Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: — | Date: May 31, 2020 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Thank you, Pastor Boyd. If you would please take your Bibles today, you will need them. I encourage you to have them even more than usual, because we’ll be looking at several different Proverbs together. In fact, we may look at 20 or 30 different Proverbs this morning. I was encouraged, I’ve been encouraged with your interest, your shared interest in the Proverbs. And last week in particular, I think I mentioned I was a bit hesitant to get into something as in a way technical, like how to interpret the Proverbs and how to understand them. But I appreciate your response to that. And again, your shared interest. And I’ve decided to look again at the subject of understanding a Proverb. So we could maybe just title this lesson that and understanding a Proverb.

You can turn to Proverbs 26. We will be there in just a moment, but we’re going to sample a lot of Proverbs this morning and attempt to just see how they work. And then along the way, of course, glean the wisdom that they offer. And I thought it would be helpful to begin with to have—this is going to be more like a Sunday school class, maybe with some interactive time. And Jimmy, I need to ask you about this. I’m going to give a, have a time here with back and forth. How’s the best way to do that? Can people, when I ask a question, can they respond? You can unmute yourself and then mute yourself with no background noise. You can respond audibly. But if you want to put it in the chat, then I will monitor it closely. And I will narrate your questions or responses. Yeah. Am I right that if people just leave their mics off, then there’s going to be an echo back and forth. Is that right? It’s not so much the echo, just any background noise. If there’s no background noise, then it’ll be fine to leave their mics open. OK. All right, so you can respond quickly if you like, leave your mic open, but if you do that, please be aware, no background noise.

I thought it would be helpful before we start looking at the biblical Proverbs to contrast it with a good number of American Proverbs, just so you get, again, get the idea of what a proverb is. So what I’m going to do here is give a—by the way, there’s my hand. My son tells me that last week as I was teaching I would move and gesture and it would rock the screen and you had to look at it rocking back and forth. I’ll try not to do that. I can’t talk without my hands though. All right, I’m gonna give you the first part of a proverb, half the line, and then as quick as you can, somebody finish it for me. So let’s get started.

Number one, a bird in the hand. Worth two in the bush. Worth two in the bush. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. That’s it. A chain is no longer, no stronger than its previous length. There it is. If you play with fire, you’ll get burned. A penny saved is a penny earned. A stitch in time saves nine. No news is good news. Actions speak… All right, all of these are American Proverbs. Let’s do some more. Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll never go hungry. Right, I actually saw an alternate version of that yesterday. It went like this: Teach a man to fish and he’ll never go hungry. Teach a woman to garden and the whole church will have zucchini. And just to clarify, I am not complaining about that. My wife makes great zucchini bread, so please bring on the zucchini.

All right, let’s do some more. Birds of a feather. Walk together. Actions. Oh, I got that one. Smarter than words. Yeah. Rome was not built. In a day. Don’t bite off. More than you can chew. When the going gets tough, don’t change horses. You have to strike while the sun shines. Don’t count your chickens. The bigger they are… Don’t cry over the early bird. Don’t judge a book. The grass is always greener. Don’t put all your eggs… The pen is mightier than the sword. Don’t put the cart before the horse. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Don’t throw the baby out of the bath water. Every cloud has a silver lining. The squeaky wheel gives someone an inch. There’s more than one way to… I resent that. I’ve done it. If a thing is worth doing… Two wrongs don’t make a right. I had an alternate version of that when I was a kid, too. If I were ever asked, if I were ever told, “two wrongs don’t make a right,” my response would be, “yeah, but two rights made an airplane.” Oh. I’m sorry. Or three lefts make a right, too. That’s good. OK, just a couple more. If at first you don’t succeed… Waste not… and one more, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, shouldn’t throw rocks. Very good.

All right. Those are American proverbs. I suspect that was more than you had to come up with off the top of your head. It certainly was for me. I had to do some digging to find all those. But it gives us a sense of how the American Proverbs, how our Proverbs work. I’ll get back to an observation about that in a minute.

