Heavenly Father, thank You for this day that You have created and ordained and inhabit and have great intention for in Your Son and by Your Spirit. Thank You for these young people, their hearts and their lives and their minds. Father, I ask that what we say here today would be useful to them, useful to their Christian development, for their walk, for their communion with You, their commitment to You. and that your word would constantly be changing us, and that we would respond to your commands and your edicts with loving hearts and with purpose. So we ask that you would superintend your word by the Spirit, and we pray this in Christ's name, amen. I never know who's gonna be here. Now that I see who all is here, I hope this does not strike you as redundant. Forgive me if it is. As I was preparing for this week, you know, here we are knee-deep in Proverbs 13, and we've been We've been mowing through a lot of Proverbs together with Jesse and myself and y'all's feedback and your conversation and your insights are just so wonderful and enjoyable to me and I just really enjoy y'all's minds. I don't know how other teachers do, but I think of a class like an organism. I know you all individually, but it's interesting to think of you as an organism. And the organism acts one way some days. And it's ponderous some days. It's shy some days. It's crouched down other days. It's springing other days. It won't make eye contact other days. It's sleepy some days. It's hangry some days. but I really enjoy y'all very much. But what I thought might be useful is to stop and think about, just for a few minutes, how it is that we're following Jesus in the Proverbs. We started our time in Proverbs way back in late August or September, whenever it was, I can't even remember now. looking at Proverbs 8 and some other scriptures in which we're talking about Christ in the Proverbs as a subset of a larger discussion about Christ in the Old Testament. I just thought it would be good for us to remind ourselves how we're seeking Him and how we're finding Him and how He is given to us in the Proverbs. So as I'm talking for a few minutes, be thinking about that because I'd love to hear any thoughts you have about that subject or as it's occurred to you across these weeks and months that we've been discussing this. Remember that we started Proverbs from the premise that Jesus is wisdom itself. He is ontologically, meaning the way in which He exists, the embodiment and the personification of wisdom as the second person of the Trinity. And we say that for a lot of reasons out of the Old Testament, but for reasons out of the Proverbs. And we looked at Proverbs 8. If you want to open up to that, I'm just going to scan over some things that we remind you, things that we found in verses 22 through 28. And then verse 30, I'm not going to read it, but I'm just going to summarize a number of concepts that are there in Proverbs 8. Listen to this language. The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His work, before the beginning of the earth. When He established the heavens, I was there. When He drew a circle on the face of the deep, when He marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside Him like a master workman and I was daily His delight, rejoicing before Him always, rejoicing in His inhabited world and delighting in the children of man. Blessed is the one who listens to me." What's so amazing about this chapter, and again, just reminding you of these things, because we worked through this many, many weeks ago. In this passage, we find wisdom's distinct identity from the Father. Wisdom's essential unity with the Father. Wisdom's eternal existence. Wisdom's role in the creation of everything. Wisdom's joy in God's presence. Wisdom's joy in the creation. Wisdom's joy in humanity. God's Son is God's wisdom. And that's what we're doing in the Proverbs. There have been Proverbs since there's been man. There haven't been anything like these Proverbs because Jesus is the embodiment of them. William Arnault says, one might profitably put the question, to himself. If the spirit designed to make known something of the personal history of Christ before his coming, how could he have done so in plainer terms than in Proverbs 8 about how Christ as our wisdom has always been with God and of God and to God and God. It's amazing how God is communicating the attributes of Christ to Israel and to us long before He is born into the world. God is teaching Israel the type of character that they must emulate before bringing the Savior to them. Jesus' earthly life was marked by His personal possession and employment of wisdom. Here's another thought about His wisdom. He was apparent in all His actions, in His treatment of people, in ministry, and particularly in His teaching. The earthly Jesus was a man of wisdom who lived out and fulfilled the book of Proverbs. All the things that Proverbs says to do, Jesus did. All the things Proverbs says to avoid, Jesus