Tag: Proverbs

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Keeping Your Kids Stupid

The book of Proverbs is full of wisdom, wisdom for those who need to get wisdom, and wisdom for those who need to give it. Solomon helps the one who already understands obtain guidance and then also give guidance to others.

One of the proverbs most quoted in our house over the years has been Solomon’s lesson on the unteachable.

Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge,
but he who hates reproof is stupid.
(Proverbs 12:1 ESV)

The word “stupid” (translated as such in the ESV, NAS, NIV) usually referred to an animal that lacks sense. To hate correction is “brutish” (KJV), “senseless” (LSB). Lots of times parents are up against the worst sort of willful stupidity. Some other times parents are the worst at keeping their kids dumb.

Imagine your house was on fire and you saw one of your kids inside, apparently unaware of the danger. You call out for your son to GET OUT, and he either can’t hear or doesn’t care. Would you just watch and wait? Would you try again with a whisper?

Who is more “stupid,” the child in the burning house or the dad who sees the child in the burning house and acts as if it’s no big deal? He who hates reproof is stupid. And he who hates giving reproof when it is necessary sponsors stupidity, and death (Proverbs 19:18). Maybe the most ironic response is hating correction so much that you get fired up to correct the ones urging your kids to get out of the burning house because you don’t like their tone. We should be wiser than that.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Mini-Pharaohs

It is Father’s Day, but this exhortation is not aimed only at dads, while it does apply to dads. It applies to women and children, though probably it applies to men first.

Eight times in the ESV there is a word combo of stiff and neck. A couple times it’s an adjective: a stiff-necked person, and other times it’s a verb: they stiffened their necks. I bring it up today because of the eight occurrences throughout the Bible, three of them are in the corporate prayer of confession in Nehemiah 9.

The background of this metaphor is an animal that won’t lower its head, like an ox refusing the yoke. He refuses to yield, he won’t be led. For humans, we’d connect it with a lack of humility, a lack of teachability. He could have avoided some pain if he’d just bent his neck and lowered his head rather than running into the overhang.

Wisdom knows that you can’t keep running into things. Something’s going to give.

He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck,
will suddenly be broken beyond healing.
(Proverbs 29:1 ESV)

The neck-stiffener knows better. Someone is trying to help the man in Proverbs, but he won’t listen to it. The same generation that walked in the midst of the Red Sea on dry land stiffened their necks. They were a bunch of mini-pharaohs.

So there is a kind of default to defensiveness, a kind of willful ignorance, that isn’t strength, it’s brittle, and it becomes easy to break.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

The Trouble with Losing

This will be our fifth and final exhortation for the parental work of soul-winning.

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life,
and whoever captures/wins souls is wise.
(Proverbs 11:30 ESV)

Remember: this winning aims for the heart, for souls that know security and fellowship and playfulness, not merely “winning” a quiet house. The winning works covenantally and mimetically, kids are fruit from parental trees, and so on with our children’s children; that they look like you is God’s design, their faces and their practices. The winning is unto righteousness, a likeness to God’s own Son. And the winning takes individual account, the soul of each kid is different. All this belongs with generational and community building.

Perhaps the greatest thing limiting our winning is our wanting. There are plenty of books. Most of them are in one wisdom volume, and have titles such as Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. Get wisdom. Watch the fruitful, imitate their faith.

Of course, the opposite of winning/capturing is losing. It’s wise to consider other possible ends. While many Proverbs stand on their own, the previous verse relates:

Whoever troubles his own household will inherit the wind,
and the fool will be servant to the wise of heart.
(Proverbs 11:29 ESV)

Trouble your household by anger, by apathy, by lack of affection, and your kids will be like the wind: gone. Later in life, your house and your own soul will be as empty as a hand trying to grasp the wind.

And then the verse that follows:

If the righteous is repaid on earth,
how much more the wicked and the sinner!
(Proverbs 11:31 ESV)

Parents, you will see results. Results come from character (righteous or wicked) in action. May the Lord bless you to win the souls of all your kids.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Righteous Fruit

We’re looking at how Proverbs 11:30 informs our parenting.

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life,
and whoever captures souls is wise.
(Proverbs 11:30 ESV)

Parents must be soul-winners. Yes, God saves souls. But God uses parents, He works through you, to get to your kids’ hearts. Your sons’ and daughters’ souls have loves to order and loyalties to layer. It’s wise to pursue the souls God has given you as offspring.

There are many ways to win; wise men learn the ways, master their craft. But before we talk tactics, take a look at the first half of the verse. The two lines in verse 30 are parallel, helping to explain each other.

“The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life.” It gets more odd if you slow down. The expected order would be: the tree of the righteous bears the fruit of life. A tree produces fruit. But the proverb describes fruit that produces a tree. Then that tree also produces fruit, which is life. It is generational.

