Aug
25
Nota bene: wisdom for Christian parents
Filed Under Baptism, Family, Marriage, Nota Bene, Proverbs, Words | Leave a Comment
Matt and Elizabeth Schmucker have posted 39 lessons, 20 tips and 10 don’t for parenting at the 9marks site. It’s an excellent collection of biblical wisdom for Christian parents, even if #32 reflects a baptist view of Baptism.
Aug
8
Bad reports and worse hearts
Filed Under Christian Living, Proverbs, The Church, Words | Leave a Comment
I wish everyone could see a congregation the way I get to see it as a preacher. Some faces are joyful and expectant, others skeptical and wary, others bored and sleepy, others surprised and wondering. I preached this past Sunday night from Proverbs on the sins of meddling, gossip, and slander. I’m not sure how to describe the looks that say, “Hey, how did you know what was going on in this relationship and this situation?” I know because I struggle mightily in this area as well. Who can argue with James when he writes, if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man…[James 3:2]? If I can master my tongue, so much of the rest of life would fall right happily into place.
You might think being a pastor simplifies these matters, because I get to breathe the pure, sanctified air of the pastor’s study and am insulated from all the sharp edges of “real life.” If you think that, you’d be wrong. Martin Luther said that unless a minister “smells like death and devil” he’s worthless. One of the devil’s aromas that surrounds me comes from the war of words. Like anyone else I hear rumors and bad reports, slander and abuse. And I’m called to labor for the peace and purity of the Church. I am an ambassador for his kingdom agenda of grace and truth. I hear Jesus saying, Blessed are the peacemakers [Being a peace-keeper is easier by far.]. What do I do with the information that comes to me by observation and report? What do I need to confront? To what do I need to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear and cover over with forbearance and compassion? How do I help my brothers and sisters repair and restore broken relationships? When the Bible requires us to purse the more formal avenues of church discipline, how should we deal with evidence and information?
Sometime soon the sermon from 3 August will be posted at fpckosciusko.org and on the free podcast at iTunes. If it helps, thanks be to God. If you want a shorter treatment from some more reputable teachers, read this related post that appeared on 4 August on Justin Taylor’s Between Two Worlds, written by Tim Keller and David Powlison, entitled Should You Pass on Bad Reports? I recommend reading it carefully. In a follow-up to some comments, Powlison writes,
…the leading edge of our argument is to place checks on the tendency we all have to snide, sneering, self-righteous, gossipy, malicious words. Any growth we can make in the direction of Ephesians 4:29 will make life much more joyous for all, and bring much glory to our God. And even criticisms I make become more hearable when I the critic am not posturing, but actually care about others. When I don’t care, my bad attitude and superiority becomes my actual message. Love is patient, love is kind . . . and then love is candid.
How much grace and mercy you and I (well, at least, I) need!
Jan
2
Wield wisdom wisely
Filed Under Bible, Christian Living, Proverbs | Leave a Comment
Think about the non-biblical proverb, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” What is that proverb telling us? If you take it as an ironclad law, then you will conclude that the secret to health, wealth and wisdom is good sleep habits. But surely there is more to it than that–and of course, there is!
Think about a Thanksgiving dinner being prepared, and the main cook says, “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” what does she mean? She means, “Get out of my way and out of my kitchen so I can cook this meal properly.”
However, after the meal, she looks at everyone and says, “Many hands make light work.” She is saying that now is the appropriate time for everyone to get busy clearing the table, washing, drying and putting up the dishes and pots and pans. Before the meal, all that involvement was a hindrance; but now, after the meal, all that involvement is a help.
One more interesting example is in 26:4-5, where we find two statements that seem to be contradictions: Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. Well, which is it? In Every Thought Captive, Dr. Richard Pratt applies to these two verses to the task of defending the Christian faith by saying that sometimes we must reject the philosophical underpinnings of unbelievers in order to confront them with the claims of Christianity. At other times, we should deal with them as though their false beliefs were true in order to point out the absurdity in their thinking.