avoided. All the proactive things that Proverbs says, Jesus embodied. All the restraint that it requests and demands, Jesus exhibited. We think about Jesus in the temple instructing the leaders. Everywhere he went, we see in the book of Mark, he was instructing the Jewish leader. He was wisdom, and the Lord started him on the path of being wisdom for his people and Israel and its leaders from his earliest days. The book of Proverbs sets before its reader a choice between two different paths, the path of wisdom and the path of folly. In the New Testament context, the choice is between the secret wisdom of God now revealed in Christ and the folly offered in the world. If you want to turn to 1 Corinthians 2, let's just see that in Paul's voice. I'll just read the first 10 verses of 1 Corinthians 2. I, when I came to you brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. and I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory." See the way that matches up to Proverbs 8? None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. But as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor heard, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him. These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. So here's the Trinity. The Spirit searching the wisdom that is Christ. Christ serving His Father in our redemption. And they all search and reveal and make known to us. The wisdom who beckons us is Christ. While the folly that attempts to seduce is anything that's created or that we put in the place of the Creator. Romans 1.22 and 23 say, claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things, looking for wisdom worship or favor from something created rather than God trying to find wisdom or purpose in idols and not in Christ. The wise man chooses Jesus and His Gospel, whereas the fool chooses the empty idolatry and folly of this world. We follow the call of wisdom in the Old Testament. We follow the call of the Gospel in the New Testament. We find Christ in the principles that are given to us. We find him in the patterning ourselves after this wisdom, which gives us more insight into his ways and his thoughts, and it makes us more like him. I have so many things here I don't want to burn up on this. Let me stop there and ask you this before I Go any further. Are there other aspects of how Christ is present in the Proverbs or the Old Testament in general that have occurred to you during our time or that occur to you as a result of what I'm saying? And it's okay if it doesn't. That's a big question. But any thoughts about Christ revealed to us in Proverbs, Christ revealed to us in the Old Testament before He's incarnate? And that's okay. That's a hard early morning question. Okay, ponder that a second. What I'm about to say needs a lot more expanding out than I have time to do today, but I just want to say this to you. Corrective words, reproofs, which are what the Proverbs are, in order to be the truth, capital T, must be authoritative, They must be universally applicable in all ages. Now, there are other aphorisms and truths, but I'm talking about to be truth, capital T, with authority. And only those from God demonstrated in Christ meet those requirements. Now, that's a very ambitious statement that I won't take time to expand. It deserves expansion. Those redeemed by God, saved by grace through faith, growing in knowledge in Him are linked together. And here's where I want to sort of wrap this up, and then we'll get into Proverbs 13. Those that are linked together in wisdom are given fellowship and companionship and spiritual friendship, which the scripture refers to as kinship, and kinship around the commands of God. does extraordinary things for us. It does things that we're not able to do on our own. The Christian life is inescapably corporate. And that's what we mean by being covenant people. We're individual Christians, but the Christian life is inescapably corporate. You have to learn the ways of Christ in fellowship and kinship. And so Proverbs is a place where we're talking about those and we're seeing them lived out. We do this in all of Scripture, but particularly with Proverbs, we build brick by brick the superstructure of the church. Christ is making us a living dwelling on earth. So the thing I want to leave you with here is proverbs are bricks that build us in our character, and we are bricks that build the church. And what is right and true and pleasing to God and the pattern of human conduct for living is demonstrated by Christ and found for us in Christ. And we even find Him as the wisdom in the Proverbs. Any other thoughts before we turn to Proverbs 13? I just wanted to remind us what we're doing here. Brick by brick, we're building each other so that we may be part of the superstructure and the edifice of the church. That's why we do this. Yes, sir. I mean, I think it's funny when you want us to look through other scripture to back up Proverbs. It's so easy to say the Sunday school