Proverbs are not Promises • Beyond The Sermon

Well, hello and welcome to beyond the Sermon of Bethany Podcast, where we get to dig deeper into our Sunday messages. I'm Tammy Delau, and today I'm joined with Pastor David Baxley and Pastor Steve Musto. And, guys, it's arctic in here. I am literally wearing. This was given to me because I had it in my office when I first became a grandmother.

And it's a grandma shawl. And I am wearing a shawl in this room. Yeah. David and I have sweatshirts with us. We're both trying to be tough and not wear them.

I do not need one today. But it is freezing. Yes. So all the things that we do. So this might be a shorter than.

And with that in mind, let's get into it.

So I know that people are thinking, what is next? Like, I had someone come up and ask me on Sunday because she loves to study. And so are we just serving a mystery? Like, what are. What are we doing, Steve?

What's the next servant? Yes. Okay. So I was so relieved to be at the end of Revelation. It's, like, sad, but relieved.

I had every intention of telling everybody, oh, here's what we're doing next. So what we're doing next is Proverbs. We're going to go through Proverbs in the summer. I had every intention of announcing it and telling everybody, but it just completely slipped my mind. There were other things going on, and it's not the only thing that slipped my mind.

Like, it was Memorial Day. I usually say something about Memorial Day, at least acknowledge it in some way. Completely forgot it in all three services. And so it was one of those weekends where we had a ton of people gone. And so, Tammy, you and I were running the show.

It was basically it. And so, yeah, I don't blame either one of us because we were doing a million other things. But, yeah, I completely missed all of that stuff. And sometimes that happens. Part of it, too, was we weren't doing a big.

Kathy and I weren't doing anything big for Memorial Day. I wasn't thinking about it, and I wasn't thinking about the next series and whatever yet. So, yes, Proverbs is where we're going to be, but it's going to be hard to read ahead for everybody because Proverbs is not a normal book. Right. What kind of a book is Proverbs?

I mean, I know I talk about wanting us to read our Bibles correctly in the literature genre that it's in because you read a phone book different than you read a history book. So what is this book that we're reading. Well, we just came out of apocalyptic literature. And the whole idea that covers over all of apocalyptic is that it's weird and that we don't have anything like it. We.

Well, this is wisdom literature. Proverbs is wisdom literature, which is actually kind of the subgenre. The real genre is poetry. So it is, in a sense, it's poetry. And there is poetry in the Bible.

Song of Solomon famously, is poetry. And when we think poetry, we think of words that rhyme. Roses are red, violets are blue, like that. Yeah. But we're not reading it in the original language.

Cause the Bible's not written to us. But even if we did read it in the original language, it doesn't rhyme. But there are really cool things that the Bible does. Psalms, proverbs, we see it. Other places that we see it where the Bible does utilize the Hebrew Alphabet or it uses chiasms.

Yeah. Chiastic structure and some other things to do. Take poetic license, I guess. So Proverbs, wisdom literature, which is sharing, unlike narrative, which tells a story and unlike prophecy, which is telling about a message from God about what could happen or what is going to happen if there's not obedience or warning people about something. Wisdom literature is more about life's instruction, how to live life for God.

And we see wisdom literature in Ecclesiastes, some of it. We see some of it in Psalms. We see some of it, most all of it in Proverbs. We see some of it in Job. Actually there's wisdom that.

Wisdom literature in Job, which is hard to wrap your head around when you just think of the story of Job. Yeah, yeah, but it is. There's some good advice in Job. It's just, well, not well timed advice and not always well timed. So that's the idea.

So this is wisdom literature. And we're going to read it a little bit differently than we would read anything else. So that's. And that's part of it. Well, I think one thing that's interesting about wisdom literature, which can make it hard is we so naturally want to read things chronologically.

Right. We just want to read things in order throughout the Bible. And where wisdom literature shows up, it's almost like it's stepping out of the narrative. You know, we have this, especially in the Old. In the Old Testament, we have these narrative stories being told about God and Israel's relationship with his people, even the prophets.

