As I mentioned last week, with my Dad in Argentina I'm teaching his Proverbs Sunday School class. Last week seemed to go well, I made it a full 40 min and then squeezed 5 more with questions/discussion meaning we dismissed only 10 min early. Not bad seeing as last time I taught I was done 15 min in. This week we're in Proverbs chapter 9 which is only 18 verses long, so I'm sure it will be short. However, going to try to be as long-winded as possible and stretch it out. We'll see how it goes. Once again, if you're going to be there Sunday and want to be surprised, now is the time to go do something else, otherwise this is what I'll be speaking about.
Outline and most thoughts are my Dad's.
After hammering the benefits of Wisdom versus the consequences of Folly for 8 straight chapters, this one seems a little bit "superfluous" as my Dad puts it. I mean, surely we get the point. But, instead of assuming we do, Solomon paints one more word picture describing the contrast of Wisdom and Folly. It is organized into 3 sections, each with 6 versus, laid out as such: The Feast of Wisdom, The Responses to Wisdom's Appeal, and The Feast of Folly. As we noted last week, Solomon leaves the worst for last so that the warning of Folly lingers longest.
I. The Feast of Wisdom (vs 1-6)
A. Her Preparations (vs. 1-3)
1. Her House is Ready
"seven pillars" - there is no specific meaning here that anyone has determined as of yet. As Dad notes, we aren't describing a particularly well-built house or a particular type of house from Solomonic Israel. However, it is ok to numerologize the number 7 and suggest the house is perfect. Wisdom lives in a perfect place. The kind of place we should want to live in.
2. Her meal is ready
meat and wine with spices, would be the ultimate meal - just like today, a big steak, a fancy drink and no expense spared on the seasonings
this doesn't mean Wisdom is a meal. Obviously its referring to how it satisfies, it provides all we need and leaves us lacking nothing. We live a fulfilling life when we embrace Wisdom and feast on its meaty-ness.
3. Her invitations are ready
As we saw in chapter 8, she's out where we can see her. She's crying from the hilltops, not a subtle message, a loud, open, transparent one. This leads to the fact its all-inclusive. Everyone is invited, personally invited to partake in the feast.
B. Her Invitation (vs 4-6)
1. Who?
The simple and those lacking understanding - everyone without Wisdom
2. What does she invite them to do?
Eat the bread, drink the wine - enjoy the feast, taste of Wisdom, to learn, not just to sample it but to sit down and fully partake of its benefits
3. Why?
Wisdom is offering life, she contrasts it from foolishness. She wants a decision to be made, reject foolishness and come partake of my feast, this is an either-or
II. Responses to Wisdom's Appeal (vs 7-12)
A. The Scoffer's Response (vs 7-8)
1. This is the fool who has heard this all before, he's hardened his heart, he mocks Wisdom openly to draw others away from it.
2. His rejection is to be avoided, stay away from the scoffer, Christ taught us not to toss pearls before swine (Matt 7:6), arguing is not profitable. I had to opportunity several times to travel down to State Street in Madison while at college to hand out tracts and speak with the people walking up and down that busy street. Sometimes very profitable discussions occurred. Often they didn't. One night a friend of mine handed a tract to a guy and he stopped to talk. He had a blue Mohawk, several tattoos and piercings and looked rather disinterested in the actual discussion and more interested in getting a laugh. My buddy, Marc, launched into the Gospel and a little ways in casually asked, or more suggested, people would care what happened to them after they died. He cut in responding, "why should I care? I'll be dead. I couldn't care less." Marc objected, suggesting that the same thing that makes us care about whether we take our next breath in this life will not leave us in the next. He shot back that he didn't care about his next breath here either. I responded wrong to this, scoffing myself, and said, "So really, you don't care if you die and turn into a bird, or die and have to watch reruns of Seinfeld forever, or die and just sit in darkness forever or..." But he turned and walked off before I could finish. That was dumb, and it was casting pearls before swine. Once we had presented the Gospel, trying to argue along presuppositional lines was going to go nowhere. He was a scoffer and responding in kind would not help anybody.
B. The Wise Man's Response (vs 8-11)
1. Unlike the scoffer, the wise man desires disagreement and instruction. He wants to get smarter and he knows delving into the marketplace of ideas will grow his Wisdom. As Christians we should not shy away from learning. We should shy away from spending undue time diving into the depths of the philosophies of man, but being smarter is always better. More specifically, the wise man is looking to live better. He wants to improve his life. He knows others will know better, he knows the Bible will have better ways. He is not arrogant, he does not suppose he's figured it out.