answer and say, well, Jesus did it so well. I mean, it's an easy answer, but it stands firm. Yes, yes, yes. And we think about those Christian friends that call themselves New Testament Christians. It's like reading anything out of sequence or in nonlinear form. What context do you have for what you're even understanding? If you do not see Christ coming, foretold and revealed to you slowly as the wisdom of Proverbs, then who you find in the New Testament is half of Him. You're continually dealing with Him, you know, out of context and out of eternal time. That's what's so amazing about that simple answer that we're giving since the time we're children. It's always right, and as you grow, it gets more and more profound. You say it when you're four, and when you're 44, you're like, that is heavy-duty true. And a lot of adult Christians don't really understand that. Thank you for that. All right, Proverbs 13. Onward we go, brick by brick. Let's look today at verse 18. Poverty and disgrace come to him who ignores instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is honored. Alright, so here are bricks to build your life with. I wish Walker was here, because I'm referencing him in my thought this week. You remember last week when he was talking about karma? People talk about this faux reality, this substance that's supposedly floating around the world, deciding how it's going to rectify all things. Well, there's no such thing as karma that's meting out justice. I thought what he said last week was so right. I really wanted to jump in on that, but I have to let you all, I have to let the organism, you know, I can't, we should be jumping on the organism all the time. Karma doesn't mete out justice in the world. There's not a mindless, arbitrary force that's unleashed when we make decisions. And that's why I thought Walker said so great last week. God has decreed that actions have consequence. God's decreed that. It's not karma. God's decreed that. Righteous acts God has, not guides. God has decreed that. Righteous acts bring blessed rewards. Disobedience brings punishment and God's disfavor. You can't be perplexed. You've disobeyed God, and now it's not worked out. You can't be perplexed. God, what's going on? Exactly what I told you. Obeying me brings favor. Disobeying me brings misery and confusion. God chastises and this produces different kinds of fruit in us we see in a verse like this. We either receive or we despise God's discipline. You're just going to have to know truthfully which way you're arcing in your soul. Now you folks are in here, you're submitted to the Word of God, to the worship of God. You're engaged in the worship of God. So it's a really positive external sign. But you have to know in your heart which way you're arcing. Does God's chastisement produce good fruit in you? Do you receive it? Or do you despise it in the form of ignoring it or trying to stifle it or suppress it? The verse shows us that the first step in a downward course is refusing God's instruction. And that instruction comes to you from lots of different places. Godly parents, ministers, good friends, authorities, all of these indicate proper and sensible conduct for your physical life and for your moral life. just as you cannot ignore gravity, you cannot ignore righteous counsel. That's what the Scripture teaches us in a proverb like this. You will encounter the force of God's decrees. The question is in what spirit will you respond? The force of God's decrees you are going to encounter them. What spirit are they going to find you in response in? He that is so proud as to refuse God or scorn those who teach and guide in knowing Him, this proverb says, will have his honor, his liberty, and his opportunity curbed. Poverty and disgrace, shame, come on those who resist the commands of God. Stubbornness begins in the spirit. It expands into behavior, and it dims our prospects, our prospects for life, for happiness, for soul growth, for work, for security, and for a good name. A lot of the project of parents with their children that are moving out of their teens into their work life is simply talking about the way the thought life and the conduct and the character align with being a productive person in your work life. Because when you're young, you haven't quite put it together, that attitude creates this effect in my work dynamic. It does so in your family dynamic and everywhere, but you haven't quite put that together. So a lot of the project of being a parent to a young person about to take flight is saying, look, I know you like to grouse about that, or I know that's your disposition, but at some point, you have to realize that has an effect in the world, not karmic effect, but the effect of what you're saying is righteous and good, or it's defective and it's pessimistic. Stubbornness begins in the spirit and expands in the behavior. And then we think back to like Proverbs 6, which says, how long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed