Sermon Tone Analysis

Why Study Proverbs?

We need more than ethical principles

We need more than practical self-help

We need more than tips on how to stay relatively pure in mind and body.

We need new hearts

We need a wisdom that isn’t learned merely in the mind, but in the heart.

We need God’s wisdom, that

We need wisdom deep within, at an intuitive level, as we hurry from one complex decision to the next, moment by moment, in the concrete realities of our daily lives.

(Without God’s wisdom, many difficulties in life will remain confusing and threatening.)

With God’s wisdom entering our hearts, we get the hang of how life really works, and we come alive more and more.

Irenaeus, the early Christian theologian, famously said, “The glory of God is man fully alive.”

That is where wants to take us.

So while chapter 2 deals largely in nega

(Overview)

: offers wisdom that protects/delivers from evil

: positive/education in life at its best

How to live well in every area of your life (work, school, home, etc.)

vs 1-8

God is showing the way into peace (shalom) (vs 2)

favor/good success (vs 4)

refreshment (“marrow”) (vs 8)

But let’s be honest… You can’t read this proverb and not be immediately intrigued by

vs 2 - length of days/long life

vs 4 - wordly success

vs 10 - barns filled with plenty and presses (vats) bursting with wine

vs. 16 - riches and honor

Is Proverbs preaching a prosperity gospel?

The prosperity gospel is known by many names...

Name it & claim it, blab it & grab it, health & wealth gospel, or even “positive confession theology”

Perhaps you know it by its teachers… The man who could be considered the father of modern prosperity gospel teaching is Oral Roberts.

The faith-healing evangelist became so influential that he started his own school that paved the way for...

The man who could be considered the father of modern prosperity gospel teaching is Oral Roberts.

The faith-healing evangelist became so influential that he started his own school, Oral Roberts University (ORU).

At the height of his influence, Roberts oversaw a ministry that brought in $110 million in annual revenue.

Kenneth Copeland, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Benny Hinn, etc...

Kenneth Copeland, a student at ORU who served as a pilot and chauffeur for Oral Roberts, also became one of the most notorious (and wealthiest) of prosperity preachers.

These men paved the way for the televangelists who became famous in the 1980s, including Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Benny Hinn, Pat Robertson, and Robert Tilton.

Today, some of the best-known prosperity teachers are Creflo Dollar, T. D. Jakes, Guillermo Maldonado, Joel Osteen, and Paula White.

Today, some of the best-known prosperity teachers are Creflo Dollar, T. D. Jakes, Guillermo Maldonado, Joel Osteen, and Paula White.

Benny’s nephew Costi Hinn was actually marvelously converted to true Christianity out of the prosperity gospel “world” and he recently wrote a wonderful book outlining the dangers of the prosperity gospel, and he refers to the Prosperity Gospel as “the #1 US export worldwide.”

So is this teaching that God is out to make you healthy and rich and comfortable and put you on top of the heap because you are his child.

Is this passage saying that?

Can we trust this counsel?

Can we swallow it whole?

I offer two answers.

The prosperity gospel is found nowhere in the Bible.

The prosperity gospel is nothing but a coldhearted materialistic wolf clothed in the sheepish clothing of religion.

While it uses select Bible verses to fit it’s name it and claim it philosophy, it does not love God.

The rewards of are good.

God offers them out to His wise children as he sees fit.

Every believer is also a sinner = AKA “it’s complicated”

We will see later on in this passage that God send us pain too (something the PG doesn’t tell you)

Is this the prosperity gospel?

You know what I mean—the idea that God is out to make you healthy and rich and comfortable and put you on top of the heap because you are his child.

Is this passage saying that?

Can we trust this counsel?

Can we swallow it whole?

I offer two answers.

God sends both earthly blessings and earthly sorrows.

Think of Jesus.

He both suffered at the cross and prospered in the resurrection.

And the resurrection is the prosperity you will want when your health utterly fails, as it will, and very soon.

Second, the rewards God offers us here in are good.

He will give them out to his wise children, as he sees fit.

But every believer’s life is complicated.

God sends us pain too.

Verses 11, 12 are clear that God disciplines us.

God sends both earthly blessings and earthly sorrows.

Think of Jesus.

He both suffered at the cross and prospered in the resurrection.

And the resurrection is the prosperity you will want when your health utterly fails, as it will, and very soon.

If your story is limited to the blessings of the here and now, you are in trouble, because your vats bursting with wine will also run dry.

But if your life in this world is only the title page to your eternal story, and God also gives you some barns and vats for the present, okay.

Just be sure you set your heart not on the gift, which will certainly fail you, but on the Giver, who will certainly never fail you.

C. S. Lewis counseled us wisely:

Ray Ortlund said it rightly, “If your story is limited to the blessings of the here and now, you are in trouble, because your vats bursting with wine will also run dry.

But if your life in this world is only the title page to your eternal story, and God also gives you some barns and vats for the present, okay.

Just be sure you set your heart not on the gift, which will certainly fail you, but on the Giver, who will certainly never fail you.”

So we need to approach Proverbs from the right perspective, otherwise we can be tempted to mine wisdom from its pages for the sole purpose of the here and now.

Such an endeavor is short-sighted (and misguided) at best and self-serving and heretical at its worst.

In Proverbs, wisdom is compared to precious jewels, but if divorced from the overall redemptive narrative of Scripture, such a treasure hunt is sure to disappoint when the seeker realizes that his gold eventually tarnishes as he puts into a bag with holes.

C. S. Lewis counseled us wisely:

The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world; but joy, pleasure and merriment he has scattered broadcast.

We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy.

It is not hard to see why.

The security we all crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God; a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bath or a football match, have no such tendency.

Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.

So while this wisdom is for us right now, it wasn’t created merely for a temporal world.

This wisdom is what happens in the heart of man when a man’s heart is in lock step with the law of God.

The law of God was simply God revealing His true nature and glory to man.

He wasn’t saying, “Do this and I’ll love you.”

He was saying, “Because I love you, I’m going to show you what you had fellowship with before sin ruined it all...”

That’s why, just as Phil pointed out last week, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Because to fear God is to obey His law.

That’s why, just as Phil pointed out last week, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

The

Which we know from Romans was given to us, in part, to show us that we actually can’t keep the law.

If you started today and set out to obey every jot and tittle of the law of God, you would be still be an offender.

There is none righteous...

And even if you could keep it perfectly outwardly (which you can’t), how do you account for your heart?