And the wisdom literature almost pulls us out of that little bit and where we struggle sometimes to know, well, how does this fit into the narrative. And I heard someone say this one time, I appreciate this about it, is that what's beautiful about the wisdom literature is that where so much of the Bible is telling us this big story literature allows us to come into this part of the Bible and almost speak about our individual lives in a more practical and realistic way. And so even though it sometimes can feel confusing, how do I read this in light of the big story? It actually is a great way of finding my life in the big story a little bit more, with a little more clarity, maybe a little bit more understanding. So oftentimes, David, you'll use the words macro and micro.

Yeah. So would you say this is more micro? Yeah, I mean, I think it has the ability for me. And I'm sure Steve will talk about this more in the message, whether we do here or not. But the ability to see more how God and I interact in practical ways of everyday living, you know, it's hard.

You know, we can read the story of Exodus and we see this big picture of God and how he interacts with his people. But, you know, not everything about that is. Translates to my everyday life in the exact same way. But Proverbs or wisdom literature has the ability to help us do that in a more practical way and to meet my, in a sense, my story of what's going on with me and God. And the word practical is really important because the two types of wisdom literature that we're going to find in Proverbs is practical wisdom and speculative wisdom.

Yeah, there you go. And so practical wisdom are the things that are directly applicable to our life. Speculative wisdom is more the kind of the meanings of life. Yes, there you go. And that's what you find a lot of that in Ecclesiastes.

Meaningless. Meaningless. All is meaningless. What is it worthwhile for a man to do this and not to do that? I observe a man doing this in his life, but this is what happens in the end.

What good is that? I mean, it's reflecting on the bigger ideas. And that's where it can feel confusing sometimes, because I think a way I would make what you just said is philosophical and practical. Right. We like to think about these ideas and these pictures and meanings of life and things like that.

And some people that just drives crazy. Yeah. And there's others like, just tell me what I need to know. And there's an element of practical in that. But when they end up in same books, even sometimes mixed into the same chapters, it can be really confusing sometimes.

How do I bring that into My life. Yeah. There's one thing we are going to bring back again and again. Usually there's a thread that runs through every series, Right. And for Revelation, there were a lot of them.

One of them was that this book is weird. Weird. It's okay to say it. One of the threads that's gonna. We're gonna run through proverbs for the next few months is this.

Proverbs are not promises. Yeah, that's good. Yes. They're not promises. So one plus one doesn't always equal two correct.

Proverbs are best case scenarios. And so this is. This is wisdom literature. And in wisdom literature, what you have is in general, if you do this, this, this, this, and this, here's the outcome. So let me give you a good example.

Generally speaking, what we say we know to be true is that if you're an adult and if you get enough exercise and you eat the right kinds of things and you avoid the right. These other things that are not good for you and you lower your stress level and you take care of yourself, you know, all these things, sleep well, all the things. This is going to translate into longevity of life, quality of life, all of these things. Now, every one of us knows the exception to the rule. Who?

Well, My grandmother smoked three packs a day and drank coffee and lived to 100, 101 with a glass of bourbon in her hand. You're like, whoa, okay, obviously there are exceptions to these rules. And then there are also the people who take care of themselves and do all this stuff and they die of heart attacks at 50. But what are your best chances? Right?

So that's the idea of wisdom literature. What is your best chance? So let's use one that we know to be true. Is your best chance for longevity? Smoking cigarettes every day or not smoking?

Well, probably not smoking is your best chance. It's not a guarantee, it's just your best chance. That's wisdom literature. The idea is when Solomon or Ager or somebody else who's writing one of these says, this is what I've seen, or this is what I advise you to do, he's not saying that every time that's going to work out for you. He's just saying this is your best chance of success.

And that's the idea behind it. The reason we call it wisdom literature is what is the wise thing to do? Because the juxtaposition to wisdom is folly or foolishness. And what is going to be held out to us from day one. Oh, do you want to be a wise person or do you want to be an idiot?

Well, I want to be wise. Great. Then this is what you do to be wise. That's the juxtaposition between wisdom and folly. So I know we often talk about who wrote the book, and you kind of alluded to that most of our proverbs are given to us by Solomon.

Is that correct? Are credited to Solomon, at least. Credited. Okay, so that. Let's talk about that.