man. It's another way of saying what's said here. Stubbornness begins in the spirit. ignoring instruction and the next thing you know they have given way to poverty and disgrace. The ability to focus on important tasks, to control one's commitment and energy, denying other preferences that might arise. Heeding instruction. When you do those things, this verse says you'll find honor and reward. It's interesting, Proverbs 25, 12 says, like a gold ring or an ornament of gold is a wise reprover to a listening ear. You know, a reprover, an authority, one who corrects. But if you think about it, that's not the way we receive reproof. when we're young, but throughout our whole lives. We don't think of it as a golden ring or an ornament when we're given wise reproofs. We see correction in our fallen state like shackles. The illusion of sin makes us think that we're finding freedom when we resist and reject the truth, but you're not. And that's what's powerful and disconcerting about sin is it literally changes the way you see and process the volitional acts that you have in front of you and the decisions and the choices. There's another antithetic parallelism of this verse, 18, restated in Proverbs 11, 23, which says, the desire of the righteous ends only in good, the expectation of the wicked in wrath. So it's saying the same thing in other words. Are there biblical examples that come to your mind of those who came to ruin by ignoring instruction? Ruin of some form. Who jumps to your mind when you think that? They ignored God and it had ruinous effect. King Saul was supposed to kill all the Amalekites and he decided not to. I'll keep King Agag around for just a little while." And Samuel showed up and said, why have you disobeyed God? Took the Spirit of God away from Saul. Yes, yes. You have some figures like Saul and Solomon. Solomon who's tracking with God and then he's resisting God. Ecclesiastes is basically, under the spirit, him trying to sort out, boy, that did not go well. I should have done this. Please, reader, do this and not that. There's reproof that's like a gold ring. Yes, Saul is the poster child of ruin when you ignore God's commands. Who else pops to mind? David's the poster child of it. Good grief, we've got... A bunch of poster children that we could raise up. Yes, yes. And the statements of obey, and this is the reward, disobey. It's like a catalog, exactly. And that's when I asked this question in my notes to ask of you, I sat back and thought, boy, Israel, is the living organism example of people who are like, eh, maybe, maybe we'll do that, ruin. Yes, ruin his family. God's family, God's tribe, God's people. And they're just like, eh. we'd rather go back and live in slavery under Pharaoh. I mean, we're gonna eat locusts again, and you know, manna, and so Israel is just sort of a living embodiment of that. Anybody else come to your mind before we? Yeah, I got one. It's not quite ruined because they were restored, but yes. not sleep, but pray. Yes. Yes. I heard one godly New Testament scholar who was looking at the different accounts. I think particularly he was talking about Mark, where Mark will give an event and he'll say, one disciple fell away, and he won't name them. And I thought this was so, I'm gonna get emotional thinking about this, because I remember how much this affected me. He said, under the influence of the Spirit, those writing Scripture realized that there was no reason to state their name because they all had done it. It wasn't a matter of calling another out. They had all failed Christ in one way or another. And that there in just that simple, general reference, you see the realization that this disciple might as well have been me. We all failed him while we were with him, after he was gone, after he was resurrected, after the upper room, after Pentecost. You know, we continued to fail him, but yes, absolutely. Any other thoughts there? I mean, Moses was bringing the people to Israel, and he prayed to the Lord for water, and he said, hit the rock, so he did the first time accordingly, and the second time, he took it in his own hands, instead of, I think he was supposed to speak to it, but instead he hit it, and then he wasn't, all he got to do was see the promised land, instead of bring the people to it. Yes, yes. We could do, you know, a whole class just saying, okay, ways in which we're resisting God that comes to ruin by way of anger. And Moses is somebody we would reference in that study. Commitment to God. and then these electric jolts of anger. And look, who wouldn't be frustrated with the grumbling? You really empathize, but you can't just lash out at God. When God said, now don't do it this way, and you're like, I know, but dang it. You can't do that. So would I. I would be a thousand Moses. I wouldn't have ever been given the Moses job. Cain, we could talk about Cain. We could talk about Esau. We've already talked about Saul and Solomon. Manasseh, we could talk about