Let me ask you to take your Bibles and we're gonna turn to the book of Proverbs as we continue on this series. And if you remember last week, we looked at a few of what we call hermeneutical issues, or how do we interpret, how do we read the Proverbs. Tonight what I wanna do is just briefly look at some of the high points of the theology of Proverbs. So the high points of the theology of Proverbs. And there are many things we could talk about when we think about a theology of Proverbs, right? We'll talk about some of them. in the coming weeks. But if you remember, as I said last week, Proverbs is a part of the Old Testament canon, meaning it needs to be read in light of the entire Old Testament canon, right? None of us are reading Proverbs as just isolated individuals that have never read anything else from the Bible or anything else in the world. And the same way Proverbs is not intended to be interpreted as this totally siloed book that is to be read different than or apart from in the Old Testament book. And in the stream of that, right, there are main threads throughout the entire book that witness to how Proverbs views God, how Proverbs views man, even how Proverbs views the world. Or we might say, more simply, Proverbs simply adds and informs to our view of God, our view of man, and our view of the world. It's never going to, obviously, contradict any part or any other portion of scripture, but it does add to it. It adds nuances and scope and sequence to the whole picture of our theology. And one thing just to keep in mind, and I love, there's an Old Testament scholar by the name of Gerhard von Rad, who I'll quote again later, one of Andre's people, but he was fairly liberal, but critical scholar, but one of the first scholars to almost, he wrote a very famous book called An Old Testament Theology, one of the first German scholars to write one of these books, and surprisingly, for a guy who probably didn't think the Bible was written by God, he says a lot of good things, right? He has a lot of things that we as evangelicals can agree with, but, In his section in the Old Testament theology about the wisdom literature, both Psalms and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, he says this portion of scripture is about living life before God. And we always need to remember that as we read Proverbs, that this is not just some vague rule for life, right? This is not the I Ching. In fact, you might say every quote-unquote book of wisdom out there has an implicit theology behind it. And we're gonna talk about this a little bit, but if you think of the I Ching, an Eastern wisdom book, the theology of the I Ching is that there's chaos everywhere. Random chance governs everything. If you go read the books of wisdom from Egypt, the theology is there's a God for everything under the sun. And so the biblical wisdom implies, or is implicit in biblical wisdom is that we are living before God. This is what life before God looks like. So let me read for us, I'm gonna just do, here's what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna read for us Proverbs chapter 30. You don't necessarily have to turn, you can just listen. But Proverbs 30, verses one through four, and this will be something of a jumping off point, but we're gonna go to a few of the Proverbs. But here's Proverbs 30, and this is the opening words of Augur, son of Jacob. Remember, this is a man outside the visible people of God. The man declares, I am weary, O God. I am weary, O God, and worn out. Surely I am too stupid to be a man. I have not the understanding of a man. I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One, who has ascended to heaven and come down, who has gathered the wind in his fists, who has wrapped up the waters in a garment, who has established all the ends of the earth. What is his name and what is his son's name? Surely you know. Let me go on to verses five and six. Every word of God proves true. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for these Proverbs. Lord, words written by Solomon, Lord, and various other people, Lord, we learn what it means to live a life before you, a life of wisdom, Lord, truly in under the fear of the Lord. I pray, Lord, for our time tonight that you would use even just these brief moments we have together to spur us on in this fear of the Lord that we might live wisely before you as your faithful and humble people. Lord, I pray for protection even for us as we go forth tonight, as you bless us and keep us in Christ's name, amen. All right, so we're gonna come back to those words of Augur here in a moment, but probably the first and main thing that all of Proverbs wants to show about this world and the God who created it is that God is absolutely sovereign. That should come as no surprise. But the way that Proverbs presents that theology of this sovereignty of God is a little bit different than we see throughout the other pages of scripture. In fact, the very first note of the sovereignty of God is found in chapter one, verse seven, right? Maybe with the most famous verse in all of Proverbs, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And if you remember last week, I said, we're gonna talk a little bit more about what the fear of the Lord is, but it's at least nothing less than acknowledging that you're not the one in control, that there's someone else in control of all of this. And until you recognize that, you can't really be wise. You may have wisdom here and there, you may have some of the tips and tricks for life, but you're not really gonna be wise until you recognize that you are not the one in control. And there's one chapter in Proverbs that really goes after this theme again and again and again, and this is Proverbs 16. Proverbs 16 has really three of the most profound statements about God's sovereignty that are given throughout the