And as Zach’s already said, we’re looking at the huge subject of leadership. And just as I was just saying to Zach beforehand just how providential timing was that on Friday past there, there was a summit conference called The Calling, organised by Christians, but open really to everyone in leadership to explore the themes of leadership. Here’s a couple of promo phrases or soundbites, I suppose we could say.

The Calling 2026 is a brand new one-day national leadership summit designed to inspire, equip, and commission people who want to lead well, creating space to reflect, grow, and lead with purpose in business, community, and life. And there is really a huge need, isn’t there, for I guess all of us to think through what leadership means. It’s something that is essential for life at every level when we think about it.

And I think as we look at the world around us… Next slide, actually, thanks, Matthew. Just a little picture that I borrowed from… I think it was Alan McKinnon had that up actually on his Facebook page. So that gives you a feeling for what The Calling conference was like.

(1:39 – 6:01)

But as we look at the world around us, I think that we see that there is at just about every level a crisis in leadership in our world, whether we think at the highest level internationally, all that’s going on there and the individuals involved without making really any detailed comment. It’s quite scary when we think about what’s actually going on there. At a national level as well, many of us will have deep concerns in recent times over leadership in terms of not only the direction that political leadership is taking, but also questions of character and integrity.

And we can bring it down to the workplace as well, can’t we, in terms of leadership there, in terms of employers. Also, we can think of churches and the crucially important role of good leadership within every gospel church. And right down to our families, leading in marriage, leading in family life, hugely important.

Even as I was just looking through the programme, I wasn’t able to be at the conference myself, but I see that I think the first session was about leading yourself, which applies to every single one of us, even if we’re single, leading our own lives well with purpose and direction. So there’s a huge amount that we could cover this evening, but Colin has given me four passages to look at, so I’m going to do my very best to stick to them. But I wanted just to open with a few verses.

Well, first of all, a quote from Matthew Roberts, who is a leading Christian thinker. David Robertson probably had that role before he went to Australia. Still does comment from the other side of the world.

But Matthew Roberts is a very thoughtful Christian thinker who writes frequently for The Critic magazine and also blogs extensively. Something that he said a few years ago in his article, The Revolution in the Stable, was, many of the social malaises currently afflicting us arise from abandoning the Christianity which provided the structural timbers of Western culture. The crumbling of Western civilisation going on apace around us is at root the chickens of secularisation coming home to roost.

That’s very true, isn’t it, that Christian principles, Christian truth, Christian values have progressively in our lifetimes, whatever age we are, been excluded increasingly from national life. And the verses in Isaiah 59 really come to mind in relation to this. So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance.

Truth has stumbled in the streets. Honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found.

And whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice. Well, before we come to look at these four passages, and borrowing from David Wiley a few weeks ago, I’ve put points two and three together.

The middle verse is here basically under one heading because they do deal with similar themes. So we are going to have hopefully just the three points. But important for us just to think about what the Hebrew words that we’re going to be looking at in these verses actually mean.

And justice doesn’t appear specifically in these verses, but it is a theme that runs through the book of Proverbs. And the Hebrew word is mishpat, and it means rectification, moral fairness, proper order, giving everyone their dues. So very similar to justice in English, what it actually means.

(6:02 – 10:52)

And it is often linked with righteousness, which is tzedakah. That’s a word that we’re going to see in the first verse that we look at. And also with equity measuring, which means uprightness, fairness, free from bias or corruption.

And this is right there at the book of Proverbs chapter one, the second part of verse three, speaking about really as Solomon sets out what the book is going to be all about. He speaks about what is right. There’s tzedakah, righteousness, and just mishpat, and fair measuring or equitable.

So there’s those three key words right at the start of Hebrews. And we’ll see some of them basically woven through these verses and passages that we will be looking at this evening. There may be a number of questions that will come to mind, and I won’t have time to answer all of them.

But one of the first ones possibly is, well, here we are, we’re reading a book that has largely been written by Solomon, although there are others that were involved too. And we might be tempted to think, well, this is in the Old Testament. Isn’t this just for Israel? In particular, when he speaks about kings and the kings and their particular role, isn’t this just intended for the nation of Israel, which was a theocracy and was unique in God’s economy.

And really it’s dangerous for us to try and apply general principles from what was being taught to the kings of Israel, to our own nation, to our own leadership, whether it be political or moral or whatever. Aren’t we in dangerous ground? Is this really only for Israel or is it for all nations? Well, what Colin was preaching on last Sunday, later on in chapter eight, he was focussing there in chapter nine. But earlier in chapter eight, we see verses 15 and 16, speaking of lady wisdom, by me, kings, plural, reign.

And rulers, plural, issue decrees that are just. By me, princes govern and nobles all who rule on earth. So there’s the answer for us.

This wisdom isn’t just for the kings of Israel. It is for every ruler everywhere. And of course, the wisdom in general is for everyone everywhere because God’s wisdom is unchanging.

It is for all of us. It is universal. It is not simply for the Jewish people, it is for Christians and indeed for all.

The call of the gospel is to come to Christ, who is the wisdom of God, as we thought many times already during this series. So since it is, as we see from the New Testament as well in Romans 13, that God is the one who appoints those in authority and indeed in Colossians chapter one, if you tease it apart, you can think that it’s really all about kind of cosmic authorities and thinking really, really big picture. But actually, if you tease apart Colossians one verse 13, I think it is, you’ll see that Paul is actually saying that all earthly visible rulers were created.

It’s actually verse 16, Colossians 1, 16, all earthly visible rulers were created by Christ and for him. So in answer to the question, is God concerned about how they rule? It’s a bit of a no brainer, but we do have in Psalm 2 some really, really telling verses where God himself says, therefore you kings be wise, be warned you rulers of the earth, serve the Lord with fear and celebrate his rule with trembling. Now we’re going to look not exclusively at the role of those in political authority because they do come up, these verses do deal with them.

But in particular, the first verse that we’re going to be looking at, Proverbs 14, verse 34, we can certainly look at in a much broader context as well. So this is looking at national prosperity. Verse 34, righteousness exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people.

(10:53 – 11:37)

Or other translations is a reproach or is a disgrace to any people. So that phrase exalts a nation. Our first point is national prosperity, and we could see, I guess, the contrast between righteousness and sin, if you go back to the slides.

Thanks, Matthew. Now politicians are always going on about national prosperity and frequently they will think of it more or less in economic terms, perhaps even exclusively. But the exalting and the prospering that is spoken of here that God has in mind is something quite different altogether.

(11:39 – 28:46)

Again, let’s think a bit about the word righteousness, tzedakah, and what it actually means in the Hebrew. It’s not just personal morality, which is maybe what we would think of first and foremost, but in a national sense, as it’s spoken of here in Proverbs 14, 34, there is the sense of right communal and social relationships, really a harmonious nation, a nation that isn’t divided into various factions and camps, but actually that works well together. And that’s something that is a very rare thing in our day and generation, but I’ll be alluding to a few moments from principally British history, but maybe world history as well over the centuries.

I think it’s undeniable that during World War II, there was incredible cohesion and unity amongst the whole of the British nation there, united in their determination to oppose the threat of Nazi Germany, and everyone had to do their bit for the war effort and help in various ways at home or abroad. And that, I think, was a great example. And of course, King George VI, just before Dunkirk, you’ve maybe seen the film The Darkest Hour, called the nation to prayer.

And I think it was very telling, wasn’t it, during the COVID pandemic, which unbelievably is over six years ago now, were there any nations, certainly not our nation, where there was a call to God to have mercy upon our world and to have mercy upon individual nations. And it shows such a drifting away, not just a drifting away, but actually a running away, in many cases, from dependence upon God. So in contrast to righteousness, we have sin here, which is, I’m not going to pronounce this correctly, but I think it would be chattahat, is what it is in Hebrew.

And it is very similar to the word used in Romans 3, 23, and it does mean to miss the mark or to go astray morally. So again, just exactly what we would understand sin to be. Now, there are problems here in the sense that you may be thinking, well, doesn’t scripture say no one is righteous? Not even one? Doesn’t it say, again, Romans 3, that we’ve all sinned? So how can this verse be true of any nation? Well, the commentators have said that when Proverbs and other parts, Isaiah in particular, other parts of the Bible, speak about national righteousness and national sin, it is slightly nuanced.

It’s not quite the same as individual righteousness and individual sin that we are much more familiar with in our understanding of the gospel. That God creates the nations, as we read in Acts 17. He rules the nations.

They belong to him, as we read in Psalm 47. And he does have a great concern for, shall we say, the moral state of each nation. This is something that we don’t really tend to focus on, but it is absolutely a theme that runs throughout scripture.

And of course, we are urged to pray for those in political authority, because so often, in terms of public policy and lawmaking, they do set the tone of the state of the nation morally, in terms of the direction that they seek to take it in. And of course, there are all the other various cultural influences that I’m sure we’re aware of, that also drive each nation, either in a good or, more often than not, in our day and generation, a bad direction away from God. So just unpacking this verse and what it’s actually saying to us, there’s three principles that I would see from verse 34.

And the first is that a lack of strong moral leadership leads to sin spreading. There is the role of government, as we see in Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2, is to have a check on sin, so to speak, a check on evil and wickedness, to restrain it, and also to commend what is good, and to punish the evildoer. So there ought to be good laws that will punish criminal activity and not turn a blind eye to it.

And not just in terms of law, lawmaking, but also the administration of law. And this is something that we have seen. I don’t want to get drawn into this to any extent.

But we have heard many, many stories about public enquiries or police action being taken with something that various things that people are very, very clear need to have intervention in terms of either public enquiry or police focus that doesn’t actually happen. And it’s very often not simply down to lack of finance. There does seem to be very often a political agenda behind not seeking to bring certain people to justice, and that is a great cause of concern in our nation at this time, isn’t it? So a lack of strong moral leadership so often does lead to sin spreading and wickedness spreading throughout a culture and throughout a society.

But conversely, strong moral leadership brings true national prosperity. And I want to just take us back to the 19th century, where this was undoubtedly the case, where evangelical Christians in politics like William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury brought about incredible positive social change, the abolition of slavery, and then many decades later, because it was much more difficult because it was global, the actual slaves trade itself. On Wilberforce’s deathbed, he learned that the key vote, I think, in the House of Lords had been passed and that the slave trade was going to be abolished throughout the British Empire.

And then all the great social reforms that Lord Shaftesbury was able to bring about just a few years later. Tremendous social good was done by so many evangelicals at the Clapham sect. And for example, Josephine Butler, maybe a name that you’re not aware of, but she worked tirelessly to raise the age of consent for girls, which unbelievably, through most of the Victorian era, was 12.

And she managed to get it up to 14, and then I think it was 1875, as late as that, it was 16, where of course it has remained ever since. So tremendous good was done by those with political, in politics like Wilberforce and Shaftesbury, but also those that took the opportunity that they had with their influence, like Josephine Butler, actually to lobby politicians, did a fantastic job over many, many years with that, and brought about great change to bring teenage girls out of prostitution and to protect them and generations to come. So there is an example from our own national life of strong moral leadership actually bringing true prosperity.

And some of you may be aware of, I think it’s Sir Neil Ferguson, I think he’s just received his knighthood fairly recently, one of the world’s leading historians who has recently professed faith in Christ. So that’s really, he was a hardened atheist for pretty well all his adult life, but along with his wife, he has professed faith in Christ in recent years. And he has written a book called Empire, which is one of the definitive books about the British Empire.

And even as an atheist, he conceded that the secret to the success of the spread of the British Empire was Christianity. And that whole era, and I accept it wasn’t perfect in every way, but certainly a great deal of good came about, not only with the spread of the gospel globally that grew through the 19th century, but also great good and great temporal blessing to those nations within the British Empire. And there’s no question that at that time when my own research was that over 99% of the population had some kind of Christian affiliation, really probably the closest to the country being truly Christian was, I think, undoubtedly honoured and exalted as a nation in terms of world history.

What’s the phrase? The sun never sets on the British Empire. So just an example from our own history where at every level of our life, notice there were those great preachers from the 19th century, C.H. Spurgeon, J.C. Ryle, great revivals indeed throughout the nation as well during the 19th century. It was a time of great spiritual and temporal blessing.

So there’s an example, I think, from our own history of righteousness exalting a nation. And we could be here all night thinking of ways in which sin is a reproach or disgrace, indeed condemning any people. And again, this verse shows that it’s not just the nation of Israel here.

It is very clearly in the Hebrew, it exalts a nation and condemns any people. So we can apply this verse to our own nation and indeed every nation in the world. So there’s some principles for true national prosperity.

It’s not military might, it’s not economic clout, it’s not political influence necessarily, but it is true prosperity, true flourishing. That is the exaltation. And of course it is all founded in the truth of the gospel and God’s ways being honoured and spread not only throughout the nation, but through many other nations as well.

But moving quickly on to our next point, which we’ll read the two verses first of all, which is chapter 16 verse 12 and chapter 20 verse 28. So kings detest wrongdoing for a throne is established through righteousness. And then moving on to chapter 20 verse 28, love and faithfulness keep a king safe.

Through love his throne is made secure. So both these verses speaking about political stability, but I think in particular, and we could say longevity, but really all to do with political integrity because that is the foundation there spoken of as righteousness and love. So we can see here the contrast, not between righteousness and sin, but between principle and what we might call expediency, which so often seems to govern political decisions, doesn’t it? So the key words here that are used, and it’s interesting how they’re translated in different ways, in different translations.

The NIV here has a throne is established through, sorry, 20:28. We’ll maybe come to that in a minute. But the word for steadfast love, or sometimes translated mercy is heseth.

Many will know that is a word that speaks of God’s covenant love for us. And also faithfulness there. It’s interesting.

These are words that we’d think of referring to God, but the verses are referring to them for the kings. So it makes us think, does that mean that really only believers should be in the kind of top jobs in political power, which was the king in the Old Testament, obviously, presidents, prime ministers, first ministers in our own context? Well, I don’t think so because that’s simply not been the case right throughout history. And clearly many verses assume that those that are in political power are not going to be believers, but we still are called to pray for them.

But I think that the reason why these characteristics that apply to God, kings are described as having them, is because their authority is delegated by God, and they are called upon to act with God’s character and attributes in terms of ruling righteously, ruling fairly, ruling justly. Regardless of what they might believe, that is what God expects of them. And it’s interesting that the word heseth, steadfast love, can mean mercy, emet, which is translated as faithfulness, can also mean truth.

And so all the translations may be thinking how choosing words that would apply more to how a king would actually execute his role as king. But it’s helpful certainly just to see what this actually means in practise. Verse 12 is a difficult one, and it’s translated in different ways.

It’s chapter 16, verse 12. And NIV has it as kings detest wrongdoing. Other translations have really more affecting to the office of monarch that it is detestable to the office of monarch for evil to be done, whereas the NIV takes the meaning that all kings are going to detest wrongdoing.

Well, clearly throughout history, many kings have delighted in wrongdoing. But I think it’s certainly speaking here about the ideal and that a good king is going to honour the office of monarch, office of ruler, which is a distinctly moral role where good is to be promoted and evil is to be kept in check and indeed punished. And the reason given for this is that the throne is established through righteousness.

So if a king is going to reject what is good and is not going to detest but delight in wrongdoing, then more often than not, that rule is going to come to an end one way or another and often fairly quickly. So moving on to chapter 20, verse 28, which speaks not just of the throne being established through righteousness, but also through love the throne is made secure. Love and faithfulness keep a king safe.

Through love his throne is made secure. Again, that’s maybe love’s not the word that we would immediately think of as a guiding principle for those in authority. But again, remember kings and rulers, their authority is delegated by God.

God has that covenant love, not only for his people, but for all that he’s made, as we read in Psalm 145. And a good king, a good ruler ought to love the people. And I think this is one of the sad reflections of our own day and generation that so often those in political authority, you really couldn’t describe them as having that as a guiding principle, that they seem to be very ideologically driven or have a very strong political agenda that they won’t be diverted from.

(28:47 – 29:10)

And they will claim that it will be for the good of the people, but perhaps love would be the last word that we would think of to describe them. But yet, this is still what God calls all rulers to have as their foundation, that they should not be there for their own agenda. They should be there to serve the people.

(29:10 – 31:00)

And the best way to serve the people is to have a great love for their well-being. So if we move on to the last point there, so political integrity, and this is just before we leave that one, it is so important that, and this is something that I’ve discussed with one or two of you, whether having moral integrity is a top priority for those in political office. And certainly, I’ve had my own thinking shaped a bit more by this, dare I say, even changed by these verses.

And it is clear that as well as looking at the policies of those that are seeking political office, of course, that’s something that we will focus on a lot at the Christian Institute. Certainly, personal moral integrity, and that’s very clear there in chapter 16 verse 12, is something that is really important that some of the other translations have. It is detestable to kings to commit wrong.

And I think that that’s something that is still accepted within our culture when we find generally that there’s an outcry if there’s been just double standards. And we’ve seen that in recent electoral defeats, shall we say. I think it’s not too controversial to say that probably one of the main reasons why the Conservatives lost was because of whatever it was called, the parties behind the scenes, and the nation was just absolutely appalled at the horrific double standards there, and that led to the downfall of the Conservative administration.

(31:02 – 32:33)

So there is still, even though we may consider there’s no vestige left in our land of any sense of right and wrong or Christian values in terms of national life, I think when there’s hypocrisy in high places, when there’s corruption in high places, there is a national outcry still, and we can give thanks for that. There is that sense that something unjust has happened and a desire for things to be put right and for justice to prevail. But just coming to this last point, which I’m calling effective advocacy, let’s look at chapter 31 verses 8 and 9. I love this passage because it’s by King Lemuel, but it’s actually not his words.

It’s his mum’s words. Look at the prologue there. The sayings of King Lemuel, an inspired utterance, his mother taught him.

That’s a brilliant opening, isn’t it? And it shows actually, all joking apart, just the importance of a good and godly influence that mothers can have. Just an example of that just recently with the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham. I’m not sure where he stands himself spiritually, but certainly his mother is a very devout Roman Catholic and very opposed to assisted suicide.

(32:33 – 33:17)

Keir Starmer, his predecessor, was an avowed atheist, very much in favour of assisted suicide. It was a real change where he was indicating at the end of July, after he’d taken office really pretty early on, that he felt that now was not the right time to have the debate on assisted suicide. There needed to be a far better commitment and investment in social care and palliative care.

And that’s clearly been the good positive moral influence that he’s had from his mother. So there’s maybe something of a parallel anyway, to some extent. But let’s look at what King Lemuel’s, the wisdom, the inspired wisdom that his mother gave him.

(33:17 – 36:22)

Verses eight and nine, speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute, speak up and judge fairly, defend the rights of the poor and needy. So I think we need to ask ourselves at the start here, thinking about the focus on the truly disadvantaged. Because if we just think about what King Lemuel and his mum are saying here in verses eight and nine, it is those who have no voice.

Let’s apply that to our own situation. That will apply to every single unborn child. They have no voice.

They can have no voice at all. And yet so many of them face death before they’re even born. Surely we need to be speaking up for the unborn.

And then those who are destitute. Indeed, some translations describe this as those who are near death. That’s really what the Hebrew means.

They’re near the end of their lives. What have so many of us been doing this year, and indeed in the last couple of years, but working hard to protect those near death from an assisted suicide law. The poor and needy.

All sorts of ways in which we ought to be helping them. And it’s great that we have things like Warm Space, and there are food banks obviously as well that Christians are involved in seeking to help the poor and needy. But getting back to what we read earlier from Isaiah 59, we could add, I think we’re on to the next one, Matthew, there we go, thanks.

Those mistreated for standing up against evil. Remember what Isaiah says, those who depart from evil make themselves a prey. They make themselves a target.

And we can think of those who are opposed to the buffer zones, those who will speak out in social media about the nonsense, ideologies being promulgated, and they find themselves being arrested simply because of something that they shared on X or on social media, where they were simply stating biological reality. So it’s good that we are concerned for freedom of speech issues when it is the gospel or Christian principles, Christian standards, truth and reality. If that is being excluded from the public square, as we read in Isaiah 59, then it’s right for us to do what we can to ensure that the freedom to speak truth is preserved and protected, and that people should not be punished for saying what is good and right and true.

(36:25 – 41:24)

The question this passage throws up though is, should it be us that does the speaking? And after all, King Lemuel’s mum is saying to her son, speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Well, it was a monarchy in those days, and it wasn’t a constitutional monarchy like ours. The king had actual political power and also judicial power.

Think of Solomon and having to make the decision with the two women and the child there. It was a very different political setup than the one that we live in just now. But if we think through the fact that we live in a parliamentary democracy, where we do have a voice, what democracy has rightly been described as rule of the people, by the people, for the people.

We have that access to our politicians. So surely it is right for us, and indeed all the commentators, take verses eight and nine, really, not just as those for the political elite to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. But if we have a voice, and we do, we ought to make use of that voice and make use of every opportunity, as we’ll see in a minute, to do good to all.

So who should speak up for them? Really, all of us that have any kind of influence. Next, what are we seeking? Well, this really surprised me, but again, one lives and learns. It says, speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.

Speak up and judge fairly, defend the rights of the poor and needy. I’ve heard Christians say, we don’t have any rights as Christians. So why are you making fuss about it? Well, here, rights are mentioned.

And of course, we think of the Apostle Paul. He had rights as a Roman citizen, and he regularly made use of them. Think of Acts 16, and also later when he was about to be flogged, and he lets the man know that he is a Roman citizen, so saves himself from a beating.

So the rights that we have in law can be used for good, for our protection, and also, of course, for the protection of others, for the protection of Christians, those that maybe feel they don’t have a voice. Without maybe the help of others, maybe they can’t afford legal representation. That is sadly a reality in our own day and generation.

So because of that, they don’t have a voice in the courts. And that’s why organisations that can help them are so important in our own day and generation. And then why should we speak up for those who are right? Because what we’re doing is we’re speaking up for justice to be applied, for justice to be often restored.

And it makes me think so much of lovely verses in Jeremiah chapter 9, verses 23 and 24. This is what the Lord says, let not the wise boast of their wisdom, or the strong boast of their strength, or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this, that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight, declares the Lord. So the Lord, we know he exercises kindness.

If we’re Christians tonight, we absolutely know the kindness that Paul speaks about in Titus, and the kindness and love of God was shown in Christ. We know that God is righteous, but he shows his righteousness on earth. He shows his justice on earth.

So whenever someone has been falsely accused of a crime and they’re acquitted in court, God delights that there’s a just result. Whenever someone that’s committed some heinous crime is found guilty and dealt with appropriately under the legal system, God rejoices in that justice. He delights in that.

It’s so important for us to realise that even though we can sometimes get things wrong, the purpose for courts of law, and actually Romans 13 is more about the judicial system than law making it. It’s more to do with law enforcement through good policing and good criminal justice system, as well as taxes being paid and used wisely. We need to see that as part of God’s good and wise purposes for the good order of society, and we often call that common grace.

(41:25 – 42:39)

So in conclusion, what principles can we make here? Well, let’s start with a couple of key verses from the New Testament in relation to our thinking about political leadership in particular and justice. 1 Timothy 2 verses 1 and 2, Paul says, I urge then, first of all, that word really means as top priority, that petitions, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for all people. Well, that’s kind of a no-brainer, I suppose, but interest in the one group that Paul singles out, for kings and all those in authority.

Praying for them is a top priority for every Christian, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives. Isn’t it interesting? It’s not their conversion that he mentions first. That comes later in the passage, but the main reason we’re to pray for those in authority is that we as Christians may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness, often referred to as religious liberty or gospel freedom.

(42:40 – 43:50)

Hugely important thing for us to be praying for, but also working for. Galatians 6 verse 10, therefore, as we have opportunity, and we do have opportunity in a parliamentary democracy like this, where those of us who are in Scotland, 16 or over, have the vote and have access to our constituency MSP, our constituency MP, possibly the list MSPs as well. That tends to vary from place to place, but we could certainly at the very least email them or send them a letter and explain our concerns about what’s happening with proposed legislation.

We can respond to public consultations. All these are examples of doing good, seeking to be a good and a godly influence on those whom God has placed in political leadership over us, that they might act justly for the benefit of all in society. Just three little points of principle just to close with.

(43:52 – 45:53)

Since God is concerned about righteousness and justice in the corridors of power, so should we be. Next, since Christ has all authority on earth, read that in Matthew 28, and as I was saying earlier, all visible earthly authorities were created by him and for him, it follows that they will be held accountable for rejecting that divine purpose and going their own way. So it’s an act of real mercy for us to seek to guide them in the right way on a whole range of matters.

And then lastly, as Christ’s ambassadors and as salt and light, we have a responsibility to hold politicians to account and as children of light, as Paul says in Ephesians 5, to commend to them all that is good and right and true. I’ve got a lot of free literature at the back there that unpacks a lot of things that I’ve not had time to mention this evening. And if you’re not already on the Christian Institute mailing list, well, there’s a chance for you to sign up this evening.

But let’s close in prayer just now. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that in your goodness and your wisdom, you put people in places of authority, political authority with the aim and intention of ruling well, ruling with righteousness and equity and fairness, and indeed with love for all the people.

(45:55 – 46:47)

And we do want to pray, Lord, for those in authority. We can be so tempted to despair of them. We can be so tempted to feel that they’re a lost cause, but your word still urges us to pray for them.

And we ask, Lord, that they would act in such a way that we as your people in our nation and indeed globally would be able to live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. And we pray as well, Lord, that as we undoubtedly have so many opportunities to be a good and godly influence on those whom you have placed in authority over us, help us in all sorts of ways to do good to all, and especially those of the household of faith. In Jesus’ name we ask it.

(46:48 – 46:48)

Amen.

The post Leadership and Justice – Proverbs appeared first on Greenview Church.

(0:20 – 0:41)

Ill-gotten treasures have no lasting value, but righteousness delivers from death. The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry, but he thwarts the craving of the wicked. Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth.

(0:43 – 1:07)

He who gathers crops in the summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son. Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked. The name of the righteous is used in blessings, but the name of the wicked will rot.

(1:07 – 1:34)

The wise in heart accept commands, but a chattering fool comes to ruin. Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out. Whoever winks maliciously causes grief, and a chattering fool comes to ruin.

(1:35 – 1:59)

The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence. Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers over all wrongs. Wisdom is found on the lips of the discerning, but a rod is for the back of the one who has no sense.

(2:00 – 2:27)

The wise store up knowledge, but the mouth of a fool invites ruin. The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor. The wages of the righteous is life, but the earnings of the wicked are sin and death.

(2:31 – 3:14)

So what do we do with a passage like this? That’s a question I’ve been asking this week. As I’ve been prepping this sermon, I’ve been asking how do I preach this? How do I convey and communicate this? And yet it’s also a question that you may have asked if you’ve read through the book of Proverbs, if you’ve made that journey through chapters one to nine, which are much more coherent and easy to follow. And then you’ve crossed that threshold into what seems like a jumble of sayings in chapter 10.

(3:15 – 3:35)

Two line sayings of Solomon, hitting you one after another. And they seem to be just arranged randomly in no particular order, like a bag of marbles that someone has spilled across the floor. And you think, how am I meant to read this?

(3:36 – 4:11)

It’s so different from reading Paul or the Psalms or even the early part of Proverbs. Well, need I even say that I will not be able to dispel all the mysteries and all the difficulties of reading this section of Proverbs. But my modest attempt this week and next week will be to wrestle with these passages with you in chapter 10 and then in chapter 16, praying that we will learn wisdom as we go.

(4:12 – 4:32)

Because remember, that’s what this is here for. This is here to give us wisdom for everyday life. So we’ll try and see what the Holy Spirit would impress on our hearts, but also praying at the same time that we will get more of an idea of how to read these sorts of Proverbs.

(4:33 – 4:50)

So I’m gonna take you through essentially my own little process that I stumbled into across the week. So the three points are basically the journey that I took. So first of all, this turns out to be kind of three levels, whether you go down the way or up the way, you can decide.

(4:50 – 5:11)

But there’s three levels here that we can read these Proverbs. First of all, there’s the surface level, and you can get pretty far at the surface level. Secondly, you can go to a deeper level by really studying them and particularly looking at the section of Proverbs, the cluster of Proverbs, and get even more out of this.

(5:11 – 5:22)

And then lastly, you can take these Proverbs to the next level. And the next level is as we step forward to the New Testament. So surface level, deeper level, next level.

(5:23 – 5:40)

Let’s start with surface level. And let me say upfront that when I say surface level, I don’t mean it in a bad way. See, these Proverbs were meant to be read or heard at a relatively straightforward level.

(5:41 – 6:06)

Bear in mind, this book was written for the simple and the youth. It was not meant to be read or it wasn’t aiming at the old and the super smart. Now that doesn’t mean that every Proverb is easy and straightforward, especially for us since we are reading them 3,000 years later in quite a different culture.

(6:06 – 6:27)

So we sometimes do need to go to the study Bible footnotes for a bit of help or maybe even reach for a commentary. But generally speaking, even today, most of these Proverbs are accessible. You read them, you pause and give them a little thought and usually you get them.

(6:28 – 6:48)

And so I want to commend this straightforward reading of Proverbs. That verse by verse, line by line, one at a time sort of reading. In fact, what I want to do, first of all, is just to cast our eyes across these Proverbs and look at what they’re saying kind of on the surface.

(6:49 – 7:09)

So you’ll need to have your Bible open. Verse one kicks off with a Proverb about the behaviour of a child and its emotional impact on the child’s parents. A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son grief to his mum.

(7:10 – 7:38)

Chapters one to nine revolve around a father and mother instructing their son. And now in the first Proverb of the entire collection, we’re told that children bring either joy or grief to their parents. That is followed in verse two with a Proverb that contrasts wealth and righteousness.

(7:39 – 8:02)

Or more specifically, unethically gained wealth, the kind of wealth that has no lasting value. Think here of criminals in the criminal underworld or the mafia. If you think about it, most of them, even the really famous ones, they die young or they end up in jail and they lose everything.

(8:03 – 8:17)

That’s what this is saying. Tons of money unethically gained has zero long-term value. But on the other hand, righteousness can deliver you from death.

(8:18 – 8:30)

I take that to mean that generally speaking, living a righteous life will stop you having a foreshortened life. Your life will have longevity. It will keep you from death.

(8:31 – 8:56)

In the third Proverb, verse three, we’re given a general observation that the Lord doesn’t let the righteous go hungry. But it’s clear from the contrasting line that the even bigger point here is not just about food. Because it says in the second line that the cravings, these sort of evil longings of the wicked will never be satisfied.

(8:56 – 9:11)

They will never be ultimately fulfilled. Whereas if you are righteous, the Lord will meet your deepest needs. Verse four is about laziness and work.

(9:12 – 9:21)

Laziness leads to poverty. Diligence leads to wealth. The fifth Proverb is about the timeliness of work.

(9:23 – 9:41)

If you have, some of you are working and you have an employer, a boss. If you have an employer, they not only expect you to work, but they usually expect you to work at certain times. Or if you’re a student, the lecturer gives you the deadline.

(9:41 – 9:58)

The work must be done in a timely manner. Well, a prudent son gathers crops in the summer when it’s the right time to do it, harvest time. But he who sleeps during the harvest is a disgraceful son.

(10:00 – 10:31)

Notice that the son’s laziness doesn’t just lead to his own problems, it leads to his parents’ shame. See, this is one of the things we’re learning from these Proverbs is that despite all of the individualism that gets pumped into our veins nowadays, we do live in families and social networks. My wrong behaviour has a social shaming impact upon my parents.

(10:33 – 10:58)

Verse six seems to be about the outcome of a righteous or wicked life. One results in blessing, righteousness, the other results in violence, which comes back on the wicked like a boomerang. The seventh Proverb, verse seven, is about the longevity and reputation of someone’s name.

(10:58 – 11:22)

The name of the wicked will rot, but the name of the righteous is used in blessings. I don’t know if any of you know who Stuart or who William Stuart Howson is, William Stuart Howson. He was a Liverpudlian who was actually a nephew of Adolf Hitler, but he fought for Britain in the war against the Nazis.

(11:23 – 11:34)

His dad was Hitler’s half-brother. And after the war, like pretty much all of the Hitlers, he changed his surname from Hitler to Houston. So odious was the name of Hitler.

(11:36 – 11:54)

And so we see here in this proverb that reputations can linger for a very long time. And of course, the point of this proverb is that righteousness leads to a good reputation, even after death. And the wisdom keeps coming.

(11:55 – 12:07)

Verse eight is a proverb about teachability. The wise in heart accept commands. The wise can take an instruction from their boss and do it, carry it out.

(12:08 – 12:21)

But by contrast, a chattering fool comes to ruin. The chattering fool is the person who doesn’t listen to what they’re told because they’re too busy chattering away and babbling. They don’t listen to anybody.

(12:22 – 12:47)

The ninth proverb seems to be about living without the fear that undiscovered sin will later catch up with you. Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out. Sin generally comes back to bite you.

(12:48 – 13:02)

Verses 10 and 11 are about the contrasting impact of our words. The harm that our words can do to ourselves and others. Our words are dangerous things.

(13:03 – 13:15)

They can be lethal weapons. And yet the mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life. So your words can either bring death and destruction or they can bring life-giving blessing.

(13:17 – 13:41)

The 12th proverb is on a similar theme of the hurt we can cause or choose not to cause. At the root of it all, though, is what’s going on in our hearts. If there is hatred deep within me, I will express that in loving to stir up conflict between people because I hate them and I love them being aggravated.

(13:42 – 14:02)

But if there is love in my heart, my tendency will be to want to cover over wrongs, to be not quick to take offence. Verse 13 is about where you find wise words. You find them on the lips of wise people.

(14:03 – 14:19)

But it’s also about the fool who won’t listen to wise words. The only thing the fool will listen to is the rod of punishment. The 14th proverb is about storing up knowledge.

(14:20 – 14:34)

It’s a really wise thing to store up knowledge. Whereas the fool, by contrast, runs their mouth to ruin. There are people whose mouths get them into trouble in life.

(14:34 – 14:54)

And there are people who store up wisdom and they say just the right thing at the right time. Verse 15 is about the human benefits of being wealthy or at least not being poor. Certainly wealth can have its dangers, but it is also a fortified city.

(14:56 – 15:14)

Some wealth can protect us from many of the difficulties and setbacks of life. By contrast, poverty, which means here, I think abject poverty is the ruin of the poor. This proverb is not blaming the poor for being poor.

(15:15 – 15:32)

It’s not always someone’s fault that they are poor. Although as we see in Proverbs, in some cases, laziness leads to poverty. But what this is saying is that whatever the reason is that someone is poor, without this being a moral comment, their life can be destroyed by abject poverty.

(15:34 – 15:59)

And then verse 16 takes up this related idea of wealth and talks about wages. Except verse 16, there’s a little twist on this, a little spin on the idea of wages. Because here we have not the wages of a farmer or the wages of a businessman, but the wages of the righteous and the wages of the wicked.

(16:00 – 16:18)

What do righteous people get paid? They get paid with life. And what do the wicked earn? Well, their payment is sin and death. And so again, the clear lesson here on the surface is, don’t be wicked.

(16:19 – 16:36)

Be a righteous person. And so there’s lots of stuff here to consider. Now, I know we were going pretty fast there, but that’s kind of how we do our Bible reading, isn’t it? We go through it at that kind of pace and there’s quite a lot we can get out of it.

(16:36 – 16:47)

Sometimes we might need to pause and I had to do a little bit of work on a few of those. You’ve got to pause and ponder and say, what does this mean? But we can get at what this is saying. It’s pretty instructive.

(16:47 – 17:36)

It’s pretty insightful and it’s extremely practical. And so I would encourage you just on the surface of things, even to look through these Proverbs this morning and think, are there any of these Proverbs that I particularly need to be applying in my daily life? I wonder if I was to ask you, select one of the 16 or maybe a top three. What would be just some of the surface level wisdom that you might need to be inputting more into your life? Could it be, for example, that you need to be a little more timely in the things that you do? Could it be that you maybe need to speak a little less than you do? Are you always the first person to give the answer in the Bible study? You’re always in first.

(17:37 – 17:57)

You’ve always got something to say or you’ve always got a lot to say. Well, there’s a bit of a caution here, isn’t there? That you actually might not grow in wisdom if you’re always like that. What would be some application for you, for me? Well, that’s all very useful, but what I want to invite you to do now is to go to a little bit of a deeper level.

(17:58 – 18:19)

And let me say that what I’m talking about here is not kind of going deep in some kind of speculative way, but in a way that’s actually connected to the text itself. I think with Proverbs, one of the problems is we don’t tend to study Proverbs in the way we tend to study other books. Because we assume that it’s all pretty straightforward and on the surface.

(18:20 – 18:40)

And the danger then is that we miss things when we simply read the Proverbs one at a time. The overall thing I want to suggest to you is that there are more connections between these Proverbs than we sometimes think. There’s a bit of debate among those who study Proverbs.

(18:40 – 19:07)

Some people do see them as kind of a completely random bag of marbles from chapter 10 to chapter 29 with no arrangement. But I think most people who study this think that at least in some parts of Proverbs, there is some arrangement or at least some kind of clusters of arrangement. Yes, there is a bit of randomness, it seems at times, but there are some connections between some of these Proverbs.

(19:07 – 19:23)

I want you to notice three connections in this passage or three links that run all the way through. Firstly, there’s a link of style. Notice that these Proverbs are written in the same format.

(19:25 – 19:40)

You will notice that in all but one of the 16 Proverbs, there is the little word but, B-U-T. It occurs in every verse except verse 10. Verse 10, the connecting word is and.

(19:42 – 20:13)

If I can teach you a slightly longer word that people use when you read books on Proverbs, people talk about parallel antithetical Proverbs, parallel antithetical. What do they mean? Well, first of all, they’re parallel in that you have two lines that are in a close relationship, right? There’s an A and a B, parallel. And then antithetical means that one parallel line stands against the other one.

(20:13 – 20:19)

It’s an opposite. It’s an antithesis. It’s a contrast.

(20:19 – 20:40)

So the wicked live this way, but the righteous live this way. The outcome of the wicked person’s life is this, but the outcome of the righteous person’s life is that. And so while in a surface reading, these Proverbs might seem totally random, when we read them in the sweep, we see that actually there’s a style that links them together.

(20:41 – 21:00)

There’s a kind of choice that’s running through the whole passage. But there’s not just links of style here, is there? Notice that there are also links of theme, or you could say there are links, there are link words or link ideas. So let me just give you a few of them.

(21:00 – 21:18)

There’s the wise and the fool, verses 1, 8, 10, and 14. There’s also the language of the wicked and the righteous, verses 2, 3, 6, 7, 11, and 16. Repeated language again and again, wicked, righteous, wicked, righteous.

(21:20 – 21:32)

There’s the frequent mention of life or death. Though sometimes the word ruin is a substitute for speaking of deadly destruction. So whenever you see ruin, it’s also speaking about death.

(21:33 – 21:53)

And those life and death themes come in verse 2, 6, 7, 10, 11, 14, 15, and 16. All over this section, and I think you can call this a section because of all these links, it’s about life or death. And then there’s the theme of words or speaking.

(21:54 – 22:05)

That appears in five of the proverbs, words. And then there’s the theme of wealth and poverty. That occurs in five different proverbs within 16 verses.

(22:06 – 22:31)

And the thing I want you to try is not to read these passages only a proverb at a time. Once you’ve done that, pan out the camera a little. Ask, are there any connections in this little cluster of proverbs? And you will often see repeated ideas almost like a cluster of themes.

(22:31 – 23:00)

Not always side by side in the very next verse, but within the vicinity. And I think the result of that is, at least in some parts of chapters 10 to 29, when you have some of these clusters, I think it’s possible even to identify some overall themes. So here, for example, the contrasting choices and outcomes of righteous and wicked living.

(23:02 – 23:21)

And these verses show us repeatedly that our wealth and our words are often key indicators of whether we are wicked or whether we are righteous. And they’re showing us that life or death is at stake depending on which we choose. These are consistent themes.

(23:22 – 23:40)

Actually, I think if you were studying at a Bible college like Cornhill, where they ask you to, you know, summarise a passage in 15 words or something like that, I think you could do that. At least here in these first 16 verses, you could give it a go. You could say something like this.

(23:40 – 23:53)

Choose the righteous way. Wise attitudes to wealth and work lead to life, not ruin. I think that would be a possible summary of this little section.

(23:54 – 24:17)

So there’s nothing wrong with the surface reading, but if we go a bit deeper and just ask a few more questions, we will often get to some kind of deeper themes in the passage that God is trying to direct us towards. Now, that’s not even to mention the possibility of structure. And you say structure.

(24:17 – 24:36)

I mean, Proverbs, this bit of Proverbs is the opposite of structure. I want to be cautious here because I think there are some parts of this big section of Proverbs where there really isn’t an obvious structure that many people can see. But I think there are some places where there seems to be a bit of structure.

(24:37 – 25:01)

So here’s Bruce Waltke, who’s a commentator on Proverbs. And whether you agree with the exact way he breaks up this passage, the reason I’m showing you this, this is a top scholar on Proverbs. And he thinks that there’s an enormous amount of structure to this little section, to these 16 verses.

(25:04 – 25:09)

So let’s move on then. We’ve had surface level. We’ve had a deeper level.

(25:10 – 25:21)

Finally, let’s spend a few minutes considering the next level. Although I almost called this, reading this on a New Testament level. So you could just fill that in if you’re taking notes.

(25:22 – 25:31)

That’s what I’m trying to talk about. So we need to take this forward to Jesus. And as we always must do, we need to apply this forward to the New Testament.

(25:32 – 25:52)

Just a few reflections here. If Proverbs 10 verses one to 16 is contrasting two ways to live. If it’s contrasting a way of life and a way of death, then it’s not hard to see how the New Testament begins to pick this passage up.

(25:53 – 26:13)

And Jesus in Matthew 7 speaks of there being a wide gate and a broad road that leads to destruction. And Jesus says that this broad road and this wide gate is easy to enter. There’s lots of space.

(26:13 – 26:19)

It’s an easy life to go down this walkway. I mean, practically everyone else is. It’s a broad road.

(26:21 – 26:38)

Like many of these Proverbs in chapter 10, the road to death is easy. Ill-gotten gain feels rather nice. The chattering away of foolishness feels rather pleasant and enjoyable.

(26:38 – 26:55)

And it can mask the fact that this road of life that we’re going down is actually taking us to the place of death. Jesus, by contrast, offers a small gate and a narrow road. Fewer people find the entrance.

(26:56 – 27:11)

And even when you get on the road, it often can feel pretty uncomfortable. But the end result is life. Here in this saying of Jesus is the ultimate antithetical contrast.

(27:12 – 27:37)

His way, life, our way, death. How do we enter that life-giving path? Well, Jesus once famously told us, didn’t he? He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And no one comes to the Father because he’s the ultimate end of life.

(27:37 – 27:53)

No one comes to the Father except through me. So what Jesus reveals in the New Testament is that none of us actually can walk this path of life in our own strength, in our own ability. Jesus needs to create the way of life for us.

(27:53 – 28:04)

He needs to put us on the path by his grace. It’s by his righteousness, not our righteousness, that we are saved from death. Yes, righteousness saves from death.

(28:05 – 28:27)

But the trouble is, Romans 3, no one is righteous, not even one. And yet Jesus possesses a righteousness that can save us from eternal death. His righteous life, and then his substitutionary death on a cross to bear the penalty that makes that life possible.

(28:29 – 28:55)

That’s what a Christian is. It is, a Christian is someone who by faith lives now and eternally within the sphere of the righteousness of Jesus, where there is ultimate security and ultimate wealth. And yet going to that next level, we must, the first aspect of the first level is we need to go to Christ with us, don’t we? He is our righteousness.

(28:56 – 29:25)

He is the foundation of the way of life. But we mustn’t stop there because when the New Testament picks up Proverbs 10, on one occasion it quotes from Proverbs 10 in 1 Peter 4, verse eight, there’s only one direct quote. But also when it picks up the themes and the ideas of Proverbs 10, what the New Testament often does is it applies this wisdom to the life that you and I live.

(29:27 – 29:44)

Well, we can see Jesus in this passage as the obedient son who brought joy to his father as the ultimate, there’s so many ways I could preach this today. He’s the ultimate fountain of life. We’ve already said, he’s the one whose righteousness saves us from death.

(29:45 – 30:13)

But we see here in the New Testament that Jesus now wants us to walk in the path of his righteousness. So 1 Peter 4 can speak of us choosing the love that covers over sin rather than the hatred that stirs up conflict. James chapter three can speak of the power of our words.

(30:14 – 30:54)

You know, our words can destroy like a wildfire, but they can also bring blessing to many and they can bring us money. Do you see that in James three, even though Proverbs is not quoted, Proverbs is seeping through the pores of James three. And does the New Testament speak about how we handle money and how it’s an indicator of the health of our discipleship? Well, it’s everywhere, isn’t it? How we earn money, how we use money, whether we trust money are all indicators of the true state of our hearts.

(30:55 – 31:10)

New Testament echoes this, doesn’t it? It says it’s not wrong to be wealthy. In fact, it’s better than being utterly poor. But there are also dangers in wealth when we rely on wealth, not Jesus as our fortified city.

(31:12 – 31:22)

See, here’s the problem. Wealth only protects you to some degree in this life. But God provides everything for us to enjoy.

(31:24 – 31:49)

There’s a famous parable of Jesus where there’s a rich man who, remember the parable where he, this guy, he’s having a pretty good go of it in business and he’s bringing all of this money and his current barns are full. And his solution to that is he’s gonna build more barns so that he can get even richer. And so he can store up even more grain.

(31:50 – 32:13)

And the punchline of the story is that that very night the man dies. And he stands before God spiritually bankrupt because he never sorted out what really mattered. He stored up his barns with wealth, but he didn’t store up his heart with Christ and with wisdom.

(32:16 – 32:46)

And you see, this is the ultimate question. What are the choices of your everyday life indicating about the eternal path that you’re on? If you’re not yet a Christian, I wonder if you are self-aware about the path that you are actually treading. Do you know that your life is not heading to a good place, but to a death place? That’s what the Bible says if you don’t know Jesus.

(32:47 – 33:09)

Jesus invites you to leave that path, however easy it seems, and to come to him. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He can give you new life and a relationship with the Father and then call you into a life of righteousness.

(33:11 – 34:11)

And if you’re a Christian, this sermon this morning is not about earning your place on the path of life. Christ has already given you his righteousness, but the question is, in Christ, aided by his Spirit, are we being increasingly conformed into the likeness of Jesus in how we live? Can people look at me, look at you, and say, that person looks a little like Jesus in our words, in our handling of wealth, in our everyday choices? Are we heeding this wisdom in the details of everyday life? You see, this is the thing. Like, it’s all good for us to have big ideas and big commitments and big prayers, but if God’s Word isn’t getting into the nitty-gritty of the details of these sorts of Proverbs, then it’s not really making a difference.

(34:13 – 34:27)

Jesus doesn’t just rescue us from a path of death. He then teaches us to walk in a path of righteousness. Let’s pray.

(34:32 – 35:07)

Heavenly Father, we thank you that Jesus is not just our way to know your righteousness, but he’s the way to live with righteousness through the power of his Spirit. We confess just how much we need Jesus. May we fully trust in his righteousness to save us from death. Help us to live that life then that increasingly looks like Him and that brings joy to our Heavenly Father.

(35:09 – 35:18)

Grant that this would be a growing reality, Lord, as we battle foolishness in our lives. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

The post Wisdom in the Real World – Proverbs 10 appeared first on Greenview Church.

(0:21 – 1:09)

Before he made the world, or its fields, or any of the dust of the earth, I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep, when he gave the sea its boundary so that the waters would not overstep his command, and when he marked out the foundations of the earth. Then, I was constantly at his side. I was filled with delight, day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world, and delighting in mankind.

(1:11 – 1:38)

Now then, my children, listen to me. Blessed are those who keep my ways. Listen to my instruction and be wise.

Do not disregard it. Blessed are those who listen to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway. For those who find me find life and receive favour from the Lord.

(1:39 – 2:20)

But those who fail to find me harm themselves. All who hate me love death. Wisdom has built her house.