Manasseh, 2 Chronicles 33. Judas, we could talk about Judas. We could talk about Judah and adultery with Tamar and selling Joseph into slavery. So there's a lot of... There's a lot of ready examples about ruin coming upon us by way of ignoring God's instruction. Let's move on to verse 19 and we'll finish this today, I hope. I hope we'll get through this, yes. Verse 19, a desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul. But to turn away from evil, listen to this, to turn away from evil is an abomination to fools. Just let that sink in a minute. To turn away from evil is an abomination. Not evil is an abomination. To turn away from evil is an abomination to fools. Boy, you could chew on that like jerky for a little bit. When righteous desires and purposes are pursued, they are fulfilling, and they bring happiness, and they bring contentment, and they bring sweetness. That's always left out of the criticism of Christians. Oh, you hypocritical this and that with your rules and regulations, and you want to judge, and you da-da-da-da. And it's sort of always conveniently left out. No, no, no. We do these things in a living relationship with our Redeemer, and it is sweet, and it is happy, and it is good, and it's what keeps us from the destruction of this world, and the impediment of thought, and grinding it out against darkness. It is sweetness and light. Righteous desires are purposeful. And when they're pursued, they're fulfilling. Psalm 4, 6 and 7. Offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord. Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord. You have put more joy in my heart. That's the life of faith. It's not drudgery and conscription. It's sweetness and fulfillment. But the fool is so beholden to evil, he won't turn away. On the contrary, it's an abomination. It's disturbing and unnatural to him to do so. This is an aversion to goodness. Charles Bridges says that heaven and hell are contrasted in the character of these two different reactions. And that's why I say my assumption would be, based on your character and conduct in the way that I know you, that you would be on the heaven side of that reaction, but only you know your heart. Only you know what you are enmeshed with in your life and immersed in in your life. This verse says deceitful pleasure and wicked gratification harden sinful natures. There's a distinct quality of the second part of this verse in our culture today. Not turning away from evil because doing so would be odd. The commitment to personal pleasure over all else. The commitment to personal pleasure over hell. And so I just want to close today by saying, you know, all around us, you can see the soul jarring spectacle unnatural curiosities, lurid interests, vices, deviancy, indecency, vulgarity. They're all celebrated and they're promoted. It's pervasive in comedy. I'm comedic. I've always been comedic my whole life. I communicate by way of humor. I try to tone it down when I'm in here with y'all, but it leaks out. I love comedy, but all comedy has gotten so grotesque that it's hard to enjoy it longer than 20 seconds. We're like, okay, well, I don't wanna... That's not what I want to talk about. I thought you were going to make me laugh. You know, I don't want to hear some hideous, torturous thing, but it's in comedy, it's in movies, it's in TV. How many times are you watching a great show and then here comes some obligatory, horrible part that you're like, well, that's not why I'm watching this. Obviously, you know, we talk about social media a lot. That's the low-hanging fruit. But if you go to concerts, you know, concerts, which I haven't really been to concerts a lot, but I see a lot of them in my daily consumption. I'm a musician, and so I see concerts of all sorts. The things that are said and done at concerts, they are an abomination. but the fool will not turn away from them because they think they're so amazing. You know, live entertainment. There's a spirit in our age which is deeply voyeuristic and it's grotesque. It's an infatuation that's turned evil. And again, I don't think of media as inherently bad. My whole life has been in media production. It serves a purpose. It has many redeeming applications. It needs to be harnessed. We have to be mindful, though, of the deadening psychology that clouds the soul of online life and virtual reality. Here's where I want to end, and then I just want any thoughts you may have. If you have friends that are around you that are numb to violence and vulgarity and sensualism and aggression and oppression and malicious behavior, just know that those are dangerous symptoms. You've got to pray for friends like that, and then you've got to gulp down real deep, and at some point you've got to say, I don't think those are healthy preoccupations. They fill your mind. You always see the wrong side of something that could be encouraging or that you could see another way. You always look at it in a dark or malicious or deviant way. These are signs. There is an aroma that this kind of behavior emits. And you want to be aware of them, and you want to respond to them. You don't want to be passive around that in your own life or in others. 