Welcome to the 10-Minute Bible, where one book of the Bible is summarized in about 10 minutes. Well, give or take 10 minutes. In this session, we're going to look at the book of Proverbs. Now, if you've been listening to this series on the 10-Minute Bible, you've heard me say, and everyone thus far, that in order to understand a book, you need to understand three things about that book. In any book, in or outside the Bible, the first thing you need to know is what is the subject of the book. It's probably the reason you picked it up in the first place. The second thing you need to know is how the author develops that subject. In secular books, that is books outside the Bible, the author very often will have a table of contents, and that gives you some idea of how he's developing the single subject of the book. There are no books in the Bible that have tables of content, but if you've got a good study Bible, it will have an outline and that will give you some idea of how to develop the subject. I call that the structure of the subject. The third thing, especially in books of the Bible, it's helpful to know what I call the situation. the author wrote on that subject to a particular group of people. So the question becomes, who's the author? Who received the book originally? And why did he write on that subject, which is the purpose of the book? So, to understand any book of the Bible, you need to begin by understanding the subject, the structure, and the situation. With that in mind, let's look at the book of Proverbs. What is the subject? Well, that's easy. Most would say wisdom. And if they said that, they would be correct. The second question is, what is the structure? And that gets a little more challenging. If you look at the book carefully, you'll notice that every once in a while, there is a title that says the Proverbs of Solomon. That phrase appears three times in the book. In 1-1, it applies to the whole book. And then it appears again in 10-1 and 25-1, where it just applies to those sections of the book. Then the first nine chapters are in paragraph form. They are discussions, discourses on the value of wisdom. And then when you get to chapter 10, it's just basically isolated proverbs with a couple of exceptions where there's an extended discussion. But for the most part, it's just one proverb after another. So the structure of this book is a little challenging. I would outline it as follows. I think the introduction is in the first seven verses, that in chapter 1, 8 through chapter 9, verse 8, it is the Proverbs of a father's praise of wisdom. I'd say the second part of the book are the Proverbs of Solomon that go from chapter 10, verse 1 to 22, 16. Then the words of wise men are 2217 to 2434. And then there is Hezekiah's collection of the Proverbs of Solomon in chapters 25 through 29. And then again, the last part is the words of wise men from chapters 30 to 31. Now, that is an outline based on those little phrases like the Proverbs of Solomon or the Proverbs of Wise Men. It's not exactly a helpful development of the subject of wisdom. It's just the way the book is organized. Now, let's look at the situation. There are several authors in the book. The first is Solomon. He wrote the bulk of the book. But as I just mentioned, there are several smaller sections where it says wise men wrote. There are two other authors mentioned in the book, Agar in chapter 30 and Lemuel in chapter 31. Nothing is known about those two authors except they wrote part of the book of Proverbs. Solomon wrote about 950, so at least part of the book was addressed to his son, probably Rehoboam, though we don't know that for certain. This applies to Proverbs 1.1 through 9.18 and probably chapters 10 to 22.16. It is more likely that it does not apply to Proverbs 25.1, because 25.1 says a larger portion of what was compiled by the men of Hezekiah. Well, that didn't happen until 7.10, and so that couldn't have been written to his son. The point is that Solomon is the main author and most of the book is written to his son, but he never tells us which son that is. By the way, if part of the book was compiled, the songs of the Proverbs of Solomon during the reign of Hezekiah, it might be interesting to note that Isaiah and Micah ministered during the time of Hezekiah. And it's even been suggested that they were involved in the collection of the Proverbs of Solomon. At any rate, in discussing the situation, the first thing you need to know is the author. And in this case, they are at least four different authors. Solomon is the main author of the book, but he did not write the whole book. It is a book of wisdom. All right, then who received it? Well, the primary recipients for most of the book would have been Solomon's children. That's very evident. Matter of fact, Proverbs 8, 1 to 5, indicates that the book was more than for his children. It's for all humanity in general. Now, this gets to be real interesting. While God's law is assumed everywhere, Israel is never mentioned in the book. It is not primarily a Jewish book. Now, it's written by Solomon. It's written to, a big part of it, to his sons, but It's bigger than that. There is a universality of this book. These proverbs apply to all people at all time. Now, what is the purpose of the book? Well, if we had the time in this 10-minute introduction, we would look at chapter 1, verses 1 to 7. And if you look at that introductory prologue carefully, you will discover that there's a two-fold purpose. The first is to impart moral discernment. That's spelled out very clearly in beginning in the latter part of verse two and is mentioned again in verses three to five. Development of mental clarity and perception is the second purpose of the book, and that's mentioned in verse 2, the second part of the verse. The moral discernment, I said, was the second part of verse 2. It's part of verse 2, the first part. The second part of verse 2 is moral mental clarity and perception. And that's mentioned in the latter part of verse 2 and verse 6. So, the philosophy of this book is not live and learn, but learn and live. I mean, isn't it sort of popular to say, just live and learn? You learn by living? That's not Proverbs. Proverbs is the opposite. No, no, learn wisdom first and then go live it. So it's not live and learn, it's learn and live. Matter of fact, if you just remember that one phrase, you've captured a lot of what this book is about. I would say the overall message is that Proverbs assists the wise and the unwise in developing mental acumen and wisdom for living. But I would say the overall spiritual truth is the wise learn from the wisdom of God's Word and from watching wise people. And that's the point. Don't live and make mistakes and learn from your mistakes. Learn by looking at the Word of God. and watching wise people. According to the book of Proverbs, that is the way to gain wisdom, which means skill for living.