She has set it up. She has set up its seven pillars. She has prepared her meat and mixed her wine.

She has also set her table. She has sent out her servants, and she calls from the highest point of the city, let all who are simple come to my house. To those who have no sense, she says, come eat my food and drink the wine I have mixed.

(2:21 – 2:42)

Leave your simple ways and you will live. Walk in the way of insight. Whoever corrects a mocker invites insults.

Whoever rebukes the wicked incurs abuse. Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you. Rebuke the wise and they will love you.

(2:43 – 3:13)

Instruct the wise and they will be wiser still. Teach the righteous and they will add to their learning. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

For through wisdom, your days will be many and years will be added to your life. If you are wise, your wisdom will reward you. If you are a mocker, you alone will suffer.

(3:15 – 3:34)

Folly is an unruly woman. She is simple and knows nothing. She sits at the door of her house on a seat on the highest point of the city, calling out to those who pass by, who go straight on their way, let all who are simple come to my house.

(3:36 – 4:27)

To those who have no sense, she says, stolen water is sweet, food eaten in secret is delicious. But little do they know that the dead are there, that her guests are deep in the realm of the dead. This is God’s Word.

One of the reasons that many people like Proverbs is that Proverbs gives everyday advice. It’s basically a father speaking to his inexperienced son, telling him how to navigate the world. He’s telling his naive boy, here is how to live.

(4:28 – 4:39)

Here’s how to make good choices. Choose hard work over laziness. Choose humility over pride.

(4:40 – 6:45)

Choose integrity over dishonesty. Choose, as we’ll think tonight, wise friends over bad influences. And if you do these things, the father says, life will go generally better.

And we eavesdrop into this as readers of Proverbs. And if we are practical people, maybe you’re a bit of a practical person, we think to ourselves, Proverbs is my kind of book. It’s pithy, it’s practical, it’s street level, it’s doable.

If I just read a proverb a day, kind of like taking a vitamin every morning, my life will go a bit better. But here’s what happens. Many people try that and they find that it doesn’t work.

They find that they read the Proverbs, they try to kind of inculcate it into their life, and they still seem to do stupid things. They know the wise sayings, but they still do stupid, foolish things. What is missing? Something seems to be missing.

Well, what may be missing, at least in some cases, is Proverbs chapters 1 to 9. See, what we’ve been learning in recent weeks is that you’re not meant to dive straight in to the Proverbs of Proverbs. Instead, you’re meant to read the introduction, the rather long introduction from chapters 1 to 9. And what are these chapters? These chapters are a kind of foundation. They’re like the foundation of a house that sits underneath all of the individual bricks that you build on top of it.

(6:46 – 7:34)

The individual bricks in this case are the individual Proverbs. But chapters 1 to 9 is the foundation underneath that. And what is the foundation of all the Proverbs? Well, it’s essentially a question, a question that you need to ask and answer.

The question is this, will we choose wisdom or folly? Or let me put it another way, will we fear the Lord? Because that’s what wisdom is. Wisdom is fearing the Lord. Or will we trust in ourselves and in human wisdom and in what the world says works? That’s the underlying question.

(7:35 – 8:55)

In other words, it’s as if the Father is saying to the Son, listen, beneath all of the other choices that you make, there is a deeper choice. Underneath, I mean, think about it, every day you and I make hundreds, if not thousands of decisions about money and relationships and words and ethics and all sorts of stuff. But underneath all of those bricks, all of those areas on top of our lives, what is your foundation? Are you choosing God’s wisdom? We would say in New Testament language, are you believing in Christ? Have you come to Christ? And is your life one of fundamentally listening to Christ and no other voice? Or are other voices dictating your life? That underlying choice will influence all of your choices on the surface.

Until you settle that, and unless you keep on top of that as a Christian, then do not expect to make wise choices in all the specifics of your life, because you won’t. That choice underpins everything. So, let’s explore it.

(8:55 – 13:42)

This is what chapters 8 and 9 are all about, the fundamental foundational choice. We’re going to look at the second half of chapter 8 and the whole of chapter 9, and we’re going to observe three things. First, the last and best reason to choose wisdom.

The last and best reason to choose wisdom. Now, if you know Proverbs at all, you’ll know that chapter 8 is one of the high points of Proverbs. The second half of chapter 8, it’s this beautiful, profound poem, a poem about the role of wisdom in creation.

Now, it’s a profound poem, and it’s beautiful, and it has a lot of interesting, you might say theological insights in it. We’ll get to some of that, but what I don’t want you to miss is why this is here. Why does the Father decide, using here the voice of Lady Wisdom in the text, why does the Father decide at this point to give a lecture about wisdom and creation? He’s not just, you know, dabbling in some nice doctrine.

You know, He’s not going off in some kind of tangent here. When we read this in the flow of the chapters, this is a final reason to choose God’s wisdom. We’re just about to come to the decision point in chapter 9, and it’s as if the Father is saying, I want to give you one final profound reason to choose the wisdom of God, and here’s the reason.

God’s wisdom is extremely old. Look at verse 22. This is wisdom speaking, personified wisdom.

The Lord brought me forth as the first of His works before His deeds of old. I was formed long ages ago at the very beginning when the world was made. Now, it’s important here that we understand the point and remember that this is poetry, not prose, right? We are in a poem here.

And that means that we’re not meant to read this in a literal way. Wisdom is being personified like a woman. And therefore, I don’t think the thing we’re to take from this is that wisdom itself was literally created.

If that was the case, then there would have been a time when God was not wise, and we know that that’s not true. This poetry is painting a picture. It’s making a point.

And it’s saying here that wisdom is very old. It’s older than creation itself. Before oceans and mountains, before fields and land, before everything was made, wisdom was there with God.

Older than creation and, verse 27 to 29, present at creation. Wisdom was at God’s side, verses 30 and 31. Wisdom delighted with God in the world and the people that He made.

If you look at verse 30, there’s a translation question. You sometimes see these in your Bible, a little A or B, and you have to look down at the footnote. The Hebrew there could be translated what the NIV has, that wisdom was constantly at God’s side.

That’s a possible translation. It also could be translated that wisdom was a master workman at God’s side. You just have to look at the context and think which of these fits best.

I think maybe master workman is actually better here. Because the poem overall is trying to say that wisdom was intimately involved in creation. God made the universe through wisdom.

Wisdom is therefore woven into the fabric of creation itself. And that means that we can trust wisdom. We can trust wisdom, the wisdom that made the world to tell us how life in the world works.

(13:44 – 14:16)

Very simple illustration. Maybe this isn’t the way that they make these appliances nowadays. It’s probably a huge team of people that do it.

But if there was someone who, let’s say, they had designed a washing machine, the particular washing machine you had in your kitchen. And if your washing machine went faulty, that man or that woman who made it would be the best person to tell you how it works. And to tell you how to fix it, because they made it, right? If you make something, you know how it works.

(14:19 – 15:18)

And the wisdom that made the world knows how the world works. That’s what this passage is saying. And therefore, we must look to God’s wisdom, and we must listen to it.

Now, of course, when the New Testament takes this kind of theme up, it says that this passage is ultimately fulfilled, or the theme of this is fulfilled in Christ Himself. Christians have long debated whether we should see Christ directly in Proverbs chapter 8. And many of the early church fathers, they really just saw Lady Wisdom as just another name for Christ Himself. And others, and I would say this is probably more the view nowadays, others would say that what we have here is the personification of God’s wisdom, and it points us forward to Christ.

(15:19 – 18:42)

It’s not Christ, but it points us to an even greater fulfilment in Christ. That’s probably more the way that I would read it. There are some potential problems, I think, with directly equating Lady Wisdom with Jesus.

To start with, wisdom is personified as a woman here. But when we read the whole Bible, we see that the wisdom she exhibits in Proverbs 8 is fulfilled in the greater revelation of God’s wisdom in Christ. Lady Wisdom is a poetic Old Testament picture of God’s wisdom that ultimately has a grander fulfilment in Jesus.

1 Corinthians chapter 1, Paul calls Christ the wisdom of God, the wisdom of God. And in John chapter 1 and in Colossians chapter 1, we see, although it doesn’t call Jesus wisdom there, that Christ shares many of the qualities of Lady Wisdom. In particular, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

And through Him, John and Colossians say, all things were created. Not just present at creation, not perhaps involved, but the means of creation. And if we should listen to Lady Wisdom, how much more should we listen to Christ, one who predates the world as the eternal Son, one who knows exactly how the world works, and the one who came into our world to rescue us from the mess our sin had made? And so, when someone puts their faith in Jesus, they’re putting their confidence in exactly the right place.

This is the last and best reason to choose wisdom. But will we? That’s the question that looms in the air, isn’t it? And now, as we enter chapter 9, we come to the big decision. We’re going to hear two voices now.

So, first of all, in the first 12 verses of chapter 9, we have the last persuasive appeal from wisdom. The last persuasive appeal from wisdom. We’ve got this big decision looming.

We went along, Nicky and I, the other evening to watch the film, Pressure. I don’t know if some of you have seen it. It’s a film about the Second World War, the D-Day landings, and they’re trying to decide whether they should invade France on the 5th of June or not.

And it all hinges on a weather forecast. And without giving too many spoilers, you might have seen it in the trailer, you’ve got Eisenhower, the guy that’s having to make the call, and he’s got one voice saying, do it. And another voice saying, don’t do it.

One voice saying, if you send them in, they’re all going to die. And another voice saying, if you send them in, it’s all going to work. And that’s what’s happening in Proverbs chapter 9. There’s these two voices.

(18:43 – 19:22)

And the first voice is that of Lady Wisdom, who in verses 1 to 12 is again personified as a woman. She has built this perfect house standing on seven pillars, and she is inviting people into her home. She’s inviting everyone, I think, but especially she is targeting the simple verse 4, the simple in Proverbs are the young and naive, they are the inexperienced, who are very open to listening to every voice and going in any direction.

(19:24 – 25:01)

And wisdom is especially calling to the simple and inviting everyone in. And she has prepared a feast of meat and wine, and she sends out her servants to the highest places of the town. I think that’s so that everyone will hear the call.

And if you know the gospels, if you’ve read some of the parables of Jesus, you’ll recognise that Jesus is leaning on this kind of passage in the Old Testament when he shares these parables. Jesus told parables, didn’t he, where he said, the kingdom is like a feast, and everyone was invited, and the servants went out and invited them in, but not everyone came. And that’s what Lady Wisdom is doing.

Now, there’s probably, probably significance in the quality of this feast. Lady Folly, as we’ll see in a moment, talks about stolen bread and water. Yes, something desirable in that culture.

You know, bread and water would keep you alive. It was a good thing. It’s desirable, but this is of a higher quality.

This isn’t bread and water. This is steak and wine. One thing that the Christian gospel says, and some people regard this as an arrogant claim, it says Jesus is offering something greater than anyone else can offer.

He is a cut above the rest. He’s not one of a number of helpful competing philosophies or views of the world. He’s not bread and water.

He’s steak and wine. His grace is a feast that will truly satisfy us, and to enjoy His feast is to experience life, because that’s what Lady Wisdom is offering here, life itself rather than death. And in order to experience this feast, verse 6, the simple, who she’s particularly aiming at, need to leave their simple ways.

Notice that. The simple needs to leave something in order to live. There’s always something to leave in order to live, always.

Leaving my agenda, leaving being in charge of my own life, leaving my attempts to succeed without God, leaving my indulgence of sin, indulging in it without a fight, turning away from those things and beginning to battle those sins to become more like Jesus. There is always something to leave in order to live. And it is so very worth it.

Yes, it will result in different relationships with people. Notice how it goes on in verse 7. There’s a new relationship with the mocker. Once you embrace the feast of wisdom, suddenly they become those that, well, you’re not mocking alongside them in kind of Psalm 1 language.

You’re different than them. You actually are rebuking them rather than joining in, and the mocker won’t like that. And it’s almost a waste of time trying to rebuke the ingrained mocker.

But as you surround yourself increasingly with other wise people, you’ll find that as you rebuke them and as you encourage them to walk more in God’s wisdom, they will respond very differently. The wise will receive your correction and add to their learning. And at the heart of it all is the fear of the Lord, verse 10.

I want you just to observe here that this is an echo and a bookend of chapter 1. The very beginning of the introduction, chapter 1, verse 7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We now come to the end of this big, that’s why I think it is a coherent section. And at the very end, we see the same principle is at the heart of everything.

It’s at the heart of the choice, that choosing wisdom is to fear the Lord. And the point of all this is what? That lady wisdom is worth choosing. The feast is hers, life is found in her house, so get yourself to her house.

That’s the point. And again, as we look at the fuller revelation of this in Christ, well, all of this is true and even more true of Jesus. The feast is His.

The true satisfaction that you really need, that all of your human appetites are pointing towards, spiritually speaking, they’re all fulfilled in Him. He’s the satisfying meal. He’s also the life, isn’t He? The eternal life.

He’s also the one that gives us fullness of life here and now. And wisdom starts with Him, doesn’t it? He is wisdom. And the message of the gospel is the same, isn’t it? Go to Him, go to Christ.

(25:02 – 26:19)

Jesus is the key to absolutely everything. It’s decision time in this passage. And you might think as we start to near the end of the passage, well, this really should be an easy decision.

I mean, if this is all that’s on offer from God’s wisdom, why would we ever choose something different? And yet you and I both know that countless people in the world do. They don’t choose the wisdom of the Bible over their own wisdom. And let’s be honest, even if you’ve been a Christian for quite a long time, there are plenty of times in a day when you find yourself not listening to Christ’s voice and you start listening to a different voice.

Why is that the case? What’s the explanation? The explanation is that there is another voice that’s also calling out to us. In the passage, Lady Folly is calling out to us. And so thirdly and finally, we have the last alluring temptation from Folly, the last alluring temptation from Folly.

(26:22 – 27:20)

Like wisdom, Folly here is personified in verses 13 to 18. Folly is pictured as a rival woman who is inviting people to her home, to a very different kind of party. And the interesting thing about Lady Folly, if you aren’t paying close attention, she seems an awful lot like Lady Wisdom, right? There’s some similarities here.

Lady Wisdom’s offering a party, Lady Folly’s offering a party. Lady Wisdom’s offering food, Folly’s offering food. Both invite people from the highest point of the city.

They’re both going public. They’re both, you know, voices in the public square of the world. And both of them say the exact same thing in verses 4 and in verse 16.

(27:20 – 27:36)

Notice that they use the exact same line. Let all who are simple come to my house. Superficially, they seem the same, but there are two decisive differences.

(27:37 – 28:29)

And to notice them, we have to listen closely, and we also need to peer in the window of the house of Folly and see what’s happening inside. So, first of all, we need to listen closely. And what I want us to do here is what the text encourages us to do in verse 17.

We need to listen to the one proverb that Lady Folly says. She’s got a proverb for us. And this is what she says, verse 17, stolen water is sweet.

Food eaten in secret is delicious. This is an idea we see often in proverbs. It’s Folly offering us excitement, thrill, and even danger in doing something unwise.

(28:30 – 30:55)

We know this, don’t we, in ourselves. There’s something exciting, something alluring about forbidden pleasures, forbidden fruits, crossing boundaries you shouldn’t, indulging in something that you need to keep private. I mean, you might feel a little bad about it, but there’s an excitement there.

She is offering this thrilling way of life, but actually, she has nothing good to offer in the long term, because in truth, what she is going to offer is death itself. The party that Folly is offering in verse 18 is a party of the dead. Her house is more like a cemetery than a celebration.

She offers thrills, but where she really takes you is a morgue. And friends, as we read this, it really unmasks the popular but deadly messages that we hear all around us in our society. We live in a time where left and right, people are offering us fulfilment, offering us happiness.

And usually, it’s fulfilment without God in the picture. It’s as if you can find true peace, satisfaction, and all of that stuff without God in the equation, as if God were not the author of true fulfilment. We saw that in chapter 8, didn’t we, if you were reading it carefully, that God himself is the first joyful being, right? He was delighting in what he created.

God is a God of joy. It’s like in the book Screwtape Letters, when the senior devil says to the junior devil, joy is his invention. It’s God’s invention.

It’s not ours. We didn’t come up with it. We perverted it.

And yet it’s dressed up, isn’t it, in sophistication. This is the smart and fun way to live. It’s like the devil’s lure to Eve in the garden.

(30:57 – 31:53)

Don’t listen to the ancient of days. Don’t listen to that ancient God. What does he know? I can offer you something exciting and fulfilling, and if you’re smart, you won’t listen to what God says.

And there’s an excitement and a thrill in taking the stolen fruit they shouldn’t have taken, and they grab it, and they enjoy it, but then they almost instantly regret it. That promise of life had been hiding death behind it. And here’s where this lands.

If we are believers in Jesus this morning, when we face the many temptations, they will always present themselves as a smart and good option for your personal fulfilment. Right? Folly never says, this is a bad idea. It says, this is a great idea.

(31:54 – 32:23)

This will be good for you. And when we are tempted to think that what God forbids might be a good thing to do, we need to remember that folly is an imitator. Folly pretends to be wisdom.

It dresses itself up as the right and sophisticated choice. It says to you, you need to lose your rag in this moment. They deserve it.

(32:25 – 33:05)

You need to tell a lie this time. It’s the really only thing to do. You need to have a little fun in the short term.

You’ve not been having enough of that lately. You surely deserve this. In those moments, we would do well to remember Proverbs 9, to say to ourselves, Lady Folly always speaks like this, but frankly, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Did you see that? Lady Folly tells us there, that she herself is a fool. She herself is ignorant. She has no clue what she’s talking about.

(33:06 – 33:24)

She lures with short-term pleasure, but doesn’t give lasting joy. She promises life, but her house is full of the dead. And so seeing through, seeing through the false promises of Lady Folly is key to ignoring her lure.

(33:26 – 33:53)

This is something we need to keep choosing daily, hour by hour, and sometimes moment by moment. But you can’t stay on the course if you haven’t started the course. Is it possible that you’re here this morning, and it’s not so much a battle, you know, you’re battling between which of these voices will I listen to? There’s really no battle at all.

(33:53 – 37:13)

And the realisation of this passage this morning is that you’re living in the wrong house. Now, I don’t mean your home address. You can go back home.

It’s absolutely fine. But spiritually speaking, spiritually speaking, are you living in the house of folly? If you’re not fearing the Lord and trusting in Him, then that must be where you spiritually live. You’re living among the spiritually dead, which Paul speaks about in Ephesians chapter 2, that we are dead in sin.

The wonderful thing is that those who are dead in sin can be made alive in Christ, because Jesus, God’s wisdom, not only knows how the world works, He does. He made the world. But He left His perfect home.

He’s not like Lady Wisdom in this sense. She just sits at the door and invites people. But Jesus left His home, and He came into this broken world, and He died for the fool.

He offers us life, wisdom, and a feast if we will only listen to His voice, if we will only come to Him. We sang a hymn earlier about this. There was a reason we chose it.

I wonder if these lyrics are your lyrics. I wonder if these words are true of you. I heard the voice of Jesus say, come unto me and rest.

Lay down, O weary one, lay down, thy head upon my breast. I came to Jesus as I was, weary and worn and sad. I found in Him my resting place, and He has made me glad.

I heard the voice of Jesus say, behold, I freely give. The living water, thirsty one, stoop down and drink and live. I came to Jesus, and I drank from that life-giving stream.

My thirst He quenched, my soul revived, and now I live in Him. Let’s pray. Our Father, we thank You this morning for the clear voice of the Lord Jesus.

We thank You that He is Your final Word to the human race. And we thank You that many of us here have heard His voice. We have come to the feast, as it were, and we are enjoying the bounty of the life that He gives us.

(37:14 – 37:43)

Help us in the moments when we are tempted and lured and when there’s a house around the corner where someone is calling us to come here, come to a better party. Lord, help us to never think that Jesus is not our joy and our true life. And for those who haven’t responded to the voice at all, we pray that by the power of Your Spirit, You would call them today.

(37:44 – 38:00)

And as we take this message out as a church, help us to be those in a sense who embody that voice, who take on the role of Lady Wisdom, humanly speaking, and invite people to the feast of Christ. And it’s in Jesus’ name we pray these things. Amen.

The post Decision time – Proverbs 8v22- 9v18 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Lord, we ask that you administer to us, you would teach us, and that we would leave here wiser as we seek to live for you in this world. So, Father, please bless us, we pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen, amen.

(0:44 – 1:37)

And tonight we’re thinking about, as David said, family and formation. And in many senses, family and formation almost runs through the whole of Scripture. If you think at the very core of the creation order, we’ve got this idea of God as Father of the universe, creating all things, forming us in his likeness.

And then even in the story of redemption, we also have the fact that God is reforming us, that formation thing, reforming us into the likeness of Christ. And tonight we’re going to try and look at the book of Proverbs, which is also almost entirely about family and formation. If you think of the book of Proverbs, as you’ve been looking at it, you see it’s from a father to a son talking about forming him, and about that family tie.

(1:38 – 2:33)

So in some ways, what Colin’s asked me to do is to preach the whole of Scripture and the whole of the book of Proverbs, and so we’ll have a wee go. But almost something to hang this on, I would love us this evening to be thinking about pursuing formation, pursuing formation. And I want us to think about that personally.

How do you pursue being formed by the living God, formed into the likeness of Christ, formed into the person that he made you to be as you seek to serve him? But then also formed, this is still you I’m talking about, formed as a discipler, as one who forms others, whether that’s within the family or within the church. And then finally, I want us to think about that formation of others and how we seek to do it. So thinking about ourselves being formed, thinking about our identity as those who are formed and those who are forming, and then thinking about how we do the forming.

(2:34 – 3:09)

So hopefully that makes sense as we come to it. I’m just going to read you the four Proverbs that Colin gave me. He was helpful in not just giving me the whole Bible and the whole Proverbs, but giving me four verses to work through.

I’m going to give you a title for each one, but just to let you know where we’re going. So the first one is Proverbs 17.6. And I think this gives us the foundations for our discussion this evening. So 17.6 says, children’s children are a crown to the aged and parents are the pride of their children.

(3:10 – 3:32)

And then secondly, thinking about what we are, Proverbs 20 verse 7, the righteous lead blameless lives, blessed are their children after them. And then Proverbs 22.6, what you say, start children off in the way they should go. And even when they are old, they will not turn from it.

(3:33 – 5:49)

And then finally, Proverbs 13.24, thinking about what we do. Whoever spares the rod, hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them. And that’s where we’re going this evening.

So first of all, I want us to think about the foundations. That first verse, 17.6, children’s children are a crown to the aged and parents are the pride of their children. Is that your experience? If you’re younger, are your parents the pride of your life? If you’re older, are your children’s children a crown to the aged? It might be that within the nuclear family, you might be able to see that, you might be able to say that.

If you think about wider society, is that the way that the old view the young generally? Is that the way that the young view the old? I don’t think so. But it sets the right context for the relationship. It sets the context that God has given to creation order that the old are meant to be forming the young.

They’re meant to be passing on wisdom to the next generation. It’s the whole point of the book of Proverbs. It’s one of the points of being united together as a church.

There’s older people there who have lived with Jesus for many years and are able to model that, demonstrate that, teach what it is to follow him. It should be that the young look to the old and think, I want to honour you. And that the old look to the young and think, you are a delight.

You’re the crown of the aged. If you think of scripture, the fifth commandment, the first command with a promise, honour your father and mother, that it may go well with you. And then a command for the fathers in Ephesians 6, four fathers do not exasperate your children.

Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. It’s one of my favourite things for my wife to say is, I think you’re exasperating the children. Fathers are very good at exasperating their children, but we’re not to.

We’re to bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. And those two things, honour your father and mother. Fathers do not exasperate your children.

(5:50 – 6:49)

The children’s children are a crown to the aged and parents are the pride of their children. That forms a foundation for society that helps it to work. It’s the way that God’s designed it.

But the problem is that society, because of our sinful fallenness, pushes against that design that God’s given us, pushes against that structure that enables our flourishing. Society, our sinful society and our sinful hearts tear down God’s good order. Karl Truman, the author says, calls these things death acts, that you do something or say something which actually tears apart some of that good fabric that God has given us.

It erodes the good order. And I wanted to quote, it’s not often that I quote pop song lyrics. I wanted to quote to you from Amy MacDonald, no relation as far as I know, Amy MacDonald in her song Youth of Today.

(6:51 – 7:40)

And she says this, and it caught me because she mentions children’s children, which is in that verse. So Amy MacDonald says, and you say, my children weren’t the same. My children’s children, they’re the ones to blame.

And you say, in my day, we were better behaved. But it’s not your day anymore. And we are the youth of today.

We change our hair in every way. And we are the youth of today. We’ll say what we want to say.

And we are the youth of today. Don’t care what you have to say at all. Interesting, isn’t it? That idea of someone saying it’s my children’s children that are the problem.

My children’s children. My children, I mean, they had their flaws, but my children’s children, they’ve lost the plot. They’ve gone.

(7:41 – 8:13)

How far away is that from children’s children are the crown to the aged? And then that line at the very end, we don’t care what you have to say at all. How far away is that from parents are the pride of their children? It’s a death act. It’s the destruction.

It’s the decoupling of how society is meant to work. God has given us these foundations, family, in order for formation. But our sinful hearts want to rip that apart.

(8:14 – 9:18)

And we’re the poorer for it. And so I suppose as we begin, I want to challenge us not just to think about these wise proverbs that Solomon gives us, but I want us to think about almost back a step. How does our whole society work? Do we honour those older than us? Do we delight in those younger than us? In order that we can see people flourishing and growing, see people formed in the Lord Jesus.

Perhaps you’re an older member of the church that grumbles about the youth. I’ve never heard that in a church. But just think about that.

You, delight in the young. And I know that I’ve not got a chance to rebuke the YF here, but I want them to be looking at the old and honouring them and thinking how wonderful it is to be part of a church where I get to know older people. It really is a privilege.

So that’s the foundations. I’m now going into what we are, what we say and what we do. So first of all, what we are.

(9:19 – 13:09)

In verse 20, verse 7, it says the righteous lead blameless lives. Blessed are their children after them. The righteous lead blameless lives.

Blessed are their children after them. I love the order that Colin’s given me. I’m just going to put all the blame onto him.

He’s the one that gave me the points. But I love the order because he started with the foundations. And now I want us to see that what we are is what matters.

That’s the next foundation. What we say and what we do have to come afterwards. What we are is going to shape far more.

I’ll tell you a wee story. From the moment I was born all the way through my childhood, I remember being told again and again and again, never smoke, son. Never smoke.

It’s a filthy habit. A dirty habit. The problem is that often it was told by, never smoke, son.

My mum smoked 10 a day. My dad smoked 20 a day. At least I knew one adult that didn’t smoke.

And I was told by all of them, never smoke. Guess what I did when I was 10? Had my first cigarette. It didn’t matter how many times I was told what they were.

The fact that they weren’t leading blameless lives meant that I followed their example, not their words. I can’t remember what century it was. Robert Murray McShane, the Scottish minister, said, my people’s greatest need is my personal holiness.

And he was meaning in terms of the context of being a minister and having a congregation. And he knew what I am is going to have a far greater effect on the congregation than what I say. And I think it’s the same for parents.

It’s the same for grandparents. It’s the same for older members of the church as we seek to disciple the young. What we are is going to have a profound effect on what formation we’re able to produce in those coming after us.

If you’re a parent this evening and a grandparent, or if you’ve got contact with younger people in any capacity, then you have to pay attention to your own life if you’re going to help to form them in a positive way. 1 Timothy 4, 16, Paul writing to Timothy says, watch your life and doctrine closely, persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers. I think it’s often that you hear parents saying, I have to do this for my children.

I have to work the extra hours to provide this for my children. I have to do this in order to… I think I want you have to be this for your children. It’s not so much what you do first and foremost, it’s what you are.

As I’ve parented my kids, someone said to me, how have you managed to get them to do quiet times in the morning? Did you do really good family devotions? And I’m not saying this is a good thing. We were rubbish at family devotion. We would every so often, and we still are, we do pickups, we read Psalms when we’re on holiday, and we do some things here and there.

But generally, we would flourish to 10 mornings, and then it would fall by the wayside for a couple of weeks, and then we’d do something else. But me and my wife continued with our daily devotions. And our kids were like, wow, you’re reading the Bible.

Excellent. They’ve followed our example. We’ve not been very good at teaching them, but we have modelled it, and they’ve followed.

Thanks be to God. If you watch your life and your doctrine carefully, then children will follow that example. What you are is more important than what you say.

(13:11 – 15:47)

I remember a friend of mine talking about a minister who was standing at one of these ministers gatherings. They don’t do this anymore, I wish they did, where you had to introduce yourself about who you were and whose ministry you had been converted under. And this guy stood up and said, I was converted under the preaching of such and such.

And my pal put up his hand and said, you might have been converted under his ministry, but I don’t think you were converted under his preaching because he wasn’t a very good preacher. But man after man after man after man was saved in that church because he was a godly, godly guy who loved the congregation and discipled them. People were saved under his ministry, and they would have listened to his preaching because they loved him.

What you are matters more than what you say. And as church members, we have to ask ourselves, what is it we’re modelling? You look at what we discuss at tea and coffee time, you look at the way that people talk about other people in the church, the way that you talk together at church meetings or whatever it is, what are you modelling to the children? What do they pick up? What do they hear? What’s the example? What you are matters. Which then brings us on to what we say.

So chapter 22, verse six says, start children off in the way they should go. And even when they are old, they will not turn from it. Start children off in the way they should go.

And even when they’re old, they will not turn from it. In some ways, I have that image of, you know when you go ten-pin bowling with a child and you’ve got that ramp? I looked up, what do you call the ramp with children at ten-pin bowling? Do you know what it’s called? A ramp. Anyway, but you know that thing where you can get a big heavy bowling ball and you put it on the ramp and you line it up and push it off and it goes down and it goes away off in a straight line? In some ways, that’s the image that I had in my head when I thought, you start children off, it’s like they’re the bowling ball and you push them and away they go.

Or I remember teaching my wee girl how to ride a bike and it’s the most wonderful thing that children learn how to pedal a bike before they learn how to steer a bike or stop a bike. So you just kind of set them off. You sit in the saddle out the back of our house in the car park, got her on the bike and I pushed her off in a straight line and away she went, pedalling away until she hit a kerb.

She just went off in a straight line, couldn’t do anything about it. And in some ways, that’s what we’re saying. Children, you want to start them off in the way they should go and the hope would be that they just keep going and keep going.

(15:51 – 17:20)

And as a child starts life, you’re seeking to train them, you’re seeking to give them guidelines that are going to keep them on the straight and narrow, get them going the way that they should go. And it’s not guaranteed and it’s important to say that. This is wisdom literature.

This is helping us to know that the general way that things go. Proverbs 13, one says, a wise son heeds his father’s instruction, but a mocker does not respond to rebukes. There’s a responsibility on the child to listen and to follow as well.

There’s many good parents whose children have gone astray, but this is giving us a general guidelines. If the parents are paying attention to the way that the child is going, giving them guidelines, giving them a straight path and set them off in the way they should go, then by God’s grace, they would continue in that direction. And as a parent, we’re responsible for teaching them all sorts of things, aren’t we? You think of a wee child, you’re trying to teach them how to share.

I know you’ve got four sweeties, why don’t you give your brother two? No chance. You’re trying to teach them how to tell the truth and not tell lies, teaching them to go to church, teaching them to work hard, teaching them to read the Bible and to pray, teaching them to eat healthily. You could go on and on and on and on and on of all the things that a parent wants to teach their child, train them in.

(17:22 – 19:43)

But ultimately, all of those things come under the fact that we want to teach them how to live God’s way in God’s world, isn’t it? That’s the ultimate thing, the way that we’re trying to line up the bowling ramp, is to set them off in the way that God would have them live, under his instruction and go in his way, because we know not only that that’s best, but also that that brings glory to God. And that work of teaching a child, starting a child off in the way they should go, is hard. It’s hard, hard work.

It’s time consuming to train a child in the way they should go. It’s challenging, because sometimes you’re not sure what the right thing to do is. Is this one of those times that I should show grace and say, it’s okay, you can still have this or you can still do this? Or is this one of those times that I need to be really hard and say, no, you were naughty, it’s not happening? Trying to decide whether they should go to that party or not go to that party, trying to decide.

There’s hundreds of things that needs wisdom in each call, it’s hard. It’s hard because it takes attention constantly. I was with a friend this week and he’s got a puppy that is so badly behaved.

It’s not awfully behaved, but it’s badly behaved. And three times the puppy did something wrong and he tried to stop it from doing something wrong and then went, Uch we’ll start tomorrow. And then the puppy did something else and he tried to stop it from doing it and eventually said, Hheh, we’ll start tomorrow.

Three times. And at the end I went, I think you just have to start today, pal. But there’s a thing there with parents, you just kind of go, I’ll try again tomorrow.

You just want to take a wee holiday from teaching a child in the way they should go, because we’re all rebellious sinners and they want to go their own way. It’s hard, but I think that, given the guidelines, you need to always be persevering and it’s hard, hard work, teaching them in the way they should go. Secondly, it’s not just hard work, it’s not just starting them off in that way, but it’s not uniform either, because every child is different.

(19:43 – 20:14)

It’s interesting, one of the commentators pointed out that when it says start children off in the way they should go, it’s not in the way that a child should go, it’s in the way that they should go. This child, this child with this particular personality and this particular character and these particular gifts, what’s the way that they should go? Pay attention to that, shape them according to what they are. And we know that as Christians, don’t we? God has made us as he’s made us and the way that we glorify him is different for different people.

(20:15 – 24:03)

Some people glorify him as an artist, some people as a doctor, some people as a pastor, some people… There’s so many different ways that you can glorify God and each one can do it in their own way and it’s the same with children. I’ve got three kids and they’re all completely different, with different skills. Alistair, my eldest, is possibly the worst singer apart from me.

Eilidh, from the age of two, could hold a tune and remember the words. Like it’s just, they’re different and you need to see that they’re different and train them differently. I was going to come to this later on but I’ll tell you this just now because I’ve mentioned them.

With Alistair, we used to give him a wee smack in the hand if he was naughty and he would cry and he would have a cuddle and then he would carry on. Eilidh, when we smacked her, she went… [Showed a furious face] It did not work, it hardened her, it made her really, really stubborn and eventually we stopped smacking her because we thought, this is a disaster. This is even before Nicola Sturgeon said we weren’t allowed.

But different children need cared for in different ways. That’s why you start children off in the way they should go. Children are different and the hope is, the prayer is, that even when they are old they will not turn from it.

Turn from that way that you have set them off and there’s so many different things in life so that can derail and drag us straight like Eilidh hitting the kerb when I was teaching her to cycle. There’s so many things in life that can make us go wrong, aren’t there? But the hope is that we start them off in the way they should go and they continue walking with the Lord. That’s why we pray for them, isn’t it? And then thinking about the church, it’s the same.

Beautifully this year at Yoker a couple of men in their 40s have come to faith and one of those guys, John, he was so eager in every way. He’s devouring the Bible and watching things online and I was like, there’s so much information going into this guy’s head in one moment and he was like ranting about something and I said, Well hold on a minute John, I think you need to just think of it this way and he said, does it really matter Greig? That sounds like pretty much the same thing and I said to him, it is pretty much the same thing but it’s not the same thing and I think what you’re saying is almost right but it’s one degree off and I’m just aware that as you start your journey with Jesus, if you start one degree off, there’s just that potential that you can end up far away and so it matters. He said, Excellent! and the next time I saw him he was like, I was thinking this Greig, is this on or is it one degree off? But there’s that thing as we’re forming people in Christ, we need to help them to go in a straight line to know the pitfalls and the dangers and to keep going in the right direction and as parents, it’s our job with our children and in church as Christians, it’s our job with everybody to help one another, to follow the way that Christ has laid out, to help each other to go in the right way and especially from the older to the younger, to train them in the way that they should go.

And then finally, coming to what we do, disciplining children. So this is 13 verse 24. It says, whoever spares the rod hates their children but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.

Whoever spares the rod hates their children. Oh dear, I’ve thrown water all over the floor, I’m sorry. Whoever spares the rod hates their children but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.

(24:05 – 27:57)

There’s that old story of a father beating, I don’t think my dad ever did this but it’s a story told, a father beating their child and saying, this hurts me a lot more than it hurts you son and everybody goes, aye right. But there is a sense that what that’s saying is true, that disciplining children can be painful and hard, can’t it? Hard in all sorts of different ways but if you genuinely love your child then when you discipline them and you can see that what you’re doing is causing them in that moment pain and upset, then there’s a desire to say, no it’s okay. And grandparents, forgive me if you’re a grandparent, grandparents can be the worst for this.

My mum and dad were very, very strict with me when I was young. When my mum and dad watched me parenting my children, they’re like, oh you’re too harsh with them. I’m less harsh than you were by the way but there’s that thing that you can look and think, oh that looks harsh.

They don’t like that. I don’t care if they don’t like that, they can’t have a fourth sweetie. You know there’s that side of disciplining where you’re making the child not happy and because you love them you want to make them happy and so you can find it painful as you discipline them, as you send them to the naughty step or whatever it might be to say, no you can’t do that.

It can be painful. In that moment you’re making the child unhappy but you must do it because it is loving to discipline a child and actually he says whoever spares the rod hates their children. If you don’t discipline your children it’s actually putting yourself first and your own preference for that moment ahead of the child’s well-being and good.

We must discipline even although it’s not nice at times or it doesn’t feel nice. Not only can disciplining a child feel painful but also disciplining a child can be inconvenient. Me and my wife made a rule from the very beginning that if we ever threaten anything then we have to follow it through.

So if the child’s been naughty and we say if you don’t stop that then we’re going to, then we have to follow it through. Otherwise they’ll never believe us when we threaten anything and a number of times Gillian would get annoyed and say if you don’t stop that we’re going to, I’d be like oh for goodness sake. You know you’re round at somebody’s house for dinner, if you don’t stop that we’re going to go, we’re going straight home.

Gill’s, how many hours are we going to leave? Very sorry, thanks for the starter but we can’t stay for the main course by the way. But there’s that thing, it can be inconvenient to discipline a child. In that moment when the child’s kicking off and you just think oh I could just give them a treat and it will shut them up but actually in that moment you say no I’m going to take the time now.

It’s inconvenient, it doesn’t suit me but I’m going to discipline them for their good, for their future because I love them. Thirdly we have to discipline because it needs to be done. It says to not discipline is to hate a child, it’s to prefer yourself and I don’t mean necessarily to smack a child, I’m not getting into that argument.

I don’t think that this passage is primarily talking about that. It’s talking about discipline, it’s talking about training a child and disciplining them when they go wrong and helping them to go the right way. The point is that we must discipline children in order to help them to go the right way.

Naturally because of our sinful hearts we will go astray if left to ourselves and as parents it’s their duty to help the child to go in the right way. Children need boundaries, actually children love boundaries and it is loving to give them those boundaries and to help them to stay within those guidelines. It helps them to feel stable and loved and to flourish.

(27:58 – 29:56)

It needs to be done and then fourthly it needs to be done God’s way. So first of all it can be painful to cause upset, secondly it can be inconvenient, thirdly it needs to be done but fourthly it needs to be done in God’s way and by that what I mean it has to be done with stability and with grace. Whoever spares the rod hates their children but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.

The foundation for disciplining a child is love. The reason why a child is disciplined is because you love them, not because they’ve annoyed you, not because they’ve inconvenienced you, because you love them and I think that shapes how you discipline. So see sometimes you see a parent disciplining a child and you see you’re really angry because they’ve got in the way of what you wanted to do and at the moment what you’re saying to this child is stop it because you’re inconveniencing me.

The focus is not on the child, it’s not loving, it’s not focused on their flourishing and their well-being and I think the way to check that is, is the way that I’m disciplining stable? Is there stability here? And then secondly discipline with grace. It doesn’t always have to be harsh, it doesn’t always, in fact it rarely has to be harsh. Discipline with grace.

Human beings, I was talking this morning about the fact that other religions lay out all these laws and rules that you have to follow but Christianity says I love you, I’ve sent my son to die for you, repent of your sin and I will welcome you into my home. Christianity is God saying come. God knows that the way that our hearts respond is to grace, to love, to forgiveness and so as we discipline those in our care and it’s important that we follow God’s example isn’t it? That we discipline with love and discipline with grace.

(29:58 – 30:40)

And what’s true in the home is also true in the church. The church needs to be disciplined and led and guided in the way that it should go and it can be beautiful. I’m a relatively young pastor, I found out recently that I’m older than I look.

Quite a few people have gone, what age are you? Like 15. But as a relatively young pastor with relatively old congregation when I started at Yoker it was quite hard to lead them and to honour them and respect them and also to rebuke where there needed to be a rebuke. But actually when you’re able to do that it’s beautiful.

(30:41 – 32:35)

Earlier on this year there was a problem at Yoker because there was a few people were unhappy about a few things that happened and it started grumbling in the congregation and I pointed it out at the business meeting. I said look this is the facts and this grumbling is going on and this is why we can’t do this. And the response was I actually got a round of applause and one of my elders texted me afterwards and he says who ever got a round of applause for giving people into trouble? But it’s a beautiful thing when people are actually led and disciplined in the right way it’s a beautiful wonderful thing and it has to happen in the home and it has to happen in the church.

We want to see everyone, every single person here, everyone at Yoker Evangelical tonight, everybody that’s seeking to follow Jesus, we want to see us all flourishing in the Lord. For the young Christian, whether that’s a child or whether that’s someone who’s new to the faith, we want to see them shaped and moulded in the faith and set off like that bowling ball in the right direction. For Christians as we start to go astray we want to be put back disciplined and put back onto the right path.

And in all of that God is honoured, God is glorified and people flourish under his care. So as we finish I want us to remember first of all that this is wisdom. We’re dealing with people not with machines.

It’s not a case of input A, B and C and you’ll get D at the outcome. People are complex, people are different. But this is what God has charged us with.

This is the world that he’s given us. He’s entrusted it to human beings, to Christians to help each other on the road, to help each other to go God’s way. As parents, as members of the church we’re called to pursue formation.

(32:38 – 32:57)

Called to pursue formation in our own lives, to be formed more and more into the likeness of Christ and also to pursue formation in others, to help others to grow in the likeness of Christ also. And all of that we have to do with his help and by his grace. So before I hand back to David let’s pray together.

(33:02 – 34:18)

Our father in heaven we thank you so much for your love for us. We thank you for your care, we thank you for your grace. Father we thank you that you love us enough to discipline us, to form us into the likeness of Christ, to teach us the way that we should go, to rebuke us when we go astray.

We praise you for that love and we ask father that as we have experienced that love from you, we pray that you would help us to show that love to others. To have that same selfless willingness to give time to shaping others, to give time to disciplining, to give time to leading. And father we ask it that you would help us to do this so that we would see people flourishing in the Lord Jesus, whether that’s our children, our grandchildren, whether that’s children in the church or young believers in the church or even those just behind us in the faith.

We ask father that you would help us to be those who are busy seeking to be formed ourselves and to form others. And we ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen.

The post Family and Formation – Proverbs appeared first on Greenview Church.

(0:35 – 1:51)

So do this, my son, to free yourself since you’ve fallen into your neighbour’s hands. Go to the point of exhaustion and give your neighbour no rest. Allow no sleep to your eyes, no slumber to your eyelids.

Free yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler. Go to the ant, you sluggard. Consider its ways and be wise.

It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man, a troublemaker and a villain who goes about with a corrupt mouth, who winks maliciously with his eye, signals with his feet and motions with his fingers, who plots evil with deceit in his heart. He always stirs up conflict.

(1:52 – 2:08)

Therefore, disaster will overtake him in an instant. He will suddenly be destroyed without remedy. There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him.

(2:09 – 6:14)

Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies, and a person who stirs up conflict in the community. Ending our reading at verse 19. Well, if an alien were to arrive from Mars, observe human life and ask, what are these people about? What drives them? What motivates them? I’m pretty sure that relationships, work, and money would be close to being the top three.

So much of your daily life revolves around these three areas that the title for this passage, The Foolish Life in Full View, is appropriate because here we see this proverb’s wisdom that you’ve been learning about over these weeks meeting the full array of basic life situations. Now, it may not have been very apparent to you though as we read the passage that this is what the passage is about. In part because you’re hearing it all here with very much a tone of warning.

This is how money, work, and relationships can go wrong when they’re not approached with wisdom. Now remember what wisdom is. You’ve been hearing about it these few weeks.

It’s skill for living. And here, once again this morning, we’re going to join the King’s offspring in the royal classroom where the King Solomon, as we understand it, is imparting his lessons in wisdom. This is the wisdom of the King preparing the royal offspring for life in the kingdom.

And the King is a wonderful teacher. He’s very engaging. He teaches, as we’ve read in this passage, very much in kind of children’s storybook style.

He paints up characters, and we’re going to meet three of them this morning. The surety, the sluggard, and the stirrer. Don’t you love it when the alliteration just works? It’s stupendously satisfying.

And with each of them we’re going to learn something of wisdom in relation to money and to work and relationships. Well, let’s come first then to the surety. And the King starts with a story.

A man from a neighbouring village falls into hard times. His crop fails, perhaps, and he requires then a loan of money. Now this poor man, he doesn’t have much to pledge as collateral for this loan.

In other words, if he couldn’t repay the money that he’s borrowing, he doesn’t have much to give back in place of that to the lender. So the lender mightn’t lend him the money in case it all goes belly up and the borrower can’t pay it back. So in order to get the loan, the poor man needs another person with enough wealth to come alongside and say to the lender, it’s okay, I’ll cover things if this poor man can’t pay you back.

I’ll co-sign the loan. That’s a surety. That’s what a surety does.

(6:15 – 7:25)

And so the poor man, he comes to this surety. And Mr. Surety, well, he feels sorry for the poor man. But on the other hand, as he’s being faced with this choice of should he act as surety, he glances back at his fields and his family.

And he realises that if he places himself as surety for this poor man, he could lose everything. There’s risk, you see, when you become a surety. And for whatever reason, he agrees.

And he becomes surety for the poor man. And the question is, of course, why is the king in this lesson of wisdom, why is he so exercised about this? You see it there in verses 3 and 4, don’t you? Do this, my son, free yourself. Go to the point of exhaustion.

Don’t give your neighbour any rest. Get yourself out of this commitment and make it urgent. Go around, 11 o’clock at night, doesn’t matter.

Get him out of bed. Just get yourself out of this. It’s a life and death matter.

(7:27 – 7:51)

And as we look a bit more carefully, we can see why. Because in verses 2 and 5, we see that the surety has got himself into a bit of a trap. He’s been trapped by what he said.

He’s caught, in fact, in verse 5, he’s caught like a gazelle, a hunter coming after this gazelle. And the hunter is going to get you. It’s going to be the end of you if you don’t get out of this trap.

(7:56 – 10:46)

And then the question, of course, for us is, well, what is the trap exactly that Mr. Surety has got himself into? Well, he has placed himself and his possessions in the power of another at considerable risk to himself. He has, in the words of verse 3, fallen into his neighbour’s hands. He’s placed himself under the power of a stranger, verse 1. He’s made a commitment, but it’s been a commitment of considerable risk to someone and a situation that he can’t fully trust.

Now, maybe you’re sitting here this morning and you’re thinking, yeah, okay, it’s not wise. You could lose out, but is it not a bit extreme to kind of paint it up like this? I mean, why all the big alarm and fuss? Well, like a lot of proverbs, you need to do a bit of unpacking. Does anyone remember Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Yes, good.

And do you remember Violet Beauregard and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Well, she was the one, if you remember, who had this, was given this experimental three-course meal, chewing gum. Okay, and for those of you who don’t know the story, let me just explain it a little bit. It was Mr. Wonka who owned the Chocolate Factory, created all of these various fantastic sweets and things, and there’s this chewing gum that, as Violet Beauregard begins to chew it, it starts off with the taste of tomato soup in her mouth, and then she keeps chewing, and then it becomes this roast beef and roast potatoes, and she describes tasting this, and it’s almost like she’s having this full meal.