whole entire, not just Old Testament, but even Old and New Testament. Let's look first at Proverbs 16.4. The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble. Notice there's this sense of control that God has over everything, even the wicked that supposedly walk contrary to his will. We get this picture, this hint at what the Bible gives of God's hidden will and his revealed will. God's revealed will is thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt know the gods before me. The things that he commands and desires for his people to do. But then there's what theologians call the hidden will of God, right? The one single decree whereby God decreed all things that come to pass, right? And so when the wicked walk contrary to God's revealed will, they're actually walking right in line with his hidden will, the secret will of God. But notice too, right, that there, Proverbs 16.4 is describing something very important to all of creation, and what is it? What does creation have? Purpose, right, has a purpose, which is a huge point, right, that this is a purposed world, that everything that goes on within it, everything that is created in it has a purpose behind it. And if you remember, if you were in my Sunday school class last semester, last quarter, when we were looking at Francis Schaeffer's True Spirituality, the question he's constantly coming up again, time and again, is why is there something rather than nothing? Why do you exist versus not existing? Or another way to put it, what is your purpose? The minute you ask why are we here, you're delving into a purpose. And from the very beginning, from all time, Proverbs is showing us that God has given a purpose to all things, even the wicked. Pharaoh, when simultaneously he was hardening his heart and God was hardening his heart, was walking according to the purpose that God had given him. When you repent of your sins, you are walking in the purpose that God has given you. When the snow comes and freezes over, happens to knock out your power, it is according to the purpose that God has given it. That's just the first statement. The second statement in Proverbs 16 is Proverbs 16 nine. The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. And this was, you know, I mentioned a few weeks ago, a verse that maybe to be cross-stitched on someone's wall. This is often one of those verses, right, that you may see on a cross-stitching or a nice throw pillow. But what it's saying is actually almost contrary to just this nice, happy, God's gonna take care of everything, right? Because notice, man plans his steps, man plans his way, I know what I want in my life, how I want my life to look for, look out and see and become, but it's the Lord who actually brings all things to pass. So one way of reading, maybe the wrong way of reading it, the Lord establishes his steps. is God is going to make the plans that I want, God is the one opening the doors. So in one sense, yes, that's true, but we need to take it even beyond the things you want. No parent plans for a cancer diagnosis with their child. No wife plans for a phone call about her husband getting in a car crash. None of these things happen, yet it's the Lord who establishes all those things. Even the hard things in life, the things that you don't plan, that aren't in your plans, are the things that God establishes. And then the last one, in Psalm 16, or Proverbs 16, sorry, not Psalm 16, Proverbs 16, Proverbs 16.33, The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. And what is the, what worldview is this proverb combating? What is governing you if you're just trusting the lot? Chance. Remember that? In fact, if you go and read the I Ching that I mentioned a little bit, the entire thing is based around rolling dice and flipping coins to see what goes where. And here, even in Proverbs 16, 33, the lot, the dice, you just roll a dice, and it just seems random chance, whether it comes up one, two, three, six, whatever, and yet Proverbs is showing us that every single turn it makes is made by the Lord. So even the things in this life that seem to you random chance are part of God's purpose, part of God's design, we might say, for how things are to play out. And here's where, again, the fear of the Lord, as I mentioned, starts to take some fuller shape. As I mentioned, it's at least nothing less than recognizing that you are not the one in control, is that it's very easy to build these apparitions of control in our life. We put money into 529s for our kids. You know, we've got health insurance, you've got insurance on your insurance, all these things. At the end of the day, it's just this mirage of control, right? And really, as we'll see over and over again, the most unwise thing we can ever say is that's not fair. The most unwanted, the thing that shows, and I say it all the time, right? And the thing that shows you lack wisdom is when you say those three words. That's not fair. Because you are, first off, thinking that you are owed something in this life. But second of all, you're saying that you think God owes you something in this life. We're going to look at a little bit of that point right there a little bit later on, but along with this sovereignty of God comes kind of two sub points. The first is what I call the inscrutability of God. The inscrutability of God. Meaning, whatever God does, we don't have the right to then turn around and curse God. How dare you do that? And we see first, Proverbs 21 verse two. Every way of man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. So every person has their subjective opinion about what they think is right or wrong, but it is the Lord who is the one who renders the verdict. The Lord is the one who decides what is right or wrong. And most likely, right there, playing off that idea found in ancient Egypt where when you died and went to