The Nature Of A Proverb

The nature of a proverb then, as you get the American Proverbs, not just biblical Proverbs, is that it’s condensed wisdom. I’ve been saying that all along. It’s a brief pithy saying that condenses wisdom and often it applies it to one specific area of life. A proverb is not intended to say everything. It just condenses a broad truth in application to a specific situation. So by their nature, they’re generalizations. Proverbs, as we said last time, proverbs are not promises. They’re general observations. So for example, “no news is good news.” That’s not always the case. I can think of a couple of specific times when I was waiting to hear news and when it finally came, it wasn’t good at all. “The pen is mightier than a sword.” That’s true generally, but there have been times when the sword has extinguished the pen. But generalizations they are, and they’re true. That’s what a proverb is.

In fact, often a proverb will present contradictory perspectives. Two given proverbs may present contradictory perspectives, each of which is right in its own situation. So for example, we have “birds of a feather flock together.” That is, likes attract likes. But we also have another saying, another proverb, “opposites attract.” Well, we have both. Either can be the case. Or we have another proverb, “too many cooks spoil the broth.” But then we have another one says the opposite, “two heads are better than one.” Well, depending on where you apply that, each can be right. Or we have another proverb, “he who hesitates is lost.” But then we have another one, “look before you leap.” Yet they’re both true and they both offer wisdom.

And in fact, we have an example of that in the Proverbs themselves. I had you turn to Proverbs 26, look at verse four. “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.” Verse five, “answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” Now formally, those are contradictory. But of course, what’s expected of the reader is that you’re going to be wise enough to know which advice is best to follow in a given situation. There are times when you just shouldn’t answer a stupid question. A fool doesn’t deserve the time, and the more attention you give to it, the worse it gets. So don’t answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes, or lest you become like him yourself. But then on the other hand, there are times when you should answer the fool, just to put him back in his place and to make him see how foolish his folly is. So again, it can give formally contradictory perspectives. And that’s important to keep in mind that in each, it’s simply giving a generalization of a truth applied to life.

Synonymous Parallel

All right, to biblical Proverbs. One of the characteristics of American Proverbs is that almost always they are one liners, even a brief sentence. It’s not just one sentence, but mostly they’re brief sentences, one liners. But in most of the ancient Hebrew Proverbs, in our book of Proverbs, you have two lines and they’re in parallel. Now, sometimes we have just simple one straight sentence parallels, proverbs that don’t involve a parallel. We’ll see something of that in a minute. But a proverb in the scriptures generally is two lines, not just one. And usually the two halves are very symmetrical. And so the trick, what you want to do to understand and interpret a proverb is to understand the parallel that’s going on. The point here is not rhyme, it’s not rhythm, it’s parallel of thought. So in a given proverb, usually you have two lines that in thought parallel one another in some way. So what you want to do is see how the second line of the proverb relates to the first.

Now it gets a little bit more complicated than that. And I’m gonna spend some time just giving a smattering of examples and we’ll along the way then collect the wisdom that they offer. One type of parallel in the book of Proverbs is the synonymous parallel. And just like you would expect then, a synonymous parallel, you have the two lines in which the second line simply repeats the thought of the first line, but with different words. And they’re usually marked by the word “and” in the middle. So let’s back up, look at chapter 14 and verse 10. We’ll see a synonymous parallel. Proverbs 14 verse 10: “The heart knows its own bitterness and no stranger shares its joy.” The heart knows its own bitterness and no stranger shares its joy. Now notice two lines, they’re in parallel. And the second line, in other words, repeats the thought of the first. Now you’ve got in the first line, bitterness, and in the second line, the emotion of joy. So in a sense, there’s a contrast there. I suspect that’s what’s called a merism. You’ve got bitterness and joy giving the whole range of emotions then. And what he’s saying here is that the heart knows its own bitterness. No stranger shares its joy. In its truest sense, these emotions are personal. They’re individually felt and experienced.

Now the Bible encourages sympathy, it encourages empathy, and it certainly warns against misjudging and presuming to know when you don’t know. But at the end of the day, our emotions are our own and ours alone, and no one truly can enter. Janet is not with us this morning. She’s the obvious example we have here at hand. What she is going through, well, some of you have been through the loss of a loved one, but at the end of the day, her emotions are her own and she feels it. That’s the proverb. The heart knows its own bitterness and no stranger shares its joy. God alone knows the human heart. But on a horizontal level, no one can truly share what we feel. And so this proverb is just simply capturing that common human experience.

Drop down to verse 19. Again, we have a synonymous parallel. “The evil bow down before the good and the wicked at the gates of the righteous.” We saw last time, this probably is looking then to the long perspective and how things will eventually work out in God’s purpose. But we have both lines saying the same thing. Look over to the next page, chapter 16, verse 18. “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Again, it’s a synonymous parallel. They say basically the same thing in both lines. Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. So saying twice to make the same point.