And then as she keeps chewing further, she finally tastes and gets the sensation of blueberry pie and ice cream. And at this point, Mr. Wonka gets worried because actually the product hasn’t been finished yet, and poor Violet actually begins to swell up and turn into a blueberry. Well, apart from the last bit, proverbs are a bit like that three-course meal chewing gum.

We need to chew on them to get richness and the depth of the wisdom that they contain. So let’s chew over verses one to five just for a moment, and we get a few of these then taster bits of wisdom. What are we learning as we chew over this story? First of all, we should acknowledge it’s not wrong to have wealth.

(10:47 – 12:23)

Solomon the king who’s teaching this lesson, well, he had lots of wealth, and it was given by God for good. It was given to be stewarded within his kingdom. It’s not sinful to be wealthy.

It’s a blessing from God, and it’s right then to be stewarding whatever we have. And that’s another observation we can make. To steward whatever we have, well, means generosity.

In fact, a few weeks ago, you may have come across this in Proverbs 3. Verse 27 says this, do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to act. Do not say to your neighbour, come back tomorrow and I’ll give it to you when you already have it with you. Hear what the king was teaching there.

He was saying, well, when it’s within your power to give, don’t withhold it, particularly to a neighbour, particularly to someone who lives trustfully near you, as that Proverbs 3 passage goes on to say. So then it makes you ask the question, well, what’s being warned against in the passage that we’ve read this morning? Well, chapter 6 is warning us about taking on a commitment at high risk with a stranger who isn’t near you and who you are not sure is trustworthy. You see, it’s quite different from that Proverbs 3 generosity that is within your power to give.

(12:25 – 13:03)

So at one level, this is a warning about putting what you have been given at risk by taking on an unwise commitment. Now we could make our applications, couldn’t we? It might be everything from financial investment to business partnerships to standing over a loan for an acquaintance that you met down in the pub. Be careful of high risk investments.

(13:05 – 14:21)

Let’s keep chewing because as we go deeper, this story of the surety can say a little bit more. Handling money can reveal a number of things about us and what makes us tick. Money, of course, it can reveal coveting and greed.

Although I have to say that in this proverb, there’s no obvious material gain for this surety. He was more likely to lose what he had than actually gain anything by acting a surety. That then makes you wonder, well, why did he do it? Why did he step in for this person that he didn’t know very well? Well, the request to be surety, it might be revealing a kind of a pride or a status thing in the way that surety responded to it.

There’s a kind of apparent power, isn’t there, in being a surety that you have the wealth, the standing, the security, maybe even the character to stand over someone else’s debt. They came to me. It may have also been the expectations of others, other people saying, yes, you go ahead, you do it, and then the fear of letting those expectations down.

(14:22 – 20:14)

Could have been those things, whether pride or fear, it seemed to be blinding surety, didn’t it, to the fact that he was being trapped in this relationship. Now, at the risk of turning into blueberry, let’s just chew a little bit further and see what we can learn more from this proverb before we leave it. Remember that one of the big lessons we’re learning in this book of Proverbs is that the root of all wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And if the root of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, then the root of foolishness is a lack of that fear, the absence of that fear. And it seems then that in this proverb, surety is revealing ultimately who he is really trusting by risking so much of what he has been given, revealing that somehow maybe he thinks he’s in control of the risks, trusting in his own calculations about the situation, and maybe just enjoying a little bit of the prestige of being asked.

What does the fear of the Lord look like whenever you’re asked to be surety for someone? Lord, Lord, who am I to be able to stand over that loan? Lord, all I have, it’s yours. What do you want me to do with it? How can I steward it for your glory? Surely, surely, Lord, you are the provider. You are able to provide in this situation, even for this man, in ways that don’t mean so much risk to what you have given me to steward.

Lord, I am to serve you and not money or reputation. Lord, may your wisdom rule my heart in how I handle this and use what you have given me. Is that our relationship to money and to what God has given us, that fear of the Lord that is ruling over how we handle those things? Just before we leave this particular first wisdom lesson this morning, there’s a lingering question.

I’m still left thinking about that poor man. If we can’t be surety, who can? Who can cover that kind of debt? I’m going to leave that stone in your shoes. Let’s move into the next one, the sluggard.

Back to the classroom of wisdom. We move on then to meet the sluggard in verses 6 to 11. Go to the ant, you sluggard.

Well, the sluggard, he doesn’t care much for work. He gets by sponging here and there, pretending to be interested in a job. But the thought of all of that energy needed, having to get up every day and travel to work, and the exhaustion of meeting people and having to work alongside them, the mental energy, the physical drain, it would make you tired even just thinking about it.

So the sluggard, he’s there, he imagines the demand and the pain of all that work, and he has a gaping yawn, and he stretches himself, and he lies back in his chair, and he closes his eyes, and he folds his arms, and he doesn’t want to face it one bit. And as he snoozes away the chance of employment and income, poverty passes by the window of his home. Poverty, we see him here in this proverb.

He’s personified in verse 11 there, isn’t he, as a kind of a vagrant, an opportunist, and he’s glancing in, and he sees sluggard dozing at his desk and snoring comatose. There’s an opportunity, and poverty comes into the house, and he plunders the house of all its goods. And with club in hand, for good measure, he gives sluggard a bang on the skull, and he sends him into a deeper coma before making off with everything, all from a little sleep, a little slumber.

And then wisdom comes along and shakes sluggard out of his coma, look at you, get up, wake up, go to the ant, have a good look at her and her ways. Now, many of us, of course, will have seen in our gardens a colony of ant workers or harvester ants. You know the image, don’t you? Long lines of these marching ants, and they’re busy carrying bits of leaf or seeds.

Apparently they’re amazing diggers. They create these long, winding tunnels, ultimate team players, working together without slowing down or getting confused. Now, interestingly, I did a bit of research in this, interestingly, the worker ants are female, and immediately half the congregation are thinking, no surprise there, isn’t that right? Well, we see here in verse 7 why they are so efficient, because of how they’ve been created.

(20:14 – 21:12)

They’ve been created to operate together without a chief, to direct and sort out their disputes without an officer, to organise them. They’re so self-motivated, they’re able to work in their own way. They’re just incredibly able to motivate themselves, and they’re organised and they’re prepared.

Verse 8, she gets her bread and food together in proper order during summer and harvest to prepare and to anticipate the cold of winter. The ant, what a contrast to the sluggard. I think wisdom wants us to consider that contrast, the diligent, organised, self-motivated ant versus the snoozy, slothful, selfish avoidance of the sluggard.

(21:13 – 22:15)

Once again, time to chew. At one level, this is a proverb about diligence, about working hard in a self-motivated and organised way. That’s how things will go much better by and large, and it’s a warning that if you’re lazy, well, don’t be surprised then if poverty comes and raids your life.

You know this, don’t you? You know this. You’ve been in working environments where you’ve met this contrast, what it’s like to work with someone who’s self-motivated and organised versus someone who’s like the sluggard. As I heard someone say recently, the sluggard, in a sense, they test my line management skills.

We know this kind of contrast. As we chew in the proverb, we can think as well, work is good. Work is what we were created for.

(22:17 – 23:00)

We sometimes only see work, don’t we, through a kind of a Genesis 3 lens. We see the toil of it. But actually, we can so easily miss the Genesis 1 and 2 lens on our working life.

It was a priestly serving in the Garden of Eden to the glory of God. Think about your work like that tomorrow morning on your commute. That would transform a Monday morning if we could see our work in that way.

Further than that, God has ordained work as a means of provision in his world. If a man doesn’t work, neither shall he eat. The ant kind of exemplifies that.

(23:01 – 23:37)

Let’s chew on a bit further with this proverb because we can also see that this proverb is about sleep, or at least the wrong kind of sleep. Again, sleep is a good thing. We were created in this 24-hour cycle of day and night, a sleep-wake cycle.

Sleep is a gift, a gift we take by faith. Psalm 127, in vain you rise early and stay up late toiling for food to eat, for he grants sleep to those he loves. It’s a gift of God.

(23:39 – 25:12)

But let’s chew a bit further because this proverb, I think, is forcing us to look at what is wrong about the kind of sleep we’re seeing here. Sleep here is avoidant. The slugger is dodging work.

Hands that should be working are instead folding in refusal and then escaping into the land of nod. As we chew further on that, we see some deeper motives here, don’t we? A kind of escapism from responsibility, a preference for ease rather than toil. What do you like to escape into? That would be a question to discuss with someone close to you this week.

I say close to you because often, you know, our escapes are quite private and hidden, aren’t they? They’re undercover to some degree. But when the demands rise and when you feel stress in life, when you need to get away, where do you go? Who do you turn to? What do you turn to? We have different versions, don’t we, of escapism today. We might comfort eat.

We might vegetate in front of Netflix. Now don’t be looking around at the person you know who does these things. We might binge watch.

(25:13 – 29:03)

We might drink a little more than our conscience knows is healthy. One of the more common, subtle and yet accessible instruments of escape can be, of course, our phones, doom scrolling, eating, Netflix, having a drink, using your phone. They’re all actually legitimate forms of pleasure and rest.

So here’s a question for us this morning as we chew on this proverb. How do I know when what I’m doing is a form of wise pleasure and rest or a form of foolish escapism like the sluggard? Well, there are probably a number of ways that you can answer that, but here is one, at least straight from our passage this morning. Here’s a test.

Does the activity make you poorer or richer? Is this something that leads to poverty in the way that the sluggard’s escape does in verse 11? Does the thing I do, does it replenish me or does it impoverish me? And where you find sources of rest or pleasure, good things, but they’re beginning to impoverish you, that might be just a little bit of a sign that they are becoming false escapes. Let me give you an everyday simple example that I noticed within the last week. I was going to bed a night last week and I decided in bed to look at my phone.

Now, some of you are going to think, that’s terrible, that’s horrible. Some of you don’t bring your phones into your bedroom, and I’m sure you’re very wise about that. Now, there is nothing wrong there unnecessarily or necessarily.

I have a reading app on my phone, that’s my excuse, and often I will read in bed using that. But I decided that I would go on to X or Twitter to follow a discussion that I was interested in. Just five minutes, I said to myself, well, you know where this is going, don’t you? A good 20 or 30 minutes later, I’m still scrolling.

The next morning, I’m up a little bit later. I’m putting things under pressure for myself and those around me. I’m robbing my day of time.

I’m feeling tired. I’ve lost quiet time with the Lord. In some subtle way, my life that day has become that little bit more impoverished.

Just a little folding of the hands, a little slumber, and poverty comes upon you. That’s a little example just, but of course we can expand that into lots of different ways that that can happen. Let’s chew just a little bit more briefly before we leave this proverb.

How can the fear of the Lord help me in the use of my phone? Lord, I want to use this gift of time and technology to your glory. Lord, let me find my ultimate rest and refuge in you, not merely in the gifts you give. Whatever, like the sluggard, leads us to want to escape should lead us to find a refuge in the Lord, to find our escape ultimately in his care of the things that burden us and that we want to get some rest from.

(29:04 – 34:44)

That’s the fear of the Lord in those things that we want to find an escape in. Yet again, just as even we leave Mr. Sluggard, there’s just a little question, isn’t there? Where do we find our ultimate refuge? Where do we find our ultimate escape? We know that the things of this life can never satisfy us completely. We were singing about some of that earlier.

Well, let’s lastly and more briefly then come to the stirrer. The stirrer is in the last section of this chapter. He’s a rabble rouser.

He’s a ne’er-do-well, a good-for-nothing. That’s what the words mean there in verse 12. The king at this point in this week’s wisdom class is getting quite strong.

Now, this means that this is really meant to warn us. But the risk is that as we read this passage, and perhaps you might have even begun to think this as we were reading it together, you might have read it and thought, well, yes, we have to avoid this stirrer, this kind of person, but he’s not really like me. I’m quite different from that.

Well, let’s take a quick look then at this last proverb together. The stirrer’s main characteristic is that he’s a troublemaker. He’s an agitator.

He stirs the pot. His speech is crooked, not quite in God’s straight line. He veers away from God’s wisdom.

In that sense, his speech is crooked. He winks with his eyes. Now, there’s nothing sinful about winking.

It can be part of a playful culture, a playful banter in our culture, of course. Here, I’m from Ireland. I know about that.

But even then, whenever someone kind of winks in that kind of playful, bantery way, it kind of has a meaning, doesn’t it? It kind of means, did you get the joke? It has a kind of an unspoken sort of hidden communication, a sort of communication beneath the surface. In this proverb, it’s a communication beneath the surface, but it’s a communication beneath the surface that intends to harm, a bit like the fit shuffling. Hard to sort of understand that.

I have this image in my mind of James Brown dancing with the foot shuffling. But here, it’s another form of that kind of underhand communication. He points with his finger.

You hear him maybe subtly blame shifting, finger pointing in his conversation. All of that coming from a heart that kind of wants to take control of life with no thought of God devising its own evil plans. And the end point, and I think this is the point that the proverb is trying to focus on, the end point is this sowing of discord, or this unleashing of conflict within the community, because that’s the other way that that could be translated.

Now, these are strong words, and they’re emphasised further in the final three verses as the things that the Lord hates. Now, let’s again just briefly chew on these for a moment. At one level, yes, this is someone to keep our distance from, this good for nothing, ne’er do well, who wants to sow distance and discord in relationships, this troublemaker.

But again, easy to think that this is about someone else. It’s not about me. And I found that as I began to chew on these verses, they came home a little bit closer than I had imagined.

In fact, it was Friday morning when Nicola and I were driving to the airport as I was making my way over to Glasgow, an early Friday morning, and we were talking about a friend, a friend who lives with chronic pain, and a pain that has a very life kind of overshadowing impact upon them. And we were talking about this friend and talking about her kind of drive to find treatments and how all of this could be a controlling influence in her life. We both love her, and I found that as we were talking that I was veering into judging this friend, brackets, crooked speech.

I was subtly looking down at her in the way that I was talking about her, brackets, haughty eyes, close brackets. There was soft criticism from me in how she was handling her life, winking eyes, shuffling feet. And as I chewed a bit more, I realised that how I had been speaking in ways that at the time didn’t feel overtly foolish or sinful to me could influence my wife in ways that could sow discord between her and her friend.

(34:46 – 35:55)

And chewing further, it was all coming out of a heart that wasn’t fearing the Lord, that wasn’t seeing the Lord as Lord of her life. Not me, I wasn’t Lord of her life. That was failing to remember her real struggle and to see her as a sister in Christ, beloved of God, that I am also called to love.

I realised that even in that conversation on the way to the airport, there was a heart that was really instead devising evil instead of fearing the Lord. The stirrer, the stirrer can be closer to home than we realise. Well, the stirrer, the sluggard, the surety, all warnings to us of life lived without wisdom, all leaving us with questions.

(35:56 – 38:11)

Who, remember, will cover the debt of the stranger? Who can be surety for that amount of debt? The fear of the Lord leading me to see that instead actually I’m the debtor that is needing a surety. The sluggard, as we chewed further, leading us to ask, why do I go after false escapes? How can I find a true rest and escape from life burdens? The stirrer leading me to ask, who will deliver me from the tendency to war that is in my heart and comes out in subtle ways in conversation? Oh, we need a wisdom that is beyond ourselves, a wisdom who will act for us, a wisdom who will transform us, a wisdom who will be our very wisdom. As we come to the end of the lesson, we see beyond the King to King Jesus, the very wisdom of God, the surety who stood in to pay our debt when we were strangers, and invites us this morning, invest your life in me.

Who says, take the yoke of the work I have done for you and learn from me so that you can find true, restful, replenishing escape for your souls. Who takes the haughty, winking, discord, sowing tendencies in our hearts and takes them upon himself at the cross and brings us into peace. No more discord.

Peace with God leads us into peace with others as we place our faith in him. Christ is our true wisdom. He is wisdom in full view, and he will make us wise.

May he bless his word to us today.

The post The foolish life in full view – Proverbs 6v1–19 appeared first on Greenview Church.

(0:14 – 0:33)

So I’m going to be reading from Luke 24, and that is on page 1,061 in the pew Bibles that you’ve got. They’re not pew Bibles, are they? The Bibles in the back of your chairs, 1,061. So the Gospel of Luke chapter 24.

(0:34 – 0:53)

So this takes place on Easter Sunday morning. So you’ve got to transport your minds to Easter Sunday. And I will read from verse one to four, and then I’ll skip over a few verses to verse nine.

(0:53 – 1:01)

But we’re mainly going to be looking from verse 13 onwards. But let me start at verse one. On the first day of the week, so that’s Easter Sunday.

(1:01 – 1:17)

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb of Jesus. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb. But when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

(1:18 – 1:33)

While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. That’s the angels and they tell the women that Jesus has risen. But I’m going to jump ahead to verse nine.

(1:33 – 1:53)

When the women came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the 11 and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they, the apostles and the others did not believe the women because their words seemed to them like nonsense.

(1:54 – 2:16)

Peter, however, got up, ran to the tomb, bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves and he went away wondering to himself what had happened. Now, that same day, two of them were going to a village called Emmaus about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.

(2:17 – 2:38)

As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them. But they were kept from recognising him. He asked them, what are you discussing together as you walk along? And they stood still, their faces downcast.

(2:39 – 3:03)

One of them named Cleopas asked him, are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who doesn’t know the things that have happened here in these days? What things, he asked? About Jesus of Nazareth, they replied. He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death and they crucified him.

(3:04 – 3:15)

But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. What’s more, it’s the third day since all this took place, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. In addition, some of our women amazed us.

(3:15 – 3:28)

They went to the tomb early this morning but they didn’t find his body. They came and told us they’d seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. And then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the woman had said.

(3:28 – 3:38)

But they didn’t see Jesus. He said to them, how foolish you are. How slow to believe all the prophets have spoken.

(3:38 – 4:02)

Didn’t the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he was going further but they urged him strongly, “Stay with us for it’s nearly evening. The day is almost over”.

(4:02 – 4:17)

So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him and he disappeared from their sight.

(4:18 – 4:38)

They asked each other, weren’t our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us? They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. I’ll stop there. May the Lord bless his word to us as we consider it.

(4:39 – 4:57)

What if I didn’t have the Bible in my language? What if I didn’t have the Bible in my language? Well, you might be thinking about me and you think, well, you probably wouldn’t have gone to Kyrgyzstan. Well, that’s true. We went to a wonderful country.

(4:57 – 5:07)

We had 10 really exciting years, very fruitful ministry. Hope you like the picture. Fruitful ministry in a very interesting, different culture, different country.

(5:07 – 5:15)

We loved it. It was a time when God was really moving and lots of people were coming to faith. It was really exciting.

(5:16 – 5:24)

But I want to turn, there’s us a long time ago in winter. It gets cold in winter. Hot in summer, cold in winter.

(5:24 – 6:17)

What about you though? What if you didn’t have the Bible in your language? I don’t know if you do this sort of thing in Greenview, but turn to the person beside you in just 30 seconds. How would your life be different if you didn’t have the Bible? If you’d never had the Bible, been able to read it for yourself or hear it explained in your own language, what do you think it would be like? So go, talk to your neighbour for a few seconds. Okay, let me interrupt you there.

(6:17 – 6:22)

I’m sure you could go on. I hope you could go on. Some of you are probably saying, I’m not really sure.

(6:23 – 6:53)

Would it really have made that much difference? Maybe there’s some people like that, but I think probably most of you are saying, yeah. I know that without the Bible, my attitudes, my values, the decisions that I’ve made, the relationships that I’ve had, they would probably all have been really different if it hadn’t been for me being able to read the Bible in a language that I can understand, that makes sense to me. Let me just stay with that idea for a bit longer.

(6:53 – 7:32)

Let me reread a couple of verses from the passage. . . . . . . . . . . .

Hmm

Did anyone understand that? If we can put our hand up. Nobody understood that? Anyone know what language that was? That was a wee bit of Russian, actually.

(7:32 – 7:36)

It wasn’t Kyrgyz. I’ve only got a few words. That’s a long story.

(7:37 – 7:50)

You can ask about that. Imagine that was the Bible reading and then your preacher is explaining it to you and you’re thinking, well, maybe the Bible says that. I’m sure in Greenview, you really trust your preachers.

(7:50 – 8:11)

You’ve got really reliable preachers and you could trust every word. But except when they start talking about, that thing and then you think, well, I think I just disagree about what. What if I’d read the Bible in French? Would anyone have understood that? A few people.

(8:11 – 8:49)

A few people think they would have understood that, but you don’t know how bad my French is. If I butchered every second word and mispronounced them and got the grammar upside down, then how much would you really have understood if that’s what reading the Bible meant to you? Faye’s uncle, Uncle Angus died earlier this year and Faye’s from the islands. Her first language was Gaelic when she was really small and then not so much later.

(8:50 – 9:05)

But Uncle Angus’ first language was Gaelic. He spoke Gaelic until he was 16 and then he went away from home and English was his language. But he was in his late 80s and he was just fading away.

(9:09 – 9:46)

And he wasn’t really responding to anything anybody said to him until Faye’s mum went there and started to speak to him in Gaelic and pray with him in Gaelic and read the Bible. And suddenly there was little movements and a sense that he could understand. All those decades he’d had in another language, but somehow the first language meant so much to him when he heard the Bible again and hymns, songs, psalms, I don’t know what she was singing, and prayers they used to say.

(9:47 – 9:58)

But his language, it meant so much to him. Imagine all the people in the world. Imagine all the people in the world.

(9:58 – 10:18)

Every square is about 400 million people, a lot of people. But one in five of them don’t have the Bible in the language that would make sense the most to them. One in five people in the world don’t have the Bible in the best language for them.

(10:18 – 10:36)

It’s one in five, 1.5 billion, it kind of almost works. That’s about 270 Scotlands don’t have the Bible in the language that would work best. Imagine if a fifth of us, those people at the back there, maybe that’s a fifth.

(10:36 – 10:53)

Imagine if they didn’t have the Bible. What would all you nice people, sorry, they’re nice as well. What would all you nice people at this front of the church, what would you do if they didn’t have a Bible? What would you do? Anybody? You might give them one.

(10:53 – 11:07)

Yeah, that’s what Wycliffe Bible Translators is doing. It’s giving Bibles to that proportion of the world. Hundreds of millions of Christians who don’t have the Bible in their language and so they’re struggling all the time.

(11:07 – 11:45)

They say, what does it really mean? How can I really follow Jesus? And then even greater numbers of millions of non-Christians what chance have they got of understanding the good news? Let me go back to Luke 24 and think about the passage there. Put yourself in their shoes. Those two people there, I think they’re both men but some people think it’s might’ve been a couple of Cleopatra and his wife but you can ask me why I think that later.

(11:46 – 11:58)

Jesus has been crucified on Friday. Jesus has been defeated. They’ve waited there on the Sabbath, not going anywhere because you don’t go anywhere on a Saturday, the holy day.

(11:58 – 12:23)

And then on the Sunday, it’s time to go but before they get their breakfast sorted out and put the dishes in the dishwasher, they hear this news from these women who come back and say, there’s an angel appeared and said that Jesus is alive and they don’t really believe. They stick to their plan. They’re going.

(12:26 – 12:36)

It seems to me like maybe they’re giving up. They’re certainly really confused. Everybody is confused except the women who are wondering.

(12:36 – 12:44)

All the men are confused. Maybe that’s you. Maybe sometimes you get confused.

(12:45 – 13:39)

Maybe right now you dragged yourself out here thinking, really, how does this all work? Why is it like this? Maybe you’re experiencing that sense of confusion. They just couldn’t imagine that Jesus could have risen from the dead and maybe you are thinking, did Jesus really rise from the dead? Maybe you’re thinking, how is it that my family member, my sister doesn’t speak to me anymore? Isn’t God supposed to make life better? How come these things happen? Maybe you’re thinking those kind of things and you’re confused this morning and Jesus appears to them. And I just love that.

(13:39 – 13:58)

It’s a great story. Go and read it again or just over lunch if you’re at home with someone else who’s here, ask them, what do you remember from the Road to Emmaus story? And there’s actually lots of little pieces in there that are quite memorable. Jesus appears out of nowhere and they don’t recognise him.

(13:58 – 14:33)

Jesus has probably by now, he must have already spoken to Mary Magdalene and appeared to her, but he’s in a hurry with her. Some of you will know what I’m referring to, but there’s a little thing that feels like Jesus is in a hurry there. Then he goes to these two numpties on the road, not understanding anything and he spends a long time with them and they say to him, are you the only one who doesn’t know what’s happened? heh heh, Jesus is the only one who does know what’s happened.

(14:34 – 14:51)

They don’t know, but anyway, the kindness of Jesus. He spends so much time with these people who are confused. It’s like Mary Magdalene, Peter, all these other people who’ve, you know, just ready to believe and in the right place.

(14:51 – 15:02)

But Jesus spends the time with the ones who are on the point of giving up. It seems to me that they’re on the point, they’re certainly confused. Jesus spends his time with them.

(15:03 – 15:29)

And then there’s that interesting phrase that they were kept from recognising Jesus in verse 16 and it goes through the end, their eyes were opened in verse 31. Was that cruel? They were kept from recognising Jesus. Jesus didn’t want them to understand, to see him immediately.

(15:31 – 15:47)

Why? Why didn’t Jesus just say, I have rose from the dead. You don’t see my hand, see my sight. Why didn’t he do that with these guys who are struggling? Isn’t that what they want? They just want to see Jesus and know the answer.

(15:50 – 16:06)

Jesus doesn’t do that with them. Instead, he takes the time to teach them about the Bible, to get them to rethink everything that they’ve read, before and heard before. He makes them think.

(16:06 – 16:30)

So I mentioned that Faye was a teacher and she introduced me to this phrase, desirable difficulty. Are there any other school teachers who’ve heard about desirable difficulty? It’s an idea that if you really want to learn something, you need to go through a process that’s difficult. If you just get given the answer and say, well, I’ve got the answer now, so I don’t need to think about it anymore.

(16:30 – 16:49)

But there’s a sense that you learn far more when there’s a bit of a challenge, a bit of difficulty, a bit of wrestling that you have to do. And it seems that’s what Jesus is doing here. They’re kept from recognising him at first so that they can really learn.

(16:49 – 17:05)

They really need that process of dwelling in God’s word, of thinking about what it really says and why it really says it. Because they’ve got a problem. They think, well, Jesus should win.

(17:06 – 17:30)

Everything should be great. There’s that key phrase, I think I’ve put it here, that the Messiah has to suffer and then enter his glory. That God’s path is that there is suffering for Jesus, but then after that, there is the resurrection, there is the glory that comes next.

(17:31 – 17:51)

And so Jesus takes them through the whole Bible. If you are struggling today, if you’re feeling confused, I think there’s a few pointers here. Number one is Jesus is closer than you think.

(17:53 – 18:06)

Maybe Jesus is just there by the Holy Spirit ready to talk to you. But you don’t recognise him. Number two is get into the Bible.

(18:07 – 18:20)

Read the Bible. If you’re feeling confused, think about it, read it, learn it, listen to it, listen to people explaining it. That’s where you find an answer to your confusion.

(18:22 – 18:42)

Jesus appeared really quite differently to Paul. Some of you, I guess most of you will know the story about Paul on another road and Jesus appeared in a very different way. But these people are confused and Jesus explains his word to them through the whole Bible.

(18:43 – 18:53)

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, all those things. That’s where Jesus takes them. And at the end, number three would be they see Jesus.

(18:53 – 19:03)

They understand who he is and their hearts are burning within them. A great passage. I love that passage.

(19:03 – 19:33)

But let me take you back to the one in five. What Wycliffe Bible Translators is trying to do is to enable that one in five group of people to have the opportunity to have their hearts burning, to have their confusions answered by wrestling with God’s word, by understanding it. There are believers out there in the world who feel like giving up just because they don’t really understand God’s word and they don’t have the opportunity.

(19:34 – 19:55)

There are people who can’t know God, humanly speaking, because they don’t have God’s word to start to think about who Jesus is and what it could possibly mean. That’s what Wycliffe Bible Translators are trying to do. And I’ve got really great news for you.

(19:56 – 20:09)

There’s a bundle of paperwork. Well, you got a piece of a document, a Words for Life. It’s called a little, and document sounds very fancy, doesn’t it? I must’ve spent too long in the academic world.

(20:11 – 20:21)

A booklet, Words for Life, which is filled with stories about what God is doing through Wycliffe Bible Translators. But there’s a few copies. And please take them with you.

(20:22 – 20:33)

Get rid of everything. I don’t want to take anything back with me. Just think how much you’ll save my fuel consumption driving back down to the south coast of England if you take this.

(20:33 – 20:47)

So that’d be great. This one’s a state of the Bible report. One of the facts there, 197 million people had the whole Bible completed in the language that makes sense to them.

(20:47 – 21:00)

And they didn’t have a Bible before. That’s a really long, complicated, but you get that it’s the one in five at the back. 197 million people last year had the Bible completed.

(21:00 – 21:15)

That’s 35 and a half Scotland’s. If you’re keeping track of Scotland’s, 35 and a half Scotland’s received the Bible. That’s a big dent in the 1.5 billion, but the population keeps growing.

(21:16 – 21:33)

So there’s still plenty to do. But it’s good news. There’s a really exciting story of what God is doing through lots of, not just through Wycliffe Bible translators, but through lots of churches and individuals translating God’s word.

(21:35 – 21:52)

And the rate of progress is really accelerating. By the 1950s, there were around 400 languages that had the Bible in them. Now there’s work going on in four and a half thousand.

(21:52 – 22:13)

So hopefully it can take 10 years, say sometimes it used to take longer to translate the Bible. These days people are reckoning at 10 years, maybe 12, 15 in some cases to translate the Bible. But there’s work going on in lots of languages.

(22:14 – 22:24)

And it’s a really exciting time to be involved in Wycliffe Bible translators. Let me explain what happens. So there’s three stages, linguistics.

(22:25 – 22:45)

A lot of these languages are minority languages. So you get a big country and there are people who speak dialects and languages that they really don’t want to speak the dominant language of that country. That doesn’t really mean the same.

(22:45 – 22:57)

It’s something they’ve learned. Maybe it’s like Uncle Angus. When he was a child in school, he would get the belt for speaking Gaelic in the playground because he was supposed to speak English in school.

(22:59 – 23:05)

It’s that kind of languages that get pushed down. Often are the ones that don’t have the Bible translated. And sometimes they’re not written.

(23:06 – 23:15)

So there’s lots of work to be done in understanding the language. Sometimes there’s only anything that was written was hundreds of years ago. So they have to be updated and understand the language.

(23:15 – 23:36)

That’s linguistics. Then there’s a translation. So big teams of people, local people who really understand the language, foreigners who are experts in translation ideas, coming together, working together, people from different churches because you don’t want just… I think I know the answer to this question.

(23:36 – 23:46)

What stream of network of churches are we in here? FIEC. Yeah, that’s what I thought. You don’t want a translation that’s only used by this group of churches.

(23:46 – 24:04)

And then there’s all the other churches and they don’t quite like it. You want to bring all the churches together. And then the scripture engagement, which is what they call producing Sunday school materials, making calendars, often making apps so that people can read the Bible and get verses for the day and things like that.

(24:05 – 24:25)

When we were in Kyrgyzstan, they had just translated the book of Proverbs into Kyrgyz. And everyone was really excited because somebody produced lessons for school teachers to teach what old King Solomon taught. And the schools loved this.

(24:26 – 24:39)

This is ancient words of wisdom for our children from King Solomon. And they were really excited with that. So that’s the kind of nitty gritty things.

(24:39 – 24:55)

There’s more stories and far more excitingly told in Words for Life. So take that with you. So what can you do as I come in? How do we respond to this? So you’ll kind of notice this is a sermon nestled within another sermon.

(24:55 – 25:04)

There’s a sermon about Luke 24 about what we need to do with God’s word. But that’s to say, this is really important. And my mileage is paid.

(25:04 – 25:13)

I’m a volunteer. My mileage is paid, not the whole way to promote Wycliffe. And so that’s what I’d like to do now.

(25:14 – 25:21)

There are opportunities to join. There’s information about that as well. Serving with Wycliffe.

(25:22 – 25:47)

And it tells you a bit about the many different roles. Linguists, IT people to build apps, people who know Greek and Hebrew or go off and learn it who become consultants in translation, who become experts in fonts and typesetting and things like that. Literacy workers, people who go out into the community and help people.

(25:47 – 26:07)

People who find the local music and help them set scripture words to song in a way which really resonates with them. So lots of things. Things that you can do part-time from your home here in Glasgow, that you can be involved.

(26:08 – 26:16)

Like I’m a volunteer part-time, very part-time. But there’s lots of different roles that people can do. So there’s information about that.

(26:18 – 26:29)

There’s a play your part leaflet on the table at the back there. And there’s different sections in it. And if you want more information, you can.

(26:29 – 26:53)

I was speaking in a church in Bournemouth in May, maybe. And it turned out there was a lady there from Indonesia and she was willing to come and help some of the students who are learning about languages by being a kind of guinea pig for them to learn Indonesian. So I don’t think you could do that so easily from here.

(26:53 – 27:04)

But there’s all sorts of things that you can do. There’s the opportunity, not just to join, but to give. And first of all, I need to say thank you to Greenview Church, because you support.

(27:04 – 27:18)

We’ve already mentioned the names Dan and Narineh and Stephen and Susan. And no last names because of the area of the world that they are working in. You’re supporting them already.

(27:18 – 27:27)

And that’s fantastic, really grateful for that. And others of you will be supporting other missions and that’s great. But maybe you just think, I really want to get involved in helping God’s word.

(27:28 – 27:57)

And if you’re interested in that, again, this red play your part form has got sections there. If you fill in the form and give, there’s some ridiculously wealthy donor who’s willing to double whatever you commit to giving there. What you are doing already, I meant to ask, I forgot to ask, so forgive me.

(27:57 – 28:17)

But I suspect what you’re doing already is enabling chapter after chapter after chapter each year to be translated into some language equivalent. You’re already involved in that and that’s great. But maybe some of you would like to become more involved.

(28:17 – 28:29)

So you can look at that. Gift aid obviously is a real help there. But I don’t want to be, don’t feel that I’m pushy or anything there.

(28:29 – 28:42)

If you don’t have the money, if you are giving elsewhere, that’s absolutely great. Maybe God stirs your heart to want to do more for that. And then as well as, so that’s the give the word programme there.

(28:44 – 28:57)

So in terms of prayer, there is the words for life, the stories there. So that’s August’s that you’ve got. That’s the one that you can take August’s away.

(28:58 – 29:15)

You can sign up. If you fill in the first part of the play your part form, you can get prayers for life. And that gives you a little short thing that you can pray for each day of the month.

(29:15 – 29:34)

So that’s August to October’s prayers for life. Really encouraging. Just I think it was last week I was praying for one and it was saying how in some churches like 42 home groups have started just because now people are really interested in the Bible because they can read it.

(29:35 – 29:43)

They’ve got it in their own language and there’s lots of information. It’s hard to pray without information. And so there’s those things there.

(29:43 – 30:21)

The kind of things that you would be praying for, just giving thanks for what God is doing is really important, really exciting to see what’s happening and to hear stories about progress made in different places. Sometimes there are, as you know from the work that’s going on here, there are parts of the world where translators, local translators are translating in secret. Even their families don’t know perhaps because of the danger of persecution.

(30:21 – 30:44)

So there’s opportunity to pray for things like that. Praying for churches coming together to agree to work together to say, yeah, okay, we can use that word for faith. Do you wanna use faith or do you want to use trust everywhere? You know, it’s like you need to get everyone on board and it’s a big deal for people.

(30:44 – 31:11)

The technicalities of writing systems, they’re really exciting stuff for some people. How are we going to spell these words that no one has spelled before? All those questions that, you know, they actually do matter. So what if spelling was simple? English spelling is dreadful, it really is.

(31:12 – 31:24)

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, I say what. I don’t say wat, I say what. And it’s like, I would like there to be an H in the word what, because that’s the way I say it.

(31:24 – 31:42)

Do other people say what? Anyone else? Yeah, yeah, we’ve got at least one nod, a few nods. I don’t know if it’s, do all Scottish people say, say it with a H, rather than a W? But, you know, like that would matter to me if you took that out and said, that’s not right. But it’s that kind of tedious nitpicking.

(31:42 – 32:04)

If you’re nitpicky like me, you know, it would matter. And then there’s all the scripture engagement. Some of you will use the U version, I’m sure, on your Bibles and that’s got heaps of translations there which are the fruit of the work of people quietly in the background doing this kind of ministry.

(32:05 – 32:23)

So that’s really all I want to say. When God’s word is understood, when God’s word is available, understandable, then Jesus comes alongside and teaches us. And when we are confused, he strengthens us.

(32:24 – 32:41)

When we lack in faith, he brings light. So please, so first of all, thank you for your support of Wycliffe. And please, if you want to take these things away, please do and talk to us afterwards.

(32:41 – 33:12)

But let’s pray. Lord, we want to pause now and maybe many of us know somebody else who’s here this morning or sitting at home, watching online. And we know that they’re a bit confused and they’re struggling and we pray for that person that you would help them, that you would reveal yourself to them, that you would strengthen their understanding through your word.

(33:13 – 33:24)

And we thank you for the work of the four people connected with the church already. Bless them, Lord. May their work really prosper.

(33:25 – 33:41)

May brilliant translations be produced and used for your glory. And we thank you for the wider work of Wycliffe and all the people who commit so much to it in so many different ways. And we pray for your blessing, Lord.

(33:41 – 34:04)

We long to see maybe in 20 years, maybe in 30 years, that every language over a certain size has got a Bible. Lord, we long for that, that all the peoples might praise you, that all the peoples might glorify the name of Jesus. So thank you, Lord, for your word and bless it too as we pray.

(34:05 – 34:05)

Amen.

The post What if no Bible in my own Language? – Luke 24 appeared first on Greenview Church.

(0:27 – 0:48)

None who go to her return or attain the paths of life. And the second part of the reading is from chapter 5. My son, pay attention to my wisdom. Turn your ear to my words of insight, that you may maintain discretion and your lips may preserve knowledge.

(0:49 – 1:06)

For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil. But in the end, she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps lead straight to the grave.

(1:06 – 1:16)

She gives no thought to the way of life. Her paths wander aimlessly, but she does not know it. Now then, my sons, listen to me.

(1:17 – 1:30)

Do not turn aside from what I say. Keep to a path far from her. Do not go near the door of her house, lest you lose your honour to others and your dignity to one who is cruel.

(1:31 – 1:46)

Lest strangers feast on your wealth and your toil enrich the house of another. At the end of your life, you will groan when your flesh and body are spent. You will say, how I hated discipline, how my heart spurned correction.

(1:47 – 2:01)

I would not obey my teachers or turn my ear to my instructors. And I was soon in serious trouble in the assembly of God’s people. Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well.

(2:02 – 2:21)

Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares, let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers. May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer.

(2:21 – 2:41)

May her breast satisfy you always. May you ever be intoxicated with her love. Why my son be intoxicated with another man’s wife? Why embrace the bosom of a wayward woman? For your ways are in full view of the Lord, and he examines all your paths.

(2:41 – 2:53)

The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare them. The cords of their sins hold them fast. For lack of discipline, they will die, led astray by their own great folly.

(3:00 – 3:16)

Thank you, Fione, for reading our passage today. Good morning. Choose Life was a fashion statement and a protest statement by British designer Catherine Hamnett in 1983.

(3:18 – 3:47)

The T-shirt was then worn by George Michael in 1984, singing for Wham! And in reaction to the NHS England shock tactics of Heroin Screws You Up, NHS Scotland went for Choose Life, not drugs. Well, today, as we come to Proverbs, we are presented with a stark contrast. Will we choose life? Proverbs, as we’ve been learning, is all about choices.

(3:49 – 4:14)

Proverbs attributed to King Solomon speaking to his son, used by Jewish theologians to teach boys becoming men aged 12 and 13. Nine chapters calling the son to choose wisdom, not folly. We have seen so far how this call to wisdom, although written by a king to his son, has a much wider audience.

(4:14 – 4:22)

Knowledge and discretion to the young. Colin reminded us that that’s those under 30. For the simple, those naive to the world.

(4:23 – 4:39)

And for the wise and discerning, as we were learning in our community groups only a couple of weeks ago, that we never graduate from learning wisdom. It is a lifelong apprenticeship. So this is for all of us today.

(4:40 – 5:06)

And that’s really important to remember as we come to this text today. This text could easily come with a 12A rating, as Proverbs is all about sexual ethics on one level. And on another level, these young men are presented with a metaphorical choice between two women, Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly.

(5:07 – 5:21)

So let’s walk into the text this morning and see what these ancient words are still profoundly and relevantly speaking out to us today. We’re going to look at four different points. The seduction of sex.

(5:22 – 5:52)

Steer clear of temptation. Drink water from your own cistern. And choose life.

Follow Jesus. So firstly, the seduction of sex, verses one to six. Ray Ortland, an American reformed theologian and now retired pastor in Nashville, the author of many Bible commentaries and books, once said that we preach through the Bible so that we don’t avoid uncomfortable topics like sex.

(5:53 – 6:15)

I must admit, when I first read this text, I thought about our pastor, our pastor here at Greenview, Colin Adams. And I thought, could you not have given this to someone else? The text starts with the repeated refrain. It’s been seen in other chapters already.

(6:15 – 6:23)

My son, pay attention to my wisdom. Turn your ear to my words of insight. Son, listen to me.

(6:23 – 6:36)

The context, as we’ve already seen, is a king to his son. However, the audience is wide to all of us. So whether male or female, young or old, God’s wisdom is for us all.

(6:36 – 6:49)

So turn your ear and listen. And then we are presented with an initial contrast. Verse two, that you may maintain discretion and your lips may preserve knowledge.

(6:50 – 7:10)

Your lips may preserve knowledge. Compared to verse three, for the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil. So who is this woman, you might ask? Well, the text in Proverbs 2, read to us earlier, gives us an insight.

(7:10 – 7:27)

She’s an adulteress. She is described as a wayward woman who has left the partner of her youth and, importantly, ignored the covenant she made before God. Her lips drip honey.

(7:27 – 7:33)

Her speech is smoother than oil. This is sensual language. She is enticing.

(7:34 – 7:45)

She is tempting. Immediately, the father and teachers through the century are bringing together a picture. Listen, son, there is this woman.

(7:46 – 7:50)

She has left her husband. She is offering sex. Her lips are like honey.

(7:51 – 8:12)

Her speech is like smooth oil. She is tempting. The seduction, the act of persuading, the temptation, or enticing someone to have sex, although this passage is written by a man to his son, is not just a male problem.

(8:13 – 8:32)

We see this in the Bible. It’s Potiphar’s wife who pesters Joseph for sex, who seeks to drag Joseph into bed with her in Genesis. There are lots of alarming statistics out there just to show that this is a problem for both males and females.

(8:33 – 8:52)

So, like I say, Proverbs is for us all. Upwards of 90% of males and females engage in premarital sex, with there being almost no gender difference. As a side point, those who have had premarital sex are statistically 50% more likely to get divorced once married.

(8:53 – 9:14)

After marrying, about 25% of men and 15% of women commit adultery at some point. It’s very similar between men and women up to the age of about 50, after which men are statistically more likely to have an affair. About half of men and a third of women are looking at internet porn once a month.

(9:14 – 9:46)

In an American study, almost three-quarters of men and almost half of women view pornography sometimes. 39% of Gen Z adults view porn on a daily or weekly basis, showing that this is a greater problem with our younger generation. Plus, more than half of younger millennials and Gen Z adults aged 18 to 37 say they have sent a nude image of themselves and three-quarters say that they have received them.

(9:47 – 10:13)

I don’t give these statistics in any way to make you think that this is OK. Ray Ortlund described it like this, it is a tsunami of sexual destruction slamming us in our modern world today. A recent Institute YouGov poll reported correlating porn use with loneliness and depression.

(10:15 – 10:36)

And it’s worse than that, as we see in our Bible, because it’s about a choice between wisdom and folly. Verse 4, But in the end she is as bitter as gall, as sharp as a double-edged sword, and her feet go down to death and her steps lead straight to the grave. This is a stark warning.

(10:36 – 11:22)

In the Second World War, the US Office of War Information came out with the slogan Loose Lips Sink Ships, aimed at military personnel and the wider public to beware of spies, to be careful with what you say and to who, because loose lips saying important information to the wrong person could literally end hundreds of lives. Verses 2 and 3 create this contrast between the son’s lips that are to preserve and are to guard knowledge, wisdom, and a forbidden woman’s lips that drip honey, folly. For although tempting, those lips are like poison, gall.

(11:22 – 11:49)

They are like a double-edged sword, a weapon that brings death, and those lips are connected straight to feet that go down to death and lead straight to the grave. Verse 6, She gives no thought to the way of life, her paths wander aimlessly, but she does not know it. Life is full of little choices around the seduction of sex.

(11:50 – 12:28)

Do we engage this person of the opposite sex in conversation? Do we flirt? Are we seeking attention or desiring companionship? What do you watch on TV? What do you do when you’re alone when no one else is watching? Do you click that link? Do you view that profile? We live day by day just one or two clicks away from pornography. The choices we make in the area of sex need to be well thought about in the cold light of day. Don’t wander aimlessly, giving no thought to your choices.

(12:29 – 12:39)

This leads us nicely to our second part of our text, verses 17 to 14. Steer clear of temptation. Verse 7, Now then, my sons, listen to me.

(12:39 – 12:47)

Do not turn aside to what I say. Again, the plea is to listen to the teacher, to the father. This is important.

(12:49 – 13:00)

Verse 8, Keep to a path far from her. Do not go near the door of her house. Do not go near to her house.

(13:00 – 13:15)

Steer clear of temptation. The best way not to sin in the area of sexual temptation is not to put yourself in the firing line. A play called Hamilton, about one of America’s forefathers, Alexander Hamilton.

(13:15 – 13:34)

A woman comes to his door seeking financial aid. Does he succumb to temptation at that point? No. But after walking her home and engaging her in conversation, and now on her doorstep, he is in a weaker position to resist temptation and goes in and starts that affair.

(13:34 – 14:05)

Later, the woman’s husband finds out and blackmails Hamilton, and it goes public, and he confesses it all in order to avoid further scandal as of financial impropriety, which would have ruined his political career as then the Secretary to the Treasury. How accurate the words of Proverbs 5, warning against adultery, are. Verses 9 and 10, Lest you lose your honour to others and your dignity to one who is cruel.

(14:06 – 14:20)

Lest strangers feast on your wealth and your toil enrich the house of another. Alexander Hamilton was bribed. He was enriching the house of another.

(14:21 – 14:31)

As a result of his affair. If you have that affair, you will find yourself in a much worse position. You will lose honour and credibility.

(14:32 – 14:43)

People will be talking about you. Your reputation will be destroyed. Your Christian witness, well, that will be no more, as you will have rejected God in your actions.

(14:44 – 15:08)

You might very well know someone who has had an affair. Affairs ruin marriages, tearing apart that union of two becoming one, ripping it apart and destroying it, to the result of a broken home, two parents playing pass the children at the school gates, living in separate homes. The parental-child relationship changes.

(15:08 – 15:33)

The parent is no longer in a position to impart wisdom. In their anger, children will cast up that one selfish act and how it destroyed their lives and destroyed the marriage. Ray Auckland’s wife speaks about her experience of helping a number of women who have committed adultery and not one of them reflected on their life being better as a result of this.

(15:34 – 15:50)

For those who have had an affair, verses 11 to 13 are so, so true. At the end of your life, you will groan. When your flesh and body are spent, you will say how I hated discipline, how I spurned correction.

(15:51 – 16:10)

I would not obey my teacher or turn my ear to my instructors. Following the way of folly brings regret and sorrow. Throwing away life and reputation for the sake of a moment of pleasure because you have listened to a lie.

(16:11 – 17:05)

The person who has had the affair, when reflecting on their life, would be saying, if only I had accepted discipline, if only I had steered clear of temptation, if only I had taken correction, if only I had listened to those wise friends, mentors, teachers around me, looking to speak to me. I’m thankful for different times in my own life, for one-to-ones with other men who have challenged me with tough questions and I have challenged them with tough questions. Have you sinned lustfully this month? Have you watched something on TV that you shouldn’t have this month? Have you sinned in the area of pornography this month? Some 18% of pastors, according to one American survey, are currently struggling in the area of pornography.

