right? His judgments are in all the earth, as the scripture says, whom the Lord loves and disciplines. So that pain, that suffering, that's our attention. suffering the consequences for not being wise in our choices. What is part of the proof then that the student here is going to, the student actually fears the Lord? Is it enough to just say, oh yeah, I fear the Lord. I'll listen, I'll give it a good hearing. Well, like Jesus says when He contrasts the two builders, and He says, anyone who keeps My sayings, I will tell you who he's like. He's like the man who built his house on rock. And then He goes ahead and contrasts that with the man who doesn't put into practice the wisdom that he's received and comes to ruin. Comes to ruin, specifically when? when he's tested. When the storm or the trial comes, right? Okay, yeah. We notice that Proverbs is a book of many contrasts and hyperbole as we've mentioned before. Part of the reason for presenting in that way is that the extremes, the contrast of the extremes can become a source of teaching on the one hand, but also it's helping to present to us what we might call an ideal. So an idealized kind of wisdom. Is the message in this book, we've talked a lot about this today, but is the message in the book intended solely for those who are young people? I hear some chuckles in the audience. Why is that funny? I'll ask the question this way. Are children the only ones that need wisdom? No, everybody does. Sometimes we act like children. Oh, you didn't have to say that, Steve. What did he say? Sometimes we act like children. He's actually being kind because we frankly act like children often. What is one of the characteristics of someone who is wise? In chapter 1, look at verse 5. They're listening, always learning. Let the wise hear and increase in learning. So not just the simple, yes in one sense it's directed at the simple, it's directed at children, but there's also an exhortation here that anyone who is wise of any age or any degree of wisdom can and probably should be listening, paying attention, continuing to strive for greater wisdom. Ginger. 11-15, the fruit of wisdom, as in all godliness. I'll start at verse 13. And He will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply. And blessed is the fruit of your womb, and the fruit of your land, your corn, your wine, your oil, your increase. Blessed above all people, that there shall not be male or female barren among you or among your cattle, and the Lord will take away all these sicknesses and evil diseases. There's so much. It's all wisdom, right? And part of what you're showing there is there, you know, God gives His law, and what is He attached to the law? Promises of blessing for obedience and also another set of promises. Curses. Curses for disobedience. Deuteronomy 30, 15. See I set before thee this day life and good and death and evil. That's a pretty stark contrast. That's the kind of thing that probably should get our attention and cause us to want to pay attention to what comes next. So as we start to run out of time here, I'm just at the top of page two. That's okay. We're not on a schedule here. But I do want to point out that Solomon, to whom the book of Proverbs and a couple of other of the wisdom books are attributed as author, that would include Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes, What was it when he became king as a teenager? I'll put it this way. He was wise enough to recognize what? He needed the wisdom of God, because that's what he asked for. Yeah. He was wise enough to know that he needed wisdom. He says what? Lord, I'm only a youth. How am I going to rule this great people? Please give me... God said, ask me anything. Whatever you want, just... It was an open-ended offer, ask me anything, and Solomon was wise enough to ask for wisdom. And God said what? Well, he said, I'll grant your wish. In fact, you'll be the wisest man in the land. And Solomon was renowned for his wisdom. People coming from far away, like the Queen of Sheba, to hear his wisdom and coming away saying, the half of what I heard. I mean, I didn't even hear the half of it. It's more amazing than I could have imagined, so to speak. He asked for wisdom, was given wisdom in abundance, and in addition to that, he says, because you didn't ask for riches or long life, I'm gonna grant you riches and long life as well. Now, part of that ended up becoming a trap for him later in life. And the irony is, and the proof that Solomon was just a man, in spite of his great wisdom, what happened toward the end of his life? where he was sacrificing to all his wives' gods. Yeah, he was drawn into the worst kind of idolatry on account of his many wives, his pagan wives specifically. So Solomon is given to us as a source of wisdom for us in terms of what he's written for us in Scripture, but also we could say he's a bit of a warning sign as well, because even someone who had that kind of great wisdom He still had a big fault. So that said, maybe it's the case that we can go back to this verse five here and be reminded that there never comes a point in life where you can say, I've got enough wisdom. Because even if you have enough wisdom, you may not be applying it as you should. So let's wrap up our thoughts there. I'll go ahead and pray for us as we get ready to enter our time of worship. Father, thank you for the time we have this morning. We are grateful that you have given us godly wisdom through the scriptures. We ask that you would give us spiritual understanding of these things. Help us to avoid many of the traps that we fall into because of our foolishness. Help as it describes the duty of a parent to a child to drive the folly out of our hearts. so that we can love you and obey you more as we go through this life. And we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.