Antithetical Parallel

All right, that’s a synonymous parallel. Now, as you might expect then, and as many of you are already aware, there’s then also not just a synonymous parallelism, but there’s the antithetical parallel in the Proverbs as well. In an antithetical parallel, the second line makes an opposing statement. I suspect the antithetical parallel is the most common in the Proverbs. I haven’t counted, but I suspect that. And now often the second line makes the same point as the first, but it does it from an opposing standpoint.

So look back at chapter 10. We’ll look at a few of them here. Chapter 10, verse one: “A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother.” You have a sustained contrast. You’ve got a wise son and a foolish son. Wise son makes glad, the foolish son makes grief. The wise son makes a glad father, the foolish son brings grief to his mother. A sustained antithetical contrast. But of course the point is really the same. And so on the one hand, he’s talking about the sense of joy and satisfaction in seeing your children grow up to be wise and responsible people. And on the other hand, he’s addressing the son himself. He says, “son, make us proud. Don’t make us cry.” He’s appealing to his son’s affections to his parents. But there’s an antithetical parallel.

We’re in chapter 10 here. Let’s look at a couple of Proverbs, again, antithetical Proverbs, on a good or an honorable work ethic. Verse four: “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.” Now, both of those statements are opposite, but they’re driving a similar point, and that is that you won’t get ahead by being lazy. Verse five, we have another: “He who gathers in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame.” Well, again, you have opposing statements, but driving a similar point. And you find that often. And in fact, you find that theme often in the book of Proverbs as well.

Drop down to verse 12. Chapter 10, verse 12. Here we have some contrasts regarding offenses. “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.” Notice, antithetical parallel. The second is the opposite of the first, but they’re driving a similar point. Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses. That is, love values the friend and treasures the value of friendship, and so is willing to overlook an offense and absorb it. Love covers all offenses.

Go down to chapter 11, verse six. Here’s one on the consequences of righteousness and the consequences of sin. Chapter 11, verse six: “The righteousness of the upright delivers them, but the treacherous are taken captive by their lust.” Again, antithetical contrast, contrasting the ends of the righteous and of the wicked. Now, in the version I have here, it says “they’re taken captive by their lust.” I’m not sure why they translated it that way. That always has sexual overtones. The word there is cravings, their greed, their evil desires is the idea there. And he doesn’t explicitly say, what is the deliverance in view of the righteous? The righteousness of the upright delivers them. But notice the parallel. The treacherous are taken captive. They’re caught probably in death or legal trouble, some kind of trouble because of their lawlessness. So what he’s saying here is a very simple piece of wisdom. Righteousness pays off. It’s safe. You don’t have to worry about being shot in a robbery. You don’t have to worry about getting in trouble with the law when you’re righteous. It’s wise to be righteous and it’s foolish to be sinful. That’s the gist of the proverb.

Moving on to chapter 12, we have another antithetical one here, verse four. This is on the good versus bad wife. There are a number of these kinds of proverbs in the book of Proverbs. “An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones.” So here we have a contrast between an excellent or a noble, virtuous wife, and on the other hand, a shameful wife. And he contrasts the corresponding effects of each. The excellent wife is a crown to her husband. The shameful wife brings rottenness to his bones. So the virtuous wife gives her husband a certain social standing, makes him proud. Everyone knows he’s got a great wife. The shameful wife, by contrast, robs her husband of that social standing. And in fact, it just eats him on the inside. It’s like rotten bones. And implied then is the virtuous wife strengthens her husband inwardly. Again, it’s just an observation from experience. And he’s teaching and then warning his son about choosing a wife.

Chapter 14, verse 16. We have another antithetical parallel. Chapter 14, verse 16: “One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is reckless and careless.” One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is reckless and careless. Now notice here, the symmetry of the two is not exactly precise, but it is implied. On the one hand, you have the one who is wise and he’s cautious. And being cautious, he turns away from evil. The fool is reckless and careless. And it’s not stated, but implied, he does not turn away from evil. He’s reckless and careless and runs headlong into evil.