Do you want your kid to have life and be a life-giver? It’s not unlike wanting to win his soul, which is the Hebrew word nephesh, a different way of describing one’s life. Life = soul. Where does it come from? It’s the fruit of the righteous.

Before you pick the perfect chore chart app, deal with your heart. Before you make the discipline policies, are you disobedient? You can really only say and not do for so long until your kids know how to say and not do. The connection is inescapable, from conception, part of the covenant household.

Anxious parents make anxious kids. Angry men make angry sons, so also with the lustful. Parents who don’t want to be bothered will get kids who don’t bother with them, and yet people are still surprised. Holy parents raise humble kids. Worshipers make joyful little worshippers. The righteous see results in life.

As usual, it’s not what you preach but what you tolerate in yourself. It is also good, because you can repent for you. Such repentance can’t help but bear good fruit by God’s grace.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Soul-Winning

We are working through Ezra-Nehemiah for such a time as this (which is a line from Esther, which we’ll also get to). Also, now and not then is the day that the Lord has made for us. Can we learn about community building from these ancient stories? Yes.

One piece that is more implicit is the work of generations, of sons and daughters, who all worked alongside each other to rebuild the walls. How did the dads persuade their kids to set down their phones and pick up bricks?

Blessed the man that fears Jehovah and that wins the heart of his children to walk in the ways of the Lord.

We’re just under eleven months away from our Parenting Tune-up Sunday. Ha. The last time I gave a series of exhortations about parenting was about three years ago. But it’s been on my heart to talk about winning the hearts of our kids, not just so that they will join us at the gates (per Psalm 127:5) but because if we can’t win them, what are we doing?

There is one verse that holds a series of sermons, but it will be our focus in its context for a few Sundays of exhortations.

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life,
and whoever captures souls is wise.
(Proverbs 11:30 ESV)

It does not say FATHERS or SONS, true. But it also doesn’t say evangelism for Jesus, “soul-winning,” which is fine even if further extended in application. Plus, Proverbs 11:29 does talk about the “household,” and it sets us up for a family focus.

The object is the soul. It represents the whole person, what your son loves and loyalties, what your daughter more than anything. The action is captures, but the most frequent English translation is “wins.” Get the soul. Get all his/her heart. Win all the hearts of all your kids.

It is work (yes, more to come on that), and it is wise. It helps to have wisdom for it, but this verse says that it will be wisdom if you do it. Get in the game. By God’s grace, want to win their souls.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

As a Man Scrolleth

What are you thinking about? There’s an old saying that a man is what he thinks. It’s not just old, it’s Solomonic, it’s scriptural. The context in Proverbs 23:6-7 counsels the wise to be careful what they consume from the hand of an apparently generous person. Watch out for the stingy man, the one with an “evil eye.” “‘Eat and drink!’ he says to you, but his heart is not with you.” The ESV starts verse 7 with “he is like one who is inwardly calculating,” but the KJV makes it more general, “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Your thoughts are your character, stingy or not, regardless of what you spread on the table.

This exhortation isn’t about stinginess, but about Scripture. We are what we think, what we do and say comes out of the heart (Matthew 15:18-19), at least eventually. What are you thinking about? What mental marinade are you soaking your soul in?

There are so many goads in God’s Word about the profit of consuming God’s Word. Psalm 1 pronounces blessing on the one who delights in and meditates on the law of the LORD. Big tech has an evil eye, “Scroll and scroll,” Elark Zuckermusk says to you, but his heart is not with you. So many free things aren’t free, the price is our attention/minds, our affections/delights.

On New Year’s Day you’re not too late to start a Bible reading plan; a verse a day, a chapter a day; listen, read, both. In addition to another Bible-in-a-year reading plan, I am budgeting minutes for myself to memorize the Pastoral Epistles.

You are what you think about, and you are like a green and fruitful and blessed tree planted by streams of water when you think about whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable (Philippians 4:8). Think on the Word, and the Lord will give you understanding and success (2 Timothy 2:7; Joshua 1:8),

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Scoffers Don’t Care

One of the main characters in Proverbs is the scoffer. The scoffer is a species of fool, and what seems to define him is that he’s hypercritical, a “haughty man” (Proverbs 21:24) who “sets a city aflame” (Proverbs 29:8). That’s not untrue, but perhaps the scoffer is extra complacent.

Mo pointed this out to me. As we watch more shows with closed-captioning turned on, a frequent label is “[scoffs].” It shows when a character hears something and is unimpressed. It could be visible in a minimal energy head shake, it could be some version of audible “pshaw,” “pfft,” a sound that means “whatever, that’s stupid.”

In that sense scoffing isn’t caring too much about the wrong thing, it’s not caring at all.

In that light listen to Proverbs 1:32:

For the simple are killed by their turning away,
and the complacency of fools destroys them.

“Complacency” is a smugness, a “careless ease” (NET). It is “repose gained by ignoring or neglecting the serious responsibilities of life” (C. H. Toy).