the underworld and Osiris was there waiting for you, he would place your heart on a scale and he would weigh it against a feather because a truly good heart would have no weight to it. and the feather would actually be heavier than the heart. But if you're cold-hearted, crooked, evil, then your heart would outweigh the feather. And here, obviously, it is the Lord. It's not Osiris, it's not Ra, it's not Baal, it's no one, but he is the one who decides who is right and who is in the wrong. And yet it's not this arbitrary thing, right? So in Islam, if you go and study Islam, they have this doctrine, which honestly, I don't know how they got away with it, but it's basically the arbitrariness of Allah, right? Meaning that you can do all the things right. You can pray five times a day, you can fast in Ramadan, you can take the Hajj to Mecca, you know, you can give alms to the poor, everything, and be the best Muslim you can, and get to Judgment Day, and Allah say, eh, it doesn't count for you, sorry. I changed the rules, right? And what a terrifying, terrifying thought that is, that you could do everything right, and God may just change his mind. But notice, we see that in Proverbs, God is the one who is always righteous. So in Proverbs 21, 12, he's called the righteous one. But then look at Proverbs 20, verse 23. Unequal weights are an abomination to the Lord, and false scales are not good. In other words, injustice, cheating, is an abomination to the Lord, and it's because he is the one who is fully righteous. He is the one, so when we think about God's inscrutability, it's because of who he is. He's not just a righteous God, as if there's some sort of standard of righteousness that is judging God, but God is the one who is righteousness. When we say what is righteousness, it is what God does. God's character is righteous. So we have, again, this inscrutability. We do not have as, Not just fallen, but finite people, the ability nor the privilege to turn around and say, God, that's not fair. That doesn't match up with my sense of right and wrong. Because guess what? Your sense of right and wrong is wrong. by and large. But then lastly, in this sovereignty of God, so this second point of this, sub-point of this sovereignty of God, we have the inscrutability of God, but also, to some degree, the indiscernibility of God. The indiscernibility. This is Proverbs 25. Proverbs 25, verse two. It is the glory of God to conceal things. There's a glory of God to conceal things. Now, Proverbs is not saying he conceals everything, otherwise this book wouldn't be here. If God concealed every picture of wisdom, this book would not be here. But part of wisdom is recognizing I can't see the whole picture. I can't see everything at play. You are one vantage point of a world of eight billion vantage points. and there's no way you can see the whole picture. Yes, yeah. And in fact, it's funny, you know, there's this, I don't want to say it's an apologetic move, like it's this sort of judo trick to trick atheists into saying something stupid, but there's, you know, often one of the things you hear about from atheists often is how arrogant is it for you to say you have the one true religion, right? Well, how arrogant of you is it to say that every religion is relative? Like, do you know that every religion is saying the exact same thing? Or do you know for a fact that every religion is 100% false? So yeah, and then obviously that goes along with the Enlightenment. But part, again, part of the lack of wisdom is the lie we tell ourselves that we see the whole thing. I know exactly Why, no offense, Doug, I know exactly why Doug said that to me the other day. Because he hates me, that's why. Right? Or whatever it might be, right? To think that you've got the secret for anything, not just, you know, for example, I parent, as a father to Poppy, even though she's still very young, It is arrogance of me as a father to think, I've got my daughter figured out. Even after 30 years of fathering Poppy, it'd be arrogant of me to say, I've got my daughter figured out. It's a long time away, and then I'm handing it off to Courtney. But so there's this, part of God's sovereignty means there's this inscrutability. It is not up to us to scrutinize God of what he does. And this indiscernibility, meaning we are not the ones called to fully discern what God's plan is or what he's doing. We are to rest in what he has given us, both in this life and in scripture. So that's the sovereignty of God. Any questions or comments about that? Again, that's maybe the main thread through all of Proverbs, so hopefully these next two will go quicker. All right, so the second one that I want to briefly look at is the finitude of man. All right, so we've got the sovereignty of God, and on the other side is the finitude of man. Finitude, man would be finite apart from sin, right? So that's just, let's keep that in mind. So even a pre-fallen world, Adam could not say, I know everything. Adam would still be finite, he would still have his one point of view, but especially now because of sin, our finite point of view is fractured and mangled. It's like trying to look through your glasses when they've cracked in half, right? Everything is splintered. You can't make heads or tails or a lot of different things. But just notice, going back to the passage we first read, Proverbs 30, and this is Augur, right? And Augur seemingly was someone born outside of Israel. who was converted, brought in, at least maybe not joined people of God, but came to faith in Yahweh. And notice what he says, the man declares, I am weary, O God. I am weary, O God, and worn out. Surely I am too stupid to be a man. I have not the understanding of a man. I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One. So he's recognizing, hey, apart from God, I don't know anything. I'm not able to