We’re here in chapter 14, let’s look at a couple more. Verse 21, here are a couple of proverbs on generosity. “Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner, but blessed is he who is generous to the poor.” Simple proverb noting God’s approval of those who are generous to those who need. Verse 31, you have the same thing again. “Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him.” Again, you have antithetical parallel, two opposite statements, but they’re driving to the same point. And here he’s connecting our horizontal responsibilities to the vertical responsibility, our responsibility to God, the maker. And that’s the “him” at the end of the verse. Notice by the way there, the last half of the verse, “he who is generous to the needy honors him.” The “him” there does not refer to the needy, but with the parallel, you know, it refers back to the maker. So to oppress the poor is a reproach to the creator, but to be generous to the poor honors the creator, honors God. And it honors God to be generous to the poor because it’s a lot like God to be generous.

All right, there are many Proverbs then on speaking and anger. Chapter 15 and verse one. Notice the contrasting or the antithetical parallel again. “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” You get the perfect symmetry here. The perfect contrast: a gentle answer, a harsh word, turns away and stirs up wrath and anger. A gentle answer turns away wrath, a harsh word stirs up anger. So he’s teaching self-control. Chapter 15, verse 18 says something similar: “A hot tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention.” So you have the contrasting results of two different characters here. You have the hot tempered man and he makes trouble. He stirs up strife. And on the other hand, you’ve got the one who’s slow to anger and he calms a tense situation. So he’s telling us here: hold your temper, calm the moment. Don’t make things worse. Something is said, it’s a tense moment. You’ve got a choice. You can give a soft answer, calm the situation, or you can give a harsh word and just stir up more contention. And again, what he’s teaching is self-control.

Well, there are many more like this. Let’s jump to chapter 17, verse 22. Here’s a couple of proverbs on the crushed spirit. “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” Notice again, you have the first line in contrast to the second. The second line talks about a crushed spirit. And in parallel, he’s telling us that the crushed spirit is as bad for you as a joyful heart is good for you. There’s nothing quite so good for you as a joyful heart. There’s nothing quite so devastating as a crushed spirit. Chapter 18 verse 14 tells us something similar. Chapter 18 verse 14: “A man’s spirit will endure sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear.” Now the man’s spirit obviously means our inner person, our soul. And that first line, “a man’s spirit will endure sickness,” is simply telling us whatever’s wrong on the outside can be sustained well, so long as the man is healthy inwardly. And so we’ll often ask, if someone is sick or been suffering for a while, we’ll ask a loved one or someone who knows him well, “how are his spirits?” Well, that’s the idea here. So long as the spirit is healthy and vibrant, they can withstand anything. But then you have the contrast in the second line, “but a crushed spirit who can bear.” And that’s just another common human experience that we’ve all seen, if we’ve not even experienced ourselves, when you’re reduced to devastation and there’s just no will to go on, no will to fight. Well, again, that’s a simple proverb that captures one aspect of human experience.

Synthetic Parallel

All right, so we have synonymous parallels. We have antithetical parallels. There’s also what’s called a synthetic parallel or a complement, C-O-M-P-L-E, complement. That is, the second line completes or complements or amplifies or in some way develops the first line. It’s a kind of synonymous parallel, but it adds something to the idea. So go back to chapter 14, verse 17. I’ll give an example of that. “A man of quick temper acts foolishly and a man of evil devices is hated.” Now the two lines don’t say quite the same thing. You’ve got on the one hand, a man of quick temper. On the other hand, you’ve got a man who doesn’t have a quick temper at all, but he’s a man of evil devices. He’s the guy who doesn’t get mad, he gets even. And he talks about both of them. I’ll pick that one up a little later. I think we’ll have a—we’re going to continue our study of Proverbs when we go back to church. And I think I’ll have one on Proverbs and the temper.

Chapter 16, verse 28. Again, this is a complimentary or a synthetic kind of parallel. “A dishonest man spreads strife and a whisperer separates close friends.” Some kind of similarity, but two different thoughts here. The second line does say something different. You have two different kinds of speakers. You have the dishonest man and the whisperer. So you’ve got the liar and the gossip. And then you have the two corresponding consequences of their actions. The dishonest man spreads strife. He disrupts the community. But then you have the whisperer, the gossip. He separates close friends. He says things that may be true even, but they ought not to be said, and the result is broken relationships. Now, the point here is obviously to condemn both. Don’t be either. Both are evil in their own way. Don’t be a liar. Don’t be a gossip. Don’t bring disruption to the community and don’t separate close relationships.