2. This Wisdom in inexhaustible, the wise man can search wisdom from the day he is born to the eons of eternity and forever be gaining. It says, "teach a just man and he will increase in learning" This is already a just man, yet he can always take more teaching and always can increase in learning.
3. Again we see the theme. This Wisdom = The Fear of the Lord
4. As I mentioned last week, we can learn about and increasingly "fear the Lord" for eternity. This is the inexhaustible nature of wisdom, it is contained in the Being of the eternal God
C. The Contrast (12)
1. "If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself" means wisdom is rewarding. It is apparently an extremely literal translation. The satisfaction of wisdom is often merely the attainment of it.
2. So yes, Wisdom is the Fear of the Lord and ultimately we seek it to please Him, but we also receive the most blessing in our lives from it
3. However, the scoffer thinks he's getting other people to come down to his level, but in the end its his own life that's in shambles. Solomon will describe this later when he says "The way of the fool is hard"
III. The Feast of Folly
A. Her Character (vs 13-15)
1. Lady Folly, like Wisdom, has prepared us a "feast"
2. This is the same Folly we've seen before - loud, undisciplined, ignorant - she is intentionally evil and deceptive
3. Unlike previously, this time she's out in the open, she's trying to mimic Wisdom - Dad suggests the picture is like a crossroads with Folly on one corner and Wisdom on the other. A decision must be made, they're both making their case, now we must decide.
4. The passengers in verse 15 are just people going by, they have no clue what's in store, like the simple man in Chapter 7.
B. Her Invitation (vs 16-17)
1. Like Wisdom, Folly calls out to the fools, the simple, the people who haven't chosen Wisdom already.
2. She appeals directly to our sin nature - stolen water is sweet, bread eaten in secret is delicious. Its not the water and the bread which are satisfying, its the manner in which we get them. However, that satisfaction is fleeting, false and damning. This is precisely what the adulterous woman said in her passages. No one will ever know, You can get away with it. Instead of getting a massive delicious feast at Wisdom's table, the fool is happy to sneak around in the dark gnawing on some stolen bread. Why? Because he's getting away with it. He's deceived into thinking because "he did it" its better than what God has provided for him.
C. The Consequences of Accepting Folly's Invitation (vs 18)
1. The same consequences from the adulteress.
2. Foolishness is death. It is not only losing one's life but also losing the joy, fulfillment and purpose of that life. As Dad says, its a macabre picture of people gathered around a rotting meal already dead but not realizing it.
Do you get the idea now? Chapters 1-9 of Proverbs have one central theme. Will you, (will Solomon's son), choose Wisdom and her innumerable benefits? Will you choose the Fear of the Lord, the righteous path, the revealed Word of God? Or will you choose Folly? The easy path at first, but the difficult way in the end. The way of death and misery.
Why is this so hard? I mentioned it last week. We still have the old man hanging on us. That old man which wars against God. So yes, if all things were equal, the blessings of Wisdom would make her the obvious choice. However, The Fear of the Lord is Wisdom, and our old man wants nothing to do with that. This is why we need Faith. We need God's power which is channeled to us through the conduit of the Holy Spirit living within us. We need to rest in the power and in the specific instruction of His Word.
That's it. So before I close, I want to touch on something. I mentioned it for a second last week. But we kept seeing Folly and the Adulteress present sexual temptation. I believe this is Solomon's lesser-to-greater way of describing all temptation. As an example, take the story in Chapter 7. The simple man is walking down the street in the middle of the night and the adulteress springs on him, seduces him, and he falls. This same process can be used to describe ANY temptation. Picture instead, young man walking down Madison Ave, sees a pair of new Nike Tennis Shoes he just has to have (the adulteress springs out and lands a kiss). He walks into the store and notices they're just sitting on a shelf, no locks, guards anything (the adulteress mentions her Husband is away)...he looks both ways and grabs them. (He succumbs to the temptation and the result? Death). Folly is not just making poor decisions. It is sinning and not believing God and the Bible when they say "the wages of sin is death." So don't think that you, if you haven't struggled with or believe you've dealt sufficiently with sexual temptation, are invulnerable to Folly's charm. She is lurking behind every weakness we have and without God's supernatural intervention - the Holy Scripture and Himself in the person of the Spirit - we are helpless.
Short! But it's a short chapter so I think its ok. I'm off work for a week, starting yesterday, because I strained my left oblique. I'm on a 10 lb restriction and taking a couple pills for the pain and to help it heal. Totally awesome. Its also my birthday on Saturday, Happy Birthday to me, I'll be 25.
Braves are cruising, 6 games in a row. Beachy is back, Heyward, Mac, Freddie and Simba are all raking. Things couldn't be better.
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