make heads or tails of life. In fact, and we might even say that the very genre of wisdom literature, whether it's Proverbs or Job or Ecclesiastes, whatever it is, the very genre, the existence of the genre assumes the fact that none of us know everything. From the very beginning, in fact, of Proverbs, it says it's to give prudence to the simple. Stupid people out there, hear me. This is for you. And he's talking to everybody. But lest, right, we think that there's somehow this level up, right? Right after he says, to give prudence to the simple, he turns around and says, let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance. So everyone is at this, starts out at this place of stupidity and simplicity, but even the wise and the learned never know everything. And their finitude means they still have to keep on learning. Turn now to Proverbs 3, 5 through 8. This is one of the clearest pictures. There's a great, there's a guy named Slugs and Bugs, he's almost like a Christian Wiggles, but better. He has a great song of Proverbs 3, 5, if you wanna get it stuck in your head, just FYI. But, Let's just briefly look at this. Proverbs three, sorry, verse five. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones. And really from the get-go then, Proverbs is telling us, hey, recognize that you don't know anything. Again, that you are very limited in what you do. In fact, do not lean on your own understanding. The understanding that you think you have is actually part of the problem. Be not wise in your own eyes. The wisdom you think you have is actually part of the problem. So just as, again, sovereignty of God is maybe the golden cord running throughout Proverbs. The scarlet cord running through the book of Proverbs is our finitude. our own inability to truly understand things apart from God and apart from Him giving us this wisdom. And that's why we're gonna talk about this a little bit later on next week, a little bit later on tonight, but why we wanna make it very clear that non-believers can have wisdom. They can have wisdom about life and how life works. But they're never going to be wise because they don't know the giver of wisdom. And you have to know the giver of wisdom to truly be wise, to have more than just this basic understanding of wisdom. So this is the third thing, right? So the sovereignty of God, the finitude of man, but then the third thing Proverbs seems to have running throughout it is that in all of life, there's this proper order of things. There's a way that life should be lived and that it should not be lived. Or another way to say it is that there is a reality out there to be understood and grasped. There is real stuff out there, right? Not just people, but real stuff, real things in this world that is able to be understood. And a lot of this, right, this was written almost 3,000 years ago, much of it. But even 3,000 years ago, or maybe just after this, there were philosophers who were saying, you can't ever really know reality. So Heraclitus, a famous Greek philosopher, he said that everything was made up by fire. He didn't think that we were just somehow like burning at all times, but the thought was everything is always in flux. Everything is always changing. His famous statement was, you never walk through the same river twice. And his point was, hey, You can come to this, you know, whatever this, what is this thing called again? Podium, thank you. You can come to this podium, walk away, turn around, come back, and this is a totally new podium. Right? It's changed. It's not the same. And in one sense, I guess we could say he's right. Because that podium was existing at 701 and 42 seconds. This one's existing at 702 and four seconds. But it was this subtle jab at truth that you can't really know anything at all. And then 2,000 years, no, 2,800 years later, famous philosopher by the name of Immanuel Kant, who kind of upended everything, famously said, you can never know something as it truly is. So whatever you see, that is just your perception. And you're never able to, so again, this podium, I see this podium, I feel this podium, but I'm never able to really know the podium, which is kind of weird saying it. Or a tree, right? You can study the tree, you can look at the tree, but you don't really know what a tree is. Don't pretend like you know what a tree is. And Again, the theme throughout Proverbs or the theme throughout scripture is no, there is a real reality out there. Something to be understood and grasped. It's why we scoff at the idea that when someone says something like math is white supremacy. Right, like what? The thing that builds bridges is an ideology. It's not simply our interpretation of the world, but there's actually something to be understood. And if there's a reality to be understood, There is a pattern and an order to reality. And again, there's not just a pattern and reality, there's not just a pattern and an order to nature as in, you know, why we can read the barometric pressure and see that a storm is coming or, you know, why we can make planes fly out of the sky. But there's also a reality in order to the moral life. There are things to do and things to not do. There are things that if you do will throw a wrench in your entire life, and there are things if you do do are the parts that keep your engine running, that keep you going along the road. And we can see that. We can see what the Proverbs pushes us because of what we've seen about God. God is the one who is fully righteous. God is a righteous, just, ordered God. And so by nature, he can only create ordered things. It's a bad artist who makes disorganized bad art. But a good artist makes organized, put together pieces of beauty. But also, as God is righteous, God is also creator, meaning that all of creation bears the marks of his hands. So if God is a righteous, ordered God, then