Comparative Proverbs

And then a brief remark about comparative Proverbs. Some Proverbs are not synonymous, they’re not antithetical, but what they do is they make comparisons with things. So it’ll draw a comparison between some ethical or theological truth with some illustration, usually an illustration from nature. The most famous of those probably is chapter 11, verse 22: “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion.” A vivid proverb. Can you imagine putting a gold ring in a pig’s nose? What a waste. Well, same with a beautiful woman who lacks discretion. What a waste.

Look at chapter 15. Let’s look at verse 16. “Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it.” That reflects the experience of a man who, I guess either man, the one who fears the Lord, he has it better. It’s more cheerful for him. But a man who has great treasure and has trouble with it, the one is better than the other. In fact, you have something similar to that in chapter 16. If you look across the page, chapter 16, verse eight: “Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice.” He’s simply saying here, you’ll have it better. You will be happier fearing God and being righteous than being wicked and gaining reward by it through unrighteousness and yet having a lot of money. Notice here, by the way, there’s no prosperity gospel here. God does not necessarily reward the pious person with immediate material prosperity. He may in fact allow the crook to prosper for a time, but still it’s better. And what he’s saying here is that to have little with the fear of God and in righteousness is better than to have a lot otherwise.

Well, we have a lot of Proverbs that make comparisons and they’re marked by that word “better.” You’ll see those quite often in the Proverbs, better this than that, better than this than that. Or like the old song of Peter, Paul and Mary, “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.” That kind of a contrasting parallel. Chapter 16, verse 16: “How much better to get wisdom than gold, to get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver.” Chapter 16, verse 19: “It’s better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud.”

Let’s look at one here in chapter 16, verse 32. This one’s rather vivid. “Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.” Now the mighty, the word “mighty” there is the typical word that’s used for a military hero. That seems to be what’s in view, especially when you look at the parallel on the second line, the one who takes a city. He’s talking about a military hero. So picture here a powerful, well-equipped soldier. Oh, let’s say a Navy SEAL. I have a professor friend whose son is in the Marines, and he’s in one of the elite fighting units, well-trained. I forget the name of the unit, but they like to call the Navy SEALs wimps, really well-trained fighters. He was home from the military one time on leave, visiting, and a professor friend of mine, his dad—like we dads do with our sons, he starts to rough him up and starts to wrestle with his son. And his son responded, “Dad, do you realize how many different ways I know how to kill you with my bare hands?” Put dad in his place. Well, it changes the situation.

Well, that’s the guy here in Proverbs 16:32. This is the mighty, the one who takes a city. All right, now in the contrast here, notice it. One who is slow to anger, rules his spirit. So you’ve got this mighty soldier who can take a city. And by contrast, you’ve got this one who’s slow to anger and rules the spirit. So the battle in view here is the inner self, self-control, which Proverbs tells us is the highest kind of strength. Taking a city is child’s play compared to controlling your own passions. And what he’s saying here is that to hold your anger is the mark of true greatness. Vivid proverb.

Numerical Sayings

Well, you have a lot of those comparative kinds of proverbs. I have to hurry on. We also have another set and that’s called the numerical sayings in the proverbs. “Six things the Lord hates, chapter six, six things the Lord hates, yea seven are abomination to him.” And it starts listing them out. And usually when you see that—”six things the Lord hates, seven are abomination,” or like in the prophets, “for three sins of Tyre, yea for four, God will judge,” and so on—the emphasis is on the last one, three, yes for four. It’s the fourth one that’s usually the one being emphasized. And we find that kind of thing here in the book of Proverbs.

And let me just take time for one. Look at chapter 30 and verse 18, 18 and 19. Proverbs 30 verses 18 and 19: “Three things are too wonderful for me. Four, I do not understand.” Okay. So you’ve got three things mentioned. No, you’ve got a fourth mentioned and that’s where the point’s going to be. “Three things are too wonderful for me. Four, I do not understand. One, the way of an eagle in the sky. Two, the way of a serpent on a rock. Three, the way of a ship on the high seas. I don’t understand how they work. And number four, the way of a man with a young woman.” I really don’t understand that. He’s talking here about the magnetic attraction of romantic love. Something happens to a guy when he falls in love with a girl. He just goes crazy.