(17:05 – 17:27)

Some 67% of pastors report historical issues with pornography at some point in their lives. Having spoken to people who are living with the consequences of sin, of adultery in their lives, it impacts on everything. Personally devastating, destroys and ruins relationships.

(17:27 – 17:44)

It hits you financially too and it impacts on you and your church as well. Verse 14, And I was soon in serious trouble with the assembly of God’s people. The reality is that sin has consequences.

(17:45 – 18:05)

How many pastors have lost their marriage, their job, their church, all quite rightly, having been caught having an affair with another woman. So steer clear of temptation. To those not married, but thinking about it, or desiring marriage.

(18:05 – 18:23)

Young people, I remember as a youth leader, sharing the story of a rich man who is hiring a chauffeur. Some people might remember me saying this. But he asked three drivers how good they were on a mountain road that led to his house.

(18:24 – 18:49)

The first said, I am so good, I can average 50 miles an hour on this twisty mountain road and take the car within a foot of the edge. The second said, I’m even better, I can average 60 miles an hour round those hairpins and take you within inches of the edge. But the third said, with you in the car, I will crawl up the hill and I will hug the mountain, keeping as far from the edge as possible as you are too precious.

(18:51 – 19:08)

I shared this as a youth leader in terms of how far is too far to go in your relationship. Don’t be driver one or two as they are far more likely to crash or even die. Be like driver three.

(19:08 – 19:20)

Steer clear of temptation. Put up many boundaries in your relationship to help keep yourself pure and to help honour your boyfriend or girlfriend. Steer clear of temptation.

(19:21 – 19:37)

Keep away from her door. And what does that look like for you? Ladies, stop flirting with that man at work who is paying you attention. Men, don’t offer to take that female work colleague out for a drink.

(19:38 – 19:45)

Be above reproach. Maybe the issue is porn. Put blockers on your TV or your phone.

(19:45 – 20:02)

Have transparency about what you’re watching through shared internet browsing or streaming services. I actually think that streaming services are incredibly helpful. I shared this the other day when I was chatting with somebody from the church.

(20:04 – 20:32)

As my streaming history is there for my wife and my children to see, whereas in the old days, channels one to four or channels one to five, nobody got to see what you’d been watching earlier. So, be transparent about what you’re watching. Have a shared iPad, a home laptop that everybody can look at.

(20:32 – 21:05)

Do everything you can to steer clear of temptation. In a relationship already? Can you help one another by creating clear boundaries in your relationship, by limiting time alone where temptation increases honour one another pre-marriage by not having sex before marriage. There are so many applications of steering clear of temptation because as we have already seen in verse five, her feet go down to death, her steps lead straight to the grave.

(21:06 – 21:33)

Our first two points this morning both come from a place where we and society around us place too much emphasis on sex and the pleasure arising from it as we’ve looked at both seduction and temptation. But in a strange dichotomy, we also undervalue sex. Point three, drink water from your own cistern.

(21:34 – 21:54)

Under this title, we’re going to see that here, in our Bibles, there is a celebration of sex in the right context. One man and one woman in a married relationship. Heterosexual, monogamous marriages are God’s design.

(21:55 – 22:12)

We see this right from the start when God takes the first wedding ceremony and he brings Adam and Eve together. Sex in marriage is not only for the purpose of having children, but sex in marriage is to be enjoyed. These verses tell us this explicitly.

(22:13 – 22:42)

As I’ve read these verses, I didn’t want to say the wrong thing or go off piece, so I’ve listened to others preaching on this topic, including Tim Keller, who is very helpful. Off the back of the warnings about the seduction of the adulteress and steering clear of temptation, we have an exhortation to be intimate only with your spouse. There is lots of water language used for sexuality in verses 15 to 19 to make this point.

(22:43 – 23:01)

Verse 15, You can drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. In Hebrew literature, the cistern of the well were used to describe female sexuality. A cistern would have been collecting rainwater and a well would have been supplied from an underground source.

(23:02 – 23:25)

So there is an image of going down into and drawing from the cistern, from the well, your own cistern, your own well. Men who are married should only have sexual intimacy with their wife. Then in verses 16 to 18, Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares, let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers.

(23:26 – 23:43)

May your fountain be blessed and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. Springs and fountains in Hebrew literature are referencing male sexuality. If you are a man and not yet married or a married man, your sexuality is not to be overflowing into the streets or the public squares.

(23:43 – 23:58)

Your sexuality is to be shared with your wife alone and not with strangers. It gets even stronger in the celebration of sex within the confines of marriage. No matter your age, rejoice in the wife of your youth.

(23:58 – 24:15)

Rejoice that she is still with you, that you are able to have a healthy and stable sex life together. Verse 19, A loving doe, a graceful deer, may her breasts satisfy you always. May you ever be intoxicated with her love.

(24:17 – 24:38)

A loving doe, a graceful deer, is poetic language highlighting real beauty. In the confines of a monogamous married relationship, we are to enjoy one another’s bodies. May her breasts satisfy you always so that you are intoxicated, literally drunk in love with one another.

(24:39 – 24:55)

Perhaps not what you were expecting to hear when you came to church today, but this is here in Proverbs and there’s no getting away from it. So we are to be careful with overvaluing sex. Don’t go with that married woman or married man.

(24:55 – 25:03)

Don’t look lustfully at porn. Don’t have sex with the prostitute. Steer clear of situations or people or places that are going to cause you temptation.

(25:04 – 25:13)

But if married, enjoy, even celebrate, the gift of sex within that marriage. Ray Auckland summed it up well. Sex is like fire.

(25:14 – 25:32)

Inside the fireplace it keeps us warm. Outside the fireplace it burns the house down. If currently single, and this is difficult to hear as it all seems to be a long way off, well it’s well worth the wait and designed to be enjoyed only within that married relationship.

(25:33 – 25:53)

Think about the stats earlier. Those who have premarital sex are 50% more likely to be divorced or to get divorce. If you’re a single and feel that marriage is passing you by or even your spouse is no longer with us, if you’re experiencing difficulties in this area, please speak to someone in church pastorally.

(25:54 – 26:17)

And pray to God about your current situation and how it makes you feel. If in a relationship, set up boundaries, honour one another, keep one another pure, be like the driver that hugged the mountain keeping far from the edge and drove at a speed so as not to lose control. And if married, choose to be faithful.

(26:18 – 26:26)

Steer clear of temptation. Enjoy one another. Enjoy the husband or the wife of your youth.

(26:27 – 26:32)

And finally, choose life. Follow Jesus. Verses 20 to 23.

(26:33 – 26:51)

Why, my son, be intoxicated with another man’s wife? Why embrace the bosom of a wayward woman? For your ways are in full view of the Lord and He examines all your paths. The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare them. The cords of their sin halt them fast.

(26:52 – 27:00)

For the lack of discipline they will die. For the lack of discipline they will die. Led astray by their own great folly.

(27:01 – 27:16)

Throughout Proverbs, we have a choice between lady wisdom and lady folly. This is the metaphorical part that we were talking about at the beginning. Life is full of choices.

(27:16 – 27:40)

According to AI, yep, I checked on AI, we make 35,000 decisions a day. 50 to 200 of these will be conscious decisions requiring active thought and emotional energy. Zero to five decisions a day will be high impact choices about work, life, financial relationships.

(27:41 – 28:04)

These verses remind us that God is watching. Your ways, the decisions that you make, even when you are alone, are in full view of the Lord. The Lord examines your paths, refers to the fact that ultimately we will face judgement for what we have done in our lives.

(28:05 – 28:22)

That judgement comes down to the choices that we make throughout life. In terms of temptation and sexuality, we’ve explored the ways of how to steer clear of temptation. But it isn’t just the area of sexuality as we’ve been focussing on today, but in all areas of life.

(28:22 – 28:44)

Decisions that lead to the love of money and possessions. Decisions that lead to addictions and drugs and smoking and alcohol and gambling and shopping and even food. The application about steering clear of temptation applies to all these areas of life too, but we just don’t have time to unpack them all.

(28:45 – 29:23)

Behind every choice there is a decision of who are you choosing to desire. Lady wisdom or lady folly. Are you seeking to follow God or are you being tempted away from God by the devil himself? Where have we seen this decision between wisdom and folly before? Where else have we seen the seductive appeal of the forbidden path? I pause because I want you to be thinking about your Bibles.

(29:24 – 29:58)

Where have we seen this before? Yes, right back in Genesis chapter 3 verse 4. The devil says, You will not certainly die, the snake said to the woman. For God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some of it and ate it.

(29:59 – 30:22)

And the woman took the fruit that God had commanded her not to eat as she was desiring to be like God. Eve chose the path of folly which leads to death. Then standing naked, the most beautiful woman in the world presented the fruit to Adam and he too ate it, disobeying God.

(30:23 – 30:44)

Adam literally followed Lady Folly in that choice in the garden. And as a result, death entered the world, verse 19, but by the sweat of your brow you will eat food until you return to the ground until you die. Behind the choice that Adam made was Lady Folly.

(30:45 – 31:22)

Behind the choice that Eve made was the devil himself. Do we choose folly which leads to death or do we choose wisdom? 1 Corinthians 1, verses 20 to 26. Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Since the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

(31:22 – 31:45)

Jews demanded a sign, Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. A stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks. Christ, the power of God, the wisdom of God.

(31:47 – 32:02)

Jesus Christ is true wisdom. Christ, the power of God, Christ, the wisdom of God. The devil tried to lure Jesus away in the desert.

(32:03 – 32:38)

He tried to tempt Jesus to show off his divine power, to satisfy his own desires, rather than trusting God, his Father. The devil tried to tempt Jesus with the basics of life, food when hungry, to take the shortcut to power, to get instant fame and popularity, but each time Jesus chose wisdom, using the Bible, the words of truth, to respond to the devil and steer clear of temptation. Behind every choice is wisdom or folly.

(32:39 – 33:07)

Young Jewish boys were presented this as a metaphor, do we choose Lady Wisdom or Lady Folly? And our choice today is the same. Do you choose to reject God as the supreme authority over your life, over the decisions that you make? None of us are neutral. If you choose to reject God, you’re choosing the way of the devil.

(33:08 – 33:31)

You’re choosing to follow a path that leads to death. Or do you choose life? Do you choose to follow Jesus, choose to seek Jesus who is true wisdom? This is the choice that each of us face today. Will you choose life?

The post Choose Life – Proverbs 5 appeared first on Greenview Church.

Tonight’s subject obviously is the wisdom of work and wealth or reward that comes through in Proverbs. And I want to bring before you as an introduction, and just come back to the issue of the relevance of what we’re looking at, perhaps from a slightly different angle. When you come to study, maybe David found this last week, but when you come to study those, anybody else who’s speaking, the book of Proverbs, it’s interesting that it speaks to you personally very much, so it’s very much a challenge to me and myself looking over the subject.

But it’s also something when you try to preach from it, it’s really to individuals, the work that’s been written in the book, rather than groups of people, primarily, much like the epistles, you know, Paul writes to churches and Peter etc and John to groups of people as well, my dear children. But Proverbs is very much targeted to you and to the individual, so it’s something that very much hits home to a person. And I was quite challenged by some of the things in the passage while I was preparing.

But I thought about, as I was thinking about Proverbs as a whole, as we study it as a church, it came to my mind that there are three criticisms that scoffers and sceptics sometimes say about religion in general and Christianity in particular. And I’ll tell you what those three things are, and I would say to you the book of Proverbs actually has, not by a proverb within the book, but the body as a whole helps address these criticisms you will have heard and may have come up in conversation when you speak to people who are not Christians or not believers, and certainly people who are antagonistic, and certainly if you’re on social media. The first criticism is, what do the writings of late Bronze Age sheep herders or goat herders have to do with us today? Have you heard that before? Sometimes that’s levelled more at Muslims than it’s levelled at Christians, but what relevance has something from the Bronze Age got for us today? Well I would point out to people who ask that question that actually when you read Proverbs you realise it’s still contemporary.

Now I didn’t check with Rebecca Adams this first of all, but you might know that the film The Odyssey has been very popular in the movie theatres. It’s nearly three hours long, I’ve not seen it yet, and it’s about the story of Odysseus and the Odyssey written by Homer over 3,000 years ago it was written, and the social media analysis of this has been very interesting. One of the things that’s come out about this is that it’s been pinpointed that Odysseus, if he actually lived, that the events took place at the fall of Troy round about the year 1175 BC, which just happens to be a critical almost decade in history where eight civilisations all collapsed, and it marked in a very sudden way the end of the Late Bronze Age.

Now you didn’t come here just for an academic treatise on this subject, but that’s relevant because that’s when Proverbs began to be written. So we know that King Hezekiah’s scribes assembled all the sayings and wise sayings they could get and assimilated and probably produced the Book of Proverbs as a whole then, but Solomon, you know, whose name is associated with it, much like David’s name is associated with the Book of Psalms, certainly started it off with the Proverbs of Solomon and the wisdom literature. So that same period of time when Troy fell and Odysseus is sailing the seas and Homer’s getting ready to write about that story, which people are still flocking to the movies to learn about, and I’m told if you go to Watersons you can’t get your hand on a copy of it for love nor money, that it still resonates with people today, things from so long ago.

But not only that, the story, not so much maybe the film, but the story of Odysseus, the themes are the same that resonate to us, the choices that are made about what you do with your life and some of the things that come up in that story. But what’s interesting is in the discussions about it, the morals are very different in that story compared to us today. And for those who are maybe into literature you’ll maybe know that one of the criticisms about this is that the movie’s been based on a translation where the person who translated that story makes out that Odysseus is this person who’s got post-traumatic stress disorder because of what he’s witnessed in battle.

All the other translations actually point out he was very proud of the horrors he’d committed and how cunning he was, but that Christopher Nolan in making the movie knew that that main version would never resonate with modern audiences compared to the version of somebody who’s a wounded soldier trying to make his way home and dealing with the wrongs he’d done. That resonates with a modern audience and that’s the answer to the criticism of the sceptics. Not just that what happened so many years ago speaks to us because our humanity is the same as the millennia go by, but also because that the truths of proverbs have permeated society in such a way that we all now hold the same set of values of right and wrong even if we sometimes don’t do those right and wrong things.

There’s that Christian or Judeo-Christian, some people would say, effect has permeated society to affect the laws and even people who would be anti-Christian still have a set of core values that now means that how people behaved 3,000 years ago no longer resonates with us about what morality is because the morality from here has changed society. And then the third reason is, so people would then say what’s so special about it, it’s all just good advice. You may as well read Confucius or you may as well read, you know, Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard Sayings, it’s good advice, things that are published in good advice columns.

It’s the same and I would say to you, well that’s true because it shows that there are truths across the whole of society that are still permeate through all religion, that God has sown it into the hearts, minds and lives of people that resonate with our humanity no matter where we are in the face of the world, these things are true. It’s not therefore that things from so long ago are not relevant but they are relevant and it’s not that they’re crazy because they’re from a bronze age but they actually speak to us and they are applicable. But what then makes the difference between these proverbs of good advice in one sense compared to the sayings and teachings of other wise men or Benjamin Franklin or whoever your favourite person is to look at aphorisms and proverbs and people would say religion is used to control people and I would say well that’s right.

If you’d been at your church home bible study group on Thursday you’d have noticed that chapter 1 verse 7 was one of the things we had to discuss, wasn’t it? Okay, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and that’s the context in which you practise all the things that follow in the rest of the book. So some things will seem very blindingly obvious as most of our scriptures today will but the context and the environment and the oxygen in the room that we breathe to do these things and practise them brings a whole moral dimension to it that’s different and if people say well religion is used to control people and a friend of mine in Europe who was on the phone to me yesterday that’s something she says to me very often and I point out, but look at the fruit and the consequences of the people who obey these proverbs and do them and practise them in the context of the fear of the Lord and reverence before him and that speaks for itself as an answer also. So the first proverb we’re going to look at tonight is Proverbs chapter 14 verse 23 and it says this, all hard work brings a profit but mere talk leads only to poverty.

(9:08 – 10:08)

So I would say there’s the wisdom when it comes to working wealth this is the wisdom of effort in what you do. On face value this is just a true saying, it hardly needs Adam Smith writing in the Wealth of Nations or any other economist to sort of bring it to you to unpack something that’s difficult to explain. All hard work brings a profit very simply you can exchange your time and your effort for basic payment or you can invest it like a farmer in nature or a carpenter in a piece of wood and fashioning into something and you can invest it in nature for a natural return or you can spend your 10,000 hours to master a skill or an expertise to become a really good musician or a tennis player and it’s just something that makes sense you spend your time you spend your effort and you put the effort in and you work hard at it and you get something out of it that’s profitable to you you can earn a living and is beneficial to other people as well.

(10:10 – 37:26)

But may I point out while these things are generally applicable that we must ask ourselves that this is something that Christians must do. We must work and I mentioned it about 20 years ago I was involved in a seminar over in Texas and one of the things in preparing for that that surprised me is that work or some aspect of work is one of the few things that occurs in every book of the Bible. Even John’s epistles it’s in there when you look for it.

Work is there. Second Thessalonians chapter 3 Paul points out that you have to tell people in the church at Thessalonica they were told that they had to tell people to work that if you have got an ability and there’s something that you can do to earn some money or to do good and to benefit so that you can feed yourself and feed other people in the church who might not be able to. It’s something that we must do it’s a fact it’s a command in second Thessalonians chapter 3 and if you think that you can’t actually go out and find a job and do work you can at least learn a skill.

The apostles all had skills that they could do. Our Lord was a carpenter. Might I also suggest to you if you want to be an evangelist if you really really want to be an evangelist and you feel called to do that and prepare maybe even for mission work to go overseas or mission work locally if there’s one skill that you should learn it’s to cut hair.

Everybody goes to the hairdresser everybody sits in that seat everybody talks. O.K. in this discussion my father even this past week when you go to the barber do you talk and he can’t keep his mouth shut. Yes he talks about all sorts of things but and he gets an opportunity to speak to people.

If you’re a barber you hear what people’s problems and concerns are and you can speak to them. So if you want to do evangelism learn to cut hair. Now the second part of this is that mere talk leads to poverty so you do need to cut the hair and cut it well.

Okay but all talk and no action that also hardly needs any explanation but just talking about something squanders time and opportunity and impoverishes and the Lord pointed out this fact in one sense when he was asked a question he says I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day the night is coming when no man can work. There is a period and an opportunity given to us in life where we have the strength the intellectual ability to actually work and do things and I mentioned at the start that I’m very convicted by some of the things that I read and every single time I go for a nap during the daytime okay especially on Sunday afternoons and especially if you’re getting a little bit stressed because you’ve got something you need to do for work coming up but it’s not a word of a lie every single time I go for a nap ever since I was a student at university Proverbs chapter 6 verses 10 and 11 comes into my mind and I always feel convicted and you don’t need to turn to it I shall quote it to you I can quote it to you in my sleep and the words are a little sleep a little slumber a little folding of the hands to rest and so your poverty will come upon you like a thief and your want like an armed man. I think that’s the New King James version okay but I just can so a as you lie down to sleep as you have a slumber and a rest or a prolonged siesta and time is slipping away there’s a period that you don’t get back to do something now most economists would conclude that what I’ve told you so far is the Protestant work ethic but it’s really just good advice until we look at it in the light of chapter 1 verse 7 and that is there’s a moral dimension to work we’ve got a different attitude towards doing a good stables work in the fear of the Lord there are some jobs therefore that it’s not for Christians to do. David Wiley gives good advice if you’re ever wondering about what you should do as a career David’s got some good chat about that basically it’s open to you do whatever you want but you must ask yourself a few questions is it moral? Will you find it satisfying and will it be beneficial to other people and if you can tick those boxes it’s really an open playing field for what you want to do from a work perspective but there are some jobs it’s not for Christians to do and there are some jobs that I have to say have to be entered into with a bit of caution and a bit of discussion with wiser Christians. There is such a thing, there was a baptism this morning, of living the baptised life a life of open scrutiny by the world at large and about what you do with your time and what you do as a job enters into that as well through some of my background reading the early church it used to be if a person applied or asked to be baptised one occupation they had to give up that they were not allowed to continue in was being an actor or an actress because the lifestyle was so associated with immorality that at that point in time the early church said you have to change an occupation do something else you can’t be an actor and be baptised it’s not compatible with a good Christian testimony or witness, So, there are some things to think about. Down in London, I happen to know a couple who started their own beer brand you now buy it in Waitrose. Okay, they’ve made a lot of money and they’ve bought a large house where there’s a new church plant done so they could be close to the church plant and get really involved with it fabulous Christians here in Scotland certainly 50 years ago that would have been a highly dubious occupation to have and say that you’re a Christian I think that’s one that takes a bit of careful thought so before you go out and buy the pub around the corner that’s up for sale you might want to talk to the elders about what sort of testimony that would give.

But then it comes on to the question of why do you work? We work in the fear of Lord but why do you work is it to earn money for food or for clothing and these are all legitimate things and certainly you get that impression from the book of Proverbs the Lord Jesus says actually no that’s not why you go to work that’s why the nations or the gentiles go to work in Matthew chapter 6 and Luke chapter 12 we go to work to seek the first the kingdom of God and all these other things will be added to us naturally we tend to think about that if we’re honest in our flesh in a very sort of negative way but Jesus teaches it as a liberating approach to your work seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you because he then goes on to say, “because your father in heaven knows the things that you need before you ask him” do you need a job pray for it do you need purpose in your job pray about it do you want to find joy in your job pray about it these things are all possible another quick story. When I was living in London for a period of time I had a fellow who was Chinese who’d become a Christian and was in ministry training and he was staying with me and Abel was a one he is a wonderful guy and he fits the stereotype very Chinese in lots of ways and there was one day he had come in from work and I stand in the kitchen and he was eating a bowl of noodles and I was just moaning about my job I was having one of those days I think we all get them maybe not if you’re on full time service but for the rest of us you come home in a funk right okay and you’re just you’re not enjoying the job and I was really going off on one and I was standing in the kitchen and he was just nodding his head eating his noodles as he was going and eventually put the bowl down and after he when he thought I’d got most of it out of my system I says what you got to say about that then and he said just pray and so this has become one of my answers to things and that is Abel he just goes he listened to you and then all of a sudden you just get just pray the hand came out like a dagger straight to the solar plexus just pray I was like well now I feel convicted you’re absolutely right he’s absolutely right a lot of these things you just need to pray and God is our heavenly father and interested in our needs it’s not an airy fairy belief he knows your struggles at work and the Lord Jesus says he cares just pray if you need a job if you need to find something that’s going to meet the demands or somewhere where you can give a witness or something fine joy just pray there’s a wisdom in the effort that you put in and if you find that you don’t think you’re getting return for that effort just pray.

Over to Proverbs chapter 10 verse 2 the different kind of wisdom to do with work and it says this ill-gotten treasures have no lasting value but righteousness delivers from death there’s the wisdom of moral values now this conjures up the picture in my mind of the big bonanza payout you know it’s like something from one of the oceans 11 oceans 12 sort of movies where there’s all this activities taking place and cunning and then you’re going to get this massive payoff that you don’t need to work a day for the rest of your life there’s this big bonanza by guile or fraud by theft or extortion by swindle or dubious quick rich schemes some sort of Bernie Madoff, ponzy scheme venture and then you get all this money or you get all these treasures and the bible says it’s got no lasting value you see treasure has the idea not only of monetary worth but treasure someone else has already invested into it and it’s also got an emotional aspect when you think about treasure maybe you don’t have the same imagination as me but I always sort of imagine a pirate’s casket and the lid comes off and there’s pearls and doubloons and faberge eggs and diamond tiaras sort of spill out onto the sand in the desert island that’s what comes to my mind and you think you pick up one of these faberge eggs and you look at the intricacy of it and how much it’s worth all the time that faberge and his workshop spent creating this masterpiece using gold and jewels or to arrange matchstones for the princess’s tiara there’s time and there’s investment and because there’s been investment of time there’s emotional worth and value has been put into the thing that you call treasure okay it’s not just money there’s something more to it than just its monetary value but when you get it by ill-gotten means it loses that. When a person gets treasure by ill-gotten ways the money gets spent quickly we often find people who are so in their mind so impoverished that they have to take these unscrupulous immoral ways to get money they can’t handle it once they’ve got it and very quickly they’re back to the same situation it gets spent but people who work hard to get it know the value and retain it and it lasts secondly ill-gotten treasures have no lasting value says the scripture because not only does the money get spent quickly but the lustre of it quickly fades the soul that designs the trespass is too small and hasn’t the capacity to really appreciate the treasure or maintain the value of the treasure because their soul is shrinking but not only that the soul perishes while you hold and retain it the thing that you’ve done wickedness for to get as you hold it it’s pulling you under your soul is getting smaller and shrivels and perishes the longer you hold it it’s a bit like why Tolkien wrote the character of Gollum if you’ve watched the movies or if you’ve read the book this you know what once was a person has withered away to the singular thing that they lust after from a monetary point of view the Lord Jesus says in Mark chapter 8 verse 76 for what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul the value of a treasure is partly by how it was gotten and the estimation of others.

Years ago I had a patient who was a jeweller he was third generation and he owned a jewellery shop down in Largs and he was being treated for cancer and none of his family were interested in continuing the business and he was trying to sell off his gems and it wasn’t just that he was selling off gems he’d had but he was the third generation of of jewellers who had perfectly matched stones worth a lot of money because of how he was able to assemble them together and so I asked that question that people will sometimes ask them where where’s the value really in it how much is it really worth and that’s the question that no jeweller ever really answers and he says the value of the stone lies in the eyes and the joy of the young lady who gets the ring a person who is a very simple man young man and works hard you know doing a very simple job and gets paid a meagre salary and he saves up and De Beers have convinced him to save three months wages to buy that ring compared to somebody who works in finance in the city you know and doesn’t think anything about dropping a hundred thousand for a car and he saves up three months salary and buys some big rock you know for his fiancee the joy and appreciation in the hearts of the girls is I would say the same regardless of the size of the stone because of what the beloved has invested into providing that treasure for them yet the greatest treasure you can possibly obtain is the Lord Jesus and we get that not by working at all but what a work he has done that we get that treasure for which we can and do sell everything we have that we can buy that field that he and his kingdom are in once we know it’s there and the righteous that delivers me from eternal death is his righteousness not my own. Treasure gained by righteous activity gives you life and health even in everyday things when you work hard and you save up and you buy something precious maybe you have it as an ornament for your house or a ring for your beloved or whatever that’s something that actually brings nourishment and joy into your relationship as long as that doesn’t become an idol in and of itself but the righteousness that the Lord Jesus has delivers me from a daily death the more I think and ponder on him the more time I spend in prayer he feeds me with the living bread his righteousness is effective now and for eternity that’s our righteousness delivers from death.

Then proverbs 11 verse 1 says this. The Lord detests dishonest scales but accurate weights find favour with Him. There’s a wisdom in daily faithfulness. If the last proverb had the idea of some grand scheme that’s going to get you, you know, rob a bank and get you all this money that you would never need to work again this is to do with daily, it’s the means and mechanism of daily work. The means and mechanism of your daily work to gain wealth. The big payday versus the hidden daily trades that we all must make. It’s three things, four things maybe, I’d like to bring to you from this verse. The first is that we must have honesty in our hidden daily dealings because they actually matter to the Lord. There’s a few things in the Bible that says that God detests and that his soul hates the Lord Jesus hates the deeds of the Nicolaitans it says at the end of the New Testament. The Lord detests dishonest scales. If you think about that that um you know when you when you would be going to buy something whether it was grain or whether it was food in the marketplace and the dealer would bring out his scales and they put the weights on and you weigh your bananas or your dates or your grain or whatever it was and it would weigh up and you’d get that and you’d pay the money. And then, maybe behind the counter, he’d have weights that had the mark on them but a bit of extra lead in it, okay, and then when it came to a different exchange, it would always benefit the person holding the scales with the different weights. So, they’re dishonest; or the scales are tipped in one direction, but God watches. He detests it, and it tells me there needs to be honesty in our daily small trades, the daily small activities in our work. God sees and it concerns him. And, as we heard this morning and as we heard last week from David, these small trades we make, form a habit that marks our destiny. The second thing is, not only does God watch what happens in the inward small aspects of our life, but God detests you and I making a profit at the expense of our fellow man. You are both meant to work and trade using his resources for mutual growth and benefit. It’s not just ,dare I say it, that God cares about the amount of silver or the amount of lead in the weight or where the needle has been fixed in the scale, per se, but the consequence is what it means to use that for you to gain your profit. Because you are therefore making a profit off somebody else who incurs the loss. But, if the weights are just, all other things being equal, when we’re looking at proverbs, a person has come along they have ploughed the field sown the grain God has given the water and the grain has grown and then you have harvested it and they come to you, and say I want to sell this to you so that the thing that you have made I can get benefit from. He needs a chair to sit in, you need grain to make bread to feed your family. There’s had to be an equitable exchange takes place so that you’re both blessed; and God has given resources for both that we might use part of our stewardship of the natural world well. What is being detested here by God is me getting more money out somebody else so he actually has a loss for his time and effort that he has put in and I have had an unrighteous gain from it. These things matter. So, God expects us to work and trade with one another to bless one another but not to make a profit at the expense of our fellow man. The third thing is everyday righteousness of doing your daily work well it’s a life lived in God’s favour. Accurate weights find a favour with him. What you do, and you think is a small job and perhaps a little inconsequential life that you have in the grand scheme of things, God watches and he finds favour. Righteous living of doing your everyday task is living in God’s favour. It doesn’t need to be a big pilgrimage, it doesn’t need to be a grand gesture, the small things that you do matter to God, and your life is not insignificant but you are seen. and that’s liberating.

Finally proverbs 23 verses 4 to 5 Do not wear yourself out to get rich do not trust your own cleverness but cast a glance at riches and they are gone for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle. I’ve called this the wisdom of balance and priorities. The end goal of work is not riches and abundance of riches. So, when you do get a good return for your work, you get that promotion at work and the job isn’t really that much more taxing, but yet you get an increase in your pay packet. Don’t fall into the trap of wanting to work more and more to gain more and more, and this is something that convicts me, right. So, I have to watch the amount of work that I take on and do. I love my job, what I do, it pays me well, but there’s a risk that I can just want to do more and more and my life gets out of balance by overworking. Compared to other things, I need to give time and attention to in life, not least of all, all of you, okay, that we have a care and a concern for our brothers and sisters in the church. This also is applicable not just to people who have paid employment or business ventures but it’s also true for Christian ministry be very careful that the work doesn’t take over. It’s important to have a balance. And no matter what structured financial arrangements you’ve put into place to legitimately minimise your tax liabilities or to structure your savings plan it can also easily come to nothing. All it takes is a stock market correction, and everyone says there’s going to be one this month, or a new chancellor, with some new novel idea about how to redistribute wealth, and all your plans can come crashing down. The … the writer of the proverbs uses this word that you just need to cast a glance at riches and they’re gone or sprout wings and fly off the sky like an eagle. You think about little sparrows and hedgerow blue tits. You know, they’re very easily frightened and they just flit away, and the same thing can happen to our money. So, please don’t don’t make the mistake of thinking that your financial security is your security. Your security, my security, is in the lord jesus. We like to sing the hymn, whether it’s the old version or the new version, My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness. But, I’ve got a cash Isa and a stocks and shares one as well, and surely they must be quite helpful for my retirement. These things can all go we must save up in the bank of heaven and just like the wee birds fly away very quickly and the eagle flies very far far away up into the heavens, our money and our finances can very quickly change, and you often hear the phrase you can’t take it with you. Okay you can’t take it with you, you hear that all the time actually but you can send on ahead! If you find yourself in a beautiful situation of having some extra money in surplus, invest it in some gospel initiatives, okay, give into some kingdom work, just helping a person who’s poor, they don’t have to be a christian, it’s a good thing. That’s part of how God wants kingdom to work. A very very dear friend of mine was walking into work the last week and the sidewalk was cordoned off because a homeless person had died in their wee tent in the side of the street in Glasgow city centre. I think the most of us tragically we go “Happens all the time” and this person who’s a new Christian was so, was quite bothered by this. So, they went and signed up at Glasgow City Mission because we need to do something to help people. So, if you’ve been blessed with having some extra, then think about how you can invest it in the church, and ministries, and gospel work overseas, and just by doing good. That’s one of the reasons we’ve been saved. God has saved us to do good things.

Let’s pray. Lord God we come to you in prayer just now at the end of this time of bible study and we thank you that we can pray to you that whatever job we do or whatever our hand finds to do that we can do it well and this is in Colossians we do it unto you, and that you can give us joy in whatever our circumstances are and we bless you that you through the book of Proverbs and through doing things in the fear of the Lord and the sanctifying work of the Spirit in our lives that you raise our horizons above what takes place in the workplace to see the great glory of making your kingdom bringing it in and making you known Lord and we thank you for the things that you do bless us with that we can use them to share to bring joy to other people to bless others as well. Aye, and we thank you for reminding us and challenging us that our hope is to be in you. As we said this morning in the word of testament at baptism we trust you and you alone for salvation. We pray that we’ve been challenged tonight that we still trust you, and you alone, for our security. We pray that tomorrow we might be refreshed and still remember the good things that your Spirit brings from this passage and that we can go into the workplace with a sense of joy, a sense of fun, a challenge, and make you known in ways that are just really exciting, that we can’t predict just now but you’ve just prepared us for for that very moment. Oh, so, Lord we thank you for this time together. We pray now as we enter into a time of remembering you through your death on the cross. You, who had everything, yet laid it aside to give up your life, to secure our salvation, now and for eternity. We pray that your Spirit might enrich our memory and our thoughts of you, as we now focus our attention on the emblems and the bread and the wine. Amen

The post Work and Wisdom – Proverbs appeared first on Greenview Church.

Amen. Did you see in the news this week that Dolly Parton died? She was the queen, they called her the queen of country music. She passed away this week at the age of 80.

(0:59 – 2:44)

And there’s been all sorts of clips doing the rounds, as happens when someone famous dies. I saw a particular clip, maybe you saw it. She was on Songs of Praise, the BBC Sunday afternoon programme.

And the interviewer asked her, he said, you’ve been quoted as saying that you live your life for three things, God, music, and sex. Dolly smirked, and she said, I was half joking, but half serious. All of those things matter to me.

In fact, she said, now that I think on it, I should have added food as well. It’s a fascinating question, isn’t it? I wonder how you would answer it if the microphone was shoved in your face and you were asked, be very honest, what is most important to you? Would it be some of the things that she said, God, music, sex, food, or maybe things she didn’t mention, family, career, money, status? What is on the list for you? In the passage of the Bible that we’re looking at today, a father is telling his son what he should put on the list of his priorities. Indeed, he not only gives his son a number of priorities, he has the audacity to tell him what the top priority should be.

(2:45 – 3:08)

He uses this phrase, above all else, above all else. I want you to prioritise something above everything else in your life. Well, if you stick with the sermon for the next 20 minutes or so, we will discover what that one thing is, but we’ll also discover two other priorities.

(3:08 – 3:31)

So there are three priorities in this passage, and we’re going to look at them briefly together. So number one, the importance of what you pass on, the importance of what you pass on. The first nine verses of Proverbs 4 are about a multi-generational family.

(3:32 – 4:24)

You have a father who is instructing his sons, verse 1. But the father, verse 3, harks back to his father. So in other words, in this passage, you have a grandfather, a father, and a grandson. Three generations, three layers present in this passage.

And the father, the middle layer, is doing that thing that sometimes irritates children. You know the thing? When I was a boy, you know, when I was your age, because I was your age once, he’s doing that. And when I was your age, my father taught me the things that I’m now teaching you.

(4:25 – 4:51)

Verses 4 to 9 are the substance of what grandpa said when father was their age. It’s summed up in verse 5. Here’s what granddad’s message was. Get wisdom.

Get understanding. In other words, granddad used to say what their dad is saying to them. Get wisdom.

(4:52 – 5:07)

Acquire wisdom however you can. Because if you do, wisdom will look after you. Again, as we’ve seen in Proverbs, wisdom is personified as a lady.

(5:09 – 5:53)

But here, wisdom is actually not just a lady. She’s more like a wife. Not just a woman, but more like a wife.

Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you, love you, and watch over you. She will be like a person who takes care of all that you have and all that you are. In this sense, how much is she very much like Jesus? Because wisdom, as we see in the New Testament, isn’t just like a person, but wisdom actually is a person.

(5:54 – 6:48)

He’s called in one place, Christ, the wisdom of God in 1 Corinthians. You see, at the end of the day, the outcome of your life, whether the outcome is good or bad, whether your destiny is delight or disaster, is actually determined not by a programme or a set of principles, but it’s actually determined by your relationship with a person. It comes down to a person and all that he has done for you.

But anyway, the grandfather tells his son to get wisdom, and he says to him, though it costs you everything you have, get it. Lose everything else in order to get hold of this. Nothing is more valuable.

(6:50 – 8:17)

Because you see, when you know wisdom, ultimately, when you know Jesus, that leads to honour, verse 8, and it leads to glory and life, verse 9. And if these sons follow this advice, then the multigenerational transfer will continue from them to their sons and from their sons to beyond. I think it wouldn’t be right to be preaching this today and not say something about how we need to continue to do this very thing now as much as then. It didn’t escape my notice when I was reading this this week that actually in the baptism today, I hope you don’t mind me saying, Douglas, but we have a grandfather.

We have a grandfather coming to be baptised, and we have multiple generations present. And it’s a remarkable thing, isn’t it? That God’s plan to get his good news out is not to use an army of AI robots who will spookily be turning up at your front door within the next year or so probably. God’s plan is not even to carry the message of good news on the wings of an angel.

(8:18 – 8:31)

I’m sure they could do maybe a better job in some ways, but it’s not his main plan. It’s through granddad, and it’s through grandma. It’s through dads and moms.

(8:31 – 9:10)

It’s through ordinary human relationships. So your friend, your neighbour, your work colleague, that the greatest news in the world is transmitted. What is going on right now in Sunday school is exactly this.

As we are teaching Proverbs here, they are teaching the book of Genesis to our children. Because the greatest legacy in life is not the stuff you achieve. It is what you pass on and what you pass out.

(9:11 – 11:13)

Let me just say also that you might be here this morning, and you might consider yourself as a looker-in to the Christian faith. You’re kind of, as it were, outside the window. You’re looking in, and maybe you’re looking in with curiosity.

Maybe you’re looking in thinking, wow, that looks really interesting. I want to know more about what those people seem to have in their life. Or maybe you’re outside the window, and you’ve actually got no interest at all of going in, and you don’t fancy it at all.

But whatever the case, did you know that God has placed in your life people who in his grace and goodness are those who are passing on the goodness of life to you? You can probably think of who those people are by name this morning, and God has placed them where they are in order that you might hear the gospel. Well, that only happens if there is a granddad or somebody like him. The importance of what you pass on.

But secondly, the importance of which path you take. The importance of which path you take. Now, in verses 10 to 19, the father returns to an image that he’s been using throughout this book.

It’s the image of two paths which lead to two destinies. There’s the way of wisdom, verse 11. The way of wisdom is a straight way, and it’s a smooth way.

In fact, he actually says here that it’s so smooth that you can run along the way of wisdom, and you won’t trip up because there’s no obstacles in the way. It’s going to make your life go in the right sort of direction. But by contrast, verse 14, don’t set your foot on the path of the wicked or walk in the way of evildoers.

(11:15 – 11:33)

You see, the decisions we make in life really matter. Notice here that going down the wrong path begins with a single step. And that step onto the path of wickedness then becomes a walk.

(11:34 – 11:49)

A walk is your daily routine, your daily decisions that you make hundreds of times every day. That’s your walk. And that step that becomes a walk, then eventually in time becomes a destiny.

(11:50 – 13:39)

Some of you were at an event last night where they were reporting on an organisation that helps people who are in the grip of addiction. And as Terry said at that event last night, the addiction problem is the human problem because what begins as a choice starts to become a habit, and eventually becomes a slavery. Look at that development in verse 16, for they cannot rest till they do evil.

They are robbed of sleep till they make someone stumble. It’s a metaphor, of course, it’s not kind of literal, but it’s an image, a picture of someone who has become by this point addicted to doing the wrong thing before God. It’s almost like they can’t sleep at night because they’ve not wronged somebody yet.

What started as a step became a walk, and what was a walk has now become an ingrained lifestyle. It’s verse 17, like the person’s food and drink. To use the biblical word sin, what we’re seeing here is where sin becomes normalised in a person’s life.

And to a great extent, it is now therefore unseen by the person. I think that’s the sense of verse 19, that the way of the wicked is like deep darkness. One of the things that darkness is associated with in the Bible is ignorance of unknowing.

(13:39 – 16:26)

They do not know what makes them stumble, the verse goes on to say. Here’s a person who is lost in life, but they’re not fully aware that they’re lost or how badly they’re lost. They’re stumbling along blind to the fact that their life is like a dark prison.

It’s a groundhog day of repetitive darkness and lostness. And ultimately, it is leading to a very dark future. It’s no surprise that the New Testament, when it’s describing that ultimate destiny that’s not heaven, but the other destiny, it’s not a surprise that the Bible uses the picture of darkness to describe separation from God.

But that darkness begins actually here and now. It begins in the choices you’re making today that becomes a way of life, that eventually becomes an eternal destiny. But there is another path that is possible, a path of freedom, a path that won’t bring you harm, a path that’s described in verse 18 as one of ever increasing light.

The path of the righteous is like the morning sun and it’s dawning ever brighter to its noon strength. What a description of the life of Christian faith. It’s not that life immediately becomes easy in every respect.

We know that. But when someone puts their faith in Jesus, whatever it costs them, there’s a light that comes into their life. There’s a hope.

There’s a future. There’s peace and there’s a prospect. Whatever’s going on in life and that light that comes into our life, burns ever the brighter, the further down the road we go.

And especially as we pass through death into eternity, when it becomes noonday brightness. So which path are you on in life? This is not just Proverbs. Jesus said, you know, Jesus, who was this very kind, if you read the gospels, incredibly kind and tolerant sort of person.

But Jesus himself said, there’s basically two roads and everyone’s on one or the other. You’re either on the narrow road that leads to God’s life, or you’re on the very wide road that leads to death and darkness. Did you know that early Christians were sometimes called followers of the way? The way, that was sometimes how they referred to Christians, followers of the way.

(16:28 – 17:35)

Are you on the way? The way of light, life and freedom, or are you on the other path? I want you to realise something today. I think this is very important to say this in a time where many people are becoming more interested in Christianity as I think a kind of religious life hack. They’ve found life hacks in other areas and money and in relationships and other things.

And it’s like, okay, Christians are now offering some helpful extra life hacks that we can sort of tack on to the other stuff that we’re doing. It’s almost as if you use the Bible and you use Christianity to get a few better outcomes in your life. Listen, that is not the Bible’s teaching at all.

Embracing the gospel is not about marginal gains. Embracing the gospel is about your fundamental direction in life and your final and ultimate destiny. That’s the stakes here.

(17:36 – 18:05)

And because this is so important, church family this morning, there is nothing more urgent that we do as a church than prioritise sharing this gospel that changes people’s destinies. I mean, every church has that as a theoretical priority. But if the gospel is true, surely that has to become the real priority in our church.

(18:06 – 18:37)

Well, the importance of what you pass along, the importance of which path you take. But thirdly and finally, and this is where we take it up a final notch, the importance of guarding your heart in verses 20 to 27. Now, we need to understand when verse 23, we’re focussing particularly in verse 23, when verse 23 refers to the heart, we need to understand what it’s talking about.

(18:38 – 20:32)

The heart in the Bible is not the organ that pumps blood around the body. And it’s also not just a way of speaking of human emotions. Like when someone makes the comment, that music touched my heart.

What they’re saying is the music moved me emotionally. So we tend to connect heart and emotions, but the Bible has a much fuller definition of what the heart is. The heart is the inner you.

The heart is the inside person. It’s the core of who you are. It’s the entirety of your inner being, your true self.

And that inner you thinks, that inner you wants certain things, that inner you decides things, which path you’re going to take. And yes, that inner you also feels certain things. It includes the emotions, but it’s much more than the emotions.

So by that definition, if you change a person’s heart, the whole of the person has changed entirely, according to the Bible. They think differently. They desire new things.

They decide different things because they have a change of heart. And so what verse 23 is saying, I think, is that the heart is infinitely precious. In a world where people are outwardly obsessed with appearance, where there’s a focus on the externals and on achievement, on the aesthetics of how we’re coming across on social media, the Bible says that what is going on inside of you is infinitely more important than how you appear.

(20:34 – 21:24)

Because as you’ll notice in verses 24 to 27, a person’s heart, the condition of it, leads to all that they say and do. Or as the end of verse 23 puts it, everything flows from the heart. The heart’s like a gushing water source.

Your heart is not like a stagnant little pool, you know, that’s going nowhere. It’s a stagnant water. The heart is a gushing water source.

It’s a source. And so the condition of your inner self pumps its way out into the way you think, the way you behave, the things you decide, the things that you do and the things that you say. And therefore, your inner self is the most important thing about you.

(21:25 – 21:37)

And therefore, it must be guarded. If it’s in a good position, if it’s got wisdom, if it has Christ in the heart, then it needs to be protected. It’s infinitely valuable.

(21:39 – 22:59)

And so I need to ask you, I’m sorry this is a little bit intrusive, but I need to ask you an intrusive question. I need to ask you, what is going on inside of your life? The bit that I can’t see, that no one around you can see, what is the condition, not of the organ that pumps blood, but what’s the condition of the inner you? To use biblical language, do you have a stony heart, a hard heart, or a soft heart towards God? Do you have a believing heart in Jesus that trusts Him as the only way to God? Do you believe that Jesus died in the place of sinners, including you? Do you believe that you’re right with God through faith alone in grace alone in Christ alone, that it’s not of works and yourself, but it’s all of what He’s done for you? Is your heart, spiritually speaking, alive rather than dead on arrival? Jesus, in John 7, speaks of those who believe in Him, and He says this, He says, whoever believes in Me, rivers of living water will flow from within him. See how Jesus, new Proverbs, that’s the gospel, that’s the gospel.

(22:59 – 23:21)

When you believe in Christ, there is this new life within you that begins to flow out into the way that you behave and the things that you say. The apostle Paul, in Romans 12, also speaks of inner transformation and outward action. Let’s see if you can note the parallel between what Paul is saying and what Proverbs is saying.

(23:21 – 23:39)

Paul doesn’t use the language of the heart here, he talks about the mind, but I think he’s talking about the same dynamic. I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship.

(23:40 – 24:16)

Ah, but where does the bodily behaviour and sacrifice of the body come from? Paul tells us, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. This is Paul’s way of speaking of the whole new inner person, the new mind that leads to a new life. Douglas will be coming shortly and telling us something of how he came to trust Jesus many years ago and how he’s continued to trust him over many years.

(24:17 – 25:05)

And I suspect that at the heart of what you’ll be saying will be something of this, this inner transformation, this new creation reality that has played its way out in his visible life. It’s not of him, but it’s what the Holy Spirit and what the gospel has done in his life. What is most important to you? I hope that number one on your list is that your heart is in the right condition before God, because Jesus has forgiven you, restored you, and renewed you, and that the light of the gospel has come into your life in such a way that it’s growing towards that great full noon display of glory in the future.

(25:06 – 25:42)

But if you’re sailing through life and you’re neglecting the mess and darkness of your heart, if you are ignoring the question of what path am I even on in life, but you’re actually on the road of darkness, the Bible is saying, address that today. Get wisdom. Get Christ.

You don’t need to stay in the path you’re on. Choose the road of following Jesus to eternal life. If you want to understand more of how to do that, I realise that this might be new for some of you.

(25:43 – 26:13)

You might have many questions. Come and ask those questions. Come and find the answers.

Don’t stand outside the door thinking, that looks good in there. Knock on the door and ask a few questions, or even better, why not come in today? Let’s pray together. Let’s just take a moment to consider what God is saying to our hearts.

(26:21 – 26:49)

God and heavenly Father, we thank you for the clarity and the power of your word. We thank you for, in some ways, the simplicity of two paths, two destinations, and one person who’s the key to it all. Father, we pray that you will call people even today to turn aside from the path that all of us have stumbled down in life.