Both proverbs are true if understood according to their intention and according to the situation. Proverbs are not ironclad laws. Their validity and applicability depends on the right time and the right circumstance. In fact, that is a basic component of true wisdom. In order to read, interpret and apply Proverbs to everyday living, we ought to keep in mind the importance of doing the right thing at the right time in the right way for the right reasons–or as the poetry of Proverbs expresses it, To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is! [Proverbs 15:23]
A wise person knows the right time and the right situation and the right approach and the right reasons to do something. The writer of Ecclesiastes expresses this right thing/right time/right way/right reasons thinking in these famous words: To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die…[Ecclesiastes 3:1-8].
Proverbs are not magical words. If you just memorize them and apply them in a wooden or mechanical way, you will not necessarily find good things happening around you:
A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey, and a rod for the back of fools…
Whoever sends a message by the hand of a fool cuts off his own feet and drinks violence.
Like a lame man’s legs, which hang useless, is a proverb in the mouth of fools.
Like one who binds the stone in the sling is one who gives honor to a fool.
Like a thorn that goes up into the hand of a drunkard is a proverb in the mouth of fools.
Like an archer who wounds everyone is one who hires a passing fool or drunkard.
Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly. [26:3, 6-11, emphasis mine]
God is telling us that it takes wisdom to apply wisdom properly. The fool applies a proverb with no regard to how fit it might or might not be for a situation—like a paralyzed leg, thorn bush brandished by a drunkard, hurting the one who wields it as well as the one on the business end of the blow. If we are to wield wisdom wisely, we must 1) understand the text; 2) understand people, and 3) understand the situation.
Dec
5
Proverbs: urban lions
Filed Under Bible, Christian Living, Holiness, Proverbs | Leave a Comment
The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion in the road! There is a lion in the streets!’
As a door turns on its hinges, so does a sluggard on his bed.
The sluggard buries his hand in the dish; it wears him out to bring it back to his mouth.
The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly.
~Proverbs 26:13-16
Proverbs’ depiction of the sluggard contains a vivid illustration of the deceitfulness of sin and its operations in the human heart. Twice in Proverbs we hear the sluggard claiming that there is a lion in the streets. Why would he do that? He is creating imaginary circumstances to justify neglecting his work. He shifts the discussion from the sin of laziness to the danger of lions. No one will condone his staying home because he is lazy. But they might sympathize with him and agree with his decision to stay home if there is real danger in the streets. So, to hide his laziness and justify himself, he deflects attention away from laziness (truth) to lions (an illusion).
Do you see the broader insight into the human heart Scripture is giving us? The heart can exploit the mind to justify what the heart wants. We are not always willing to deal with things as they really are. We are not neutral when it comes to understanding our situation. On the contrary, we feel powerful desires and pressing fears, and then our mind can bend reality to justify the desires and fears and seek fulfillment or find relief.
The sluggard desires to stay at home and avoid work. Instead of dealing with his evil desire, he uses his mind to create unreal circumstances to justify his desire. He may even believe the excuses he has fabricated. [Remember George Costanza's advice to Jerry: "It's not a lie if you believe it."] The deceitfulness of sin can actually make us mentally deranged!
Understanding this truth makes Proverbs 26:16 come alive: “The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can give a discreet answer.” The self-deception makes the sluggard resistant to any truth that exposes his sin. When seven wise men confront him and say, “There is no bloodthirsty urban lion in the street. We walked here safely. We’ve searched the neighborhood. You are not in danger of becoming a lion’s lunch,” the sluggard still will not get out of bed. Their testimony won’t change his mind. He knows better. He insists that the hungry urban lion is out there. Otherwise his laziness is exposed for what it is. Truth gets flushed down the toilet of self-justification.
No one is immune to this. It goes far beyond the matter of work ethic. Walking in the darkness of evil makes us hostile to the light of truth–and in the process our mind concocts and spits out “spin”–half-truths, equivocations, sophistries, evasions and lies - anything to protect the our evil desires from exposure and reproof.