I didn't see your eyes, but so credited. That was. There were quotes around that word. Well, it gets a little complicated. I never want to make anybody feel like they can't trust the Bible.

And this is one of those times when we have to realize that ancient people are different from us. So if I write a book and I put your name on it, Tammy, that is not good. I mean, that wouldn't be considered a positive thing. And you would rightly come into my office and say, hey, we got a problem here, man. You can't say.

You can't put this into my. Put words into my heart. This is not my heart. No, you're saying. I'm saying things that I'm not really saying.

In the ancient world, this was kind of a sign of honor and respect. So people often would write letters or what we would think of as books in the style of this person or that person. So. And there was a category for this in antiquity, and the category was, no one's holding anyone responsible for this being the actual words of this person. We understand that as you're writing this, it's being written in the spirit of this person.

So almost the phrase imitation is the sweetest form of flattery. It was that at some level, in a sense, or it would be, you know, if somebody produces a movie and the movie is really popular, and then someone is inspired by that movie and says, well, in that same spirit, I'm gonna make this movie. Okay. As kind of a. In the spirit of that.

I don't know that we have necessarily have a lot like it. We're so individual that it's hard to even wrap our head around. That's exactly right. But important to note that in the sense we look at that name on that book, to say, this is why I can or cannot trust this. That still existed so for the culture of its day.

And so even as they're doing that, as they're putting these collections of various writings together, you have. You have. You have groups of people that are bringing them together that can say, this is consistent. This is consistent with the spirit of that person. Whatever it might be.

And maybe this is not in there, because it's not that. And so there's still a process that they're walking through to say, this is why we can still trust this in the way we have our process of doing that. But. And they still had that as well. So it's not just randomly.

No one knows what's happening when this is brought together. So people who knew Solomon, knew Solomon's heart, knew, knew how he spoke, the direction he would take. People would have said, yep, this is in the spirit of solemn. Is that what. Is that what you're kind of saying?

Yeah, I mean. I mean, that's a part. I mean, we'd have to unpack a lot more of that. But I just think, because like you alluded to, Steve, we don't want to make people distrust, you know, and so it gets complicated when we. When we talk about some of the process, because again, two separate cultures.

But it's just really important to affirm there is that process, a trusted process, a reliable process that's a part of that that we can still trust in. We're told that Solomon had hundreds of saying that became well known. And so it's likely that many of the proverbs that are credited to Solomon came from Solomon. And we can say with some authority, yes, there are proverbs in here that came from Solomon. We just can't say for sure.

Chapter 11, verse 2 is absolutely from Solomon, but verse 3 is not. We don't know that. We don't know. But there's also a whole nother book that is not in our Bibles that's called either the sayings of Solomon or the wisdom of Solomon or something like that that are more of these kinds of sayings that did not make the canon. Yeah, they did not make canon.

And I used to know why, and I don't remember why that one got rejected. So can you Google that and you could look at those sayings, like, is it easy to find those sayings of Solomon, like the wisdom of Solomon sayings? Yeah. And I always say be careful with that. It's okay to read that stuff.

We just can't take it as seriously as we take scripture. And we have to be careful that we don't. And there's only so much time in our day, so I guess I'd rather be in God's word than elsewhere. Yeah. So this is what we have here.

I mean, summary is what we have here. Absolutely. Some of these are going to be from Solomon himself. But the fact that we don't know that all of them are from the people who are named here. That does not erase their credibility in any way.

This is still the inspired, authentic word of God. We can trust that it's here. And over time, these wise sayings have proven to be wise, to be true. So we have that. Yep.

So we have most of this credited to Solomon, but then we have some of it credited to other people as well. And we don't know a whole lot about those people, but you have to think that in their day, they would have been somebody to have them written down and included in this book. One of the notable things about Proverbs and one of the reasons why people really like Proverbs, not only because it's easy to read and easy to apply, but there's 31 proverbs and there's 31 days in many months. And so if anybody's ever done a Bible reading plan, usually in many of those plans, they will have you read a proverb corresponding to a chapter in Proverbs, corresponding to whatever day it is. And so this is something that we can incorporate as we go through this series.