(26:50 – 27:32)

And yet, Lord, by your grace, you’ve called some of us to a different path. So Lord, call some even today to that path of faith and trust in Jesus Christ. And Lord, we pray also that your people, as your church, as those who have heard that call, who are on that way, we pray that we would be zealous to take this message out and to pass this message down the generations.

And Lord, help us to guard our hearts. Help us not to value other things as more significant priorities than this. And it’s in Jesus’ name that we pray.

Amen.

The post Guard your Heart – Proverbs 4 appeared first on Greenview Church.

The harsh overbearing parent, the nasty teacher, the critical boss, the bullying friend. We all have our own versions of, if you don’t eat your meat, you won’t get any pudding. We’ve all got those voices in our head that trigger negative and defensive reactions.

(0:59 – 1:28)

And even when the criticism’s intended constructively, it often feels wounding rather than restorative. At least it does to me. And our culture encourages us to be defensive.

It absolutely despises being corrected. Don’t tell me how to live. Validate my choices.

(1:30 – 2:40)

Don’t judge me. And although we may secretly admit our failures and weaknesses to ourselves, it’s quite a different gravy if someone else takes that position and points them out to us. But the wisdom literature of Proverbs knows very little of political correctness as we understand it.

Scripture, as it always does, and Proverbs is no exception here, although it’s a genre of its own, it has a way of cutting into uncomfortable territory like a razor. And Proverbs presents to us a radical remedial truth. To refuse correction is a mark of utter and absolute folly that will carry in your life catastrophic consequences.

(2:44 – 3:18)

So this evening we’re considering four Proverbs about what I’ve entitled remedial wisdom. Wisdom that provides correction and instruction. There are many more than four in Proverbs, but these four provide us with a framework for understanding how the others work, but also how our human hearts react to instruction and correction, and how our hearts are intended to react to instruction and correction.

(3:19 – 4:12)

So we’re going to look at these four Proverbs under three headings. One proverb in the first heading, two in the middle, one and one at the end. Let’s think in three areas.

A stark diagnosis we’ll look at first, then we’ll look at a sobering dichotomy with those two in the middle, and then a secure destiny to wrap up at the end. So let’s think firstly about the stark diagnosis. And I’ve called this knowledge versus ignorance.

We’ll find that in Proverbs 12 verse one. So let me ask you to turn in your Bible if you have one there, or switch on your Bible if you’re using a device to Proverbs chapter 12, and we’ll read verse one together. A stark diagnosis.

(4:13 – 4:59)

Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof or correction is stupid. And the text is presented to us here with characteristic proverbial bluntness. If you hate reproof, you’re stupid.

The Hebrew word here though, that’s translated for us as stupid is an interesting one, because it actually refers to an animal. It refers to a brute, stubborn beast. A beast that just is not for budging at all.

(5:01 – 6:50)

But Solomon isn’t simply saying if you hate being corrected, you’re an idiot. He’s actually making a precise theological diagnosis here. Because you see, when a person hates reproof, what the text is saying is that that person descends from the dignity of being an image bearer of God, being human made in his image, to the level of a donkey.

Stubborn, rigid, unteachable. So why is it that we hate reproof so much? Why do the hackles rise? Why do we resist it? Pride. Pride.

We are the absolute centre of our own universe. And correction from anyone about anything, if we’re being honest, is an assault on our own self-esteem. In fact, if you were looking for some kind of pride-ometer, some measure of pride in your life, here’s a proxy measure.

The next time someone corrects you about something, see how you react. How you respond to correction is a reasonably good measure of our pride level. And in Proverbs, failing to respond to remedial wisdom is the single defining feature of a fool.

(6:51 – 7:55)

Someone who is aggressively opposed to God’s instruction and correction. Whereas the wise are presented in Proverbs as those who submit, even if it’s hard, submit to God’s instruction and correction. And of course, this is exactly the main difference between those who accept the gospel and don’t, isn’t it? Any religion or lifestyle based on human achievement must defend its own righteousness and its own self-effort at all costs.

If that’s your currency, that’s all you’ve got in life, you’re going to defend that. Think of the self-sufficient heart that says, as Colin reminded us this morning, and more, much more than this, I did it my way. Think of the difference between a self-sufficient heart like that and a vulnerable heart filled with the overflowing grace of the gospel that says, teach me your way, Lord.

(7:57 – 8:17)

Think of that as a comparison. I’ll submit to a wisdom outside of myself. And where do we find a wisdom outside of ourselves? Well, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 1, the ultimate source of wisdom outside of ourselves.

(8:18 – 8:44)

He says in verse 23 of 1 Corinthians 1, we preach Christ crucified, the power of God and the wisdom of God. It’s God’s wisdom and God’s wisdom is found in the good news about Jesus Christ. And if you’ve grasped gospel wisdom and gospel correction, you know two things.

(8:46 – 9:42)

Firstly, you know that you are far more flawed, sinful, and foolish than you ever dare imagine, or that you’re ever willing to admit to another human. But you’ve also grasped that you are far more loved, far more accepted, and far more secure in Christ than you would ever hope to dare dream. And when the reality of these two things takes root in our lives, suddenly reproof and correction stop being a threat to your identity, do you see? If your identity is hidden with Christ and God, someone correcting you at a human level won’t destroy the essence of who you are, do you see? You’ve already confessed to God that you’re bent and broken and twisted by sin and you need straightened out.

(9:45 – 11:37)

And you need his correction and you need his healing and you need his transforming grace. So why do we find it so difficult when others point out the things that are wrong in our lives since God hasn’t finished with us yet? But isn’t it just such great news that God remains willing to correct sinners instead of writing them off? Isn’t that great news for all of us? And as we work through Proverbs, we will find an interesting thing emerges. It’s not God who gives up correcting the sinful in Proverbs.

The sinful give up accepting God’s correction. And part of that correction is God’s ongoing instruction and words of correction from preachers, from authors, from spouses, from friends, from work colleagues, from elders. So let me ask you, just as we get our heads into this, how do you respond to those ongoing corrections on a daily basis? Do you feel that bristling defensiveness driven by self-justification and ultimately pride? I confess, as I have to because my wife’s here, that I often do.

I often do. But I, like you, need to hear the warnings and heed the warnings about ignoring correction, which will inevitably lead to spiritual ruin. And that’s hard because becoming a lifelong learner requires humility.

(11:39 – 13:00)

You see, in order to learn something in any field, but certainly here, in order to learn something, we need firstly to acknowledge there’s something we don’t know, right? You’ll only learn something if you open your heart to acknowledge that you don’t know it. And to change something, we need to firstly acknowledge that there’s something we’ve been doing that’s suboptimal. That’s why change is so difficult.

We hear a lot about culture change in the NHS, culture change in the workplace. Why is it so hard to change cultures? Well, firstly, we have to acknowledge that there’s something that we’ve been doing that’s suboptimal, or wrong, that could be better. And that is not easy.

Change is emotionally expensive for human beings. And we sang words as a prayer in our hymn that talk about this. Let me ask you if you meant it when you sang it.

Ancient words ever true, changing me, changing you. We have come with open hearts. Oh, let the ancient words impart.

(13:02 – 14:14)

What does an open heart look like? An open heart is vulnerable before God and open to change, right? The father speaking to his children, those made in his image, wisdom’s calling out in the street. Listen, can you hear her? Open your heart. Open your ears.

Acknowledge you need to change. Yeah, you. Rather than identifying all the things that everyone else needs to change and sitting in judgement above all of that.

You need to change. I need to change. But we’ll never change if our heart remains hard.

Do you see? If you are still the same today as you were 30 years ago or 47 years ago today, since I came to this church, if I’m the same today as I was 47 years ago today, there’s something wrong. Something wrong with me. I’ve not been listening to God.

(14:14 – 14:42)

I’ve not been open to his word, changing my heart. I’ve not had an open heart. We’ll never change if our hearts remain hard.

And you can have a hard heart for 47 years or longer. So let me give you the warning of Hebrews 3.15. Today, today, if you hear his voice, hear the words of instruction today. If you hear his voice, don’t harden your heart.

(14:43 – 14:58)

If you came in with a hard heart, go out with a soft one. The way of wisdom you see demands a decision to change direction in a thousand different areas. If we are to grow, the way of folly demands nothing.

(15:01 – 15:14)

You go out the same way as you came in. That’s the way of folly. So that’s the start diagnosis.

(15:14 – 15:55)

Then we have a sobering dichotomy. Let’s look at the next chapter, Proverbs 13, verse 18, and then 15.5. So turn to 13.18 first. He who ignores discipline comes to poverty and shame, but whoever heeds correction is honoured.

And 15.5, a fool spurns his father’s discipline, but whoever heeds correction shows prudence. What I want you to notice here is the sobering spiritual alternatives within remedial wisdom that Solomon sets before us. There’s no middle ground here.

(15:56 – 16:22)

There’s no fence to sit on. You’re either moving towards wisdom and honour, or you’re adding to your folly with every decision that you make in your life, with every voice you listen to. And scripture’s intensely realistic about consequences.

(16:24 – 17:43)

So in Proverbs 13.18, we find that ignoring instruction leads to poverty and disgrace. Poverty and disgrace. Now, remember that Proverbs are not always absolute guarantees.

We were thinking a bit about this this morning. It takes a bit of work to get your head around the genre of Proverbs, because they’re Proverbs, not promises, right? And yet they have some predictive element within them. They give us general principles that describe God’s moral order.

So for example, train up a child in the way they should go. There’s not 100% guarantee that when they are old, they will not depart from it. Because we’ve all seen children who were brought up in the way that they should go, and then they have, let’s say, abandoned the faith, for example.

Because you see, the child has to embrace the wisdom that they were taught for themselves. But the principle is sound. Unless a child receives good instruction and understands boundaries, there may be trouble ahead.

(17:46 – 18:02)

But more than that, Proverbs requires wisdom in their application. This is really important. You see, Proverbs are there to teach us how to think, not what to think.

(18:04 – 18:16)

Let me explain. By way of illustration, this is a bit of a sidebar, but I think it’s important to understand how this works. Turn to Proverbs 26 for a second.

(18:22 – 19:03)

And we’re going to read two back-to-back verses in Proverbs 26, verse 4 and verse 5. Verse 4, do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself. Verse 5, answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes. You see the problem here, right? Verse 4, do not answer a fool according to his folly.

Verse 5, answer a fool according to his folly. In the very next verse, make your mind up, Solomon, which is it? Which is it? It’s like Sophie’s Choice, isn’t it? I can’t choose. I can’t choose.

(19:04 – 19:40)

But remember, this is wisdom literature. It’s not law. It’s about being able to read a situation, not just being able to read a book.

Okay, let me say that again. Proverbs teaches us about reading situations wisely, not just reading a book. We don’t like the hard work involved in that because we’re lazy people.

(19:41 – 20:48)

We’re sluggards, going to meet those characters later in the book. But God wants us to be intellectually engaged, to be thinking all the time. We’re a bit lazy with this.

We want God to tell us what to do in every situation we face in life, don’t we? It would be a lot easier, we think, if that were the case. And we look for wisdom and guidance in Scripture, and we’re facing a situation, we can’t find it in Scripture. Why is that? Because God doesn’t hand you advice on a silver platter.

It’s not how it works. He’s not a helicopter parent God. He wants you to think it through for yourself.

Work it out from first principles, work it out from the principles of wisdom that he’s given you. And then apply that wisdom to the actual situation that you’re in. So in some cases, it may be entirely appropriate to answer a fool according to his folly and say, you’re talking like a clown.

(20:50 – 21:08)

But it may not be the wisest thing to do that if the person talking rubbish is the CEO of the company, and you’re sitting there in a one-to-one. Maybe it would be better to say nothing in that occasion and find another way to point out the problem. Do you see? Situational wisdom.

(21:10 – 22:12)

That’s what Proverbs is there to teach us. So back to 15.5. Because in 15.5, this is taught to the covenant community. A fool despises his father’s instruction.

And when I say it’s taught to the covenant community, that’s another important thing to learn. It’s not just one father talking to one son. It’s not just me talking to my son or Solomon talking to his son.

Remember, Proverbs is a compendium of wisdom from multiple sources, like a handbook for the whole Hebrew community. It was written primarily for adolescent boys in the Jewish community, preparing them to enter public life and to take on leadership roles where they would require wisdom to rule well. Adolescent boys.

What’s presented in Proverbs? Women. Lady wisdom. Lady folly.

(22:15 – 22:24)

Right, lads? Which one looks nicest to you? Which one’s the most attractive? Well, she may look attractive. She’d do a lot of harm. That one there.

(22:25 – 22:31)

Really beautiful. You’ll find her properly in chapter 31. Right at the end.

(22:33 – 24:30)

The wonderful wife. It’s not just a picture of a wife, you see. It’s a picture of lady wisdom in all her glory, presented to young adolescent Jewish boys to say, you want to go after that girl.

Do you see? Notice two things about this instruction. It’s the instruction of the father, reflecting the gentle, patient, truth-filled nature of God’s perfect fatherhood. There is no human father perfect in any sense.

It’s just a scale of how good or bad they are, but none of them are perfect. But here’s the instruction of God, God’s fatherhood, the gentle, patient, truth-filled nature of God’s perfect fatherhood. The father’s discipline.

The father’s instruction. But notice it’s instruction. The word here is discipline in the NIV and the ESV and various other versions.

The word used is instruction. I like instruction as a concept here, because it carries with it the idea… I mean, discipline’s fine, but it’s got a kind of petulant, hard-edged beat you over the back of the head with a stick thing on it, hasn’t it? That discipline thing going on. No, instruction’s better, I think, because it’s not petulant.

It’s not impatient. It’s not unrighteous outbursts born of anger and frustration that human dads are so prone to. I remember when my daughter was learning to play the violin.

It was quite a painful process for all of us, actually. Often the violin teacher would gently stop and take hold of her hand or her wrist and change the angle or show her how to hold her bow in a different way. Stop doing it that way and start doing it that way.

(24:31 – 26:57)

And it felt awkward, probably, at first. It’ll sound a lot better if you stop doing it that way and start doing it that way. Gentle instruction.

And surprisingly enough, it did. And that was a great mercy for all of us. It improved her playing and our listening immensely.

Benefits all round. But there are consequences if you ignore instruction, aren’t there? A worker who refuses feedback, they’re not going to last long, are they? They’re going to get fired or they’ll end up on a supported improvement plan of some kind. A husband who consistently ignores his wife’s advice and treats her with contempt will functionally destroy the marriage.

May not end the marriage, but it won’t function. A spiritual leader who thinks they know it all will fall into all kinds of difficulties, frequently including moral ruin, if they think their teaching only applies to them out there and not me in here. You see, in God’s economy, an unteachable spirit bankrupts a life.

Professionally, socially, relationally, and catastrophically, spiritually. The person becomes a fool. But what happens if you listen? Well, look at the second half of Proverbs 15, 5. Whoever heeds correction or instruction shows prudence.

When you take on board the correction that God brings into your life, you’ll build prudence into your character. Now, prudence isn’t a word that’s in common use in 21st century English in the West of Scotland. Unless you listen to the Beatles’ back catalogue, they have a song about prudence that was covered by Suzy and the Banshees in the 80s.

That’s just a sidebar, don’t pay any attention to any of that. But it’s not a common word. Prudence, what does it mean? Well, in Proverbs, prudence is one aspect of wisdom that has a number of functions that help us understand why wisdom’s so desirable.

(26:58 – 27:20)

Firstly, let’s pop over to chapter 22, verse 3, and we’ll do a little mini study on prudence. 22.3, a prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it. Prudence has a protective function, let’s call it a radar function.

(27:22 – 27:56)

Taking instruction develops your spiritual antennae. It helps you sense the consequences of harmful choices, your spidey senses are alert to danger, spiritual danger, helping you to take evasive action before they hit you. So prudence has a radar function, it has a filter function, go back to chapter 12 and we’ll drop down a little bit in that chapter to verse 16.

(27:58 – 28:38)

A fool shows annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult. Prudence has a filter function. Taking instruction helps you learn to evaluate things calmly rather than jump to an angry response, which might be unwise.

We saw last week that this is particularly true with words. My grandfather had a saying that I remember yet. Words like eggs should be handled with care, for words once spoken, like eggs once broken,

(28:39 – 28:59)

are not the easiest things to repair. And so adopting prudence or finding prudence as a filter to our speech and our reactions is a mark of wisdom. I wish I’d learned that a long time ago.

(29:01 – 29:24)

It has thirdly, a privacy function. Look at verse 23 in chapter 12. A prudent man keeps his knowledge to himself, but the heart of fools blurts out folly.

(29:26 – 29:46)

Taking instruction and becoming wise develops confidentiality and discretion. Do you see that? Gossips aren’t wise. People who treat sensitive information confidentially are wise and prudent.

(29:48 – 31:03)

And not everything needs to be shared widely and to everyone. That’s catastrophic, isn’t it? Especially if you’re not sure what you’re talking about and you don’t have all the background information and you’ve just got one side of the story and it goes all over the place. And this is particularly true of course on social media.

The prudent keep their knowledge to themselves, but a fool’s heart blurts out folly. These are challenging lessons and they’re not lessons learned quickly because the rewards of prudence and honour don’t happen immediately. The book of Proverbs, as we go through it, you see Colin touched on this this morning, it’s a journey.

It’s never in a hurry. There’s a measured pace about it all because it always has an eye on the future. These are young men, remember? Remember who it was written to? Adolescent boys with a life ahead of them in the goodness of God.

(31:07 – 31:24)

So the wisdom writer is thinking in the long term in their lives and in what’s left of ours. And that takes us to our final point, a secure destiny. Let’s pop over to chapter 19 verse 20.

(31:32 – 31:47)

Listen to advice and accept instruction. The ESV says that you may gain wisdom in the future. Your version may say in the end you will be wise.

(31:49 – 33:03)

But you see that both of these translations are telling us the ongoing correction in our lives is presented here as an investment that will yield a dividend. But not today. It’s future wisdom.

And so often we struggle with this, don’t we? We want wisdom instant, pre-packed and painless. We want the spiritual maturity of a person who’s walked with God for 50 years, but we want it now by Tuesday afternoon and without any correction or hardship. I want it all and I want it now.

But God doesn’t work that way. The way of wisdom requires us to accept instruction over a lifelong process of being reshaped, pruned and corrected. So that we may end up at our desired destination.

(33:07 – 34:22)

This ending up at our desired destination is like the end result of constant small recalibrations on a regular basis. Let’s think of a Cunard ship leaving Southampton in order to get to New York. No stopping off point between.

It’s a transatlantic voyage. There is a route to follow. And the navigation officer on the bridge every so often will check where the ship is in relation to where it should be and will make a small adjustment to the course.

And then in about half an hour or less, maybe even, we’ll check again and make another small adjustment to keep the ship on course. Now, let’s just assume for a minute that this is a recalcitrant worker and he decides he or she are going to have an unscheduled nap for the afternoon. They just disappear to their cabin up there on the bridge and they fall asleep.

(34:24 – 36:49)

And they fall asleep for one hour and two hours and then suddenly waking up and rush back to the bridge in a panic because you and I know what’s happened. Where’s the ship now? Well, it’s not just a little bit off course, it’s probably 60 miles off course blown by wind or current or goodness knows what. And it won’t require a small recalibration to get it back on course now, will it? Now we’re into catastrophic territory.

Now we’re into massive changes. We’re into big stuff to get that ship back on course. Lots of fuel, lots of energy, lots of panic, lots of pain.

And in the time there was no one making the small adjustments, my goodness, the ship may even have run aground in the rocks. Do you see? In the same way, dear brothers and sisters, regular, small, daily corrections in the direction of your life will prevent the need for massive change later. I know what that looks like in my life to find yourself off course and having to make some pretty big changes to get back to where you should be.

I could have avoided all of that and set out to get there. No one does. No one ever sets out to be miles away from where they should be.

Small decisions not made at the right time, ignored, not listened to, drift, drift, drift. And that’s how spiritual shipwreck happens. Every single action and decision matters.

Friends, can I say this lovingly? There are no small decisions in life. That was the big message that jumped out to me during this last few days of preparation. Proverbs wants you to know that there are no small decisions in your life.

None. Even the ones no one sees. Maybe especially the ones no one sees.

(36:51 – 38:47)

Because over a lifetime, they are the decisions that make us what we are. They determine our destination, do you see? Sow a thought, reap an action. Sow an action, reap a habit.

Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. And as we embrace wisdom, we saw in chapter three, verse 18, that she becomes a tree of life to those who take hold of her.

Let’s pop back to Proverbs three and verse 18. Colin didn’t get that far this morning. Wisdom is a tree of life to those who embrace her.

Those who lay hold of her will be blessed. Wisdom’s a tree of life. We’ve seen the tree of life before in the Bible, haven’t we? Where have we seen it? Genesis two.

We’re introduced there to the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve had access to the tree of life. Wisdom.

They had access to God’s wisdom freely. But they, and by extension we, lost access to it after the fall. Because God’s wisdom wasn’t enough.

In our fallenness we lost wisdom, do you see? We became fools. One writer describes the fool in Hebrew thinking as being marked by aggressive perversity. That’s a great phrase, isn’t it? Not an attractive one, but it’s powerful.

(38:48 – 40:24)

Aggressive perversity. Has there ever been a culture in human history, maybe apart from the Roman Empire in the first century, that has been marked by such aggressive perversity as we face in our culture? That’s the mark of a fool opposed to God. Aggressively so.

But as we embrace wisdom, as we embrace lady wisdom, we roll back the effects of the fall in our lives, do you see? We find again the tree of life. We embrace the tree of life again. But of course Genesis 2 isn’t the only place we find the tree of life, if you can be patient with me for a few more minutes.

We see it again in Revelation 22, at the end of the Bible, in the eternal city of God, where wisdom once again fills the new creation with healing and joy. You see, we were created to be wise, and we will be forever wise. And we’re called to grow in wisdom now, by embracing wisdom, by embracing the tree of life.

And where are we to find that wisdom? Well, in Proverbs it was presented to young Hebrew men in the feminine form as someone attractive, someone to be desired. And in the New Testament, we also have someone attractive and someone to be desired who is presented to us. And that picture is none other than Jesus himself.

(40:27 – 41:03)

In 1 Corinthians 1.30, Paul tells us, you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. He became to us wisdom from God. We talk about his righteousness, sanctification, and redemption being imputed to us.

(41:06 – 41:38)

Paul tells us his wisdom is imputed to us too. So this is the way we get wisdom. We listen to wisdom, we store up future wisdom by listening to him, by loving him, by obeying him.

And we do that knowing that one day we’ll be fully like him. We’ll be wise where our first parents were foolish. We’ll explore all that God has prepared for us within the boundaries of wisdom, acknowledging that he is God and we are not.

(41:41 – 42:05)

So that’s what future wisdom looks like for all who believe in Jesus. So the big question tonight is, where are you resisting correction and wisdom? Where are you choosing folly instead of wisdom? Turn away from your pride. You know the areas that are leading you to spiritual disaster.

(42:09 – 42:26)

Embrace wisdom, bow the knee, drop your defensive shields and say, Lord, teach me, instruct me, correct me where I’m wrong. My heart is open. I long to change and be more like Jesus.

(42:28 – 43:05)

That’s the beginning of wisdom now and the storing of a future wisdom that will last forever. Let’s then ask the Lord to grant us soft hearts, teachable spirits and the grace to love the discipline and instruction he sends to shape us into the image of his son. And let’s do that by praying the last verse of an old hymn by George Matheson.

Let’s pray. Make me a captive Lord and then I shall be free. Force me to render up my sword and I will conquer be.

(43:07 – 43:37)

My will is not my own till thou hast made it thine. If it would reach a monarch’s throne, it must its crown resign. It only stands unbent amid the clashing strife when on thy bosom it is lent and found in thee its life.

Lord, we submit now to your loving correction that we may win the wisdom that is Christ himself and that we may find our lives in him. Amen.

The post Remedial Wisdom – Proverbs appeared first on Greenview Church.

Bind them round your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart, then you will win favour and a good name in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to him and he will make your path straight.

(0:50 – 0:59)

Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones.

(1:00 – 2:06)

Honour the Lord with all your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops, then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine. My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke because the Lord disciplines those he loves as a father the son he delights in. Colin. Let’s join together in prayer. Father, as we open your words and as I open up my mouth, we pray that your voice will be heard in the power of your spirit.

Help us to embrace your perfect wisdom over our flawed understanding. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

(2:09 – 2:24)

I’m going to list some things and you can decide if you want them. Number one, long life. Number two, a peaceful life.

(2:26 – 2:59)

Number three, a bulging bank balance that never ever depletes. Number four, perfect health from now till the day you die. Any takers? Anyone up for any of these outcomes? Well, if you are saying yes, and I’m certainly saying yes myself, then Proverbs seems to be offering us these things today.

(3:00 – 3:17)

Take a look at Proverbs 3 and what it appears to be promising. Long life, peace and prosperity, verse two. Verse four, a good reputation in the sight of God and people.

(3:18 – 3:31)

In verse six, your life can be straightforward. At least that’s what it seems to say. In verse eight, the promise of wealth, of health.

(3:32 – 4:00)

And in verse 10, the prospect of overflowing barns and vats brimming with wine, which I guess for the non-farmers translates into an overflowing bank balance. Now admittedly, there are some conditions to all this. So we need to keep some commands and trust in the Lord and honour the Lord with our wealth.

(4:00 – 4:25)

But if we do, life is going to be rosy rather than sad and grey and bleak. That all sounds incredibly appealing, except there’s a problem with this. In fact, maybe not just a little problem, but a really huge whopping problem.

(4:26 – 4:45)

Because as appealing as these outcomes are, we’re probably sitting thinking, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I know Christians who didn’t live a long life, but tragically died young.

(4:46 – 5:03)

Wait a minute. I know faithful Christians who have suffered terrible health, terrible treatment, or who have been terribly poor. I know them, or maybe that indeed is myself.

(5:04 – 5:33)

How does Proverbs three marry up with that? Is Proverbs over-promising the Christian pensioner who’s living on meagre resources and having to visit the hospital every week? Well, that is a very valid question. And it drives us to think about the genre of the book of Proverbs. You might say the type of literature it is.

(5:35 – 6:05)

Because Proverbs isn’t mainly doctrines or laws or even promises, although it sometimes may contain all of these things. But Proverbs is mainly wise advice and why you should follow it. And so before getting into our verses this morning, I want to establish two guardrails, two protective guardrails that will help us read Proverbs without falling into harm.

(6:07 – 6:36)

Two guardrails that will help us read this book helpfully. Number one, Proverbs are wise principles that are generally true, but they’re not the whole picture. So for instance, Proverbs three verse nine says, look at the passage, honour the Lord with your wealth, then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine.

(6:37 – 6:55)

That’s a wise principle that is generally true. When a person honours the Lord with their wealth, their life will usually go better financially. God often practically rewards that sensible investment in him.

(6:56 – 7:21)

And yet, that is not the whole picture. For Proverbs 15 verse 16 adds, better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil. Wait a minute, I thought if I honoured the Lord with my wealth, I’d be financially sorted.

(7:22 – 7:32)

Well, that’s often true. But this proverb tells us that a believer can have very little. And still be faithful.

(7:33 – 7:56)

It is better to be that way than to be rich and live in the turmoil of not knowing God. Proverbs itself makes it clear that much of its wisdom is general advice. Or to put it a different way, for every proverb, there is often a counter proverb, something that balances it or gives us a very different perspective.

(7:57 – 8:12)

That says, yes, that’s true. But life doesn’t always work that way. In a world where God is sovereign and humans are sinful, wise living doesn’t always produce immediate results.

(8:13 – 8:22)

Like pressing a button on a coffee machine and it just comes out as you want it. So that’s the first guardrail. Proverbs are generally true.

(8:23 – 8:44)

But the second guardrail, it’s helpful to see that proverbs are very often ultimately true, even if not immediately true. They’re very often ultimately true, even if not immediately true. To put it another way, some proverbs will come true if you only wait long enough.

(8:46 – 9:05)

Because proverbs, a book about the now is not ignorant of eternity. Proverbs 12, verse 26 says, in the way of righteousness, there is life. Along that path is immortality.

(9:07 – 9:34)

The book of Proverbs is conscious of the life to come. And that’s an even stronger New Testament perspective, I think. You may not have immediate riches now, or immediate justice now, or perfect health now, but you will be given all these things in Christ and in the new creation.

(9:34 – 10:07)

The New Testament teaches that. And so while people often say rightly that proverbs are generally not promises, they are principles. Many of these principles become promises in the light of eternity, don’t they? And so when a proverb doesn’t match your present experience, you can often ask the question, will this be true one day for me? Then I should still trust the Lord as I await that prospect.

(10:09 – 10:23)

And it is that trust that is at the heart of our passage this morning. So we’re looking at Proverbs 3, verses one to 12. It’s a section that hangs together.

(10:24 – 10:35)

Notice it begins in verse one with my son. And then there’s a kind of bookend in verse 11 to 12, my son. So it seems like it’s a section.

(10:36 – 11:06)

And right at the heart of it, at the core and the centre, is the Father’s call in verses five and six to trust. Whoever we are this morning, in whatever circumstance we come here today, we are invited to trust in the Lord and not in our own understanding. We’re going to look at this trust in three dimensions today.

(11:07 – 11:30)

We’re going to look at trust from three angles or answer the question, in what way must we trust the Lord? So first, we trust in the Lord as we internalise His word. Now, remember where we are in Proverbs. This is the early part, chapters one to nine.

(11:31 – 11:53)

And we’re eavesdropping on a conversation between a father and a son. The father is telling the son to choose wisdom rather than choose a life of folly. And part of what choosing wisdom means is listening to the father’s commands and instruction,

(11:53 – 12:13)

verse two. For, if the son listens to the father, his life will be prolonged. Verse two is an echo of Exodus chapter 20. It’s a reverberation of one of the 10 commandments.

(12:15 – 12:41)

Honour your father and mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. Life is likely to be long and successful if the son doesn’t forget the father’s teaching, but crucially takes it to heart. Notice that emphasis on the internal.

(12:42 – 12:58)

Verse one, keep my commands in your heart. And verse three, let love and faithfulness never leave you. Bind them around your neck and write them on the tablet of your heart.

(13:00 – 13:12)

People in those days kept their valuables close to their chest and often around their neck. I guess there wasn’t safes to put things in. Maybe the locks on the doors weren’t so good.

(13:12 – 13:35)

I mean, today people do this as well, don’t they? When you go on holiday, you keep the precious things in the money belt, the cash and the cards and the passport and so on. And the same idea is here, isn’t it? That the son is to take the father’s teaching and commands, that which is precious, and he’s to hold them close to his heart. He’s to value them.

(13:37 – 14:14)

Indeed, more than that, he’s actually to internalise them. To write the commands in his heart implies deep learning, meditation, memorisation, internalisation, so that the wise words of the father that comes in through the ears would begin to inform the son’s character, verse three, in outward love and faithfulness to others, which results, verse four, in winning favour with God and man.

(14:18 – 14:39)

And I guess in one sense, this is the very definition of being a Christian, actually. What does it mean to be a Christian? Peter says in his epistle, it’s the seed of the Word of God, that seed of life being planted in your hearts and bringing that new birth. You can’t be a Christian unless God’s Word’s been planted inside your life.

(14:41 – 15:09)

But this is also the ongoing difference between someone who is barely growing as a Christian and someone who is making consistent growth as a believer. In the life of a growing Christian, there is a commitment to inputting the Word of God deep into our hearts. It’s the opposite of the teenager who audibly hears the words of their parent, but they’re not listening.

(15:10 – 15:35)

It’s in one ear and it’s out the other. There is a discipleship version of that where our engagement with God’s Word is no better than doomscrolling through passages, doomscrolling through sermons. But none of it’s really going in because we’re not engaged.

(15:37 – 15:54)

We’re not stopping long enough to hide the Word of God deep in our hearts. I once had a youth leader, his name was David, and in my church in Kirkintilloch, he was a great guy. He was an awful lot of fun.

(15:54 – 16:02)

One of these youth leaders that just kind of made coming along fun. But he also had this really serious side to him. He was passionate about Jesus.

(16:03 – 16:34)

He was passionate about the Bible. And sometimes when the kind of atmosphere was getting out of hand, mainly due to me and others talking too much and joking too much, he would say, he’d get really serious and he would say, listen, what you put into this is what you’re going to get out of this. And it was a dagger to my solar plexus because I was a young Christian and I knew that he was right.

(16:36 – 17:13)

Am I not seeing much godly maturity in my life? Then the question is, what am I putting into my heart? Or maybe better said, am I putting God’s word deep into the recesses of my mind and my heart? This has to be done actively. It has to be done internally. Some of us need to slow down and do that thing that previous generations talked about, taking time with God.

(17:15 – 17:37)

And it takes great trust to do this because it doesn’t look like productivity. And the Bible is never demanding that you pick it up and you open it and read it, is it? But if we want abundant life and peace within, then we trust the Lord as we internalise his word. That’s the first dimension of trust.

(17:38 – 18:04)

But the second is equally important. Secondly, we trust in the Lord as we lean on his wisdom, not our own. And now we come to these famous verses, verses that Christians put on their phone wallpaper or a verse up in the wall in a frame or it’s a reading at their weddings.

(18:05 – 18:16)

And it’s these great verses. I mean, I understand why people do that. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

(18:17 – 18:52)

The wisdom of this verse is to trust in the Lord, to trust in the I am, not just to trust in any old God, but to trust in the God of the Bible, of Israel, of rescue and redemption and to trust in him with all of our heart, not half-heartedly or just some of the time. I had a great quote from someone this week who said, we’re not to trust in God like we trust in the bannister. You know, a bannister where you just lean on it now and again, just for a little bit of assistance.

(18:53 – 19:03)

Don’t treat God like a bannister. Trust in the Lord with the full weight of your life. Have full confidence in him.

(19:03 – 19:25)

That’s the idea. And if you are going to do that, then necessarily you must not lean on your own understanding. Now, that line does not mean that God does not want you to understand things or to think.

(19:25 – 19:41)

It does not mean that. This verse is not saying, stop using your brain and trust the Lord. To lean on your own understanding is the same thing as verse seven is saying, do not be wise in your own eyes.

(19:42 – 19:59)

To lean on your own understanding is to trust in yourself rather than in God. It’s to trust in your wisdom rather than in his wisdom. It’s the classic error of Adam and Eve.

(20:00 – 20:10)

Thinking they knew better than what God had said. Thinking that their way was better than God’s way. That’s leaning on your own understanding.

(20:13 – 20:23)

I did it my way. I mean, is it the most popular thing you hear at a funeral service today? Probably. It’s a fun song to sing.

(20:23 – 20:45)

The guy had an amazing voice, but it’s a terrible philosophy to live your life by, according to the Bible. Living it my way will lead you down a path that will go towards death. So when we properly understand verses five and six, it’s not saying to shut your brain off.

(20:47 – 21:01)

These are also not verses I don’t think about guidance primarily. It’s not about decision-making. No, these verses are about whether you will trust in yourself or whether you will trust in the Lord.

(21:02 – 21:33)

If you trust in the Lord with all your heart, he will make your paths straight. Now, from our perspective, it may not always look like our paths are being made straight or that they’re very clear. But I think if we could see life from the bird’s eye view, if we could see our life as God sees our life, we would see that God indeed makes our paths straight when we acknowledge him.

(21:33 – 21:51)

We may not live an easy life, but we will be going in the right direction. We will be, if we trust in the Lord, on the narrow road that leads to life. And we will reach that appointed destination.

(21:55 – 22:23)

Now, it’s rightly said, isn’t it, that it was only Jesus who trusted the Lord with all of his heart. It’s only true of Jesus, isn’t it, that he never once leaned on his own understanding. In fact, this is an amazing passage to apply to Christ, isn’t it? You could probably do all this work yourself pretty easily, see the links, but Jesus was the son, wasn’t he, who took his father’s commands to heart.

(22:24 – 22:44)

And he trusted in the Lord with all of his heart. And he did not lean on his own understanding, his own wisdom, when he chose to obey the father’s will, even when that choice seemed painful and impossible to him. Jesus didn’t live a long life.

(22:45 – 22:58)

His life was cut short. And yet he stayed on the straight path of fulfilling the Lord’s will. No one, no one trusted in the Lord like Jesus trusted in the Lord.

(22:59 – 23:19)

And the whole basis of my Christian life and yours rests upon the fact that Jesus trusted in the Lord perfectly. My confidence is not in my faith, but in his faith. This is why his death was effective, because his life was sinless.

(23:19 – 23:28)

His trust was perfect. And therefore his sacrifice was perfect. And it’s sufficient for your forgiveness and mine.

(23:29 – 23:59)

And yet the call to us is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. Acts 16 verse 31, believe. And whether my belief is strong or weak, consistent or intermittent, I am saved because of the Lord my faith is placed in.

(24:00 – 24:26)

Not because of the strength of my faith, but because it rests on the Lord Jesus. It’s a common illustration, isn’t it? I’ve probably used this before, but two people can see an empty chair. I don’t know what it’s doing out in the street in the middle of Glasgow, but they could see this chair and one of them with full confidence could throw themselves into the chair, very confident it’s going to hold them up.

(24:26 – 24:44)

And it does. And then a few minutes later, another guy comes along and he’s asked to sit down and he’s very tentative, very nervous. And you managed to persuade him, why don’t you just give it a go? And he has just enough confidence to tentatively put his weight down on the chair.

(24:45 – 24:58)

And the chair holds him just the same. Because you’re not saved by the strength of your faith. You’re saved by the strength of the one your faith is placed in.

(24:59 – 25:22)

The Christian life begins when you rest your faith in Jesus Christ. But of course, God’s calling us to something even more and better than that, isn’t he? Because as you come to know him better and you see the sufficiency of who he is, your confidence in him should grow. Your doubts should be assuaged.

(25:23 – 25:49)

You should learn gradually perhaps, but you should learn that you can trust him with all of your heart and know that that confidence won’t be mistaken. And as our confidence builds, that trust in Jesus is something that we have over and against our own understanding in a whole host of areas. There’s a very practical outbox to this, to living this.

(25:51 – 26:20)

Because this is about trusting Jesus enough that you acknowledge him and submit to him rather than doing things your own way. So for instance, it’s choosing what the Bible says about being honest at work and having integrity in your dealings. Even though you think that you could be successful more quickly if you just cut a few corners.

(26:21 – 26:40)

That’s what trusting in the Lord might look like in that area. It’s trusting what Jesus says about relationships and sexual ethics. And it’s trusting in what he says and the goodness of what he says over what we might like to do in the moment.

(26:43 – 27:20)

It’s trusting what the Bible says about both the conception of life and the ending of life and seeing the preciousness of both those things over and against the popular zeitgeist of the day that tells us what is compassionate and acceptable. We say, I’m gonna trust the Lord’s word rather than my own fallible understanding. See, it’s in these sorts of areas where we’re tempted to see things differently from God’s perfect word, where we might think we are wiser in our own eyes than God is wise.

(27:23 – 27:45)

I think it was Tim Keller who once said that if your Bible always agrees with you, then you’re probably not reading it very seriously. Because it is God’s word, it will often say things that don’t fit with how you want to think or how you would like to act. Let the word of God correct you.

(27:45 – 27:57)

See, these verses, they’re still lovely verses. I don’t wanna say they’re not, but they’re not just lovely verses to put on fridge magnets. This is the battleground of our hearts.

(27:57 – 28:16)

This is the war for our souls that these verses are talking about. And we need the incentive of verse seven to know that the straight path will belong to those who trust in the Lord. That life to the full that Jesus spoke of is for those who trust in him.

(28:18 – 28:38)

It’s when we fear the Lord, verse eight, that nourishment will come to our bodies. That’s not just by the way about a good medical prognosis, it’s about true happiness and true health. And so we trust in the Lord and we internalise his words and we trust him as we lean on his wisdom, not our own.

(28:40 – 28:56)

Now, those are two quite challenging ways to trust the Lord, but I’m sorry to say that the final one is maybe even tougher, but it’s really important. So here’s the third and final dimension. We trust in the Lord as we perceive his loving discipline.

(28:57 – 29:14)

We trust in the Lord as we perceive his loving discipline. Now, if you’re just kind of walking through this passage, I think verses 11 and 12 kind of surprise you. They sort of ambush you because it’s all been very positive.

(29:14 – 29:21)

Do this, it’s going to be blessing. Do that, it’s going to be blessing. Verses eight, nine, and 10, you know, honour the Lord with the firstfruits of your wealth.

(29:22 – 29:39)

Give him the best, not the dregs. Your barns and your vats will overflow. And if you were reading it superficially, it could sound like the prosperity preacher on the God channel by this point until you hit verses 11 and 12.

(29:40 – 30:05)

At the very end of the passage, which is setting all these blessings before us, we suddenly hear about the Lord’s discipline. My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke. This suggests, doesn’t it, that this son will experience times of hardship in life.

(30:07 – 30:38)

If he’s going to experience the Lord’s discipline, that must mean hardship rather than health, poverty rather than riches, persecution rather than praise, barrenness rather than blessing. If there’s not some outbox like that, then what does this even mean to say that you’re going to go through times of discipline? So there’s going to be difficult times in this young man’s life. And this could indicate that the son might stray from the path.

(30:38 – 30:49)

I mean, of course he will. He’s a sinner like the rest of us. And the Bible makes it clear, doesn’t it, that God does sometimes discipline us for the reason that we sin, because of our sin.

(30:51 – 30:58)

This son won’t always listen to instruction. He won’t always trust in the Lord. And the father knows this.

(30:58 – 31:17)

And the father says, when you turn away from the Lord, the Lord is going to discipline you to correct you and bring you back. But it’s interesting, when we read this passage in the book of Hebrews, because Hebrews actually picks up this text and gives us a little explanation of it. It does something quite different.

(31:18 – 31:37)

Hebrews 12 picks this up. And one of the big points it makes is that all hardships are to be considered as discipline. Whether we’re suffering for sin, which might happen some of the time, or whether we’re just suffering.

(31:38 – 31:54)

Because sometimes we just suffer under God’s sovereignty, like Job. And sometimes we suffer because God simply wants to mature us in some way. But the author says that in all moments of hardship, we should consider it as discipline.

(31:55 – 32:21)

The loving discipline of a father who is making us and moulding us into the children he wants us to be. Notice in verse 12, it’s not the human father in Proverbs who’s disciplining the son, but the human father is pointing to the heavenly father. Yes, for a period of time, our parents discipline us.

(32:22 – 32:30)

It’s an important training. It sets the right direction in life. But there’s a time where we outgrow that.

(32:31 – 32:47)

But the author here says that we never outgrow the discipline of our heavenly father. We’re going to be hearing more of that tonight through David. The role that correction needs to play in a life of growing wisdom.

(32:48 – 33:13)

But here we’re asked to trust in the Lord when we endure hard times of discipline. When God doesn’t seem to be delivering the good stuff of Proverbs 3, we are being asked to trust that our father is disciplining us in love. We really, really, really need faith to believe that.

(33:15 – 33:37)

Because it is not often evident to us that hardship in our life is a sign of God’s love. But usually when I’m going through hard times in my own life, I’m much more quick to think that God is indifferent, or even worse, that he just doesn’t love me and he maybe hates me. That he’s rejected me.

(33:39 – 33:53)

This passage says the reality is the opposite of that. I heard a story. It was told by a pastor, but he used to be a Christian, or used to be a teacher in London in a primary school.

(33:54 – 34:03)

And he said there was a boy in his class who had been brought up in a very wealthy home. His mom and dad were high flyers. They were never at home really.

(34:03 – 34:14)

And they paid a nanny to cook him his meals and do everything for him. And they said to the nanny, just give him whatever he wants. Cook for him whatever he wants.

(34:15 – 34:22)

Well, you can imagine the fruit of all that. And this boy became very chaotic. Chaotic with people.

(34:23 – 34:31)

His grades just took a huge dive. And eventually the teacher called in the father to have a chat with him. And the boy was also there.

(34:32 – 34:58)

And the father of the boy was a bit irritated. This was sort of cutting into his work time. And what was this really all about anyway? And he said at one point, the boy in floods of tears screamed at his dad, why don’t you love me enough to ground me? Love isn’t constantly feeding your children ice cream.

(34:59 – 35:24)

Real paternal love, both human and divine, has an element of discipline. And again, the wonder of this is when we think of Jesus, Jesus didn’t need to be corrected in this sense. And yet scripture says that Jesus learned obedience by what he suffered.

(35:27 – 35:56)

Jesus endured the judgement of a holy God. So that we would only know the blessing of God as our father and his loving discipline just for a time. Do you need to hear that this morning? Do you need your thinking to be recalibrated? To realise that your heavenly father loves you? And that’s why he sometimes allows troubles in your life.

(35:56 – 36:29)

At least it’s one of the main reasons he does. Will you trust him in that? I wonder if that’s a real battle for someone here this morning. Will you take to heart what we sang before I stood up here? Did you take in the lyrics as we sang them? When trials come, no longer fear, for in the pain our God draws near to fire of faith worth more than gold.

(36:30 – 36:41)

And there his faithfulness is told. Within the night I know your peace. The breath of God brings strength to me.

(36:42 – 36:54)

And new each morning mercy flows as treasures of the darkness grows. I turn to wisdom not my own. And I like to amend this line slightly.

(36:55 – 37:09)

For every battle Christ has known, my confidence will rest in you. Your love endures. Your ways are good.

(37:11 – 37:40)

Let’s just pray briefly together. Our father, we come to you this morning aware of the battle to trust in you. We come as those who often lean on our own understanding rather than resting on your wisdom.

(37:42 – 38:02)

We thank you that Christ has known the battle. And we thank you that Christ has overcome the temptation to trust in his own strength. Help us to put our confidence squarely and entirely in him.

(38:03 – 38:17)

And may we know that his love endures and all of his ways in our life, however crooked or bendy they might seem to us, are good. And it’s in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

The post Trust in the Lord – Proverbs 3v1–12 appeared first on Greenview Church.

(0:20 – 0:34)

So chapters one to nine is the choice of wisdom. It’s an appeal to the son to decide to choose God’s wisdom. And then chapters 10 to 29 is the content of wisdom.

(0:34 – 0:54)

And it’s mostly hundreds and hundreds of little pithy Proverbs that are giving insight into the skill of living well. And there’s 19 chapters of these sayings. And then in chapters 30 and 31, yes, some more content, some more Proverbs.

(0:55 – 1:10)

But for a few reasons that we’ll get into when we come to those final chapters, I think chapters 30 and 31 are wrapping up the whole book. They are special chapters. They’re written by different authors and they’re summing up the main lessons of Proverbs.

(1:11 – 1:50)

So hopefully that’ll be just a little bit helpful just to orientate you to the book. But the question that I’ve been mulling over quite a lot is, how do we preach the middle chunk of Proverbs? How do we deal with the bulk of it, chapters 10 to 29? Are we gonna preach a sermon a week on a Proverb a week? That could take us 25 years. Well, in the morning series, we’re going to actually tackle two of those chapters, chapter 10 and chapter 16, and they might turn out to be the worst sermons you’ve ever heard.

(1:51 – 2:11)

I don’t know how those are gonna go, but we’re gonna give it a go on two Sunday mornings. But I guess the main thing we’re going to do in the evenings, we’re going to look at the content in themes. So we’re gonna group together different concepts, different themes, and we’re gonna just look at a number of Proverbs to make it a little simpler.

(2:12 – 2:34)

So tonight we’re looking at the theme of words. And this is going to be hugely practical, very challenging, but I hope in the end really encouraging. Because bear in mind that the book of Proverbs was written to help the simple become wise and help the wise add to their learning.

(2:35 – 2:57)

So the basis of this book, the premise it’s starting from is that each of us can grow in wisdom. We don’t need to come here defeatist as we look at these topics, but we can make steady growth even in the area of our words. And I’m sure that all of us will appreciate that our words is an area where we do need to keep growing in.

