Sayings of the Wise

Proverbs 13:3 NIV

Those who guard their lips preserve their lives, but those who speak rashly will come to ruin.

Josh is awesome

This week, we’re in our second to last week in our series on hope this has been a beneficial process for you as we’ve taken time to examine the idea of what Biblical Wisdom actually looks like in our world today.

We’ve discussed at length the reality that Wisdom or Hokmah is this underlying force that God has hardwired into the Universe in the very fabric of how it was made. So when we seek to live live wisely in the world, we are actually stepping into living in tune with how God originally intended for the world to function.

Jeremiah 51:15 ESV

“It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.

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says it this way

One of the things that I love about this is that God isn’t hiding what it looks like to flourish. He’s made it readily available to us and our job is to partner with him in living in the way that he always intended for us.

That brings us to our passage tonight. We’re going to be reading what’s known as “The sayings of the Wise” Proverbs can be broken down in a number of different ways, but there seems to be some consensus that the book can be broken down into six different parts.

That brings us to our passage tonight. We’re going to be reading what’s known as “The sayings of the Wise”

: Lectures to My Son

We spent the first couple of weeks in Part I where the writer introduces us to a series of lectures that he gives to His son. This wasn’t just directed to a physical son, but can be applied and is for everyone.

We spent the first couple of weeks in Part I where the writer introduces us to a series of lectures that he gives to His son. This wasn’t just directed to a physical son, but can be applied and is for everyone.

Then, we spent the last couple of weeks in Part II where we looked at the importance of our words and how we say things as well as the importance of friendship in our lives.

Tonight we’re gonna look at Part III. This begins a new series of Proverbs. In fact, if you look in Your Bible, you’ll see right above Vs. 17, it will say, “The Words of the Wise”. What’s happening in tonight’s passage is that the editor and writer of Proverbs is gathering sayings and phrases from an Egyptian sage named Amenomope.

Insert Mother/Father Joke

So before we get started and read our text for tonight, I wanted to put this quote on the screen to set our hearts in the right place regarding the things that we’re reading.

A series of proverbs demands much of the reader, if it is not to remain for him a string of platitudes. The present call to attention is salutary not only in its immediate context but beyond it, to enable the disciple to review his (or her) response to Scripture.- Derek Kidner

I thought this was really helpful as we approach these sayings because it can be so easy to breeze through these sayings quickly without allowing ourselves to sit with what they’re actually saying and calling us to.

So tonight, I want to just ask one question of us.

What’s our response to Wisdom?

What’s our response to Wisdom?

Are we people who think we know what’s going on?

Are we people who balk at the idea of believing that someone has something to say to us that might be beneficial?

We live in a culture with instant access to so much information so why would we need to embrace different sayings of people

Are we people who are afraid we might not know everything?

So with that being said, let’s Pray and Read our text for tonight.

Proverbs 22:17–21 ESV

Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply your heart to my knowledge, for it will be pleasant if you keep them within you, if all of them are ready on your lips. That your trust may be in the Lord, I have made them known to you today, even to you. Have I not written for you thirty sayings of counsel and knowledge, to make you know what is right and true, that you may give a true answer to those who sent you?

As we mentioned above, the is the beginning of a series. These first five verses make up the prologue or introduction or Exordium. So as we break this introduction down, we’re going to see that the text can be broken down into three distinct parts. So let’s Look at the First one.

Benefits for Listening

Re-Read Verses 17-18

As we read these verses, one of the things that jumps out is that the author has a tangible and active picture in mind of what he wants the reader or listener to do.

To incline has the idea of leaning in to listen- to hear the words of the wise.

Apply your heart to his knowledge.

I want to take a second to talk about this phrase “heart”. It’s the Hebrew word, Leb. So I feel like we go through a series of phases of in our lives.

So I feel like we go through a series of phases of in our lives.

When we’re young, we start of with the picture of the heart that’s inextricably tied to Valentines day, Right? We have this picture that all love starts in our heart because it looks like this and is beautiful and things are rose-colored.

Proverbs 22:17–18 ESV

Incline your ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply your heart to my knowledge, for it will be pleasant if you keep them within you, if all of them are ready on your lips.

Proverbs 22:

Then, we get to Junior High or High School and have our heart broken and it turns into this ugly picture of what the heart actually looks like.

Some of you know I like to smoke pulled pork. This picture makes me think of that. It’s kinda disgusting to look at. But we say love is dead and I hate everyone and everything.

When we read “Apply your heart to my knowledge”, we need to recognize that they’re not talking about either of these things.

In Hebrew language and thought, the Heart was this powerful, robust driving force in a person’s life.

An Old Testament scholar puts it like this:

The ancient Hebrews used heart’ comprehensively to indicate the inner person, the ‘I’ that is the locus of a person’s will, thought, and feeling. Thus, all of a person’s actions, especially speech, flow from the heart, expressing its content, whether good or bad… One’s disposition toward God is a matter of the heart. Like a deep well, the heart has a hidden depth. Its deepest depths, what modern psychologists might call the subconscious or the unconscious, only God can plumb. Raymond C. Van Leeuwen

When we read “Apply your heart to my knowledge”, we need to recognize that they’re talking about this deep internalizing of the things that we’re reading.

