Year 2, Day 312, Proverbs 21

The Style of Proverbs

In all the conversations about Proverbs, I’ve noticed something.  People – myself included – keep talking about the verses and themes that keep jumping out at them.  You’ve heard me mention this idea of repeated themes several times.  How many times have I talked about wisdom?  How many times have I talked about humility coming before honor?  How many have I spoken of patience and listening?  On a funny note, how many times have I talked about our culture’s need to respect gray hair?  Or to take a more serious angle on that thought, how many times have I talked about our culture’s need to treat wisdom as a virtue that is more important than beauty?

In the past I’ve always talked the book of Proverbs down because it is such a hard book to read.  It’s so sporadic – especially once you get past the first ten chapters or so.  Proverbs is hard to read because you get a barrage of topics.  Reading the book of Proverbs is often about the same as feeling as the proverbial “wall” towards which we throw spaghetti in order to see what sticks. 

I’ve gained a brand new perspective in the importance of Proverbs.  My new perspective is simple.  The value of Proverbs is that as we read through the various topics, we start to see topics leap off the page at us.  The broad spectrum of topics allows each of us to discern where God’s Holy Spirit is deep at work within us.  I can read through the Proverbs and hear God speaking to me over and over about listening, humility, and wisdom.  Someone else can read through Proverbs and hear God speaking to them over and over about jealousy, wealth, and hording.  Someone else can read through it and hear a repeated message of marriage, childrearing, and honesty.  Other people can read through it and hear lessons about the tongue, what it means to be evil, and the importance of hard work. 

Reading through Proverbs is a whole different experience than reading through the rest of the Bible.  We don’t have one or two teaching points per chapter; we have thirty or forty repeated points in each chapter.  So in reading through Proverbs we can see which of the repeated themes our spirit picks up on and we can discern what God is teaching us.  How cool is God’s Word!

The Lord Determines Right

“Every way of man is right is his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart.” Here is another one of my repeated themes.  Our ways seem right in our own eyes.  Our decisions make sense to us as we make them.  Most of us do the things that we do for a particular reason.  We are horrible judges of whether our own actions are “right” or “wrong” because we muddy the waters with our evaluation of our circumstance.  Only God can truly see our actions and truly weigh our hearts. 

Yesterday I ran across a Martin Luther quote that caused me some challenging reflection: “Reason is the biggest obstacle to belief.”  While I may disagree with him on some applications of the saying, I think in this particular application Luther has a point.  Our ability to reason – our ability to muddy the black and white nature of truth with the graying effect that comes from looking at circumstance – really gets in the way.  We can rationalize almost anything if we work at it long and hard enough!

Haughtiness

Proverbs 21:4 grants me another avenue to talk about another repeated theme.  Haughty eyes and a proud heart – the lamp of the wicked – are sin.”  Is this not the same thing as saying that humility comes before honor?  Again we see God’s Word denouncing human pride and lifting up human humbleness.

The Tongue

Proverbs 21:23 gives us a chance to pause and revisit our ability to “keep our tongue.”  This proverb reinforces our need to focus on listening as opposed to controlling the conversation.  Trust me, this is a difficult task for someone like me – especially when talking about the faith!

Sacrifices Can Be An Abomination

I’m going to end on Proverbs 21:27, which is a new conversation to me in this blog.  The sacrifice of the wicked person is an abomination, especially when brought with an evil intent.  Now, we don’t necessarily live in a culture that demands animal sacrifices.  But we do still think of our work as a sacrifice.  We give of our time, talents, and treasures.  We give of our time to come into His presence and worship Him.  From a particular angle, these things can all be seen as sacrifices.

So think about Proverbs 21:27 in this light.  Have you ever heard someone say in an attempt to deflect guilt about a particular element of their sinful nature, “Well, at least I was in church?”  Have you ever gone to church when you didn’t feel like it, refused to be changed while you were there, and come home the same person who went?  Can that not be considered a “sacrifice of time” by a person of a “wicked heart?”  Does this proverb really seem to indicate that God is looking into our hearts at such a time and saying, “Well, at least they went?”  No.  This proverb seems to indicate that sacrifices given while our heart is in the wrong place is an abomination to the Lord!  There is no, “Well, at least I was in church!”  Sacrifices given for wrong reasons are an abomination to the Lord.

Having said that, I don’t want to be making a case for people to stay away from church!  I have had many experiences where I came to worship God in a very grumpy mood but the act of worshipping our God changed who I was.  I’ve had many times where I came in grumpy and cranky only to leave happy and repentant of my prior irritability.  That’s a great experience and God certainly approves of that sacrifice – although He’d approve more if I could work out my grumpiness prior to coming, surely.  God doesn’t mind the sacrifice of a genuinely repentant sinner.  God only considers it an abomination when the sacrifice is from an unrepentant sinner.

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