we would expect the things that he made to bear even, dare I say, righteous, ordered marks. That there are things that fit together in this world. And Proverbs is calling us to see that. That there is a fittingness to discipline your child. It's good and right for you to discipline your child. There is a fittingness to telling the truth. A fittingness to keeping your word as a bond. All over and over again. Again, I think I've mentioned this before, but probably one of my favorite Images in all of the Proverbs, I'm not gonna spend time looking for it, but it's when he's talking about the adulterous woman and the righteous woman, or Lady Wisdom and Lady Adultery, and he says, playing with sexual immorality is like heaping coals on your chest, expecting not to be burned. There's a rule of nature. If you're wearing, whatever you're wearing, right, unless maybe it's aluminum foil, If you heap coals onto you, you are going to be burned 100%. And in the moral law, it's the same. If you commit adultery on your spouse, You are just, you are going to be burned sooner or later. Proverbs 6, thank you. So there's this order, there's this pattern of order in all of life that should be followed. I mean, again, we'll look at this next week a little bit more in depth, but Proverbs 8, where wisdom is sort of personified and says, I was there when God created the world. By me, he laid the foundations of the earth. So we should expect that this wisdom that is in place throughout all of creation should be visible and perceivable by us. And last part of that as we close tonight, there is a true connection, if there's a connection between reality, the moral order, but even nature across the world, There's a connection between wisdom and salvation. And let me explain a little bit what I mean, right? Again, if you remember last week, one wrong way of viewing the Proverbs is this is just general advice. It's not gonna help anyone get saved, but it's kind of good, you know, it's good secondary advice. If you can't get someone to believe the gospel, get them to believe in Proverbs. And maybe they'll just have a comfortable life. But true pursuit of wisdom goes hand in hand with the path of salvation. As God restores his people, again, remember that part of salvation is the fact that we are now given the ability to live proper lives before God. And you may have even picked it up a little bit, Proverbs 3. Verse five, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. One of the first calls of wisdom is believe in God, have faith. Or even later on in Proverbs 3, Proverbs 3.13, blessed is the one who finds wisdom and the one who gets understanding, for the gain from her is better than gain from silver and her profit better than gold. She is more precious than jewels and nothing you desire can compare with her. And hear this, long life is in her right hand, in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life. "'to those who lay hold of her. "'Those who hold her fast are called blessed.'" And some people, again, even that translation of long life, it's the right translation, but some people wanna read 3.16 and just say, hey, this is just kind of a general, if you wanna live longer than your friends who were dumb and died in high school, don't do those dumb things. But really it's saying not only long life is in her right hand, but eternal life is in her right hand. Or then at 3.18, she is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her. So the pursuit of wisdom is not just this pursuit of a comfortable life here, but pursuit of wisdom is ultimately the path of salvation. The path of eternal life with God. And again, it starts with trust in the one who is in sovereign control. And again, that German guy, Gerhard von Raad, said all of Proverbs is life before Yahweh. He also said that folly is practical atheism. So to folly, being foolish, is practical atheism. You know, you may say you believe in God, but if you're walking in a foolish light, you're basically saying, eh, I know what's better than God. I'll discern my own way. I, you know, God may establish other people's paths, but me, I establish my own path. So again, right, so really what you might say, true wisdom is belief, and true folly is unbelief. as if to walk contrary to God. And really this kind of reached a summit in the New Testament when we see Paul, 1 Corinthians 1, say that Christ himself is the wisdom of God. He is the wisdom of God. So pursuing wisdom from a biblical standpoint is not just pursuing the best tips and tricks for life here, but it's the pursuit of Christ across an entire lifetime. And that's why I said again, as we close, right, there's a vast difference between knowing wisdom and knowing the giver of wisdom. There's a vast difference between having a few tips in your tool shed to be able to help, or tool bag, not tool shed, tool bag to be able to help out. But it takes something more to know the giver of wisdom. And true wisdom only comes when we know the giver of wisdom. And we're gonna talk a little bit more about that next week as we consider what the Proverbs as Christian scripture. How does Proverbs actually point us to the goal of our faith, Jesus Christ? But I wanna end there, right? The true life of wisdom is the life that is on the path of salvation. And there's no separating the two, right? That a life of wisdom is a life that is being saved by God. Any questions or comments? Yeah. What do you think about, in light of chapter eight in relation with that being Jesus Christ, the wisdom of Christ as far as it's taking place, Yeah, we're gonna talk about that next week. But yeah, that's a big debate of is 822, particularly 822 through 31, is it prefiguring Christ in an Old Testament? And I'll give you a little, I'll go ahead and ruin the surprise. I think it is, but we'll talk a little bit more about why next week.