(2:58 – 3:17)

I came across a statistic this week. It’s one of these, how do they measure the statistics? But it said that the average person speaks 16,000 words a day. So even if you don’t get your 10,000 steps in, you probably get in your 16,000 words a day.

(3:18 – 3:42)

And some of those words, I’m sure many of them are helpful words, they’re needed words, they’re truthful words, they’re loving words. But if you’re anything like me, there are plenty of those words that you wish you could just catch and put back into your mouth. And so Solomon here addresses us as sons, daughters as well, who need to mature.

(3:43 – 3:54)

And he gives us a number of, I mean, many different Proverbs on words. And he scatters these throughout chapters 10 to 29. And I’ve just selected four of them.

(3:55 – 4:08)

These are just sort of representative of some of the things he says, but I hope this will be helpful. So the first Proverb is chapter 10, verse 19. Chapter 10, verse 19.

(4:09 – 4:31)

And I know many of you are looking at this in the NIV, which is okay, but I prefer the translation here of the ESV. I think it’s a better translation in this case. It says, when words are many, transgression is not absent, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.

(4:32 – 4:48)

So the principle here is that wise people are restrained in their speech. Wise people do not talk too much. As we’ve said, as human beings, we inevitably speak a lot.

(4:49 – 5:27)

We need to communicate for all sorts of different reasons, both fundamental to remain alive and viable human beings, but also for social reasons, for loving reasons, for kindness reasons, we need to communicate. And yet the warning of Solomon here is don’t speak overly much, because if you speak too much, it becomes inevitable that sin will not be absent. Jesus once said, didn’t he, that it’s out of the heart that the mouth speaks.

(5:28 – 6:10)

And I don’t know what the condition of your heart is, but while we have plenty of sanctified thoughts in our hearts at times, and hopefully some godly ideas and good things that run around our brain, we also have plenty of wrong things in our heads, things we wouldn’t like others to know we’re thinking. And so it follows then that if we just keep on speaking long enough, if we just keep on upping the quantity of our words that we say out loud, more of what is unhelpful will seep out. This is what you call an antithetical proverb.

(6:11 – 6:24)

An antithetical proverb is a proverb with two halves, which are a contrast to each other. Notice the word but in the middle. So when words are many, transgression is not absent.

(6:24 – 6:49)

But here’s the contrast, whoever restrains their tongue is prudent. A prudent person is a cautious person in the best sense. A prudent person is wisely careful, wisely careful not to sin against the Lord and wisely careful not to harm those made in his image.

(6:50 – 7:09)

And that kind of wisely careful person restrains their tongue. You hear people say sometimes in a moment of provocation, I held it in, you know, I could have said something. I almost said something, but I didn’t say it.

(7:10 – 7:24)

And that’s probably for the best on most of those occasions. Controlling the quantity of your words is one way of living with wisdom. One commentator says, words are like sheep.

(7:25 – 7:42)

The more there are, the better chances that some will go astray. And of course, the world is not encouraging us in the Bible’s direction here at all. The advice tends to be in the opposite direction.

(7:44 – 8:00)

A few people are telling us to tone down the number of our words. Folk are saying, speak up, say more, be bold, get out there and let the world know what you think. And it’s not just in person that we have opportunity with this, but also online.

(8:00 – 8:22)

It’s electronic communication that means we can contact hundreds of people very easily and simply. And so many people are saying, just speak, just talk, just keep going with sentence after sentence. And yet wisdom is telling us, have your words on a short leash.

(8:24 – 8:39)

The quality of your words goes down in proportion to the quantity. Now, yes, sometimes people speak too little. Sometimes it’s actually unloving to say too little.

(8:39 – 8:55)

And sometimes things need to be said that are not said. And silence, as one writer says, is ambiguous. Someone’s silent, you don’t know whether they’re for you or against you, whether you think it’s good or it’s bad.

(8:55 – 9:06)

So it’s ambiguous. And that’s about unsettling. But it’s better than filling every moment with words that will eventually betray the thoughts that are within.

(9:07 – 9:34)

The Lord Jesus knew when to speak, but he also knew when to remain silent. So let me just give you just a few possible areas where this would apply. If you’re a parent, and of course you need to be instructing your children, know when the quantity of your words is leading you to say things that are less and less helpful.

(9:35 – 9:48)

Right, I mean, some of you know that in a disciplining situation. You’ve said the piece, you’ve said what needs to be said, but you just keep going. And the longer you go, the less helpful the things are that you say.

(9:50 – 10:25)

Think of it in conversation with friends and with people that you know, I don’t know if this is just me, maybe this is just my own weakness, but I don’t know if you can relate to this. But I find that the longer I have a conversation with somebody, the longer it goes on for on the phone or in a coffee shop, very often the quality of the conversation decreases the longer it goes. And so a one hour chat on the phone is likely to be more fruitful and godly and positive than if it’s a three hour chat on the phone.

(10:26 – 10:38)

Maybe that’s just me, but it seems to me that often the longer we talk, the less edifying things can sometimes become. It’s at least a possible danger. And so we need the wisdom of this proverb.

(10:39 – 10:55)

Why? Because of the second one, second proverb, Proverbs 12, verse 18. Proverbs 12, verse 18. The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.

(10:57 – 11:07)

And so the second principle is that wise people know the impact of their words. They know the impact. Words are not flimsy things.

(11:08 – 11:23)

They’re not as wispy and inconsequential as the air that carries them. Words are more like a sharp blade. It’s like metal being thrust into someone’s side if they’re the wrong kind of words.

(11:23 – 11:43)

The image of this proverb is actually of multiple swords. It’s like having lots of swords in both hands and multiple stab wounds. What we’re being told here is that words, when they’re unhelpful and harmful, are incredibly painful things.

(11:43 – 11:59)

They pierce other people. I just think of this very kind of practically. Many families have a relative somewhere, auntie so-and-so, uncle so-and-so, and they’ve got a reputation for having a sharp tongue.

(12:01 – 12:20)

And it’s the reason why, you know, they’re sort of, they’re casting lots to see who needs to go and see aunt X this week because whoever goes needs to be walking in with the body armour on because many wounding things are gonna be said. What a sad situation that is. And that person’s probably feeling very lonely.

(12:20 – 12:34)

And why is no one coming to see me? And not realising the reckless swords that come out when they speak. And this is described here as recklessness. Notice that, recklessness.

(12:35 – 12:51)

This is the person who speaks impulsively, just says whatever’s on their mind without in any way filtering. Filtering, I hear people say sometimes, as I’m getting older, I’m losing my filter. Watch out for that.

(12:52 – 13:16)

The Bible calls that recklessness. It’s recklessness, be careful. I think the danger of this, though, is that we think of this as the caricature aunt or uncle, and we’ve probably all got some person or other in mind in our family or maybe someone in church or someone in work, and we think, oh, that’s the person, they’re the person that speaks hurtfully.

(13:17 – 13:39)

And yet we can overlook the fact that we at times, all of us, say things that are harmful to other people. And often it will be in moments of frustration or in moments of tiredness. And we just lack that self-control to hold the tongue back and the rash words come out.

(13:40 – 14:13)

I say this in a week, when we’ve been doing a lot of DIY around the house, a lot of painting and stuff in the evenings, and if you work during the day and you come back and you do three hours painting a ceiling, you don’t have a lot of patience over little things. And there’s been lots of unsanctified little words coming out, and I’m thinking, I’m preaching a sermon on this on Sunday night, and here I am, needing to find a different preacher. But it’s often in those moments, isn’t it? And yet it’s the real us coming out, isn’t it? It’s nobody else.

(14:13 – 14:31)

But when the pressure comes on, often that’s what emerges. Bear in mind as well that very often when we hurt people with our words, they will never come and tell us that they’ve been hurt by us. I mean, 90% of the people that say hurtful things to me, I don’t go to them and say that was hurtful.

(14:33 – 14:49)

And so we need to be aware of the fact that we need to have self-awareness. And we need to think, I wonder if what I just said to that person, or I wonder that conversation that seemed a bit tense, I wonder if I wounded that person. I wonder if I needed to apologise for what I just said.

(14:51 – 15:06)

So that’s the negative side of the equation. The positive side is that the wise person has a tongue that brings healing. And that’s a lovely thing, isn’t it? So whereas your tongue can be a sword, it can also be a tool for healing.

(15:07 – 15:28)

Just as words can harm, they can also heal. And it’s true, isn’t it, that there’s often nothing more healing than the aptly chosen words of another human being. Maybe even the apology the person gives you can be so healing, despite the fact they wounded you to begin with.

(15:29 – 15:46)

Now, just a caveat here. There is a truth to the statement that the truth often hurts. And we’re living in an age where if I feel a negative emotion because of what you’ve said, then therefore what you’ve said was wrong.

(15:47 – 16:05)

And we need to be very careful about that. Someone can be very lovingly measured in the way they speak. They can sometimes speak the truth in love, and we can still feel wounded because our pride has been wounded, or our sin is being challenged.

(16:06 – 16:22)

And the Proverbs actually calls that the wounds of a friend. There’s a good sort of wound that you can give to someone, but there’s also a bad sort of wound, and we need to know the difference. So this is not about avoiding ever hurting anyone else’s feelings for the right reason.

(16:23 – 16:50)

But if you’re the sort of person that seems to lead casualties all around you, whenever you leave the community group, or whenever you leave the coffee chat, or whenever you, you know, there’s someone going home and they’re just, you know, there’s a few scars, then this might be a proverb that you need to take more seriously, that I need to take more seriously. So this is very important. And if we’re gonna do that, then that brings us to Proverbs 15, and verse one.

(16:51 – 17:01)

Proverbs 15, verse one. A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. Here’s the third principle.

(17:02 – 17:10)

Wise people control the tone of how they speak. They control the tone. We’ve got another contrast.

(17:11 – 17:20)

All three of these have been contrasts. On the one hand, you have a gentle answer. That could be translated a soft answer.

(17:21 – 17:48)

And it is contrasted with a harsh word, or literally it’s the idea of a painful word, a word that causes negative emotional impact because it was unloving. And we’re told that when we choose the soft word, the gentle word, this will de-escalate tension and it will reduce anger. And there’s many examples of this in the Bible.

(17:49 – 18:03)

We don’t have time to look into this, but you could look this up later for a bit of kind of reflection on this. But in 1 Samuel 25, there’s a really brilliant story that’s all about this. You have David.

(18:04 – 18:15)

He’s this really fearsome warrior that you shouldn’t mess with. But there’s this guy called Nabal, and Nabal decides it is a good idea to say all sorts of nasty things about David. And it gets back to David.

(18:16 – 18:24)

And David’s gonna set about this guy. He’s in big trouble. But thankfully for Nabal, he has a wife that’s wiser than him.

(18:25 – 18:38)

And her name’s Abigail. And Abigail, she intervenes on her husband’s behalf and she speaks wisely to David. And she gives him a soft answer, a gentle answer.

(18:38 – 18:54)

And she calms down David’s wrath. And at least temporarily, Nabal doesn’t get his comeuppance athough later for a different reason he does. But it’s a wonderful illustration, isn’t it? And we all have our own versions of that probably.

(18:56 – 19:07)

Situations, I mean, both ways. Situations where maybe there was rising tension. And unfortunately, we said the thing that seemed to put the sparks in the fire.

(19:08 – 19:29)

And it became a full-blown explosion. But we also can think of other situations where with the help of the Holy Spirit, we somehow managed to take a breath and respond in a way that was true but was also gentle and loving. And what could have been a crisis calmed itself down.

(19:31 – 19:38)

And so what we’re reminding of is really something very simple. It’s not just what you say. It is about how you say it.

(19:40 – 19:48)

This is very important. Because sometimes people will say, I’ve done this as well very defensively. What was wrong with what I said? You know, and you repeat back the words.

(19:49 – 19:56)

Usually you repeat them back in a really nice tone. I said it like this. But actually that wasn’t the way you said it originally.

(19:57 – 20:07)

Two people can say even the exact same sentence of words. And one do it with love. The other do it with sarcasm, biting sarcasm.

(20:07 – 20:28)

Same words, different tone. This is often something that other people can pick up more easily than we can. I think we often have a responsibility to each other to occasionally say, it’s not so much what you said, but it’s the way you said it.

(20:30 – 20:49)

It’s just an observation from being in ministry over the years and seeing quite a few issues in churches as happens. And in my own relationships with people too. It’s amazing how few times the problems are actually about differences of opinion.

(20:50 – 20:59)

The problem is not that people have differences of opinion. I have people all the time that I have differences of opinion with and I get on really well with some people. Because it’s not about that.

(20:59 – 21:10)

The issue is always the manner in which the people with differing opinions speak to one another. That’s the issue. It’s the tone that’s the problem.

(21:11 – 21:23)

And one person said something in a very unhelpful way and the other person reacted in an equally unhelpful way. And the whole thing just builds up and up and up. And then you’re maybe called in to be the referee.

(21:23 – 21:38)

And that’s part of the role you play. And then sometimes you find yourself in this situation where actually your response even as a church leader was just a bit sharper than it should have been. And you were a bit frustrated and a bit tired and your tone wasn’t quite right.

(21:39 – 21:49)

And actually you’ve stirred up the fire yourself. I’ve been there with that too. So that’s another thing we need to be careful of here.

(21:49 – 21:55)

And actually, let me just say this. A lot of these proverbs are about avoiding the negative. Interesting that.

(21:55 – 22:05)

There’s few of the proverbs about words that are about here’s the positive, but there are some. And so let me just finish with one briefly. Proverbs 25 verse 11.

(22:06 – 22:21)

Proverbs 25 verse 11. Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken at the right time. Now the imagery here is a little bit uncertain.

(22:21 – 22:40)

And actually, let me just say as a side comment. One of the slightly tricky bits interpreting some proverbs is they’re so brief and they’re so underexplained that you sometimes do have ambiguous images or even just the proverb itself. You sit and think, what does that mean? So there are a few proverbs you really need to ponder quite hard.

(22:40 – 23:08)

This is one of them, at least the imagery is a little tricky. What seems to be being described here are carvings of fruit in gold, something kind of decorative that was then set within a silver backdrop. And whatever the exact thing is in mind here historically, the idea I think is clear, that this is something that just is the right thing in the right place.

(23:08 – 23:20)

It just looks right. It’s kind of like, maybe I’ve got decorating on my mind tonight. But it’s like when you decorate a wall in your house and you paint it a certain colour and then someone with an eye for things picks just the right picture.

(23:21 – 23:29)

That just blends with what’s behind it. And they put it up and you think, wow, that’s the right picture for that wall. It just fits right.

(23:30 – 23:43)

That’s the point of this proverb here. The point is that words, when they’re spoken at the right time, they just fit perfectly. They are apt for the situation.

(23:43 – 24:12)

The principle is this. Wise people say just what is needed. And Proverbs is saying then that we can grow in wisdom in our words and we can become, as we avoid some of the negatives we’ve talked about, but as we grow in wisdom and as we grow in Christlikeness, we can actually grow into the sorts of people who will start to say the right thing at the right time in the right sort of way.

(24:13 – 24:23)

I wish that was more the case with my words. I’m sure you wish it was more the case with yours. I know that it was always the case with Jesus’ words.

(24:25 – 24:47)

Luke 4, 22 says, all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. In Matthew 13, 54, coming to his hometown, he taught the people in their synagogue and they were astonished. Where did this man get such wisdom and miraculous powers, they asked.

(24:48 – 25:01)

And in John 7, 46, never has anyone spoken like this man. Jesus’ words were always wise. His words were restrained when necessary.

(25:02 – 25:13)

He was silent when he needed to be silent. Remember, he was silent before the cross. Jesus’ words could be strong at times, but he only ever wounded the pride of the prideful.

(25:15 – 25:24)

His words didn’t bring unnecessary wounds. They brought healing to those in spiritual need. Jesus was the epitome of the gentle answer.

(25:24 – 25:45)

His tone was always the right tone because, well, God always speaks with the right tone. And he always said the absolutely perfect, fitting thing in every single scenario, including even when he was dying on a cross. We can never match the perfect words of Jesus.

(25:46 – 26:00)

James says, if any man can control his tongue, he is the perfect man. That’s Christ. And yet, the encouragement of Proverbs is we can grow in this.

(26:01 – 26:14)

We can. We can make slow progress. I was listening, again, when I was painting, to Graham Beynon the other day on Battling Sin.

(26:15 – 26:28)

Very worth listening through. He did five lectures at Keswick the other week on Battling Sin. And he had this great little line where he said, the battle never stops, but the battle line can move.

(26:29 – 26:40)

The battle never stops, but the battle line can move. What he was saying was, you know, as an immature Christian, maybe you just blurt out all the nonsense without a filter. The battle’s still there.

(26:40 – 27:06)

He said, but 15 years on, 20 years on, you might have stopped saying the nonsense, but you’re still thinking it. And it’s true, isn’t it? The battle’s always there, but can we make that little bit of progress, little by little, to grow in our words? Let’s briefly pray. Father, thank you for addressing us tonight.

(27:06 – 27:16)

Thank you for your wisdom on our words. Thank you for the perfect man who controlled this tongue. We pray for real progress in this area.

(27:17 – 27:28)

We pray that we will say what is helpful and healing, rather than what is reckless and wounding. And we ask this for the extension of your kingdom. Amen.

The post Words and Wisdom – Proverbs appeared first on Greenview Church.

(0:26 – 0:40)

If they say, come along with us, let’s lie in wait for innocent blood. Let’s ambush some harmless soul. Let’s swallow them alive like the grave and whole like those who go down to the pit.

(0:41 – 0:53)

We will get all sorts of valuable things and fill our houses with plunder. Cast lots with us and we will all share the loot. My son, do not go along with them.

(0:55 – 1:08)

Do not set foot on their paths, for their feet rush into evil. They are swift to shed blood. How useless to spread a net where every bird can see it.

(1:10 – 1:20)

These men lie in wait for their own blood. They ambush only themselves. Such are the paths of all who go after ill-gotten gain.

(1:22 – 1:33)

It takes away the life of those who get it. Out in the open, wisdom calls aloud. She raises her voice in the public square.

(1:34 – 1:53)

On top of the wall, she cries out. At the city gate, she makes her speech. How long will you who are simple love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? Repent at my rebuke.

(1:54 – 2:17)

Then I will pour out my thoughts to you. I will make known to you my teachings. But since you refuse to listen when I call, and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand, since you disregard all my advice and do not accept my rebuke, I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you.

(2:18 – 2:47)

I will mock when calamity overtakes you, when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelms you. Then they will call to me, but I will not answer. They will look for me, but will not find me, since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the Lord.

(2:48 – 3:17)

Since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them. But whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease without fear of harm.

(3:18 – 3:40)

This is God’s word. When you go for a walk in the forest or in a park, you will sometimes come to a fork in the path. So you know the kind of thing where you can’t just keep on going.

(3:41 – 3:54)

There’s a right and a left, perhaps maybe a yellow trail and a blue trail. And you, the walker, have to choose. You have to pick which path you’re going to take.

(3:55 – 4:04)

And if you’re a bit of a ditherer, it might take you five minutes. And if you’re more impulsive, it might take you five seconds. But you pick one.

(4:05 – 4:27)

And of course, you then commit to one. You tend to continue doggedly down that same path, whether it was a good idea or not. Well, in the book of Proverbs, which we’ve started to look at last Sunday, we’re learning lots of things about what it means to be wise.

(4:28 – 5:03)

But one of the big things we need to really grasp about wisdom is that the life of wisdom begins with a choice. In fact, it not only begins with wisdom, but it actually continues with a continual choice to be wise. And you see, if we don’t commit to this path, if we don’t keep committing to this path, then the default reality is that we’ve chosen another path, a path that’s leading to a very bad destination.

(5:05 – 5:30)

Well, this is what we’re going to think about this morning. We’re going to look at the final two thirds of Proverbs 1. And these two passages that we’re going to look at together are focussing on voices and choices. So it’s about the choices we make, but also about the voices that entice us to make either choice.

(5:31 – 5:45)

So let’s begin, if you’ve got your Bible open, with the first section. This is verses 8 to 19. And in this first passage, what we hear are voices that will entice you to death.

(5:46 – 6:06)

Voices that will entice you to death. Last week, we looked at the introduction to the book of Proverbs. In fact, we looked at the intro to the intro, which was verses 1 to 7 of chapter 1. Those verses explain the book’s purpose.

(6:07 – 6:25)

And they also showcased the appeal of wisdom. It was kind of presenting it as a very attractive thing. But now, having received that initial orientation, we progress to nine chapters of a father’s passionate appeal.

(6:26 – 6:59)

We now hear a series of speeches, of lectures, of calls. You could call this full section, the call to wisdom, chapters 1 to 9. And in these chapters, the father is saying to his son, choose wisdom, not folly. Because only if the son chooses wisdom, will he then apply himself to the Proverbs that follow in chapter 10 and afterwards.

(7:01 – 7:18)

And what we have in our passage today is the first speech from the father to the son. You see that in verse 8. Listen, my son, it begins. I guess we could think of this son perhaps as the son of Solomon himself.

(7:20 – 7:30)

And yet, as we saw last week, this book is addressing really all of the sons of Israel. It’s addressing all those who would seek God’s wisdom. All who want to grow in knowledge.

(7:32 – 7:51)

And what is this son to listen to? He is to listen to his father’s instruction. And he’s not to forsake his mother’s teaching. I was just thinking as I was reviewing this earlier this morning, that this must be the most uncool sermon point that you’ve ever heard.

(7:51 – 8:07)

That basically, you need to listen to your mum and dad. And the wisdom that they’ve already gained from the Lord. And he says there in verse 8, doesn’t he? In kind of strange imagery to us, the garland and the crown.

(8:08 – 8:24)

But basically he’s saying it will reward you. It will be a wonderful blessing for you if you stick with the teaching of your father and mother. The difficulty is that there is an alternative option.

(8:25 – 8:40)

There is another path this son can choose. And there are other voices that he can listen to. If you like, his mum and dad are already on the wisdom trail.

(8:40 – 8:59)

And they’re kind of calling the son to follow them, follow their instruction up that path. But at the fork in the road, there’s another group, a gang really, of what the passage calls sinful men. And they’re already on the path of folly.

(8:59 – 9:16)

And they are enticing the son to follow them, to come with them down their road. It’s like the sirens in the story of Odysseus really. They’re luring him with their tempting voices.

(9:16 – 9:25)

Look at verse 11. If they say, there’s the strategy, it’s their words. And they’re gonna say lots of things to this young man.

(9:25 – 9:41)

All the way from verse 11 down to verse 14, they’re saying things to him, trying to persuade him to follow them. Now, please notice with me how temptation works. Because that’s what we’re dealing with here.

(9:42 – 10:12)

These are the dynamics of temptation to sin. And whoever you are this morning, whether you are a follower of Jesus, or whether you are not, we all know what it is to be tempted to do the wrong thing. What are the dynamics of that? Well, what temptation does is it tells you what you will gain, and it hides from you what you will lose.

(10:13 – 10:24)

That’s what temptation always does. It tells you, here’s what you will gain by doing this. And it is silent about what you will lose.

(10:25 – 10:35)

So the gang say to the young man, yes, come with us. Yes, we’re gonna do this kind of hideous thing really. Even they know that, notice the language there.

(10:35 – 10:46)

They are going to kill an innocent man. They’re aware of that. This innocent guy walking down the street, he doesn’t deserve to be ambushed.

(10:47 – 10:58)

But think about the upside. Think about what you will gain if you do this with us. And there’s two things they dangle before this young man.

(10:59 – 11:20)

They dangle cash, and they dangle community. So on the one hand, cash. Verse 13, once we’ve killed this poor person, we will get all sorts of valuable things and fill our houses with plunder.

(11:21 – 11:40)

This is basically a get-rich-quick scheme with a deadly dose of murder in the mix. And even if the act is hideous, don’t you feel attracted by the outcome that they’re presenting here? I mean, I do. Because what the outcome they’re offering is this.

(11:41 – 12:01)

They’re saying, you don’t need to endure the slow, hard grind of accumulating wealth that everyone has to go through. Those many decades of working and earning a wage Monday to Friday, and it’s slow and hard and a gradual increase in salary and so on. But you can avoid all of that.

(12:01 – 12:16)

And just in a matter of minutes, you can gain all of the security that money brings with no effort at all. That is a strong temptation. And that’s the main thing they dangle before the son.

(12:18 – 12:32)

But there’s also something more subtle that they’re holding out to him as well. Notice the implied promise of community. Verse 11, come along with us.

(12:33 – 12:47)

Verse 14, we will all share the loot. These men are not just offering money, they’re offering community. A kind of unholy church.

(12:48 – 13:30)

It’s very possible to sin alone and in isolation. I mean, we would sin if we were living stranded on a desert island, wouldn’t we? But very often, one thing that really leads us into much more trouble is the fact that we often are seeking a place within a friendship group or a workplace environment or some community that we want to just feel part of. And so it’s the child at school who joins in with the gossips and the bullies because they don’t want to be a target and they want to stay in the cool crowds.

(13:31 – 13:54)

It’s the student, isn’t it, who gives up their ethics on freshers week just because they want to fit in. And it’s the adult who morphs into a cutthroat person at work because that’s what you need to be to be a success in this kind of workplace. And this is what temptation always does.

(13:55 – 14:12)

It’s the reason why we often give in to temptation because it promises us things. It says, this is what you will gain. Money, community, instant pleasure, more power, greater control.

(14:13 – 14:26)

And we want these things. And so we seek these things. But what temptation fails to then tell us is this is what you will lose.

(14:28 – 14:53)

It tells you what you will gain in the short term, but it’s silent about the loss. And notice here, very significantly, it is the father from verse 15 who alone speaks up about the deadly consequences. Not a peep from the friends, but the father speaks up and says, my son, do not go along with them.

(14:53 – 15:03)

Do not set foot on their paths. And back in verse 10, do not give in. Do not go along.

(15:04 – 15:19)

Do not set foot. Do not give in. It’s pretty black and white advice, isn’t it? Don’t even put your big toe on the road these men are going.

(15:20 – 15:42)

Because this father knows what every wise person knows, that the first step is rarely the last step. If you don’t want to fall off the precipice, don’t take a step in that direction. That’s a crucial bit of advice in so many areas of life and temptation.

(15:43 – 16:05)

If we think we can dabble in things that we know are unhelpful, but don’t worry, we won’t go too far, then we’re just kidding ourselves. Because that’s not how the sinful human heart works. Don’t put your foot on the path.

(16:06 – 16:19)

And why not? This is a very good parent here. He doesn’t just say don’t or do. He says why? Because this path leads to death.

(16:20 – 16:34)

This is what the enticing voices have failed to mention, that if the son goes with them, he is walking into a trap. And the trap isn’t for the victim. It isn’t for the person who’s going to be harmed.

(16:34 – 16:46)

The son himself will be trapped and harmed and killed if he goes down this road. Look at that. It’s a shocking surprise, isn’t it, in verse 18.

(16:47 – 16:56)

You’re not expecting that punchline. These men lie in wait for their own blood. They ambush only themselves.

(16:57 – 17:13)

They think they’re killing the victim, but they’re actually signing their own death warrant. Because they won’t get away with what they do in the world of God’s justice. They will die.

(17:13 – 17:23)

They will be ambushed. And that outcome should be very obvious to them. I think that’s the point, the obviousness of it.

(17:23 – 17:50)

I think that’s the point of verse 17, which is a bit of an ambiguous verse about the net and the bird and so on. How useless to spread a net where every bird can see it. I suppose back in those days, I mean, I’ve never tried to catch a bird for food, but if you were trying to catch a bird because you needed to eat, then I suppose you wouldn’t lay the net out in the open, uncamouflaged for the bird just to see what you were doing.

(17:51 – 18:05)

And even a bird wouldn’t be dumb enough if you just put a big obvious net in the middle of a path. And the point the father is making is that the trap here is obvious. Yes, the money might be good.

(18:05 – 18:15)

Yes, the community might be fun for a while. But if you rob people and kill people, then eventually the net is going to embroil you and kill you. That should be obvious.

(18:18 – 18:40)

It should have been obvious to Judas. As we read in the New Testament, I was thinking about this, the many parallels between Proverbs 1 and what we see with one of Jesus’ disciples. Judas betrayed Jesus to death for a reasonable amount of money.

(18:41 – 19:03)

30 pieces of silver, according to one thing I read, is about four months wages in those days. So for four months of wages, not life-changing money, but a significant amount of money, he was willing to betray Jesus to die. And yet, within 24 hours of that decision, Judas himself was dead.

(19:05 – 19:27)

And within 42 hours of that, the one that he had put to death was raised again to life. Who made the wise decision? The great lesson is captured in verse 19, that such is the destiny of all who go after ill fortune. Ill-gotten gain.

(19:29 – 19:55)

You see, it’s not just the murderers and bank robbers and career criminals who need to learn the lesson here. The Father’s giving a very extreme example, but he’s saying this applies to any situation where we put gain over what is right. Any situation where we harm other people to get the things we want.

(19:55 – 20:14)

It applies to all situations in life when we cut corners and avoid the slow, steady progress of wisdom. In all such situations, there is a disastrous outcome. And so suddenly this passage feels a lot more relevant to all of us.

(20:15 – 20:41)

Because I don’t imagine that many of us are thinking of becoming career criminals, which is kind of what he’s describing here. But the point is, the same dynamic, the same dynamic of foolishness, of seeking instant gain by unethical choices, is something we’re all tempted to do. The folly of cutting corners morally to get ahead a bit quicker.

(20:43 – 20:58)

The folly of harming others because we selfishly need something or want something. And if we need to push them to the side, if it hurts them a little bit, well, that’s just tough. This is a warning to each one of us.

(20:59 – 21:14)

Not to go down the wrong road and follow the foolish path. And yet what follows is, as the father’s first speech develops, is a bit of a change of gears. And so we come to verses 20 to 33.

(21:16 – 21:30)

And now we have something slightly different. After the voices that will entice you to death, we now have a voice that can save you from disaster. A voice that can save you from disaster.

(21:31 – 21:46)

And what we now have, quite curiously, is a woman’s voice. Her name is Wisdom, verse 20. And notice where she is.

(21:47 – 21:56)

She’s in the streets of the city. And she’s also in the public square. And she’s also on the top of the wall.

(21:57 – 22:25)

And she’s also at the city gates. Now, all of these locations are public, the most public places in a city. So there’s a shift here from the domestic background of the previous verses, the home situation of eight to 19, where you can almost imagine the sinful men kind of enticing the young man to follow them into the streets, follow them into folly.

(22:26 – 22:45)

But now we’ve left that home perspective, and now we are in the city, we’re in the streets. And the picture here is that the young man or the young woman has now gone into the world, as it were. And Lady Wisdom is going out to them.

(22:46 – 22:57)

She’s not the father or the mother, but she’s very much in league with them. And she’s saying very similar things to them. She’s after the same goal.

(22:58 – 23:40)

In the book of Proverbs, Lady Wisdom is a repeated character who personifies godly wisdom. She isn’t God, but she acts and speaks in ways that God speaks and acts. And so she goes to the public places and she cries out at the top of her lungs, verse 22, how long will all of you simple people love your simple ways? Notice here that the assumption is that the people she’s crying out to have been choosing the foolish path for some time.

(23:41 – 23:57)

The simple, the naive have been loving their simple ways. There are people who delight in mockery. There are fools here who have hardened so much that they now hate knowledge.

(23:58 – 24:12)

Whereas the previous section was, what choice will you make? This section is much more, you’ve made the wrong choice. Now turn from it. Or to use the biblical word, repent.

(24:14 – 24:26)

Repent means turn around. It means do a U-turn. It means if you’re on the wrong trail, even if you’ve gone many miles down it and you know you’re going the wrong way, stop, turn around and go back to the junction.

(24:28 – 24:40)

Because if you do that, even now, it need not be too late. Look at verse 22. Then, positively, I will pour out my thoughts to you, says Lady Wisdom.

(24:40 – 25:04)

I will make known to you my teachings. There’s still opportunity for this person who’s out in the streets to come back and learn the thoughts, the teachings of Lady Wisdom. But Lady Wisdom is not confident that they will listen, which is why she speaks so strongly with a grave warning in the verses that follow.

(25:06 – 25:20)

But since you refuse to listen when I call and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand, that stretching out the hand there is a hand of judgement. Lady Wisdom’s holding out a hand and saying, I’m going to bring judgement. But they’re disregarding that.

(25:20 – 25:40)

Since you disregard all my advice and don’t accept my rebuke, I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you. I will mock when calamity overcomes you. Lady Wisdom goes on to describe the calamity as like a sudden whirlwind.

(25:41 – 25:59)

That’s a perfect image, isn’t it? Of sudden disaster, you know, whirlwind just sweeps through. And destroys everything in its path. And when the whirlwind comes, there will be no chance to call on Lady Wisdom then to save you.

(26:02 – 26:22)

And this all sounds very grim and maybe harsh to some people’s ears. Lady Wisdom might sound a little bit mean, you might think, saying she will laugh when disaster comes on them. But notice that even here, this is Lady Wisdom’s attempt to wake these people up.

(26:23 – 26:39)

Even by saying that she’s going to mock them and laugh at them when disaster comes, it’s an attempt to spur them into action. Look at verse 32. For the waywardness of the simple will kill them and the complacency of fools will destroy them.

(26:39 – 26:59)

You see, the big issue here is complacency. One of the great problems when we get trapped in a life of selfishness and sin and we ignore God is that things can seem to run smoothly for a while. They can go well in the short term.

(27:00 – 27:14)

It’s kind of like the person who has committed a serious crime, but they haven’t been caught yet. And they’re chilling at home every night and they’re eating ice cream. And life is good.

(27:14 – 27:40)

And they’re completely complacent. And then one morning at 5 a.m., the whirlwind and the door is bashed in and utter destruction comes. Yes, these are strong words, but they are designed by Lady Wisdom to jolt the complacent person out of their sleep and stupor.

(27:42 – 28:20)

Whereas verses 8 to 19 were aimed at the person starting out, don’t choose a life where you reject God’s wisdom. Verses 20 to 33 are saying, if you’ve long since chosen that life of foolishness and decided that your way is better, God lovingly warns you through Lady Wisdom that however happy life is in the short term, it will lead to disaster in the long term. And yet there is an offer, a call to the complacent, a call to the prodigal son or prodigal daughter.

(28:21 – 28:38)

God is saying you still yet can choose a different path. The whoever of verse 33 is singular, singular. It’s as if the masses won’t listen.

(28:40 – 29:03)

It’s as if most people won’t respond, but maybe there’s one, maybe there’s just one person here among that crowd going the wrong direction, a whoever who might say, I need to turn around. I need to stop listening to the wrong voices. I need to stop listening to the voice of atheism.

(29:04 – 29:34)

I need to stop listening to the voices of doubt and agnosticism. I need to stop listening to the voices of self-centred, short-term pleasure-based living, which is fun in the moment, but which is leading me to a disastrous life and eternity. Whoever listens to the voice of wisdom will live in safety and be at ease without fear of harm.

(29:35 – 30:12)

And I guess that kind of has an application just in general everyday life, doesn’t it? If you choose a wise life and you steer clear of folly, then the consequences of your wrong behaviour in that sense won’t follow you. You’ll suffer for other reasons, but you won’t suffer because you’ve been a complete idiot. But I guess as Christians who understand the gospel and the fuller picture of the New Testament, this is not just about living a good life now, but it’s about that great hope of living forever in relationship with God through Christ.

(30:13 – 30:25)

Lady Wisdom is not Jesus, but she acts and speaks like Jesus. And she calls us to turn around. You know, Jesus is God’s final words to the world.

(30:26 – 30:54)

And Jesus, if you think about it, he came to the streets and the public places of our world, didn’t he? He went to where people were. He didn’t just hang out in the temple, but he went right to where people were and he called people to repent and he called people to seek God’s wisdom. And the really tragic thing is that the cry of Jesus, who is the epitome of wisdom, was largely rejected by the world.

(30:57 – 31:24)

They took Jesus and they nailed him to a cross. That’s what they thought of the wisdom of God. But in contrast to the foolish son who abandons his father’s instruction and murders and steals for ill-gotten gain, Jesus listened to his father’s instruction and he died as an innocent man at the hands of a gang.

(31:26 – 31:47)

It’s amazing to think, isn’t it, that Jesus died in the place of a murderer, Barabbas, and he died in between two robbers, two thieves. Because on the cross, Jesus was dying for people just like that. People like you and me who go after ill-gotten gain.

(31:49 – 32:17)

And he died in order that we might be forgiven and free. And so just a few, I hope, pointed but helpful applications as we finish. Maybe you’re here this morning and you are a younger person and you’re just at the point in life where you are making the big choice about what fundamental path you’re going to take in life.

(32:18 – 32:36)

The message of this passage is really simple. Choose the way of wisdom and realise, and this is something that as a younger person who grew up in church, I struggled to realise. Realise that there is no need to go down the wrong path to test whether it’s the wrong path.

(32:37 – 32:43)

Because the trap is so obvious. Death is so obvious. Others have been caught in the net.

(32:44 – 32:58)

You can see it for yourself, surely. And therefore, you don’t need to go down the roads to experience that destruction for yourself. So choose God’s way by putting your faith in Christ and by committing yourself to follow him.

(32:59 – 33:14)

I wonder if there’s someone here you kind of very consciously need to make that decision. And you’re maybe thinking, I can just keep sitting on the fence. But God’s word is saying today, there is no such thing as sitting on the fence.

(33:15 – 33:35)

So that’s the first kind of application of this. The second one is maybe to the person who already has chosen the wrong path. And maybe you’re sitting here this morning you might be in church, but you’re very, very far away from God in your heart.

(33:36 – 34:01)

Or it could be maybe more likely you’re maybe listening to this online because you don’t go to church anymore, but you just listen in every so often. And long ago, you left the influence of a Christian home. You left maybe what your parents taught you of the gospel or a Christian gran or the friend who introduced you to Jesus years ago.

(34:02 – 34:17)

And maybe you believed for a little while and then you rejected it, or maybe you just never believed. And there you are, you’re out there in the world as it were. And maybe it’s already bearing bad fruits.

(34:19 – 34:30)

And you’re realising that you maybe picked the wrong path. But there’s a lot of pride there. And it’s really difficult to humble yourself and say, I’ve got the whole thing wrong.

(34:31 – 34:45)

Maybe that’s you. Or maybe even worse, maybe life is actually going okay in the short term. You’ve not been struck by lightning yet.

(34:47 – 35:23)

But you need to realise, I lovingly say to you that complacency today leads to catastrophe one day. Even now hear the call to turn around. And thirdly, if you’ve chosen the path of wisdom and you’re basically committed to it, we continue to face the daily challenge of competing voices, don’t we? You know, none of us will wake up tomorrow, even if you’ve been a Christian for many years without facing all sorts of choices about how to live tomorrow.

(35:24 – 35:32)

The temptations still come. The voices still speak. The battle is very real.

(35:34 – 36:12)

And we need the encouragements and the warnings of this passage to help us. Maybe when your next battling temptation, and it will be tomorrow on a number of fronts, you could turn to Proverbs one as a place to help you in a moment of temptation and difficulty. Let the words of a wise father and his expose of what temptation is not telling you, let that strengthen you, strengthen your resolve to reject the enticing voices of quick sinful gain.

(36:13 – 36:41)

Because in the end, the voice of wisdom has something much better to offer us than the short term gain of folly. It offers us great reward in this life and in the next. Let’s take a moment to reflect on what we’ve heard.

(36:49 – 37:09)

Heavenly Father, we thank you that your son listened to your voice and in the end, it led him to life. It led him out of the pits to the highest place of honour and glory. We rejoice in the path he chose.

(37:11 – 37:37)

We rely not on ourselves, but in Jesus faithfulness to you. But in light of that, we pray that you will help us to choose wisdom, to choose Christ, to choose repentance, to choose your way. Lord, there’s so many situations here of how that might speak to individuals.

(37:39 – 37:52)

Please call us, each of us, in the way that individually we need to hear your call. And may we respond today with the help of your spirit. In Jesus’ name we ask, amen.

The post Voices – Proverbs 1v8-33 appeared first on Greenview Church.

(0:13 – 0:38)

They call it things like life hacks, personal development, or self-help. But through books, podcasts, social media feeds, people want to skill up in every area of their life. They want to eat better, sleep better, parent better, feel better.

(0:38 – 1:03)

They want to be better communicators, be better at handling conflict. And in all these things, they listen to the experts, the people who seem to know, seem to have cracked it, and they look to them for the insight that they need. Humans are hardwired to want wisdom.

(1:04 – 1:27)

And this morning, we’re starting a new series in the Bible, a series in the Old Testament part of the Bible that offers us wisdom. The book of Proverbs is a book of profound wisdom. And not just any kind of wisdom, but God’s wisdom.

(1:28 – 1:50)

This book is the Creator’s wisdom for life in the Creator’s world. And so, we’re going to start to look at it this morning. We’re going to find our bearings in the opening seven verses of chapter one, and it would be good just to open your Bible once again to that passage.

(1:50 – 2:12)

Now, just to orientate you a little bit, chapters one to nine of Proverbs is a lengthy introduction to the whole book. It’s a huge introduction to the Proverbs proper from chapter 10. But the first seven verses of the book are an intro to the intro.

(2:13 – 2:37)

It’s kind of like the front door before you get into the porch. And in these verses, we get some important insights into why Proverbs was written and how we can benefit from it. So, let me suggest there are four things to learn about Proverbs and about wisdom this morning.

(2:38 – 2:55)

Firstly, wisdom has one source. Wisdom has one source. There is, if you like, one expert that we are going to be listening to in the book of Proverbs.

(2:55 – 3:11)

He’s identified in verse one as Solomon. And we’re going to hear Solomon’s wisdom through the means of Proverbs. Notice there, verse one, the Proverbs of Solomon.

(3:12 – 3:28)

Now, Proverbs are what the book of Proverbs is most famous for. And they’re mostly found from chapter 10 onwards. But what are Proverbs? Let’s give you just a very brief definition at the beginning of the series.

(3:29 – 3:48)

Proverbs are short sayings that give you greater insight in the skill of living. So, for example, here’s a short saying that will give you insight into the skill of living. This is from Proverbs 26, verse 15.

(3:49 – 4:05)

The sluggard buries his hand in the dish. He is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth. Here is a man so lazy that his hand is stuck in the bowl of popcorn.

(4:06 – 4:27)

And it’s a funny, it’s a sad, it’s a pathetic picture, but it’s a wise little prompt to tell you don’t live your life like that. And Proverbs is full of these sorts of sayings. And the source of them is largely Solomon.

(4:28 – 4:51)

Now, that’s intriguing, isn’t it? That Solomon is named as the sole author. Because actually, when you read the book carefully, and some of you might have read the whole book through, you’ll know that there’s actually a few other authors who have cameo appearances. So there’s a little group of wise men in chapters 22 to 24.

(4:51 – 5:09)

They’re just called the wise. And then at the end of the book, near the end, you have a man named Ager in chapter 30 who gives you his wisdom. And then at the start of chapter 31, there’s King Lemuel and the wisdom that his mum taught him.

(5:10 – 5:27)

So it’s not all Solomon, but it’s mostly Solomon. Solomon’s wisdom fills chapters 10 to 22, and it returns in chapters 25 to 29. He is named as the sole author.

(5:28 – 5:44)

And I think that’s intentional. I think God wants us to see Solomon as this one great source of wisdom. Why is that so? Well, I think one of the reasons is that it ties Proverbs’ wisdom to God’s wisdom.

(5:46 – 6:00)

If you know the story of Solomon, he was an extraordinary individual who lived an extraordinary life. Very famously, God asked him for anything that he wanted. Just imagine God said, you can have anything on the menu.

(6:00 – 6:24)

And it struck me that Solomon must have been a pretty wise guy to begin with, because he had the wisdom to ask for wisdom. And God poured out unprecedented wisdom into Solomon’s mind and gave him an unprecedented amount of insight. Maybe he, perhaps he was the wisest man since Adam.

(6:25 – 6:44)

And he becomes this enormous fountain of wisdom. The book of Kings tells us that he wrote over 3,000 Proverbs, wisdom’s kind of flowing out of this man. And for a period of time, Israel flourished under this wise king.

(6:46 – 7:10)

Things would go awry eventually, when even great Solomon made foolish choices. But the point here is that the wisdom of Proverbs, because it is coming from Solomon, is therefore coming from God. The one source of wisdom is ultimately, through Solomon, God himself.

(7:12 – 7:37)

And that means that we can trust the wisdom of Proverbs. With all due respect, we can trust this wisdom far more than the wisdom of the best-selling life hack book in Waterstones. And also notice just something else here briefly, that Solomon is described as the son of David, king of Israel.

(7:38 – 7:44)

Just notice the kingly theme there. Notice that Solomon is the son of a king. He himself is a king.

(7:45 – 8:03)

And therefore, his son will also become a king. And one of the themes of this book is that Solomon is instructing his son in how to be a wise king. And I’m not gonna develop that much now, but just to note that, that this connects the book of Proverbs with kingship.

(8:05 – 8:25)

And there’s going to be lots in this book about how a king should rule wisely. And that’s important because it ties the book of Proverbs into the rest of the Bible. It ties Proverbs into the theme of a great story of humanity needing a great and wise king, ultimately fulfilled in Jesus.

(8:26 – 8:43)

So it’s an intriguing start. Proverbs is presented as having one source of wisdom, but if it has one source, it also has many dimensions. Secondly, wisdom has many dimensions.

(8:43 – 9:04)

And here we start to wrestle with what wisdom is. Now, when I started researching this book, one of the things that everyone pointed out was the meaning of the word wisdom. And folk pointed out that the Hebrew word for wisdom, it actually means skill or skilful.

(9:05 – 9:23)

So for example, in the Old Testament, when the craftsmen were building the tabernacle, the temporary worship place for God, Exodus describes them as skilful craftsmen. But actually the word the Bible uses there is the word wisdom. They were wise craftsmen.

(9:23 – 9:36)

It’s the same word that’s here. The craftsmen had the wisdom, the skillfulness to know how to build that complex structure. So that’s a helpful starting definition.

(9:36 – 9:54)

Wisdom is skill and how to live. But in verses two to six of Proverbs 1, that’s filled out in a lot more detail. And the author gives us various words and shows us the many dimensions of wisdom.

(9:55 – 10:14)

Wisdom is more like a many-sided jewel than a simple 2D image. And so it includes things like understanding words of insight, verse two. And it’s about receiving instruction, verse three.

(10:15 – 10:28)

And about listening, verse five. And adding to our learning. And wisdom, verse six, is about understanding Proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise.

(10:30 – 10:59)

And just grouping some of those dimensions together into a bit of a ball, all of those ones I’ve just mentioned there are something to do with understanding, with content, intellectual knowledge content. Wisdom, at least in part, is information that you need to know. Or to put it another way, people are often unwise simply because they don’t know any better.

(11:00 – 11:11)

Like they actually don’t know any better. They don’t know enough. That’s why children need instruction from their parents, even though they hate it.

(11:11 – 11:31)

Because left to themselves, they won’t receive enough insight into life at a quick enough pace. They need information on how the world works. And so wisdom is the skill of living, and it’s partly to do with understanding things.

(11:32 – 11:48)

But notice it’s also acting on that knowledge. Verse two speaks of gaining wisdom and instruction. And the word instruction there in verse two, it probably has a corrective tone.

(11:48 – 12:08)

It could be translated discipline rather than instruction. So wisdom is the instruction of a disciplining parent. It’s telling the five-year-old to stop standing so close to the curb when they’re beside the road.

(12:08 – 12:25)

It’s instruction for behavioural change. Verse three talks of instruction in prudent behaviour. Verse five, about the discerning, getting guidance, knowing which path to choose.

(12:27 – 12:46)

And it’s about wise dealing in what is right and just and fair, verse three. Notice there’s something important about wisdom that sometimes we need wisdom to know what is right and just and fair. And we might think that’s strange.

(12:46 – 13:25)

Isn’t just right and wrong, just simple and clear? Sometimes in life, some things are very clear and straightforward and black and white. And the law of God says, you know, do not murder or do not steal. But we all know this, don’t we, that there are many situations in life in our workplace, in our relationships, and how we handle money, where we need great wisdom in knowing what is the right thing to do here? What does justice and fairness look like in this particular situation? And it’s not always immediately obvious.