The longer I serve as a pastor, the more I see this at work in people with addictions, people who harbor bitterness, people whose marriages are crumbling–in other words, sinners who need help. And, at the same time, it makes me cry out to God to deliver me from my delusions as well. I must reckon with God’s grace and truth as I really am and in the situation I am really facing–that is, without the urban lions.
Thanks are in order to John Piper for being the catalyst for these insights.
Sep
17
Proverbs: Anger, continued
Filed Under Christian Living, Poetry, Proverbs | Leave a Comment
Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty,
and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.
~Proverbs 16:32
A little extra something re: the 9/2 sermon on anger in Proverbs. This morning Andra
Mooney, retired English teacher, reminded me of William Blake’s 1794 poem “A Poison Tree” concerning unresolved anger:
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.And I water’d it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with my smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,And into my garden stole
When the night had veil’d the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.
Sep
12
Proverbs: Too much, continued
Filed Under C.S. Lewis, Christian Living, Ethics, Proverbs | 1 Comment
This past Lord’s Day I preached on the wisdom found in Proverbs concerning excess–or as I called it in the sermon, too much. Alas, I had too much material to include in the time allotted for preaching that evening. I wanted to read a paragraph from C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra, in which Ransom is acclimating himself to the new planet, reminiscent of what Adam’s first hours must have been like in Eden (thanks to Grant Carroll for bringing this passage to my attention last week):
Now he had come to a part of the wood where great globes of yellow fruit hung from the tress–clustered as toy-balloons are clustered on the back of the balloon-man and about the same size. He picked one of them and turned it over and over. The rind was smooth and firm and seemed impossible to tear open. Then by accident one of his fingers punctured it and went through into coldness. After a moment’s hesitation he put the little aperture up to his lips. He had meant to extract the smallest, experimental sip, but the first taste put his caution all to flight. It was, of course, a taste, just as his thirst and hunger had been thirst and hunger. But then it was so different from every other taste that it seemed mere pedantry to call it a taste at all. It was like the discovery of a totally new genus of pleasures, something unheard of among men, out of all reckoning, beyond all covenant. For one draught of this on earth wars would be fought and nations betrayed. it could not be classified. He could never tell us, when he came back to the world of men, whether it was sharp or sweet, savoury or voluptuous, creamy or piercing. “Not like that” was all he could ever say to such inquiries. As he let the empty gourd fall from his hand and was about to pluck a second one, it came into his head that he was now neither hungry nor thirsty. And yet to repeat a pleasure so intense and almost so spiritual seemed an obvious thing to do. His reason, or what we commonly take to be reason in our own world, was all in favour of tasting this miracle again; the childlike innocence of fruit, the labours he had undergone, the uncertainty of the future, all seemed to commend the action. Yet something seemed opposed to this “reason.” It is difficult to suppose that this opposition came from desire, for what desire would turn from so much deliciousness? But for whatever cause, it appeared to him better not to taste again. Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be a vulgarity–like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day.”
Did you catch that? Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be a vulgarity. Something in Lewis’ thought here sheds light on our sinful tendency to overindulge and binge. We find something good and pleasurable, and we feel we must have more and more and more. Opposed to us is the teaching of Proverbs 25:16: If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it. Paul’s expression their god is their belly comes to mind as well.
When you look at it closely, too much is a lordship problem, a worship disorder. Who is your master, God or your desires? Do you desire God above all else, is he the strength of your heart and your portion forever? Or do you desire something in the creation more than you desire the Creator? At root, drunkards and gluttons and workaholics and exercise-obsessives are worshiping another god. Their worship is actually a form of self-worship. We worship what brings us joy and contentment and rest.
I had the opportunity to feast with dear Christian brethren last night in Fort Collins, Colorado (I’m here for the annual RYM board meeting). My conscience was teased along with the thought: there was plenty of “honey” to eat, but how much better to taste and move on, rather than have my fill and vomit it.