It’s an active process where we take time to meditate, to think about the implications of these words in our lives, and to allow them to shape the different decisions we make throughout our lives.

He continues…

“For it will be pleasant if you keep them within you, if all of them are ready on your lips.”

The translators are being nice here by saying ‘within you’. The language actually reads like this: It will be pleasant if you keep them in the casket of your belly. He has in mind a deep internalizing of the material and words.

The writer here is using really graphic, tangible language to get a strong point across. It will be pleasant for your if you allow this information, these sayings to seep deep inside your bones, to shape you, to guide and direct your life.

Tremper Longman says it this way:

“To guard them in your stomach is a picture of integrating them into the inmost part of a person’s being. The integration of the teacher’s wisdom is prerequisite to its use in the students own life. In other words, appropriation into students’ character is then followed by their own ability to express the wisdom: ‘have them ready on your lips’”

The author is trying to say communicate that we need to allow wisdom to seep so deep into who we are that we can’t help but share about it.

THink about something in your life that you’ve been so deeply impacted by or that’s shaped so much of who you are. - You can’t help but talk about it and share about it. That’s what the writer has envisioned here.

What’s our Response to Wisdom?

Let’s Keep going.

Purpose for Listening

Read

“That your trust may be in the LORD, I have made them known to you today, even to you.”

This is a moment where we need to stop and take a breath.

Think about some of the TV shows that we love… The Office, Parks and Recreation… Ferris Bueller’s Day Off… We watch these shows and allow the drama to unfold, when all of a sudden, the actor stops and looks at you in order to get your attention.

Verse 19 is what this section and really all of Proverbs is about.

Tonight, if you hear nothing else, hear this...

The application of wisdom is to find our trust in the Lord

Let’s take a second to unpack what this looks like and what that actually means for our lives because trust in the Lord can be one of those phrases that we gloss over and say, great. I trust in the LORD.

Trust is one of those interesting words in that it runs so much of our lives. We trust in things that we hear and we run our lives according to the things that we trust.

If I stop at this stoplight, it’s going to turn green eventually

If I eat lots of salad, I will be skinny

If I eat lots of pizza, I’ll look like Jake

If I drink Coffee, I’ll be more awake in the morning.

I want to be honest tonight and say that we trust in dumb things.

We trust that if we just looked a certain way, we would feel valued

We trust that if we just had a few more friends, we would feel validated

We trust that if I just had a boyfriend or girlfriend, we would be happy

We trust that if people will see how many pictures I post of how awesome my life is, then I will really start to feel complete.

We trust that if we look at pornography, then we’ll feel satisfied

We trust that if we give ourselves away sexually, then I’ll feel loved.

What the writer has in mind here is an all-encompassing, active choice to believe God.

That means to trust his Word- That what God says is true

That means to trust in his love- to trust that He’s on Your side

That means to trust in his sacrifice- to trust that JEsus was enough

That means to trust in who He’s said You are- To trust that you are a son or daughter of the father

That means to trust in who He’s said you aren’t.- That you aren’’t defined by what other people say or think about you.

Again, like everything we’ve been saying, this takes work. We have to fight and coach ourselves to believe and trust the right things.

I love the way one scholar put it...

This active trust in the LORD, who reveals his will through the adjusted sayings, entails a constant commitment to the LORD and his words, not an autonomous reliance on oneself or a passive resignation to fate.

Alright Let’s finish this out with our last section

Statements From the Wise

“Have I not written for you thirty sayings of counsel of knowledge, to make you know what is right and true, that you may give a true answer to those who sent you?

As readers, this was written for us. He now provides a snapshot as to his reasoning for writing these sayings…

‘To make you know what is right and true’- The idea of knowing here is an intimate understanding and grasp of something. .. This moves beyond head knowledge to conforming the listener’s character....

That you might become a living testament to what is right and true… that you might give a true answer to those who sent you

That you might become a living testament to what is right and true… that you might give a true answer to those who sent you

Those who sent you could refer to an employer or someone to whom the reader was accountable.

Those who sent you could refer to an employer or someone to whom the reader was accountable.

He provides

That being said, the idea here is that wisdom and what is right and true should be such an integral part of who we are that those we interact with will be exposed to what is good and right and true.

So as we close tonight, I have a couple of questions that I want us to spend some time reflecting on.

What’s our Response to Wisdom?

When we read and interact with God’s word

Are we paying attention? Are we concentrating on what the living God has to say to us?

Have we allowed our lives to be saturated and transformed by the truth of God’s word?

Do we trust in the LORD?

Are we embodying it?

I want to be honest tonight and say that we trust in dumb things.

We trust that if we just looked a certain way, we would feel valued

We trust that if we just had a few more friends, we would feel validated

We trust that if I just had a boyfriend or girlfriend, we would be happy

We trust that if people will see how many pictures I post of how awesome my life is, then I will really start to feel complete.

We trust that if we look at pornography, then we’ll feel satisfied

We trust that if we give ourselves away sexually, then I’ll feel loved.