We’ve got songs about that in our own musical literature. It’s making me dizzy. My head is spinning. I remember an old song from Johnny Cash: “Six foot six, he stood on the ground, weighed 225 pounds. I saw that giant of a man brought down by a thing called love.” Something happens. Kim and I were watching a movie a week or two ago. It was set about 100 years ago. And this grandfather is talking to his grandson about the old days when he fell in love with the boy’s grandmother, his wife. And he’s reminiscing about it all and talking about how he fell head over heels for the girl and he couldn’t get over it. And the little boy remarked, “What is it that happens? Explain that to him.” He said, “I don’t know, son.” He said, “it’s just something happens when you fall in love with a woman.” And the boy says, “well, can’t they give you a vaccine for that or something?” No, there’s no vaccine. It just happens. And that’s what he’s saying here. Three things I don’t understand. Four, I really don’t. And you find these kinds of Proverbs there. But try to keep an eye on those that when they give six or seven, three or four, something like that, it’s usually the last one that they’re really aiming at to emphasize.

Single Sentence Proverbs

Finally, we do have some single sentence Proverbs where it’s just a simple, a complex clause, but it’s just a simple sentence like we saw in chapter 26. Verse four: “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.” It just completes the sentence. We have some like that.

Well, there are a lot more I wanted to give, but we’ve run out of time. Now, it’s not necessary for you to know these labels that I’ve given—the synonymous, the antithetical, the complementary, and all of that—but to be aware of those categories, the general kinds of categories, I think will be helpful to you as you look through the Proverbs and see how they work and try to understand them. Generally, what you want to do is look at the second line, see how it corresponds to the first, and then see how the meaning fleshes out. And often the two lines will inform each other to drive the point home.

The goal of the book of Proverbs, as I’ve said before, is to instill wisdom. It’s to enshape character, to promote virtue, to promote wise living under God. In the Proverbs, you have some leading themes that are emphasized over and again in the Proverbs. You have the nature of wisdom, nature of wisdom and folly. You have themes like righteousness versus the wicked. A major theme in Proverbs is speech, the right use of the tongue. It’s the power of the tongue and so on. Work and diligence is another major area of emphasis in the Proverbs. The family, home relationships. And you have other secondary themes as well, like the use of money, work, industry, good work ethic. Humility versus pride is another. Your temper is another. Friends and neighbors is another. You have lots of different themes like that through the Proverbs and the Proverbs are intended to give you wisdom in all of those categories of life and in all of those kinds of relationships. And so Proverbs is a wonderful book for us to spend much time in always to help us living wisely.

The Proverbs are not arranged necessarily by topic. They’re arranged by authors, collections. You have the Proverbs of Solomon and you have some of the others as well, as we’ve seen. A couple of times in Proverbs, like in chapters 10 to 13, there are some clusters of Proverbs that follow a similar theme, but usually they’re miscellaneous. And so it’s often been advised to read through Proverbs a chapter a day. That can’t be bad advice, but at the same time, I wonder if just reading through a chapter of Proverbs like that misses the point of a proverb. Proverbs are not meant to be read over quickly. They’re meant to be thought through and spend some time. So it might be better to spend your time reading a proverb or two a day and just spending time thinking it through and analyzing it.

I have a friend who has been with us here on the Sunday meetings while they didn’t have their church, who said that when he first came to Christ, he came out of just a completely secular background with no knowledge of Christ, no knowledge of the scriptures or Christianity, no real church background of any kind. And from the human standpoint, he was saved by accident. There’s just no explanation for it except that God came to him in Providence and brought him to Christ through a witness. But he was something of an island for a while and had no real direction, nobody giving him good direction. He had his Bible and he stumbled on the book of Proverbs. And he remarked recently that the book of Proverbs was just a wonderful help to him, especially in those early years, because it gave him some direction for living and showed him what a life pleasing to God should look like.

Now with all of this, keep in mind that ultimately it’s driving us to Christ, who not only is wisdom and who not only teaches wisdom, but he’s the one who saves us from our foolishness and enables us to live wisely. And all of this then we look to see: how can we please Christ? What is it he’s enabling me to do? What does the leading of the spirit look like in shoe leather? Proverbs tells us that. What we want to do then with this lesson, what I’m hoping to do is teach us how, just give us a flavor of how the Proverbs work and how to understand them. All right, I went a little longer this time. Sorry for that. I guess it’s more like a Sunday morning now this time. Pastor Greg, Pastor Boyd, would you like to comment anything before we close?