2 Chronicles 36.16 says, but they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord rose against his people until there was no remedy. And that's why you want to be a good enough friend to say, hey, while there's still remedy for your pessimism or for your self-destruction, can we talk about it? Do you have any thoughts about that general statement in light of this verse as we close today, about the state of your social lives, your friendships, the social fabric that you inhabit in the world? I know that's another big question, but any thoughts about that as we close? I'm always thinking about the difficulties that you face We face difficulties too, and I don't know that we need to get into better or worse or more or less. They pervade in ways now that they didn't pervade when I was your age. I didn't have access to, I couldn't carry around something that was trying to destroy me. I had to at least load it into my heart and carry it around there. It wasn't just a machine saying, John will self-destruct in 10 seconds. So I'm always empathetic about that struggle, not that the Lord cannot see you through. He will, and another generation will say, this one was easy. So on and on it'll go, but just any thoughts about this pervasive, you know, look, not turning away from something because it's too enticing. Yes, sir. I think we always have a tendency and it was only for a few seconds, but then it's a few seconds more, like the next show or the next movie, and you get more and you get none, and then it ramps up and it gets worse and worse until you're watching full R-rated movies, and you are numb to the violence and the vulgarity, and you're just like, well, I was able to walk through it, when in reality, deep down, it's destroying you. Exactly. And that's why I say this is subtle and you want to understand what the verse is saying. This is a person who may have gotten to that place in degrees and now they think it's dumb to look away from that. They think it's unnatural to look away from that because they're so numb. You don't just plop down and arrive like that. That can be a very cultivated kind of deviancy. our machines are really helping that that's that's good any other thoughts yes watching Elon Musk trying to get stuff cut from our federal budget yes just perverse stuff like we're sending Yes, yes. And the outrage that trying to cut that program has caused. Yes. It's an abomination for fools to depart from evil. Yes. Watching these simple things, trying to end this war in Ukraine. Ending a war is good. And we've got people like Lindsey Graham freaking out going, oh no, we can't stop this war. That would be terrible and not be killing people. The political realm is another example that I think gives us apt examples of people who are so far down a way of thinking, they do not know how to see it objectively or pull back and return to some formal, former objectivity. And like what we said about any person, with great sorrow and pity should we look on that, we would be absorbed into it very easily, I think, if put in similar circumstances. And I'm thankful for people that try, and I lament those that are corrupted, yes. Well, I said Jeremiah earlier, and just, you know, whenever I read the Old Testament, I'm like, Guys, it's not that hard, you know, just get rid of your idols, you know, stop looking at other nations, and you will not be destroyed by the Babylonians, but at the same like, we do that now, you know, and God is pleading with us to we're saying we know what's best. That's it. Amen. Let's end on that because that's exactly right and let's take the force of that insight out of the verse. It's always a problem to succumb to thinking that ignoring or rebelling against God is okay or okay for a season or okay for a specific purpose. And that's how Satan ensnares you. All he needs to see is your willingness to do that and now he knows the little breadcrumbs to get you off the path. So that's exactly right and it's in all ages. I really enjoy y'all, the organism of my people. And I look forward to keep going with you. Mr. Mann, would you? I'll do it. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your words today as we seek your wisdom and we thank you that it's coming to receive and rest upon you. You grant wisdom to us. You also grant wisdom to those we have fellowship with. And pray that we would be quick to seek that and understand it. And also to avoid evil, knowing that it will frustrate those who are in darkness. But let us be prepared for that and compassionate as we offer the wisdom that we know and you may grant to those. We're thankful that you put us in place to witness for you and to spread your word. I pray we would do that diligently in the days ahead, for we ask all this in thy name, amen.