(13:25 – 13:37)

We have to wrestle for the wisdom to know what the right thing is. And so that’s something of what wisdom is. It’s hard to kind of put it all in a bottle.

(13:38 – 13:51)

It’s skillfulness in living. It starts with insight, intellectual knowledge, and it leads to the best course of action. And we need this in our lives.

(13:52 – 14:25)

It’s not just Israelites in Solomon’s day who need wisdom. One of the reasons why I chose the passage last week from Philippians 1 was so that we would see that, that wisdom is still needed in the Christian life. What was Paul praying for last week in Philippians 1? He prayed that they would have knowledge and depth of insight in order that they would discern what is best and would live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ.

(14:27 – 14:44)

That is very proverbial. We continue to need this wisdom. But the question is, are we hungry for it? Do you and I want it? Because the next thing we see is that all of us need wisdom.

(14:45 – 15:10)

Our third point this morning is that wisdom has multiple audiences, and it includes us all. So did you notice in verses two to six that it also tells us who wisdom is for? Look at verse four. Forgiving prudence to those who are simple, knowledge and discretion to the young.

(15:11 – 15:21)

Good news for you if you’re a young person. I don’t know who this morning would categorise themselves as young in the Bible. It’s under 30, usually, is how the Bible considers it.

(15:22 – 15:34)

But if you’re in that age range, the book of Proverbs is for you. You are a target audience of this book. And that’s reflected in the rest of the long intro.

(15:35 – 15:49)

We’re gonna see a father instructing his young son in how to live wisely. Our society idolises the young. And there are many brilliant things about being young.

(15:50 – 16:20)

If you’re 46 like me, you kind of wish you could go back to when you were 26 or 16. And yet, and yet, one of the difficult realities of being young, one of the few downsides is that you need to grow in wisdom. There is so much about life you don’t get yet, which is why, incidentally, many people do their most foolish things in life when they’re young teenagers or in their early 20s.

(16:20 – 16:28)

That’s just kind of how it is. No human being is born wise. You have to become wise.

(16:30 – 16:43)

And the designation of verse three adds also that this is for the simple. Now, the simple is a little bit different to the young. Simple is not just someone, by the way, who lacks intelligence or lacks the ability to learn.

(16:44 – 17:04)

The simple is someone who is naive about the world, someone who does not know how the world works yet. And therefore, it’s someone, the simple person is someone who is easily led by others because they don’t know any better. And so this book is for the young.

(17:04 – 17:16)

It’s for the simple, the naive. Those folk are invited to learn wisdom. And yet, it’s not just for the young and simple, is it? Have a look at verse five.

(17:16 – 17:33)

Let the wise learn and add to their learning. And let the discerning get guidance. And so in the school of wisdom, we never graduate from the course of wisdom.

(17:35 – 17:51)

You don’t get the PhD and just start dispensing the information. We’re all in school till the very end of our life, Proverbs says. And part of being a wise person is continuing to grow in your wisdom.

(17:52 – 18:17)

If you’ve had the privilege of being around people that you would consider wise, just picture in your mind, there’s someone probably coming to your mind right now, probably an older person or an older couple. You know the sort of people who just drip wisdom and you just wanna, they’re the folk you wanna hang out with at the coffee break. So if someone comes up to you afterwards and chats, maybe they think you’re wise, I don’t know, afterwards.

(18:17 – 18:41)

But that kind of person, you want to chat, you want to gain the nuggets. And there’s something about their life that you admire. Now, if you’ve had the privilege of getting up close and personal with people like that, say you’ve had the pleasure of staying with them for a few days in their house and you really see their life up close, one of the things you notice about the wise is that they are still learning.

(18:43 – 18:59)

They learn something in their Bible time in that morning. They ask questions of people. Yes, they’re the wisest person that you know, but they ask questions because they assume that they still don’t know things.

(19:00 – 19:19)

And they continue to benefit from sermons in church, even although they know as much as the preacher and they’ve heard a thousand sermons. But they still come away and say, I learned something today. And so wisdom is for the old as well as the young.

(19:20 – 19:34)

It’s for the wise as well as the simple. And we can therefore say that Proverbs is wisdom for everyone. Now, I’m labouring this point because we really need to nail this down with Proverbs.

(19:35 – 19:46)

Here’s why. This book sometimes gets a bad rap for being very narrow in its focus. And it’s true that this book will go on to address a male son, that is true.

(19:47 – 20:13)

And it’s also true that it will have many lessons for kings and rulers, and presumably none of us here or most of us here wouldn’t be in that sort of category. And yet the opening of the book, the first seven verses says nothing about just young sons or males or rulers at all, actually. This book in the opening makes clear that God wants the wisdom of Proverbs to be available to everyone.

(20:14 – 20:46)

Young and old, men and women, inexperienced, and those who are wise. So whoever you are, whatever age, whatever stage you are at, are you open to learning God’s wisdom? It’s possible, isn’t it? To get stuck in the simple stage. It’s possible, isn’t it? For various reasons, to just continue going through your life without that upward trajectory and you continue to be naive.

(20:47 – 21:17)

And then to wonder, why is my life such a mess all of the time? And it’s also possible, it’s also possible to have stopped at a plateau. You know a plateau, you’re climbing up a mountain and then you’re making good upward progress and then you come to the flat bit and you just get a bit tired. And you just lay down and start having a rest for minutes that become hours, that become days, that become months, that become years.

(21:18 – 21:44)

And all of a sudden, we’ve actually stopped thinking and learning and growing, both in what we know and in our application of God’s word. And it may be that the book of Proverbs is challenging that. And it may be that we haven’t started or that we’ve kind of got stuck along the way because we’re neglecting the fourth and final observation today.

(21:45 – 21:56)

Really, the final point is a key. It’s the great key to living wisely and it’s this. Wisdom has one starting point.

(21:57 – 22:11)

Wisdom has one starting point. Now we’re looking now at verse seven. And what we have in verse seven is a kind of foundational principle without which we cannot grow in wisdom.

(22:12 – 22:32)

It’s a nugget of wisdom in itself. Some people view verse seven as the first proverb in the book of Proverbs. We’re told that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

(22:33 – 22:53)

Notice there that this is the first mention of another category of person who stands in contrast to the wise, the fool. And we learn here that fools despise wisdom. They hate it and they despise God’s correction.

(22:54 – 23:05)

Notice that it’s not that they’re unintelligent. It’s not that they lack mental capacity. Fools, in the Bible’s view, can be bright.

(23:05 – 23:22)

They can have PhDs, but the issue is their attitude to God’s wisdom and to God himself. They don’t buy into the whole life mindset of verse seven. They don’t fear the Lord.

(23:23 – 23:32)

Which is the beginning of knowledge. Let me just say as a side note there, don’t be thrown by the word knowledge. It’s the same thing as wisdom.

(23:32 – 23:49)

If you look at, there’s another repeat of this in chapter nine, verse 10, and the word wisdom is in place of knowledge there. So the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. It’s kind of like the gate that then leads to the path of wisdom.

(23:49 – 24:06)

You can’t get on the path of wisdom unless you go through this gate. It’s the beginning of wisdom. And it’s not that once you get through the door, you just sort of forget about fearing the Lord, because the way in is the way on.

(24:08 – 24:34)

And yet the entry point is the fear of the Lord. And you’ll notice that it’s not the fear of God in some sort of general terminology, but the fear of the Lord. All capital letters in our translations, because that’s translating God’s revealed name, his personal name, sometimes expressed as Yahweh.

(24:35 – 25:13)

In other words, this is not fearing any God or a God of our own construction. It is fearing the revealed God of the Bible, the God of Scripture, the God of Israel, the God who called Abraham, and the God who revealed himself to Moses, and the God who rescued a people from Egypt. It’s the God who made the amazing promise in the Garden of Eden that he would send a new human ruler, a wiser and better human ruler who would crush the head of the lying serpent.

(25:13 – 25:30)

It’s that Lord that we are particularly to fear. And there’s a lot of discussion about exactly what that means. I mean, what does it mean to fear the Lord? It’s a very rich concept, I think.

(25:30 – 25:43)

I think it’s hard to nail it down as one thing. But I think it does include the idea of the word that it uses. After all, it doesn’t speak of the love of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom.

(25:43 – 25:53)

It could have chosen that word. But it does choose the word, the fear of the Lord. And so it must include some element of reverence or respect.

(25:55 – 26:17)

Don Carson, commenting on this verse, says that God is no domesticated deity. He is not only a good God, says Carson, but a terrifying and awesome God. Even as we love God and have peace with God, we ever stand in awe of God.

(26:17 – 26:31)

He’s God. Sometimes a young toddler or a young child, I mean, it’s kind of humorous when you become a parent that this happens. But there’s this little window where they’re in awe of you.

(26:33 – 26:40)

Maybe it’s just because you’re so much bigger than them. And you can, maybe particularly as a dad, like you can do things, you can lift things. They can’t imagine lifting.

(26:41 – 27:13)

And at some point, that completely vanishes. But it strikes me that if a child can feel that way about a parent who is, after all, only a more developed human being, then how much more should we be in awe of the eternal, invisible God of creation? And so this isn’t less than reverence, I don’t think. But it is even more than that.

(27:14 – 27:35)

Because the fear of the Lord in the Bible is also tied up with relationship with God and with a right relationship with Him. And it’s sometimes described as actually a wonderful and enjoyable thing to experience the fear of the Lord. It’s something you would even want in Proverbs 19, 23, for instance.

(27:36 – 27:57)

We’re told that the fear of the Lord leads to life. Then, if you have the fear of the Lord, then one rests content and untouched by trouble. Isn’t that an amazing verse? If you know this deep, reverent relationship with God, you will be content and you will be deeply satisfied.

(27:58 – 28:29)

And so the fear of the Lord is essentially living your life in a right relationship with the revealed God, where you respect Him and trust Him and love Him. It’s living your life with the Lord at the centre of your life, not on the fringes, not as an afterthought, and not rejecting God altogether, because that would be foolish. It’s living gladly and gratefully in relationship with Him.

(28:30 – 28:53)

And this is the entry requirement to the course of wisdom. You know, some universities, they’ve got the, well, they’ve all got, haven’t they, entry requirements? And you need so many A’s or so many B’s. The entry requirement to God’s course of wisdom is a personal relationship with the Lord of the Bible.

(28:54 – 29:19)

There’s no point trying to cherry-pick the wisdom of Proverbs. There is no point trying to skill up in money management or relationships or whatever other area there may be if we haven’t gone through the gate of fearing the Lord. Maybe you’re here today and you know you haven’t done that yet.

(29:20 – 29:50)

You haven’t started that relationship with the Lord where you take God seriously. You’ve heard His words, but you’ve not taken them seriously. His serious words to repent of your sin, His serious words to believe in the good news about Jesus with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, to come under the submission of the Lord’s authority.

(29:51 – 30:27)

Let me say to you this morning that you start a life of wisdom by relying on the same Lord that you are called to fear. That personal Lord who came in the flesh, who from the beginning of His life, we should be so very relieved, the Lord Jesus Christ feared His heavenly Father. Did you know that Jesus feared the Lord? Hebrews 5 verse 7 says, Jesus’ prayers were heard because He prayed with reverence.

(30:29 – 30:48)

The Son of God perfectly feared the Lord. And He therefore grew up to be perfectly wise. And right till the end of His life, He lived with a perfect, wise obedience when He made that final choice of obeying the Father’s will and dying on the cross.

(30:50 – 31:00)

And that’s wonderfully freeing. Our attitude to fearing the Lord comes and goes. It’s right one minute and it’s not right the next.

(31:00 – 31:48)

But the good news this morning is that we rely on the perfect fear of the Lord that was consistent in the Lord Jesus. And we then depend on His sacrificial death for our sins and His resurrection which can give us that access into the presence of a holy, holy, holy God where the trembling fear of judgement is removed and there’s just a loving awe and reverence of Him. My question for you this morning is, have you relied on the Lord, the same Lord who calls you to fear Him? And if you are a Christian believer today, and I know many of you are, the way you start is the way you go on.

(31:50 – 32:10)

And it begins with our attitude to the Lord. We can listen to thousands of sermons and read hundreds of Christian books. We can sit through many Bible studies and yet not be changed because our heart posture to the Lord is not what it ought to be.

(32:11 – 32:53)

What is your heart posture to the Lord at the moment? Could you insert the word fear there in the sentence of your own heart? Or would there be another word that would have to take the place of that at this time? If we are taking God lightly these days, we cannot expect to flourish in a life of wisdom. It’s as we keep the Lord at the centre of our lives and choices that we will be able then to grow and keep growing in the rich wisdom that Proverbs has for us. Amen.

The post Wisdom Starts Here – Proverbs 1v1–7 appeared first on Greenview Church.

(0:38 – 0:56)

That likely speaks of the first day that the gospel was grasped and received by the Philippian believers. On the first day, they immediately signed up to be gospel partners with Paul. They realised that the good news was too good to just keep it to themselves.

(0:58 – 1:31)

And so they supported Paul in his ministry. And I think I need to say something really important at this point that kind of flows out of this particular verse, verse five, that you cannot be a partner in the gospel until you have first received the gospel. It would be a tragic contradiction, wouldn’t it, to act like a gospel partner, yet not be a gospel recipient.

(1:32 – 2:06)

To be, for example, someone who is a leader in a holiday Bible club or in a church youth group or something like that, and you’re telling people about Jesus, but it’s a Jesus you don’t know yourself. That’s the reason, incidentally, in our particular church, we restrict all of the roles where there is word ministry to Christian believers who are members of the church, because you can’t give away what you haven’t, first of all, received. There needs to be that first day beginning.

(2:08 – 2:34)

And maybe that will be a memorable first day for some of us, a day marked in the calendar. Or maybe, like for many people, you won’t be able to remember the exact day, but you’ll know that there must have been a first day. I was thinking of an illustration of one of these massive house renovations, you know, the kind of thing where they completely change the house.

(2:34 – 3:03)

It might take a couple of years for them to absolutely change it. And I imagine if you’re the couple, maybe, that own the house, and it’s 18 months, 19 months in, you easily could forget the exact day and the exact date that it all started. But I’m guessing as you looked around the house and saw that everything was changed, you would know, wouldn’t you, that there must have been a first day when the work commenced.

(3:04 – 4:03)

And that’s the Christian life, isn’t it? There needs to be that first day that then leads to the many days of gospel joy and gospel partnership. And I really do hope that as a church, we will keep embracing this as a focus. As we support our mission partners consistently and enthusiastically, as we maybe perhaps come alongside some of the evangelistic work we’re doing, as we come alongside some of Lucy’s initiatives as our church outreach worker, and as we’re right alongside her in presence and in prayer, sometimes one, sometimes both, is that a way we’re expressing this? Or as we do the ordinary ministries of the church that, yes, sometimes is building up Christians, but always has that gospel endeavour right at the heart of it.

(4:04 – 4:24)

A church that keeps focused on gospel partnership will often remain united with a sense of joint mission. So that’s the first commonality, the gospel, gospel partnership. But the second commonality is closely connected.

(4:24 – 4:42)

From gospel, we come next to grace. And notice that this is Paul’s next thought in verse six. Paul’s been joyful and thankful in his prayers, but now in verse six, he’s confident in God’s gracious work.

(4:43 – 5:13)

Notice that he’s not confident in himself or confident in the Philippians. He’s not even confident in a kind of direct way in their partnership itself, but he’s confident that underneath that partnership, the grace of God is working. He’s saying really in verse six, the reason our partnership exists is because God has been working in you as he has been in me.

(5:15 – 5:36)

He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. The Philippians gospel change and the Philippians gospel partnership that followed are a result of God’s creative work. Paul calls it God’s good work.

(5:37 – 5:52)

Perhaps a hint back to God’s creation activity, his good work. God is doing a new creation work in Philippi. And it was started by him, and it is continued by him.

(5:53 – 6:07)

And if you read about it in the book of Acts, you see the kind of power of God’s gracious work, don’t you, in Acts 16. And we get these little examples of conversion. And there’s Lydia, this woman who comes to faith.

(6:08 – 6:31)

And it’s interesting how the Bible describes her conversion. The text says, verse 16 of Acts 16, that the Lord opened her heart to receive Paul’s message. God had started a good work in this church, and God was carrying it on until the day of Christ.

(6:32 – 6:52)

That is the day of completion when Christ Jesus returns. God is not like the dodgy tradesman who comes and starts the job and then says, I’ve got a few other things I need to see to, and then you never see him again. God’s not like that.

(6:54 – 7:13)

Every genuine local church and every genuine believer will be a finished project. And this is at the heart of Paul’s relationship with the Philippians. In verses seven and eight, he returns to speaking of his love and affection for them.

(7:14 – 7:48)

He says, whether he’s in prison, which he is at this point, or whether he’s out and about, whether he’s defending and confirming the gospel, he says either way, in all situations, I have you in my heart. And yet the reason for this deep connection is found at the end of verse seven. What is it that really draws them together in relationship? He says, all of you share in God’s grace with me.

(7:49 – 8:14)

So God’s not just doing a good work in the Philippians’ lives he’s doing it in Paul’s life too. Paul’s a recipient of grace and the Philippians share that grace with him. Just by the way, grace is not some kind of substance that God sort of drops onto your life.

(8:15 – 8:25)

Grace is not a thing. Grace is not something separate from God that he gives to you. Grace is God’s disposition towards you.

(8:26 – 8:45)

Grace is God’s attitude of undeserved kindness towards sinful people. And Paul says, we share in God’s grace together. We together live our Christian lives under the smile of a gracious father.

(8:46 – 9:12)

And Paul doesn’t lose sight of this. Even after speaking about partnership in the gospel, even in a letter that is so focused on mission and giving and serving and the gospel task, Paul never reduces the church to a mere set of tasks. The Philippians aren’t mere business partners with Paul in ministry.

(9:13 – 9:42)

They are sharers in grace with him. A constant danger in Christian churches, particularly among believers who are A-type people, is to become so focused on the outputs of church and ministry that we stop resting in the grace of God that is among us. And it all becomes about the success and the output of our particular ministry.

(9:44 – 10:10)

But Paul saw that they weren’t just gospel partners. They were also sharers in grace. One of the reasons I love our times of communion is that it is a space in church life where we pause from the business of ministry, the hubbub of ministry, and we just sort of let out a breath together, a collective exhale.

(10:12 – 10:47)

And we simply rest together that we are sharers in the grace of God. And how we view one another, how we treat one another, how we serve alongside one another is so shaped by whether we have this perspective on each other or not. When a church doesn’t keep grace to the forefront, it quickly becomes a church that’s full of activity and ministry, but becomes characterised by pride, judgmentalism, and mere functionality.

(10:49 – 11:09)

Gospel partnership brings us together, keeps us together. The grace of God is something that begins our unity together, and it keeps us together. But thirdly, under Christ, we can add a third G. We share together thirdly, and finally, in growth.

(11:10 – 11:35)

We share together in growth. And this is seen in Paul’s prayer in verses 9 to 11, a wonderful prayer. Alec Mateer, whose commentary on Philippians I highly recommend, he points out that the imagery of growth, perhaps even the imagery of the garden or the field is subtly present in this prayer.

(11:36 – 11:48)

It’s the sort of underlying image that we should have in our minds. I mean, in verse nine, there’s the language of more and more, the language of abounding. It’s a kind of a growth language.

(11:49 – 12:13)

But it’s much more explicit in verse 11, because the end of it all is being filled with the fruit of righteousness, which appears to be the end of the growth process. And so this is all about growth. Last week, you might remember, we studied the prayer of Jabez, and it was another prayer.

(12:13 – 12:20)

It was a prayer born out of pain. This is a bit different. It’s a prayer characterised by joy.

(12:21 – 12:50)

But what is similar about this prayer and that prayer is that Jabez’s prayer was expansive. It was all about growth, in his case of territory and blessing. But I suggested last week that under the new covenant, prayers tend to go in the direction of spiritual growth, prayers for the expansion of the kingdom of Christ, and prayers for the church of Christ to grow in likeness to him.

(12:51 – 13:02)

And this is exactly the kind of prayer we have here. Paul prays for a Christian as if they are a growing tree or a growing plant. That’s what the church is like.

(13:03 – 13:14)

The gospel seed is planted. Life begins, all of grace. And as the seed grows, it grows up into love.

(13:15 – 13:36)

Pretty much the first thing that identifies a new believer is the presence of love, love for God and love for other people. Jesus says in John’s gospel that love is the characteristic of the Christian disciple. And yet this love is a growing thing.

(13:37 – 13:53)

It starts small in the beginning and it grows. And as it grows, it grows in knowledge and depth of insight. This is not love by itself, and it’s not love as we define it.

(13:53 – 14:09)

This love grows up, notice, with knowledge and depth of insight. Knowledge is the kind of content of what we know. It’s more the objective truths that we know about God and about the gospel.

(14:10 – 14:30)

It tends to be more intellectual, and that then marries with our experience. And then depth of insight, well, that’s more about kind of moral perception of God’s truth. It’s not just knowing lots of information, but it’s perceiving the goodness of things and the wickedness of things.

(14:32 – 14:52)

And so you put that package together, and what you’re starting to see is a young Christian who is growing into maturity. Their love is getting bigger. It’s growing more persistent, more gracious, more sacrificial, and their knowledge is expanding.

(14:53 – 15:16)

That’s a very important part of Christian maturity, that you know more of the Bible and more of God’s will. And as you’re growing in that, you’re also growing in moral perception. So that as you mature, you increasingly discern what’s best in your life, and you begin to make the best daily choices.

(15:17 – 15:48)

Paul speaks about choosing what is excellent, not just choosing the moral option, although it includes that, but actually choosing the best option, the most excellent way of living. It’s the wisdom that we’ll start to look at next week in the book of Proverbs. And as this kind of life of love and knowledge and discernment grows, it then leads to a purity on the inside and a blamelessness on the outside.

(15:49 – 16:12)

Purity and blamelessness is godliness inside and out. And all of this comes to its final culmination in verse 11, when one day we will be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. I think verse 11 is the end of the process.

(16:13 – 16:34)

When every branch of the tree is filled, the language is, it’s completely, there’s not a piece of fruit missing in terms of the righteousness of Christ. And this righteousness comes through Jesus Christ. Notice that Paul says it’s generated by him.

(16:34 – 16:46)

It’s all of grace. And therefore, it is for the glory of God. He gets all the praise for your Christian life growing to fruitfulness.

(16:48 – 17:10)

And so when we take verses nine to 11 together and we kind of reflect on this growth project that Paul is praying for, I think there’s kind of two sides to this. On the one hand, this is very encouraging. And this should encourage us to positively pray and pursue growth in our Christian lives.

(17:11 – 17:37)

We should be pursuing growth. We should be not content with the height that we’ve reached, if you like, in our stature of Christ. And we should be praying about that above all, praying for one another as well as ourselves, praying big prayers and not being defeatist about our lack of love, knowledge, and discernment.

(17:39 – 18:42)

And yet the very fact that it is growth, the very fact that it’s on the day of Christ and not before when the tree will be filled with the fruit of righteousness, that should temper us and it should make us patient, shouldn’t it? Patient with ourselves and patient with each other. I was chatting to someone a couple of months ago from a different church, and they asked me a question that I was kind of stumped by when they asked me. They said, if Jesus is at work in the church, then why is the church sometimes so disappointing? You know, if Jesus is working in us, why sometimes is there so little evidence of his presence? And I fumbled around trying to find an answer, but one of the, I mean, the thing that occurred to me at the time was, you know, sometimes the tree’s not even alive, right? That’s possible, isn’t it? Sometimes when you don’t see any fruit is because there’s no life there at all.

(18:43 – 19:12)

But the other point to make, and it never occurred to me until I was studying it this week, is that the New Testament itself says that Christian growth will be slow growth. Inevitable growth, wonderful growth, but slow growth. You cannot skip the growing to fruitfulness any more than a child can jump from one foot to six foot.

(19:13 – 19:42)

There must be a slow process. And so there’s a kind of healthy tension between patience and persistence, between waiting for growth to happen and praying hard that it will happen. And we’re all on the same journey, even though it’s true that some people might be a little further on in the process than others, but no one is there yet.

(19:43 – 20:10)

And that should bring a sense of cohesion and togetherness when we realise that. One of the things that unsettles unity in a local church is when people start to think that everyone else needs to grow except them. When we grasp that we’re all growing, it just kind of lets air into the room, doesn’t it? And we can admit when we get things wrong.

(20:11 – 20:23)

We can be less self-protective. And we can encourage other believers by saying, you know, I’m still growing in this too. See the thing you’re saying you’re struggling with? I’m struggling with it too.

(20:23 – 20:35)

And I need your prayers and you need mine. The church is not united by sports or music. It’s united by something much more profound.

(20:36 – 20:48)

We are united together in Christ. And because of him, we share in a gospel and a gospel partnership. We share in the grace of God.

(20:49 – 21:13)

And we share in a growth towards a final goal and it’s not just a hopeful aspiration, but it will become a reality that every piece of fruit will be present on that day. That’s what brings us together and that’s what will keep us together. Let’s pray.

(21:14 – 21:33)

Father God, thank you so much for the wonderful seed of life that you plant in our hearts through faith in Christ. We thank you for how that grows up into so many wonderful things. We thank you for the church that is born out of that gospel.

(21:33 – 21:49)

We thank you for the unity we share in gospel partnership. We thank you for the wonder of sharing in your amazing grace. And we thank you that together we are growing up into the righteousness of Christ.

(21:50 – 22:04)

Lord, may we grow more and more so that we look more like Jesus and so that we draw more people to hear the good news about him. And it’s in his name we pray, amen.

The post Gospel, Grace, Growth – Philippians 1v3–11 appeared first on Greenview Church.

And what we are not, make us. For our good and for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

(0:29 – 4:28)

On Sunday the 2nd of September 2012, a man dressed in a black suit walked into the Kelvin Grove Park just at the beginning of the West End. He stood by a bench that overlooks a children’s skate park area where a lot of children were playing at the time, cycling or playing on their skateboards or generally running about. He took a bottle of vodka from his bag which he proceeded to drink and after which he produced a can of petrol which he poured all over himself.

Then he set himself on fire and became a human fireball. No one knows why he done it but those who witnessed it said they could hear him crying out, I just want to die. I just can’t live with the pain any longer.

Well no one knows what was causing him so much pain. Was it the death of a loved one? Maybe a spouse or a child? Maybe the pain of watching a loved one that was at one time so full of life but now can’t do anything for themselves and life is slowly agonisingly ebbing away? Was it the break up of a marriage? Maybe due to adultery or being told I don’t love you anymore, I don’t want to be with you anymore? Was it the pain of living with a terminal illness or an addiction that he had failed on several occasions to overcome? Or maybe the excruciating pain of living with guilt and shame? But whatever it was, it was real, it was real pain. It’s a terrible story.

A terrible story of real anguish and real pain that many people face daily. Not just in this city but also all around the world. They just want to die because they can’t live with the pain any longer.

And friends we know that as Christians we are not immune from pain. Life is full of hardships, horrors and heartaches for the non-believer and the believer alike. But surely as Christians we are immune from the type of pain that would make us think and say, I can’t stand this pain any longer, I just want to die.

Well that wasn’t the case for the writer of our second hymn, William Cowper. He was born in 1731 and at the age of 21 in 1752 when he wasn’t a Christian at the time, he sank into his first paralysing depression. Many others would follow.

In 1763 after attempting suicide three different ways, he was committed to St. Albans Asylum. But it was here in this place of all places, six months into his stay, he became a Christian. The light of the gospel invaded the darkness of his life.

But ten years later in 1773 during another bout of depression, triggered by what he called the fatal dream. Now he didn’t say what the dream was, but only that a word was spoken that reduced him to spiritual despair. Something to the effect of, it’s all over with you, you are lost.

He had repeated attempts at suicide. In 1786 he entered his fourth deep depression and again he tried to take his own life. And the last days of his life brought no relief.

In March 1800 he said to a visiting friend, I feel unutterable despair. He died just one month later, the 25th of April in the year 1800. What a life, eh? A life that couldn’t stand the pain of living.

(4:29 – 7:06)

With goodness knows how many attempts to take his own life. And yet even a life like that produced hymns that we know, hymns that we love and sing to the praise of God and we encourage one another with. And it’s exactly the same with the Psalms.

I think this is why generations of God’s people love the book of Psalms so much. For in the Psalms the writers pour out their hearts before God and their outpourings contain frightening honesty, refreshing openness and a very large dose of realism about the life of faith. It’s no wonder then as we read, we often take great comfort and great assurance from the experience of the Psalm writers.

And if we’re honest, the honesty, openness and realism that we read in the Psalms, we don’t often hear too much from each other. Maybe because we’re scared to say anything about how we really feel or how we really think or how really broken we are. As everybody else in their family looks so happy, they look as if they’ve got it all together.

It’s as if we are scared that thinking or feeling this way is somehow unspiritual or shows a lack of faith. Well I am so glad that David didn’t just feel these things or think these things or say these things. No, he was inspired by God to commit these things to writing so that they would be part of scripture and in order that they would help and bring comfort and assurance amidst the anguish of life to generations of God’s people.

I’d like to take the Psalm under three headings. Firstly verse one and two, David’s pain of struggling with his feelings. Verse three and four, David’s prayer for the defeat of his foes.

And then thirdly and lastly verse five and six, David’s praise to the God of his faith. Well firstly then verse one and two, David’s pain of struggling with his feelings. Notice that this Psalm is written by David, the great warrior king of Israel.

He is the one who defeated Goliath the giant, the one who penned Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Well here in this Psalm there is definitely a want with David.

I think it’s fair to say he wasn’t having a good week. He certainly wasn’t having his best day. He is somewhat under the weather.

(7:07 – 7:47)

Four times in two verses in anguish he screams to God, how long Lord? How long is this going to go on for? Verse one and two, how long oh Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? These are the cries from the heart of a man who definitely can’t stand the pain any longer. These four how longs make up three complaints. Three complaints that centre on God, on himself and his enemies.

(7:48 – 8:34)

You could say his complaints are theological, psychological and sociological. Well firstly the theological, the complaint that centres on God, verse one, how long oh Lord will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? Of all David’s troubles, these troubles that he feels with God are surely amongst the most agonising. He feels deserted, deserted by God and that he is totally on his own.

He feels forgotten and forsaken. What a dark and distressing experience to feel that God has forsaken and forgotten you. Now these cries could only come from a heart that had previously known fellowship with God.

(8:34 – 9:09)

Someone who had never known fellowship with God would never say that this was the problem and atheists would never say that. But that’s what real faith does friends. Real faith comes to God with its doubts about God and that is what David is doing here.

In anguish he is screaming Lord I feel forgotten by you. You’re the God who remembered Noah, you remembered Rachel, you remembered Abraham. You told your people never to forget you, never to forget your character, never to forget all that you have done and never to forget your commandments.

(9:11 – 9:45)

But Lord I feel forgotten and forsaken by you. If David thought there was an end in sight or there was maybe light at the end of the tunnel he could have maybe hung on in there. But being forgotten by God he feels will last forever.

God’s face is also hidden from him. How long will you hide your face from me? David seems to be reflecting on the wonderful benediction that Aaron and his sons were to pronounce on the people. The Lord bless you and keep you.

(9:46 – 11:07)

The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace. But this is not what David is experiencing.

He is asking the Lord to give him the blessing that he has promised. The blessing of God’s presence. Now it’s common for us to say to friends or family members that we haven’t seen for a wee while you know I long to see your face.

Well I suppose it depends on the face. But we do long to see them but what is really meant by that expression is I long to be in your presence. I long to be with you.

David feels totally forgotten by God and that the Lord has removed his presence from him. Many of you will remember a couple of years ago my wife Charlene was really unwell. Our son Phillip was delivered 10 weeks premature by Caesarean section and Charlene spent the best part of four weeks on a ventilator.

My minister and I, Wally Phillip and I had a meeting with her consultant and the consultant said Charlene doesn’t look like a woman who has been on a ventilator for four weeks. She looks great. To which Wally Phillip replied aye that’s because she’s had four weeks away fae Terry.

(11:09 – 11:43)

Well she did spend four weeks on a ventilator and there were a few scary moments when things were touch and go. But do you know friends I have never experienced the presence and closeness of God like I did during those four weeks. I was in despair and anguish about what the days ahead might bring into my life.

But I knew that the Lord was with me. The Lord was at hand and with his presence in my life I would get through it. Come what may.

(11:44 – 13:47)

But friends that’s not the case here for David. His most severe suffering was that he felt God’s presence had been withdrawn. The circumstances he faced were one thing but being abandoned by God was worse than all of that.

Can God forget us? Well best to let God’s word answer for him. We read in Isaiah 49 but Zion said the Lord has forsaken me. My Lord has forgoten me.

That was Zion’s complaint and here is the Lord’s answer. Can a woman forget her nursing child? That she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget yet I will not forget you. Behold I have engraved you on the palm of my hands.

Well how do we square these two things up? Well I think it’s fair and true to say that pain and grief have a way of clouding our thinking, our feelings and our judgement. But I think too the Lord also allows for us to go through these times in order to refine us. Maybe to discipline us so that he will teach us the value of his presence.

Or maybe to show us the extent of our own weakness. Or maybe to remind us of his great salvation. To remind us what it was to be lost without Christ.

You may remember the Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2 verse 12. Writing to the Ephesians and he says remember you were at that time separated from Christ. The Apostle Paul it seems never wants us to forget.

What a wonder it is that God has revealed his beautiful face to us. Removed the separation, stepped in, lifted the veil and made his face bright to us in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the gospel. David feels deserted by God.

(13:47 – 16:09)

His second complaint, the psychological as he feels depressed within himself. Verse 2. How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day long? He’s saying God you’re not listening. And I’m wrestling here with my thoughts over and over again.

He feels totally cut off and isolated and that there is no one who cares. He’s become turned in on himself and it’s like he’s going over the situations and the circumstances he’s in over and over again. All the while increasing the turmoil that he’s in.

And he’s talking to himself in ways that are totally unhelpful. Now there are times when speaking to ourselves is called for and can be really helpful like in Psalm 42 and 43. The psalmist speaks to himself in a helpful way.

Why are you downcast oh my soul? But here in Psalm 13 it’s unhelpful. He’s turned in on himself. Taking counsel in his own soul and his self help he finds out is no help at all.

He is as we would say stuck in his own head and it’s constant. There are no breaks from this depression. Sorrow in my heart all the day long.

Now sometimes throughout any given day we can go through different emotions. Our emotions may change. We may begin optimistic in the morning, discouraged in the afternoon and then optimistic again in the evening.

But no not here. There are no changes in his emotions. There is no relief for David.

Sorrow in my heart all the day long. David feels deserted by God, depressed within himself. And his third complaint, the sociological, well he feels defeated by his enemy verse 2. How long shall my enemy triumph be exalted over me? Well we’re not told who or what the enemy was which is helpful as we can fill in the blank ourselves.

But maybe as David is the king he is facing opposition against his service to God. And you don’t need to be King David to face this kind of opposition. His enemy is exalted over him.

(16:10 – 21:37)

There is nothing worse than the sound of laughter coming from an enemy. It’s horrible. It’s hard to take in isn’t it? An enemy rejoicing over your demise.

Maybe this fits perfectly with circumstances or situations that you face personally. And what we need to understand is this friends. Sometimes God allows this to happen to his people in order that we learn to trust him.

That we might be taken into a deeper relationship with him and learn to walk by faith and not by sight. Well you would maybe think that David is done for. He is a man who is drowning and he will definitely sink.

But all hope hasn’t gone. Why? Well because David is still talking to God. Faith hasn’t disappeared.

Friends faith is being exercised. Listen to this from Sinclair Ferguson. When we begin to speak to God about the fact that he has deserted us we are no longer at our lowest point.

The tide has turned and we are on the way up again. You see friends that’s the difference between unbelief and belief. Unbelief turns away from God in anger shaking its fist.

But faith turns to God in anguish lifting its hands in prayer. Firstly David’s praying of struggling with his feelings. Secondly verse 3 and 4 David’s prayer for the defeat of his foes.

David’s prayer for the defeat of his foes. Well what do you do when you’re facing personal pain? Part of which you feel is that God has forgotten and forsaken you. Well I don’t know about you but I would stay in bed and opt for the death by duvet approach.

But what does David do? Well David goes on praying. What else can he do? Where else can he go? Then back to the one whom he feels forsaken and deserted by. It may well be that when the world has plunged you in its deepest pit you find the saviour there the hymn writer writes.

For when you are deep down in the pit the evidence of true faith is revealed in you. So what is the believer to do when God gives us no answers? We go on praying. We persist in our petitions.

Look at verse 3. Consider and answer me O Lord my God. Or as the NIV puts it, look on me and answer me Lord my God. Remember he feels the Lord has hidden his face from him.

He is saying look on me. Turn your face to me. He hasn’t given up on the Lord.

He is hanging on to the Lord. Look on me O Lord my God. All the way throughout this psalm David uses the covenant name of God Yahweh.

Anytime you see the Lord in capital letters in your Bible it’s referring to the covenant name of God Yahweh. He is the promise making, promise keeping God. The God who has bound himself to his people in covenant love.

The God who has promised to save and redeem his people. And David is praying consider me. Look on me and answer me.

Turn and listen to me Yahweh. David is crying for God to listen to him. To look on him according to the character of God.

He is saying this is who you are. And this is what you are like. And listen also according to what you’ve already promised Lord.

This is what you’ve said. And friends we need to do this. We need to store up the promises of God in our hearts like a wee squirrel does with nuts getting ready for winter.

We need to store up God’s promises so that when nor if when the dark times and the hard times come we can stand in those promises by faith. That’s what the words from the hymn encourage us to do. Standing in God’s promises.

Words that can’t fail. When in the storms of doubt dark fears assail. My hope is anchored fast within the veil.

Sure in his living word I always prevail standing on God’s promises. Well what does David pray for? Well he prays for light verse 3. Light up my eyes. He will give three reasons for this request in verse 3 and 4. And they are all in connection with the defeat of his foes.

In the ESV each of these begins. Lest I sleep the sleep of death. Lest my enemies say I have prevailed over him.

Lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken. David prays light up my eyes. This isn’t a phrase that we would usually use and it can seem a bit puzzling.

He’s saying Lord let me see clearly your hand in all of this. Illumine my understanding that I may see your plans and purposes in all of this. But also give me fresh strength, fresh energy and stamina to face all the battles that I am going through.

(21:38 – 25:26)

David doesn’t pray take these battles and difficulties away. No that’s not my greatest need. My greatest need is to see all that you’re doing through this and to have fresh energy strength and stamina to face it all.

And friends that was the case with the apostle Paul when he was in prison. Many of his friends were distressed and discouraged by this imprisonment. But Paul was able to comfort them and encourage them with all that God was doing.

And he wrote to the church in Philippi I want you to know brothers that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. So that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment are much more bold to speak the word without fear.

Being in prison brought great opportunities to Paul for sharing Christ and it’s the same for us. Some of the darkest and hardest times in our lives. Things that we would never volunteer for can often provide great opportunities for us to grow in faith and grace.

And opportunities for sharing the hope and trust that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ and his gospel. Seeing these opportunities and all that God is doing doesn’t come easily to us. And just like David we need God to light up our eyes so that we can have a divine perspective on our situation and the strength and energy to endure it all.

Sometimes we won’t see for years if at all what God’s plans and purposes in the darkness have been. And that was certainly the case with Joseph as we read his story in Genesis. Thrown into a pit by his brothers, sold into slavery by them, falsely accused of rape and then thrown into prison for a great number of years.

I’m sure during all these years of darkness Joseph felt deserted by God and cried out many times, how long oh Lord will you forget me forever? But by the end of Genesis in chapter 50 verse 20 Joseph could say of that whole dark period in his life, as for you, you meant evil against me but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. And that may be your experience too friends as individuals or collectively as a church. God’s plans and purposes in the darkness and the difficulties that we go through may only be understood by us years later if ever at all.

David prays, verse 3, light up my eyes, give me strength, stamina and energy to keep going amidst all these battles. And now he gives three reasons or three arguments in this request in verse 3 and 4 and they are all in connection with the defeat of his foes. As I said in the ESV they begin with the word lest but I’m going to read them another way.

David prays, light up my eyes so that I won’t sleep the sleep of death. Light up my eyes so that my enemy won’t get the better of me. Light up my eyes so that there will be no rejoicing from my foes because I am still standing.

I will not fall. David is praying, Lord don’t let me die. I don’t want that mob dancing at my funeral.

(25:27 – 28:46)

David is using arguments. He is presenting his case to Yahweh as to why he should answer his prayers. I wonder do you pray that way? Do you give the Lord reasons as to why he should answer your prayers? Can you make an argument for the prayers that you bring and why God should answer them? Again when Charlene was ill there were people praying for her all around the world from America to Australia and everywhere in between and there were a lot of non-Christians looking on.

A lot of them were friends and family members and I mind pouring my heart out to the Lord and saying to him, Lord please deliver Charlene. Please send her home to me. I mean Lord how can I look after four wee boys? I can hardly look after myself.

And Lord what about the ministry of Hope for Glasgow as it was at the time? What about the ministry of Hope for Glasgow to those with addictions up and down the country? If I have to stay home and look after four wee boys, Lord that ministry will fold. Lord there are huge implications for me if my wife doesn’t come home. But Lord there’s more at stake for you in all of this.

This will reflect badly on you. All those non-Christians looking on will think badly of you. If you don’t deliver they will say well all that praying was a complete waste of time.

They will say that you’re no real or that you couldn’t be bothered to listen. They will say either you were too weak to do anything about it or not that you’re weak but that you’re wicked because you don’t care. So deliver her Lord so that ultimately it will be for the honour of thy name Lord.

As much as David was concerned for his own needs, he was concerned even more with the glory of God. Tied up in the defeat of his foes is a concern for God’s glory, a concern for God’s honour. David is reasoning in his prayer.

He is making arguments in his prayer as to why God should answer him. If I die they will triumph and if I die it will be because you won’t deliver me. It will reflect on you Lord, your reputation and your name.

So vindicate your servant and make yourself known. David’s pain of struggling with his feelings, David’s prayer for the defeat of his foes and thirdly and lastly verse five and six, David’s praise to the God of his faith, David’s praise to the God of his faith. But I have trusted in your steadfast love.

My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. I read these verses and I think to myself, what’s going on here? Is this the same guy? I mean one minute he’s going how long, how long, how long, how long and now he is declaring I will trust, I will rejoice, I will sing.

(28:47 – 36:46)

What’s going on? Is this guy unwell? Does he have a kind of a spiritual by poor or something? I mean one minute he’s full of anguish but now he’s full of assurance. There is a total turnaround in the tone of these verses from that of verse one and two. In verse one and two he was overwhelmed with grief but now here in verse five and six he is overwhelmed with goodness.

He has changed from a man who was screaming how long and he is now really declaring as long as it takes. Well why? And why this change? What has happened between verse four and verse five? What has changed in his circumstances? Well if you look with me, can you see it there between verses four and five? You’ll have to look very, very carefully. Can you see it? No and neither can I because there’s nothing there to see.

There is nothing. Nothing has changed but he has changed. His prayer of verse one through four may not have changed his circumstances but they have changed him which is always a far better result.

He gets a hold of himself with God’s help and he says the hand I’ve been dealt is the hand I’ve been dealt and with God’s help I’m going to trust. With God’s help I’m going to rejoice and with God’s help I’m going to sing. The man who was wrestling is now trusting.

Why? Well because of the Lord’s ‘hesed’, his steadfast covenant unfailing love. Instead of sorrow in his heart all the day long, his heart is filled with rejoicing. Why? Because of the Lord’s salvation.

The man who was screaming to the Lord will now sing to the Lord. Why? Because the Lord is good and he has dealt bountifully. He has been good to me.

David is declaring here the same as he writes in Psalm 23, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And friends I want us just to note there has been no deliverance yet for David. No, that is still a long way down the road but it’s like it’s already taken place in his experience.

But what is the basis for this? Well it’s the character of God. David has remembered Yahweh and he is trusting him. It’s not about how much faith we have but the object of our faith, where our faith is placed, what our faith is resting on.

And David is declaring here in praise to Yahweh, I am leaning on your proved, tried and tested character. That’s the basis of my praise because that is the way you are. God’s character is the basis of his praise and God’s character is the basis of his assurance.

And friends that’s one of the greatest needs that we all have is to know what kind of God God really is. He is the God whose character has been proved, tried, tested and never once found wanting. Friends some of us may be going through real darkness, real difficulties just like David.

You may feel in your experience that God has forgotten and forsaken you. Well let us try and learn and take something from the experience of David of what got him through difficulties and the darkness. What brought him from pain through prayer to praise.

How did he overcome the inward struggle with his feelings, the outward struggle of his foes? Well he did so by the upward look to the God of his faith. David remembered and trusted himself to the character of God. When darkness veils his lovely face, I rest on his unchanging grace.

In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil. The circumstances that we are in or we face may not change but standing in God’s word, storing up his promises in our hearts, standing on them, remembering his unfailing love, remembering his unchanging grace, rejoicing in his wonderful salvation and singing to the Lord because we have been overwhelmed by his amazing goodness. These things will see us through.

But friends there, maybe some amongst us, real believers who feel unutterable despair just like William Cowper, it seems that there’s no release, no relenting. Well we have to keep praying, keep trusting, keep hanging on to God and his promises. There may not be relief here in this earth, in this time, but one day the end of this psalm will be the reality, a fully realised reality in all of our lives when he will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

Death shall be no more, no more mourning, no more crying, no more pain. On that day we will rejoice and be glad in it and we will sing like never before. But there are some here today friends that these truths won’t get you through the darkness.

The truths of this psalm won’t do you any good. The reason why? Because you’ve yet to taste and see that the Lord is good. You come to this service often.

You may come every week. You’re convinced by the truth of the gospel. It looks good, but you’ve never tasted.

Why don’t you taste the thing and experience the goodness of God? The goodness of God that was fully expressed in the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. He really was forsaken and forgotten by God on the cross so that we might be forgiven. God did really hide his face from him and he really did face the darkness of God’s wrath so that he might bestow on us the light of God’s love.

Today would be a good day to trust him. Why don’t you do that today? Let us pray together. Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God.

Father, we give you great thanks for your great goodness to us. We ask that you would help each of us to store the truth of this psalm deep into our hearts. We may not be experiencing the darkness of feeling forgotten and forsaken by you today, but one day we will.

Help us then to know that there is a hope that lifts our weary heads, that lifts our eyes beyond the beckoning grave, to see the matchless beauty of a day divine when we shall behold your face. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

The post Anguish of Faith to the Assurance of Faith – Psalm 13 appeared first on Greenview Church.

(0:14 – 0:39)

We know it’s important, but are we people who invest in time with God? Do you enjoy prayer? Do you love prayer? Do you love spending time with God? My colleague, Steve, is an evangelist based up in Perth, who was in a church recently, not dissimilar to this church, where a Christian of many years standing said, Steve, I don’t really pray. And Steve said, why? And he said, because I can’t understand prayer. So I don’t.

(0:39 – 0:57)

And you think, do you need to understand it? I mean, I don’t understand what consciousness is, but I don’t sleep 24-7. I have no idea how my laptop works, but the PowerPoint seems to be okay this morning. I’m not sure we need to fully understand every mystery around prayer to engage in it.

(0:57 – 1:40)

And certainly in our text today, the Lord Jesus Christ has given us two parables, which don’t give us unlocking deep mysteries around prayer, but do encourage us to get on with it, to engage in it, even when there are mysteries around it. The Lord focusses us this morning on the practise of prayer, even if it is difficult. Do you pray? Do you pray diligently, sporadically, passionately, coldly? Did you used to pray, but have got a little cold? The famous author, the late Timothy Keller, interviewed lots of pastors as they were dying, and he found that their two greatest regrets were that they didn’t spend enough time in prayer, one, and with their family, second.