A great temptation is the worldliness of not caring, not just about what but how much. It’s one thing to care about the wrong things, it’s another not to care about the right things in a way that corresponds to the value of those things themselves.

Our roots don’t go deep, no wonder we are blown around by slight breezes.

There is truth. Know it. There is truth’s way of knowing the truth. Treasure it up. Complacency, a lack of attentive eyes and affectionate hearts, kills.

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Lord's Day Liturgy

An Irritated Puddle of Retaliatory Goo

We are well into advent now, rounding third and headed home. Yet because of how the days fall on the calendar this year, the fourth advent Sunday is still six long days from Christmas. A lot of events are done, but there are more on your schedule, especially ones with the people who tend to get on your nerves the most…family. That presents a significant challenge, because with strangers, you can’t predict as well what they’ll argue about, and you may never see them again. With the ones God has chosen for your permanent “neighbors,” you’ve seen the show a thousand times.

In a week of final preparations and feasting, even for a week with siblings at home from school all day every day, Solomon provides some counsel for the prudent.

The vexation of a fool is known at once,
but the prudent ignores an insult.
(Proverbs 12:16)

Vexation refers to the spleen in the pot, foolishness is like the fire that makes the complaints simmer. Vexation is what pets your feathers backward, what puts salt in your tea. It could be about the state of democracy, it could be about the state of dinner. It could be about the commute, it could be about your comment. And because of how the proverb runs, vexation isn’t only generic grumbling in your presence, vexation may be insulting to your person.

I have said much about not being angry or ungrateful, this is about how to absorb it.

But…she’s wrong! But…others will get the wrong impression if I don’t make a public correction! But…you don’t know how insulting my brother has been for years!

The New Testament version goes even further: love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8), which Peter uses as prep for the following imperative: “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling” (1 Peter 4:9).

Prudence and love like this are not pushovers, just the opposite. This sort of wisdom and care is unable to be pushed over into an irritated puddle of retaliatory goo.

Good sense makes one slow to anger,
and it is his glory to overlook an offense.
(Proverbs 19:11)

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A Shot of Encouragement

Recognize and Resist Wicked Rulers Day

Today is September 28. It’s a good day to read Proverbs 28. Maybe the wise should call the 28th Recognize and Resist Wicked Rulers Day.

The wicked flee when no one pursues,
but THE RIGHTEOUS ARE BOLD AS A LION.
(Proverbs 28:1)

When a land transgresses, it has many rulers,
but with a man of understanding and knowledge,
its stability will long continue.
(Proverbs 28:2)

Those who forsake the law praise the wicked,
but THOSE WHO KEEP THE LAW STRIVE AGAINST THEM.
(Proverbs 28:4)

When the righteous triumph, there is great glory,
but when the wicked rise, people hide themselves.
(Proverbs 28:12)

Like a roaring lion or a charging bear
is a wicked ruler over a poor people.
(Proverbs 28:15)

A ruler who lacks understanding is a cruel oppressor,
but he who hates unjust gain will prolong his days.
(Proverbs 28:16)

When the wicked rise, people hide themselves,
but when they perish, the righteous increase.
(Proverbs 28:28)

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Lord's Day Liturgy

If an Idiot Falls in a Forest

Word studies are often bad. Or done badly. Or a bad idea to begin with.

I am fond of words. The world is upheld by the word of Christ’s power (Hebrews 1:3). God created by speaking into existence (Hebrews 11:3). Jesus Himself is the Logos, the Word (John 1:1). God gave us His Word, and He gave us words, with form and function and meaning and history.

It’s easy enough to hear surface connections between words, or see simple derivatives, and make conclusions that are wrong. For example, dynamite comes from the Greek word dunamis, but when Paul said that the gospel is the “power (dunamis) of God to salvation” in Romans 1:16, the apostle did not mean that the gospel will explode and blow up our sin. Or, another example, for as much as we can appreciate compound words, the English word “butterfly” is neither a fly made out of butter or butter with wings.

That said, I recently came across the root of the word idiot. I have a pretty good idea of what idiot means; I have been called one, I have met more than one. It usually works fine as a synonym with fool, as one who makes it known that he is not in the know.

What I came to know is that it grew from the Greek word idios which means “ones own,” or “private.” It developed over time as a reference to one who couldn’t be bothered by what other people had to say, and described someone who was unskilled or inexperienced because of not being able, or willing, to learn from others.

That may seem like a lot to pin on just a word. Fine. So consider the corroboration from these inspired sentences.

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion. (Proverbs 18:2)

And that really stands out after reading the previous verse.

Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment. (Proverbs 18:1)

Or as the NKJV translates, “he rages against all wise judgment.”

One could be an idiot like this geographically, or argumentatively, or even silently, smugly judging how stupid everyone else is, just in your own head. Oh how wise it is to not be alone, and to listen to those who offer life-giving reproof (see Proverbs 6:23).