Oh, that's true. And we can, you know, as we get into June, we can start because we're, we'll. June 1st is Monday. So start by reading Proverbs chapter one on Monday and then Proverbs chapter two on Tuesday. If somebody wants to do that, they absolutely can.

Well, and then because we're doing it through the summer, they really would read the whole book three times or close to three times. Yeah. That's awesome. And just it's such a wonderful book. The other notable thing we're going to find in all of this is as we read Proverbs, Wisdom is personified.

And this is famous in the ancient world, but Wisdom is personified as a woman, a woman who is sent by God. It's because we're wise. It's because women are wise 100%. I'm going with that.

And Wisdom. Even for people who didn't believe in Yahweh, who, Wisdom was often seen as a woman, as a goddess, or someone who would visit and deliver something. But here, what we're going to find in Scripture is that Solomon takes some of those ideas and says, yeah, Wisdom is not a goddess who's got her own version of Wisdom. Wisdom is female in the Proverbs, and Wisdom is sent by Yahweh himself to come and deliver life direction for us. And so the whole idea of Wisdom being personified as a woman is just, is A wonderful thing.

And it's going to be fun. Part of the book. It's going to be very fun. Well, you bring up the gender thing, because that's one other question that often comes up in proverbs sometimes, is that it seems that when instructions are given that seem to be directed, you get a lot of instruction that seems to be really driven toward men. Yeah, a lot of commands toward.

The pronouns are definitely. Yeah, that's. That's exactly right. And so, you know, I remember years ago, like, reading why that was the case. And just understand again, we say it often not written to us.

So who was it written, brought together for initially and understanding. Let's come back to Solomon. He's a king. He's got lots of people around him. When he's raising people up to rule his kingdom, he wants the kingdom ruled well.

And so as these things were initially being coming together, they're being brought together to give wisdom and instructions to the men and to leaders in the court. To his leaders. Yeah, that's exactly right. And so, you know, as. So as you read it again, understand that context, I think, is important because the.

The beauty of wisdom, it doesn't apply to just one gender. Right. But to understand why it's being written in that way, I just think is important. It's the same way if. If I'm writing a letter of advice to my son, I'm going to reference him, but I also have a daughter.

And I could say, hey, read this, because this, the truth, the wisdom in this letter is gonna. Is gonna apply to you. It's gonna apply to my granddaughter. I could give it to her too. So I could write individual letters, or I could say, here's what I originally wrote, but read it as well, because I think this will also help you.

And so just understand that context, I think can be important because that question comes up. And again, that was not a. They were not thinking in terms of equality of gender. That's exactly right. Yes.

Most of the time the terminology they were using in antiquity is translated he. But they understood it to be gender neutral. But in this case, yes, you've got. It's sort of like leaving the letter is a good analogy. It's like leaving in your will to my son Desmond, here's some lessons for life, but it is applicable.

So it gets passed on, handed to my granddaughter too. And she could have the same wisdom. Yeah. And the idea is that it's a teacher passing it along to a protege. Yeah, that's right.

And that protege could have a protege that is a different gender. Sure. So yeah. That's really cool. So why did you guys choose Proverbs?

I always want to know what is behind your guys choices. Proverbs. For me there's a couple choices in it. The top level one was this. We have done a lot of really heavy lifting in the spring with Revelation.

So is there something that we can do that's more accessible or I can take it from my life and plug it directly into my life and yes, and Proverbs is one of those. But also because of people's travel schedules and whatever during the summer, I always look for things that we can do in the summer that enable people to pop in and pop out. Because if you miss a week or have to catch up later. Or have to catch up later. Yeah.

Like in Revelation that was really hard. Right. And people had to go back and like, oh, I. I don't want to miss that because I'm gonna. Then I'm gonna be behind and. And some books are like that.

Proverbs is not like that at all. So it's summer friendly in Wisconsin. It is summer friendly. And yeah. And it's just, it's just.

So it's loads of fun to teach. You would almost say there's practical wisdom in approaching it that way based off the rhythm of life during this season. There you go. That's good. I am looking forward to this summer.

So. And I love the idea of people if they don't have something to do. We want them in God's word. Reading the Proverb of the day is a great idea. So thank you guys and thank you for joining us.

Have a great week. Bye. Bye.