(1:41 – 2:08)

Dying pastors at the end of lifetimes of ministry looking back say, the one thing I would have done differently, to spend more time with the Lord in prayer. And so in these two parables that we’ve had so nicely read for us this morning, Jesus isn’t calling us to prayer as some kind of horrible works, or some kind of irksome duty that we have to do. He’s actually talking about engaging our hearts with Him.

(2:09 – 2:37)

The privilege the gospel gives us is access to God. We often think about the exclusivity when Jesus says, no one comes to the Father except by me, but we don’t often enjoy the privilege of saying, in Christ I can come to the Father. There is an exclusiveness to that, but also what an extraordinary privilege there is too, that God saying, you can come to me.

(2:38 – 2:49)

Prayer is of course life giving. You know when the Apostle Paul says, everything is a surpassing loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. Everything else is a complete loss.

(2:49 – 3:03)

It’s a waste of time, it’s like manure, it’s dung. All my life achievements are a waste of time compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. Yeah, we know Him, we see Him through a glass darkly now, but we have a foretaste of what’s to come.

(3:04 – 3:30)

We get to speak with God, we get to be with God. This is the most unspeakable privilege, and God offers it to sinful human beings like you and I. In Christ we can come to the Father, and it’s where in fact we are most truly alive. This world is stacked full with many blessings and good things from God, but I don’t think any of us are any more truly living than when we are in the presence of God.

(3:31 – 3:52)

And a congregation, a church, a group of people in God’s presence can in fact become almost like a lightning rod conducting the blessings of God down to earth. History is silent about a revival that didn’t start in prayer, but yet a church in God’s presence can be a lightning rod for God’s blessing. Prayer is life-giving, it’s also extremely difficult.

(3:53 – 4:18)

I was intrigued recently, the Evangelical Alliance put out a survey last year. They did some detailed interviews with people who are new Christians, and it was called the Finding Jesus Report. They interviewed I think about 200 Christians, people who had come to faith in Christ as adults, and they asked all sorts of questions about where were you before you came to Christ, and what did you believe in, and how did you come, how did you first hear the gospel, and it was very interesting things.

(4:18 – 4:39)

They said, what was the most significant thing for you in your journey to putting your faith in Christ? The best two answers, the Bible and prayer. Later on, what are the two things you found most hardest as a Christian? Guess what? The Bible and prayer. So the two things we find most life-giving are also the most difficult.

(4:39 – 4:55)

They present a challenge for us this morning. So this morning I’m not going to try and explain prayer to you, or present a clever thesis that unwraps the mystery of prayer. What we’re going to seek to do, as I challenge you and challenge myself, is to obey what Jesus said about prayer.

(4:55 – 5:19)

We need Christian people today who really love God, who really pray, who really worship Him, who really experience His presence, who believe in His truth, and can intercede for this lost world. And that’s why we turn to these two parables that Jesus told in Matthew 11 and Matthew 18. Before we go into them, we have to sort of point out that these are parables, not allegories, if you know the difference.

(5:20 – 5:39)

Well, an allegory is one of those very clever stories when every part of the story represents some other truth, like the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. You know, every single part of that represents a different part of the truth. A parable, on the other hand, tends to communicate one spiritual truth, and the rest is the narrative that makes it work.

(5:39 – 5:54)

If you try and allegorise these parables, you are going to be in big trouble, because the unjust judge, he wants the woman to go away. He’s not welcoming her. Both stories, you have someone banging on the door persistently, who is our model for prayer, and someone on the other side of the door who just wants them to go away.

(5:54 – 6:07)

Now, Jesus wants us to know that we are supposed to bang on the door of prayer relentlessly. He’s not asking us to get a picture of God from these texts. Well, where’s God in this text? Well, that’s Jesus telling the story.

(6:08 – 6:18)

And what does it say? I tell you this story so that you will pray persistently and not give up. So Jesus is saying, I’m the Lord, I actually want you to come to me. I am not like the unjust judge.

(6:18 – 6:30)

Jesus is saying, I want you to come and keep coming to me consistently and persistently. Pray and not give up. So don’t try and allegorise the parable.

(6:30 – 6:37)

If you start reading God in as the unjust judge, you’re going to be all over the place. That is not our picture of God. So this is how I want to do it.

(6:38 – 6:54)

I want to draw back from the text to start with, and think about who God is. This God who says, I want you to pray to me persistently and consistently. And then we’ll dive into the text to see how we should respond to this God.

(6:55 – 7:06)

What kind of God do we find here in the text? Well, he’s not awful and mean like the unjust judge. He is quite the opposite. I love that phrase in one of the songs we had this morning about God being beautiful.

(7:07 – 7:15)

You just spot that in the hymn. The first time I heard the idea that God was beautiful was a Keith Green song in the 80s. And the first time I heard it, you know, oh Lord, you’re beautiful.

(7:15 – 7:30)

And I thought, oh, Americans, they’re so kind of gushy, aren’t they? We don’t go there, do we? Is God beautiful? I said that to one of my American friends, and they said, well, you think we’re emotionally incontinent. We think you’re emotionally constipated. Too gushy.

(7:30 – 7:42)

We don’t go there. And then, I think it was last year at the FIEC conference, they were preaching on the Good Shepherd. And they unpacked the language, and they said a good translation would also be that Jesus is the beautiful shepherd.

(7:43 – 7:55)

Beautiful. The Lord is incredibly attractive. You know, that the very best of the love that we have in this world, Christian marriage, is supposed to be, at its very finest, a glimpse of Christ in the church.

(7:56 – 8:03)

And yes, we deride some modern songs and say, oh yeah, those terrible Jesus is my boyfriend lyrics. Yuck. But we mustn’t also forget that he is our husband.

(8:03 – 8:18)

That we are the bride of Christ, and the love and marriage here is supposed to point to a deeply passionate relationship between God and his people. He’s won our hearts, not just our minds. We love him, and he is morally beautiful.

(8:19 – 8:31)

Glorious. Every piece of beauty that we find in this world is but a signpost to the true beauty of God. That’s why he’s littered this world with the Kulin Mountains, and the Cairngorms, and waterfalls, and the sea, and the cry of a newborn baby.

(8:32 – 8:42)

Littered this world with things of beauty, all pointing to the true beauty of God. That’s why prayer isn’t a dreadful duty. It’s the highest privilege of mankind.

(8:42 – 9:02)

That we can enter into the throne room of the living God, where his beauty dwells. How can you and I enter into the presence of a God like that? It’s quite extraordinary, and quite wonderful. And we meet this God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

(9:03 – 9:16)

One God in three persons. And we bow before him in his glory, and his majesty, and his perfection. God is love, and that perfect love that exists between those three persons.

(9:16 – 9:42)

Father, Son, and Spirit. And there’s that extraordinary promise in the New Testament that describes Christian people like you and I in Christ as partakers of the divine nature. Is that not the most extraordinary phrase in the New Testament? How can you and I be partakers of the divine nature? How can the living God say to people like you and I, come in? When we know we deserve to be thrown out.

(9:43 – 9:50)

But in Christ he says, come in. You can partake of the divine nature. That is an extraordinary phrase.

(9:50 – 10:01)

So let’s think just for a minute about God as our Father. Because immediately in these preceding verses before that parable, we have the Lord’s Prayer. When Jesus tells us to pray, our Father who is in heaven.

(10:02 – 10:11)

My wife and I did a parenting course a few years ago. We’ve got three kids, several of whom have been an interesting experience parenting. They’re great.

(10:12 – 10:20)

But parenting is a challenge, right? So we did a parenting course. And the most challenging thing on that parenting course was a diagram. We discussed it in couples.

(10:20 – 10:34)

And they put this diagram up and asked you to sort of explore your own parenting. What parenting style do you have? And you can see that the axes are warm to not warm, firm to not firm. And of course there are all sorts of different parenting styles.

(10:35 – 10:48)

Those who are not warm and not firm are absent parents, negligent parents. But God’s not that kind of Father. We don’t serve the God of the deists who set the world spinning into motion and cleared off.

(10:49 – 10:56)

That’s not our God. He’s here. He’s actively engaged in his world.

(10:57 – 11:03)

Other parents are warm and not firm. All cuddly, all present, spoiling their children. No boundaries, no discipline.

(11:04 – 11:19)

I once saw a kid on a plane running up and down the aisles and they couldn’t take the plane off. And the pilot, the captain came out and said, Will you get your child to sit down? And the parents were mystified about the idea of telling a child anything. It was all presents and toys and games but no discipline whatsoever.

(11:19 – 11:25)

But that’s not our God. I was reading Jeremiah yesterday. The God who judges the nations.

(11:27 – 11:37)

This is not our God. He’s not all just dispensing toys and things for us to enjoy. He’s the living God who we had better listen to because he has all glory.

(11:37 – 11:45)

The opposite extreme is the caricature of Victorian parenting. Firm and not warm. That is authoritarian parenting.

(11:46 – 11:51)

Cold, distant, savage, harsh. Always on your back. Always criticising you.

(11:52 – 12:05)

And equally, that is not a picture of God, our Father, who we approach this morning. Because God is also the one who, you know, when the prodigal comes down, the path comes running to him and throws his arms around him and says, Kill the fatted calf. We’re having a party.

(12:05 – 12:20)

My son has come home. This is our God who, though he has all glory, though he judges all nations, is also incredibly warm and engages us with his love. God, of course, is the authoritative parent.

(12:21 – 12:36)

Because he is both absolutely in control and full of glory and yet throws his arms around his children. This is our Father. Rejoice with trembling, Psalm 2 says.

(12:36 – 12:44)

Rejoice, why? Because his arms are open. Tremble, why? Because he is the living God. And anybody that doesn’t tremble before him is a fool.

(12:45 – 13:02)

Rejoice with trembling. Enter into the embrace of God in prayer. This is our God.

We pray to the Father. This is a picture of John F. Kennedy in the White House at the height of the Cold War. This was really the most powerful seat anywhere on Earth.

(13:02 – 13:08)

From there he could control the nuclear weapons. He could launch nuclear attacks. He controlled all the countries across NATO.

(13:08 – 13:19)

All the telephone lines in the world connected there. That’s the centre of power on this Earth at that stage in the early 1960s. I’ve covered up the bottom of the picture, but let’s reveal the bottom of the picture.

(13:20 – 13:44)

That’s his son crawling around under the desk. This is the kind of access we have to the throne room, not of this world, but of the whole cosmos. The living God says, you’re my children.

You can come. In fact, Jesus tells us to pray persistently. He says, I give you this parable so that you pray persistently and don’t give up.

(13:44 – 13:56)

Yes, he has all authority, but yes, he says, come to me. We are called to pray to the Father. Jesus says consistently, but we’re called to pray through the Son.

(13:57 – 14:28)

How can people like us approach the living God? How can you and I with our sins and our faults and our follies and our mistakes and our brokenness and all the things we’ve got wrong approach a holy God? How can it be that you and I can come and God will listen to people like you and I? The answer is because we come through the Son. We approach God the Father in Jesus Christ the Son who takes away our sin and gives us his righteousness. He shares the intimate relationship he has with the Father with us.

(14:29 – 14:35)

That’s why we can come to the Father. That’s why we can approach. That’s why prayer in the Bible is always to the Father and through the Son.

(14:36 – 14:47)

Because it’s the Son who gives us access to the Father. John Calvin wrote this most beautiful illustration of that. He said, imagine if you were standing before a crowd of thousands of people.

(14:48 – 15:13)

And of course this was in the days before amplification, he wrote this. And he said, and you try to sing to them all, but your voice is poor and thin and weedy and you can’t get projected and you can’t be heard and it can’t get out. But then you are suddenly joined on stage by the world’s greatest opera singer with this enormous voice who begins to sing the most amazing melodious tune and the tune fills the stadium and goes out into the streets outside.

(15:13 – 15:38)

And then he says to you, sing with me, sing with me. And you blend your little weedy voice in with this great opera singer and together your song travels out and fills the stadium. And it’s his picture of prayer.

He says, on your own, do you think your voice can reach the heavens? Of course not. But Jesus says, sing with me. And you and I can speak to God.

(15:39 – 15:53)

And our thin, weedy, puny voices that are not fit to be heard in heaven are carried heavenwards by the Son. This is the gospel in action. You see, the gospel is in action not just the moment you became a Christian, but when you kneel down to pray.

(15:53 – 16:03)

It’s that same gospel that gives you access to God the Father. He says, come, come and speak to me, to the Father, through the Son. But let’s complete the picture.

(16:04 – 16:18)

He also says in Scripture, we pray to the Father, through the Son, but in the Spirit. We pray in the Spirit. Something happens in us and to us when we come into the presence of God.

(16:19 – 16:25)

The Holy Spirit stirs our hearts. He pours petrol on the fire. He groans within us, in fact, sometimes.

(16:27 – 16:45)

I was deeply struck by what the great Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote about this in his commentaries and sermons on Ephesians. He describes in the passage on Ephesians about praying in the Spirit an experience he had of someone on whom the Holy Spirit came when he was in a prayer meeting. Let me just read you a few words from Lloyd-Jones.

(16:46 – 17:02)

He says, praying in the Spirit, anyone who knows anything of this experience will know exactly what it is, but how difficult it is to put into words. And if Lloyd-Jones can’t find the words, I don’t think anybody can. He says, I can look back by the grace of God and I thank him for it.

(17:03 – 17:15)

Two public prayer meetings in which I was present when this presence of the Spirit was experienced in an exceptional manner. I shall never forget them as long as I live. A prayer meeting started one night at 7.15 in a church in South Wales.

(17:15 – 17:31)

It was a hot summer’s evening on a Monday night. Two men had taken part in prayer. Then a man stood up whom we all knew so well, an unimportant man, not a gifted man by any means, a man whose prayers could be stilted and formal and dry and even discouraging.

(17:31 – 17:42)

He began to pray and suddenly something happened to him. The whole man was transformed. His voice deepened and he began to pour out one of the most eloquent prayers I’ve ever heard in the whole of my life.

(17:42 – 17:51)

And he lifted up the entire meeting, myself included. Every one of us was in the Spirit, in the realm of the Spirit. And on the meeting went, one after another praying.

(17:51 – 18:00)

Men and women who I’ve heard on other occasions praying were now praying as I’ve never heard them pray before. Language, thought, everything was perfect. And the warmth and freedom and liberty were remarkable.

(18:00 – 18:06)

On and on it went until 10 minutes to 10. We’d forgotten time. We were in the realm of the Spirit.

(18:06 – 18:09)

We were in eternity. Time did not matter. Nothing mattered.

(18:09 – 18:18)

This is what you get in revivals and we were given a taste of it. And this is the thing which the Apostle Paul is exhorting us to in Ephesians. Formal prayers are not sufficient.

(18:19 – 18:37)

The world and the church being as they are today, we need this praying in the Spirit. We need to lay hold of God to give Him no rest and to use those dramatic, expressive words of the prophet Isaiah, and you will never lay hold of Him unless you are in the Spirit. This is the kind of prayer that the Lord is inviting us to.

(18:37 – 18:51)

Pray to the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit. We need to be hungry for this. Have you ever glimpsed that? We had a small glimpse of that, nothing like that, but a small glimpse of it in Perth in February.

(18:51 – 19:08)

Our pastor had called us to 21 days of prayer and fasting for the life of the church. And then at Solas, there was a girl who had contacted us because she had been going through our website and had all sorts of questions about the Gospel. So we sent her a Bible for her Christmas present and she began to read it and came back with all sorts of questions.

(19:09 – 19:20)

And then we arranged for her to go around and meet a Christian. This was in the north of England. And the night she was meeting that Christian, we had a prayer meeting in Perth and something happened and we were praying for her and we almost felt something shifting.

(19:20 – 19:26)

And we almost said, we think she’s home. We think something’s happened. There was a sense of the Spirit in the prayer meeting.

(19:26 – 19:35)

And then I phoned my boss Andy to say, I think something’s happened. He said, we had a similar experience in Swindon praying for the same girl. And then she emailed the next morning to say, I brought my boyfriend.

(19:35 – 19:42)

He thought he was a Christian until last night. And then he said, I’ve realised tonight I’m not a Christian. And they both put their faith in Christ that evening.

(19:43 – 19:51)

But we felt something happen in the prayer meeting. And I’ve no explanation for that. I’ve got no detailed theology.

(19:51 – 19:58)

But I know the Holy Spirit was at work. And it didn’t leave me with lots of answers. But it left me very, very hungry for more of that.

(19:58 – 20:15)

Now, that is not to dismiss or diminish the value of prayer meetings when it’s hard work. Because sometimes prayer is hard work. But are you not just hungry to pray to the Father, through the Son and in the Spirit? Like Lloyd-Jones describes in that text.

(20:15 – 20:27)

This is the God we pray to. So that’s pulling back. To say, who’s the God who invites us in? Now let’s draw down into the text and tell us how we should approach this God.

(20:28 – 20:34)

How we should approach Him. Well, the persistent widow we have here. We are told we should pray like her.

(20:34 – 20:46)

Because she banged and banged and banged on the door until she got what she needed. It says there. And Jesus is telling us that prayer could be prevailing, wrestling, perseverance, seeking God.

(20:46 – 20:52)

And prayer is personal. We live in an impersonal world. We’ve shifted our purchasing from the high street.

(20:52 – 21:00)

When you go in and you buy your stuff from someone you know over a counter. To clicking an anonymous machine on a screen. But prayer is not like that.

(21:01 – 21:10)

We don’t click our orders into God anonymously and then wait for the delivery. We need to engage with the Lord face to face. To seek His face.

(21:10 – 21:20)

It’s more like mining your own gold. And then in the other text did you see that with a midnight friend. He was told that he’s going to get what he needed.

(21:20 – 21:28)

The bread in this case. Because of his shameless audacity. Did you spot those words in the text? Shameless audacity.

(21:28 – 21:36)

I love those words. I tell you, even though He will not get up and give you the bread because of your friendship. Yet because of your shameless audacity.

(21:36 – 21:49)

He will surely give you as much as you need. So the Lord Jesus is commending us to come before the Father with shameless audacity. How should we pray? Cringing and scared? No.

(21:49 – 21:56)

Vague and nonchalant? No. Formal and ritualistic? No. With some vague woolly spirituality? No.

(21:57 – 22:05)

Undemanding and distant? No. We should come before the throne of God Himself with shameless audacity. Lord, help me to pray.

(22:06 – 22:10)

Lord, it’s a struggle this morning. Send your spirit and help me to pray. I need your help.

(22:11 – 22:18)

And keep going. Jesus encourages us to be a bit of shameless audacity. I wonder if we’re just sometimes a little bit too polite in the wrong way, if you know what I mean.

(22:19 – 22:25)

Holding God in massive respect obviously. But Jesus says, press in. Lord, send revival.

(22:25 – 22:31)

Lord, come back soon. Lord, save my friend. Pray and don’t give up.

(22:32 – 22:46)

And there’s that beautiful picture you have towards the end of the Bible. A prayer being pictured as incense drifting up from the people of God before His throne as a fragrant offering. Now, I know literal incense isn’t a very Greenview thing.

(22:46 – 23:09)

I’m not suggesting literal incense. What I’m talking about is that beautiful picture you have of those prayers rising up from God’s people into His very presence. God’s house must be a house of prayer in which we persistently and consistently press into God for what we need.

(23:10 – 23:19)

And of course, you know when Jesus went into the temple and it wasn’t a house of prayer, He tipped the tables over. He said, no, this is a house of prayer. Well, you and I, we should be part of a house of prayer.

(23:19 – 23:36)

Now, obviously in the old covenant, the one place where heaven touched earth was in the Holy of Holies, in the temple. And that’s all gone because the true temple is the Lord Jesus Christ where heaven touches earth, where deity meets humanity. The one meeting point when it all comes together is in Christ Himself.

(23:36 – 23:43)

And Christ dwells in our hearts by faith. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are supposed to be a house of prayer, my friends.

(23:44 – 24:03)

And I just wonder when I look at my own life, if Jesus wants to come in and tip over a few tables and say, priorities, Gavin. What are your priorities? Is spending time with me your priority? I think Jesus wants to turn over some tables in my heart. I wonder if that’s the same for you.

(24:04 – 24:38)

Maybe your church, and I have shamelessly audaciously nicked your church logo and put it on the screen there, just to ask you, is your church a house of prayer? Or does the Lord want to come in and turn over a few tables like He needs to do in my life as well? Jesus says, don’t hold back. It’s prayer before the living God, to the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit that shakes the earth, that has ushered in every revival in the history of the church since Acts 2 to the present day. It’s prayer that makes demons tremble, that makes devils flee.

(24:38 – 24:54)

It’s prayer in which salvation breaks out and church grows, the kingdom comes. It’s prayer during which people will see the glory and indeed the beauty of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let me tell you about two people I know who model this wonderful, shameless audacity.

(24:55 – 25:08)

There was one man in the church where I grew up whose son was a bit of a prodigal and he’d gone astray. And this man, prayer meeting after prayer meeting, would start to pray for his son. And people would tut and roll their eyes and say, oh, there he goes again.

(25:08 – 25:21)

But do you know what? He was in tune with our text this morning. He was banging on the door saying, Lord, give me what I need, save my son. And he did not stop praying for his son for the whole of his life.

(25:21 – 25:26)

Shamelessly audacious, like our text. Persistent banging on the door, like our text. Wonderful.

(25:27 – 25:41)

And there’s a man in my church in Perth who lives in a village way outside Perth where there’s no gospel church. And you don’t need to prod him for more than about 10 seconds before he’s pleading for a gospel church in his town. And again, some people will tut and roll their eyes, but I love his shameless audacity.

(25:41 – 25:51)

Lord, bring a gospel church to my village. Lord, raise up a work in my village. Show the people in my village your church, your people, your truth, your gospel, your son.

(25:51 – 26:31)

And you can’t stop him when he wants to pray because the Lord has put this kind of thing on his heart. Because if we read that parable on its own, it sounds a bit like hard work. Which is why we drew back to say, have you seen the glory of God? Have you glimpsed him? Have you seen his majesty? Have you stood before the empty tomb where Christ walked out and conquered death itself? Do you know he’s coming back to put this rotten world right? Who would not want to be in the presence of a God like that? Who would not want to share his gospel with a broken world for which there is no other hope, no plan B, no second route? It’s Christ or nothing.

(26:31 – 26:35)

It’s Christ or loss. It’s heaven or hell. It’s glory or loss.

(26:35 – 26:52)

Would you not talk about a world like that? We need to bring this world before a God like that because he is the only hope for this city, this town, this country, this world. Christ alone is the hope for this world. Let’s approach him in his glory and his beauty and his majesty.

(26:53 – 27:21)

And how about a bit of that shameless audacity that we’ve been talking about? I want to maybe suggest four things that we can pray about this morning as we go forward in persistence and shameless audacity. The first is our country. And so as we cover the length and breadth of the country, it’s really interesting in the moment we are at at the moment with the loss of new atheism and people all over the place on a deep search for truth and meaning and hope.

(27:22 – 27:37)

And we know that they will try every false alley and Christ is the only answer. We need to be praying for our country at the moment. Somebody said that our country was drowning in new atheism and they’re all starting to come up for air.

(27:38 – 27:56)

Whose hands are out to lift them and show them Christ? Well, we need to be praying for our country at this particular moment. And I know that all the Quiet Revival stuff has had a big sort of big discussion about stats and data sets and all the rest of it. But as we travel up and down the country, we find people who are deeply ignorant of what the Bible says and deeply hungry for answers.

(27:56 – 28:11)

At a postgraduate seminar recently, our director, Andy Bannister, was chatting to some postgrad students. And one of them turned to him and said, you Christians read the Bible, don’t you? And he said, yes, we do. And he was starting to rehearse all his different apologetic answers for different objections to Scripture.

(28:12 – 28:36)

And then he waited for the question, you Christians read the Bible, what is it? A postgrad student, literally the question was, what is it? So we are currently painting on a canvas of almost total ignorance, but yet openness to discuss Jesus like we’ve never had before. Now is the time to intercede for our country. God could do remarkable things.

(28:36 – 28:53)

God can do remarkable things. And he needs people here who are going to step up with some persistence and some shameless audacity to intercede for our country because nobody else can. Why? Nobody comes to the Father except through me, Christ says.

(28:53 – 29:03)

That means the only people in our country who can intercede for it are those with unfettered access to the throne room of God. That’s the church. That’s the body of Christ.

(29:03 – 29:23)

Now is the moment to pray, I think, for our country. And what about our rulers? The king who is wanting to water down the covenants he made before God in his coronation this week to defend all faiths with some pernicious legislation coming down the road in the coming parliaments. Pray for rulers.

(29:24 – 29:31)

Pray for leaders. They are lost. And our country is like sheep without a shepherd with some very dangerous legislation being planned.

(29:32 – 29:48)

Only the church can stand in the gap and pray for our nation. I just finished reading Jeremiah last night where God judges not just his own people but all the different nations of the earth in the last five or six chapters there. I need to pray that God will have mercy on our nation.

(29:49 – 30:01)

God will respond to wickedness. And as you look even at the history of our country, it will either be in judgement or with a blessed revival when he turns vast numbers of people back to himself. We need to step into that moment.

(30:01 – 30:10)

And be people who pray for our country. I was at a wedding on Friday. And I saw two very typical things.

(30:10 – 30:17)

One was the groom, a new Christian. Very happy to talk about his faith in front of all his non-Christian friends. A young lad who has come to Christ in the last few years.

(30:18 – 30:30)

And then someone sitting next to my wife who has walked away from the Christian faith when she was in her twenties. And that’s very typical around the country. Many, many young people coming into the church.

(30:31 – 30:45)

But isn’t there a whole generation of prodigals out there? People who have heard something of the gospel but have walked away. People who know something of who God is and have rejected him. People who are in the far country, in the pigsty, whose lives are falling to bits.

(30:46 – 30:50)

They don’t know where they are. They don’t know where they’re going. They’re without God and without hope in the world.

(30:52 – 31:00)

And what’s Jesus’ attitude? Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the shepherds. How I long to gather you under my wings. But you weren’t willing.

(31:02 – 31:14)

Oh, isn’t it the moment for us to pray? Not just thanking God for the new Christians who are coming into our churches. In Perth, we don’t know where to put them. We haven’t moved them out of the room because there are so many young people coming to Christ and being baptised.

(31:15 – 31:29)

Glory to God! But what about the generation before? That prodigal generation, those many decades of church decline and growth. You know, loss of growth, church decline, people who have walked away. Will you step up this week? You have a prayer meeting this week.

(31:30 – 31:35)

I love the thing on your slide, by the way. It said, the gospel is the only answer. This week is our prayer meeting.

(31:36 – 31:48)

I mean, perfect. But will you pray for that lost generation? And then finally, what about your city? I hope you like that photo I got, which symbolised Glasgow. I thought that was magnificent.

(31:50 – 32:07)

And which Scotland has taken around the world in the last few weeks as well. The traffic going on their head. But what about the state of your city? And if your city is to be one back for Christ, it will happen as missionaries and evangelists and pastors go around and share the gospel.

(32:08 – 32:17)

But the sea change will happen here in the prayer meetings. You know, the Hebridean revival didn’t break out in Lewis when the evangelists went out. It broke out in the prayer meetings.

(32:18 – 32:38)

It broke out when people prayed relentlessly, month after year after year, until God came down. You know, oh, that you would render heavens and come down, Isaiah says. Shouldn’t that be our prayer, not just for our country, but also for your city as well? Persistence and shameless audacity.

(32:39 – 33:00)

My pastor in Perth is Brazilian, and he’s got a very interesting story. He was kind of converted in the major revivals that took place in Brazil, a lot of it amongst the Pentecostal churches, and he was converted out of folk Catholicism. And when he came to Scotland, one of the local ministers in one of the established churches said to him, our policy here is managed decline.

(33:01 – 33:12)

And his eyes nearly burst out of his head. He said, never heard anything so outrageous in all my life. The book of Acts, managed decline? Are you kidding me? No, we will call a prayer meeting.

(33:13 – 33:25)

We will pray and fast until we see normality restored. What’s normality? I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. That’s reality.

(33:26 – 33:29)

That’s the truth of Scripture. That’s what he’d experienced in Brazil. That’s what he’d read in the Scripture.

(33:29 – 33:40)

So he calls us to pray. And what happened? Well, it wasn’t revival, but ones and twos started to come to Christ. We saw a sea change in what was going on, because he called us to prayer like we’d never done before.

(33:42 – 33:47)

Let’s just backtrack one. Lack of prayer. That is the biggest delusion of adequacy.

(33:48 – 33:53)

If you don’t pray, you think you’re adequate. Well, forget that. You realise how out of your depth you are.

(33:53 – 34:06)

Just cast yourself on the mercy of God. And this is the God to whom we cast ourselves. God the Father, the living God, the God of all glory, who stands above it all, and will judge the living and the dead.

(34:06 – 34:18)

It’s the living God who allows us to come to him through Christ. Everything that we need provided for on the cross that we’re about to celebrate in communion. Christ shed his blood for us so that we could come to God.

(34:19 – 34:32)

All our sins removed, and the inexhaustible riches of Christ given to us. It’s all here in bread and wine, pictured for us. We come to God, the Father through the Son, and he’s here by his spirit amongst us.

(34:32 – 34:41)

He makes it real, he makes it live. Not just in our minds as good doctrine, but he sets our hearts on fire. He gives us that sense that he’s here with us.

(34:41 – 34:54)

His spirit testifies to our spirit that we are the sons of God, it says in Romans. You get that sense of God throwing his arms around us and saying, You’re my people. And what a privilege it is for us to come to God.

(34:54 – 35:02)

And we have access. Let’s not squander that access. But let’s be people of prayer.

(35:03 – 35:08)

Because no one else can. It really is up to the people of God. Amen.

The post Rekindling a Passion for Prayer – Luke 11&18 appeared first on Greenview Church.

It certainly includes the physical but also the spiritual, and it’s something we’ve been learning that we are to practise. It doesn’t necessarily come easy. It’s certainly not straightforward, so we’re to practise it, make it a habit.

(1:32 – 4:09)

It’s something that we’re all to be involved in and in a variety of ways. So finally today then we’re going to turn to Luke chapter 14. It’s another example of hospitality that Jesus is involved in, and in this particular chapter we’re going to see how hospitality is fundamentally to do with the kingdom of God, and we’re going to break our reading this whole chapter into three parts, but firstly Jesus contrasts a true versus false practise of hospitality, and in verse 1 to 14, so if you turn your pew bibles again to page 1047, and the words are on the screen as well, one sabbath when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent pharisee, he was being carefully watched.

There in front of him was a man suffering from an abnormal swelling of his body, and Jesus asked the pharisees and experts in the law, is it lawful to heal on the sabbath or not? But they remained silent, so taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way. Then he asked them, If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on a sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out? And they had nothing to say. When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honour at the table, he told them this parable.

When someone invites you to a wedding feast place of honour, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited, and if so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, give this person your seat. Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you’re invited, take the lowest place so that when your host comes, he will say to you, friend, move up to a better place.

Then you will be honoured in the presence of all the other guests. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Then Jesus said to his host, when you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives or your rich neighbours.

If you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.

(4:10 – 5:12)

Jesus is at this meal. He’s invited by a Pharisee, one of the Jewish religious rulers, and a number of other people are present. But what they thought and understood and practised as hospitality is going to be challenged by Jesus.

In fact, what Jesus is doing is he’s reorienting their practise of hospitality as a kingdom of God matter. Jesus gives two examples to demonstrate this. Two examples that characterise the giving of true hospitality in contrast to false hospitality.

And in the first example, Jesus shows us that hospitality is more about merciful care and not rules. So an opportunity to give kingdom of God-like hospitality was given by way of the man at the meal who was in need of healing. And here Jesus is not simply performing a miracle.

(5:12 – 5:28)

He’s intentionally touching an untouchable who was at the feast. He’s restoring someone whom the religious leaders who were there would have viewed with a moral dislike. It was a Sabbath day.

(5:29 – 6:10)

Jesus simply asked them whether it’s lawful or within the rules to heal this man. And they didn’t answer. Is it because they didn’t know? Or did they know they were being challenged and so didn’t like to answer? Well, we’re not told why, just simply that they kept silent.

So Jesus presses in more. He says, imagine you have a child or an ox, a person or property that’s valuable to you, it’s fallen down a well. Would you not pull them out? But again, they’re silent.

(6:11 – 8:02)

The opportunity is for physical care to be given, for mercy to be shown. It’s this kind of action that characterises God’s kingdom. It’s the same kind of physical care of hospitality that was given, remember, by the Samaritan to the Jew on the road to Jericho.

But they couldn’t answer. And in that silence, Jesus is challenging their reliance on rules, their performance to a standard that made them look good on the outside, on keeping laws at this superficial level, when in fact they were breaking the more important, greater law to love your neighbour, to not do harm or evil towards another. You see, in God’s kingdom, failure to provide physical care is a harm.

To bring healing is a mercy. But they were more concerned about keeping the laws than showing mercy. God said the same to the people of God and the leaders of Israel many, many years before.

He warned them in Micah chapter six of three core principles that God requires of his people. He has shown you o mortal what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Zechariah says a similar words. He said, this is what the Lord Almighty said, administer true justice, show mercy and compassion one to another. But their silence is deafening.

So Jesus gives another example. He shows them that hospitality is an opportunity for humility. It’s not about gaining in social status.

(8:04 – 8:17)

And in verses seven to 14, he unpacks this with two issues that he lays bare. The first issue that he lays bare is their pursuit of honour in verse seven to 11. So they’re scrambling for seats.

(8:18 – 8:36)

Who can be closest to the host? Because these places bring greatest honour and greatest status. And Jesus turns this thinking upside down. His lesson ends with the statement, everyone who exalts themselves will be humbled.

(8:37 – 10:06)

But whoever humbles themselves will be exalted. You know Jesus is not giving out social advice. Instead he’s getting to the root of who they thought they were.

He’s focussing on their view of self. It wasn’t endearing. It’s not commendable.

This practise of hospitality was more about their own status in comparison to others around them. That’s issue number one. But there’s a second issue here.

And here Jesus speaks about patronage and favouritism. This is about how they viewed others. And this view leads to practising hospitality to get a leg up.

He’s calling out the problem of using hospitality as a strategic deal-making way where they invite others so that they in turn can be invited back. This was the custom of the day. To invite people who could return the favour and in turn bring them social and financial benefit.

And Jesus again is overturning that thinking. You see in God’s kingdom hospitality is not about gaining status or earning rewards. True blessing comes from God as you welcome those who cannot repay you or improve your standing.

(10:08 – 11:09)

And neither this nor the pursuit of honour is genuine hospitality. You see what these practises that they were doing reveals is a manipulation. It’s a heart of manipulation rather than a heart of love.

It’s the antithesis to the kingdom of God’s hospitality. They’re treating people as a means to gain honour, status and favour. But love seeks the good of others for no return.

Manipulation calculates. It gives out to get something back. But hospitality shaped by the values of God’s kingdom is given not to manipulate to get something in return.

Yes there is a reward in giving hospitality. But it’s fundamentally spiritual. Hospitality is a kingdom of God matter.

(11:10 – 11:33)

And Jesus teaches that life in God’s kingdom transforms even our hospitality. It works on us as much as it works on others. And we are to become more concerned with showing mercy and walking humbly before God and towards others which is expressed in that humility with others.

(11:34 – 12:30)

Instead we’re freed from finding security in status or possessions. So much so that we can give generously out of what we have. And we can give generously in a sacrificial way.

We can prioritise the vulnerable over personal comfort. And we trust God to reward what is done for the good of others and for God’s glory. So we come to the next part of our Bible reading.

Follow me then in chapter 14 again but starting from verse 15. When one of those at the table with him heard this he said to Jesus, blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God. Jesus replied, a certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests.

(12:30 – 12:56)

At the same time of the at the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who’d been invited, come for everything now is ready. But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, I’ve just bought a field and I must go and see it.

Please excuse me. Another said, I’ve just bought five yoke of oxen and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.

(12:56 – 15:03)

Still another said, I just got married so I can’t come. The servant came back and reported this to his master and then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town, bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. Sir, the servant said, what you’ve ordered has been done but there’s still room.

Then the master told the servant, go out to the roads and the country lanes and compel them to come in so that my house may be full. I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet. So one of the guests at this meal, remember Jesus is at this meal, and one of the guests at this meal speaks out to Jesus and says, blessed is the man who will eat the feast in the kingdom of God.

Now we don’t know what relies behind this expression, this comment. Is it a genuine expression of truth? Is it religious showmanship or something else? We don’t know. The text does not tell us.

But what we get next is Jesus telling a story about a great banquet. With this story, Jesus has taken the opportunity to teach about God’s way of hospitality. So we’ve been hearing about the false way of hospitality.

Now Jesus is expressing what God’s way of hospitality is. And so he tells us that there’s this certain man, prepares a great banquet and as was the custom, sends out an initial invitation to the guests. And then a second call when everything is ready.

It’s like a save the date card goes out first and then come to the meal. So Jesus uses this to point out to a wider gospel story that God has already been sending out invitations to this kingdom feast. Save the date cards have already been mailed out to the world.

(15:05 – 15:36)

There’s this inner witness of conscience that we all have as God’s people. There’s a revelation of God in creation. And there’s the message of the prophets that has come down through history, down through the ages.

All of this forms part of the first invitation. But the second invitation is more specific and timely. And it lines up with what Jesus has been telling the people since he’s arrived on the scene.

(15:37 – 17:20)

When Jesus arrived on the scene he says to people, repent and believe for the kingdom of God is near or has now come. Jesus spoke of his own coming into this world as he came to seek and save the lost. He said elsewhere, I came to give my life as a ransom to many.

And what Jesus is doing is revealing again and again his greater purpose at this time here on earth where he would live and die and to bring a way of salvation and forgiveness for sin for all people. And again and again through what Jesus said in many parables and stories, many of his interactions and demonstrations of his power through miracles, that he pointed to the specific invitation to join in and be part of God’s kingdom now. People were to repent.

People were to believe. People were to listen and to follow Jesus’ teaching. And Jesus’ point that while there had been an invitation to come and know God through conscience, through creatorial revelation and through the prophets that spoke to the people down through history, Jesus is declaring now everything is ready.

Come and join the feast in the kingdom of God. But this story that Jesus tells, in the story that Jesus tells, the invited guests offer pretext. That is they give bogus excuses not to take up the invitation.

(17:21 – 17:47)

They offered other reasons in order to conceal their true motivation. It’s a deceptive tactic. It’s used to justify a behaviour while hiding actual purpose.

It’s like someone being at a party and they want to leave early and they tell everyone, I’ve got an emergency at work. I need to go. But the true reason was simply that they just wanted to go home.

(17:49 – 21:27)

The excuses given here, buying a field, testing some oxen, getting married, they may feel kind of distant to us, but they carried real weight in that culture. The first two relate to business and property and the third to relationships and together they reflect areas of life in the Near East and they still speak powerfully today. We too are shaped by the same concerns in business, for example our work, our careers, our education, the results, the effort that drives all that We too are concerned about property matters, what we own, what we’re saving up for, homes, cars, finances, everything associated with that.

We too care deeply about relationships, family, friends, work colleagues, leisure and all that sustains and is involved in keeping up relationships. These things are not wrong. These things are to be engaged in and pursued.

It’s good and a blessing to have a job, to contribute to society. It’s wise and prudent to save and to have savings and investments. It’s right and good to think that we should build up relationships because life can be lonely and hard, so we nurture connections and cultivate bonds and prioritise people.

But the point Jesus is making in this story is that these legitimate things of life, they are being used as excuses to reject the invitation to join in and be part of God’s kingdom. These good and lawful practises or activities are being turned into stumbling blocks. It’s stopping them taking up the invitation to the feast.

So Jesus continues in his stories and says the master that’s hosting the feast widens the invitation and so now urban poor are invited, those in the streets and the alleyways, those who are poor, crippled, blind and lame. And you might ask why were these people not, these outsiders not invited from the beginning? Well in Jesus’ story I think the first guests in a sense represent Israel, the ones whom graciously, God graciously chose. Not because they were greater than any others but because he’d rescued this people from Egypt.

He’d gave them their law. He’d provided a sacrifice for sin and spoke through the prophets yet they repeatedly rejected God’s ways. And rather than loving their neighbours they burdened each other with man-made rules and they excluded the poor and the blind and the lame and the marginalised.

But God’s hospitality reaches to those on the outside and so the master is sending his servant beyond the city, beyond the roads to the fields to say there’s still room at the feast. Those outside are urged to come because such grace seems too good to be true to these people. I wonder if you might feel that way.

(21:28 – 22:36)

Do you ever feel like you’re on the outside? Too distant from God for the invitation to really include you? Maybe past experience with Christians or church has left you feeling that you are not good enough. But the truth is we’re all in the same place before God, all in need of his grace. No one stands righteous on their own.

Yet God does not affirm our wrong and sinful behaviours. Instead he calls us to himself to forgive us and to transform us. There’s room for all of us.

That was Jesus’ way. He consistently reached out to those who are far from God. He met them.

He spoke with them. He ate with them. Yet he still called them to repent and believe.

And wherever he went he showed that compassion for both physical and spiritual needs. Yet not everyone responded. Yet the invitation was always extended.

(22:38 – 24:25)

He didn’t hold out so much for those who thought they were righteous though, who had other priorities. He particularly focused on those who knew they needed him. And so the invitation still stands.

Whatever our past or present may be, God calls us into his feast. We are invited and there is room. The question is whether we will come or perhaps do you find yourself offering reasons to decline, to stay away.

Perhaps these kind of thoughts sound familiar to you. Not now but later. When life is less busy.

When I finish school. I’m too young. When I’m done studying.

When I’m settled in a job. When I have more time. When I’m retired.

When I need God. I’m too old now. Later.

Not today. Reminds me of a story I heard when I was growing up, of a young boy who saw a bike in the shop window. The sign read, today you pay, tomorrow you get it for free.

All excited he returned home expecting the next day to get the bike at no cost. But the owner asked for a hundred pound. Confused the boy protested and points to the sign and the owner replied, read it again.

(24:26 – 24:35)

Today you pay, tomorrow it’s free. You see the boy had missed the point. Tomorrow never comes.

(24:37 – 28:07)

You see Jesus is giving a warning in this story. The invitation is only valid for so long. The warning is to all who are invited but who reject the invitation for whatever reason that may be.

He says quite quite bluntly in verse 24, I tell you not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet. The bogus excuses by those initially invited reminds us that there can be a real difficulty for those who are caught up with the things of life. The Bible speaks into this reality.

We can be so taken over by life, by living, by earning, by parenting, by relationships, eating, clothing, security and so on that we can simply miss out. Another challenge is that when we surround ourselves with life and with living that we’re satisfied with and we’re engaged in and we’re fulfilled by. So business and work and career, learning and education, property, finance, investments, friendships, family, they provide enough for us.

Friendships and family but we simply don’t believe we need anything from God. Our lives are busy and full of things that take us away from God. Not necessarily wrong in themselves but where the problem is when they become the most important and they replace God.

Yet the invitation to God’s kingdom is truly only seen by those whose eyes are open to their need. It’s often the case that when material things are taken away, you know, through loss, instability, disappointment, we begin to see how fragile and dissatisfying they really are. It’s often the case that as we lose our business or our work or if something rocks our financial stability or our relationships are affected in some way through breakdown or death even, that when that happens we realise we’ve built our lives on things that just don’t last.

But in their place God offers true hospitality, shelter, refuge, peace, purpose, belonging, forgiveness and lasting security. And only those who see that they really need these things and they cannot find it within themselves or the things that they surround themselves with, only the humble can receive this kind of invitation to know this kind of feast. You know, we don’t read of any excuses offered by those who are poor, lame, crippled, marginalised, outsiders, those who are in the fields.

Perhaps because their lives were so stripped back they were humble and ready to see the invitation for what it was. Perhaps they could really see what was being offered and there was nothing holding them back. You see the psalmist puts it this way, today if you hear God’s voice do not harden your hearts.

(28:08 – 36:34)

Paul the apostle says now is the time of God’s favour, now is the day of salvation. Which brings us to the last section, we’re to consider the cost. Look with me down at verse 25.

Large crowds were travelling with Jesus and turning to them he said if anyone comes to me and does not hate mother and father, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes even their own life, such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Suppose one of you wants to build a tower, won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you’ve enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying this person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.

Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king, won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with 10,000 men to oppose the one coming against him with 20,000. If he is not able he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

Salt is good but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile, it’s thrown out. Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear. In these final verses of this chapter Jesus is warning again and that whilst the invitation to receive God’s hospitality is free, there is a cost to consider.

Colin spoke about this in our first sermon of their series from Isaiah 55, that the price of entry to this banquet is free. That’s the unbeatable hospitality of the kingdom of God. That God has sent his servant Jesus who bears the sins of the people, pays the price that their sins deserve, dies in their place.

The servant lays down his life and the offer is made to you and me and it’s free at the point of receipt. Jesus has paid for it but there are costs to consider. There’s a personal investment required and Jesus expands that truth in these verses and he says to the disciples, if you’re going to be disciples you must hate your father, mother, spouse, children, even your own life.

This word hate used in this way in the original language really means to love less. Jesus isn’t commanding his followers to literal hatred, he’s simply saying we’re to love God first and if forced to choose then the disciples love for Jesus and his priorities, his purposes, his kingdom is to come first. Jesus said it elsewhere, he said love God and love others.

Our love for God would then influence our love for others. He said to his followers, seek first the kingdom of God and all these other things will be added to you. Jesus is saying we’re to carry our cross and follow him which means that followers of Jesus are on a one-way journey just like those being executed by way of crucifixion with the crowds around them jeering and criticising and hurling insults.

It’s accepting that following Jesus can lead to that kind of rejection and mocking from those around you, that’s a cost to consider. Also we’re to see this discipleship journey as a long-haul endeavour. It’s not a short-term commitment, it’s not a casual decision, it’s not simply for when you feel good and things are going well.

It’s through thick and thin, the ups and downs of living in a limited body and a weak body and even as a sinful person still in a hard and sinful world where bad things happen to us, it’s a spiritual commitment that must be committed to through to the end. Jesus also says it’s something we are to give everything up for. This discipleship involves distancing ourselves from materialistic attachments in the world for the sake of the kingdom of God.

You see following Jesus means counting the cost. It means recognising his authority over business matters, career and work and education and ambitions, that is a real cost. It means submitting our possessions to Jesus, our homes, our finances, talents, even our bodies, yes, to his rule, that is a real cost.

It means yielding our relationships to his lordship, allowing him to shape our choices and priorities in them, that too is a real cost. When it comes to discipleship, following Jesus and all that this means, then it impacts all of our life, our personal devotions and building relationships with God. It influences what we do with our time and our resources and how much we will invest in the kingdom of God here in a church family like Greenview or elsewhere, whether we simply turn up to church to consume or whether we engage and participate and actively serve one another.

It all points to a way of life that indicates we don’t give what’s left over to Jesus. We give it all as we go about business and work and careers and education and accumulate property and wealth and as we live life in and through our relationships. Jesus is not asking for what’s left over and that’s a cost.

The man who spoke out in verse 14, whether he really understood it or meant it, we don’t know, but he was right when he said, blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God. God has provided blessing after blessing after blessing. He has poured out the riches of his grace through the giving of his son, Jesus.

Belonging, acceptance, forgiveness, security, cleansing, healing, adoption, all these amazing, amazing gifts and blessings that are ours as we join the invitation to his kingdom. He’s generously lavished his love on us, ultimately in the laying down of Jesus’ life for us. In response, we take up this free invitation to come and follow our saviour Jesus.

Today we can enjoy the ongoing generous hospitality from the father by his spirit with our fellow guests, our church family. Today we can offer that same hospitality to each other to show mercy and care and spiritual encouragement. By that way, we and they, we and you are blessed.

Today we offer that same invitation we’ve accepted to you, to join in with us so that we and you together can be blessed today and eternally. Let’s pray. Father, we do thank you that you are an hospitable God who generously has poured out your love at the riches of your grace and mercy.

(36:35 – 37:14)

Thank you for this great invitation to the feast. Lord, as we receive this invitation, help us to consider the cost, but to take it up, to know that it’s worth it, that what we receive in blessing from you is far, far more than what can be had for a short term here in this time. Help us with these things, we pray.

Encourage us. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

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