Day 304: Proverbs 7-9 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study with Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Welcome to the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebobledepartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. (upbeat music) - Family, welcome to day 304 here on the Bible department podcast. I'm your host Dr. Mandy Rango and we are continuing our trek through the book of Proverbs today. We've got Proverbs chapter seven, eight and nine. If you have not done the reading, how about you stop the video, pause the audio, go do the reading. Incredible Proverbs today. Now, you could probably assume from the length of the episodes of the past two days, you could tell, I love a proverb. Proverbs hate to see me coming, okay? I love Proverbs 'cause I love wisdom. And so my goal today is to make sure that the episode is not as long as they have been in the past. We've got 10 days in Proverbs. Today is the third day of 10 days of us camping out and getting wisdom, all right? So I'm gonna give you some big picture context clues that I'll give you as many nerdy nuggets as I can. And then I'll obviously leave you out for the time of the street, okay?

So the big context clue is that we're coming to the end of an entire movement or section. So Proverbs chapters one through nine really focus on like word pictures and the big word pictures or imagery that chapters one through nine is supposed to leave us with is lady wisdom and lady folly, okay? Lady wisdom, lady folly. They both are trying to seduce you. They're both trying to win your heart. They're both trying to get you to fall in love with them, okay? And Proverbs chapters one through nine are trying to get you to bind your heart to wisdom, to fall in love with lady wisdom, okay? So wisdom and folly are both gonna be personified as women because this is a dad trying to give advice to his son and he's essentially saying you gotta fall in love with somebody and you gotta love a woman somewhere. I want you to reject folly. I want you to love wisdom, which is going to mean that all of your romantic relationships from that point on are all gonna be wise 'cause you've fallen in love with wisdom before you fall in love with anybody. So once we get to chapter 10, the tone of Proverbs is going to completely shift, okay? The first nine chapters are different from the rest of the book. They are designed as educational poems, parents instructing their children on how to live wisely. These are the wisdom traditions

that are passed down from generation to generation. They are of course longer than the short aphorisms that Proverbs is most famous for, okay? So once you get to chapter 10, it's just gonna be one liner after one liner after one liner. These kind of fit together as poems, like as a whole, okay? The chapters kind of flow together. You can see themes, okay? So the book of Proverbs is gonna shift, just want you to know, I'll actually kind of give you an outline of the book that it would probably be really, really helpful. Proverbs chapter one through nine are nine wisdom poems attributed to Solomon. These are thought to be written by him during his reign. They take the form of a parent instructing a child and focus on the choice between wisdom and folly, okay? Proverbs chapters 10 to chapter 22 verse 16 are sentence, sentence, sayings attributed to Solomon. They are aphorisms, okay? Aphorisms associated with Solomon thought to be written by him. These are the more traditional wisdom material, okay, made up of short memorable sentence sayings. Proverbs chapters 22 verse 17 to 24 verse 22 are the words of the wise. Another collection of aphorisms, but these are on the face of it anonymous though, as will be discussed when we get there, they seem incredibly similar to an Egyptian work of the 12th century BC named the wisdom of Ammon Mobe.

Chapters 24 verses 23 to 34. Another anonymous collection of aphorisms. And then Proverbs chapters 25 to 29, more sentence sayings of Solomon. These are another collection of aphorisms associated with Solomon, but not included in his earlier collection. Rather they were collected during the reign of Hezekiah in the eighth century or early seventh century BC. And then you got Proverbs chapter 30, which are gonna contain the sayings of a man by the name of Agur, A-G-U-R. These are the collected aphorisms wife of noble character. These are the sayings of the mom of King Lemuel, the aphorim risms and acrostic poem written by a Gentile king named Lemuel based on the sayings of his mother, who these were, like who they are, and where and when they were written is completely unknown. We have no information about Lemuel or his mama, so that's a breakdown of just the book, okay? And that's enough context for us to get into today's content. All right, $630 nuggets that I got for you for today, okay? The first is actually something I was supposed to say yesterday I didn't get to because I was rambling about, you know, prostitutes costing a loaf of bread and don't mess with a married man's wife and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, okay? I want to go back to chapter 6. I know today we're focused on chapter 7 through 9, but I want to go back to chapter 6, okay? Chapter 6 verses 1 through 11, okay? These are good. This is good stuff right here. This is chapter 6 verses 1. My son, okay? My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor, if you have shaken hands and pledged for a stranger, okay? Hey, that's unwise. That sounds unwise. You have been trapped by what you said, ensnared by the words of your mouth. So essentially this dad is saying you got to be careful who you're going to business with. You got to be careful about how you manage your financial dealings, how you do business, okay? Because now you're ensnared by the words of your mouth, by the contract, by the pledge. So do this my son to free yourself since you have fallen into your neighbor's hands.

Go to the point of exhaustion. If you ask me right now, do I think most people do anything to the point of exhaustion? I would say no, they don't. There's actually been moments where I have fallen asleep in this chair. Cam who's filming with me can attest. There are moments where I will, in order to produce 365 episodes of a podcast, you have to push yourself to exhaustion. There are moments where I've recorded sick, I've recorded coming straight off the road, will land at the airport, come straight to the studio to record content, to the point of exhaustion. And there was one time where I was sitting in this chair at this table with all my books. And I just kind of literally leaned back. It was just like snoring and Cam came and woke me up and was like, "Yo, Pam, I'm going to take you home, man. Come on, man. This is elderly abuse, bro. I just feel like I'm going to be judged by God if I keep you in the studio." To the point of exhaustion. And here we go, let's keep reading, okay? To the point of exhaustion. Most people haven't even seen exhaustion. They haven't even met exhaustion. Them and exhaustion are not friends, okay? And give your neighbor no rest, okay? Allow no sleep to your eyes, no slumber to your eyelids. Free yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler. Go to the aunt, you sluggered, okay? Consider its ways and be wise. Be wise. It has no commander, no overseer, no ruler. My biggest pet peeve, like with, I don't know, people right now is like, if your boss doesn't tell you to do it, you don't do it. Ants don't even need a boss. You tell me you need a boss? You need somebody to like whip you in the shape? Like that's crazy. Like there's got to be a motivation that's in you that makes you want to succeed, that makes you want to win. You got to be self-motivated, okay? It has no commander. It has no overseer. It has no ruler. Yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. How long will you lie there? You sluggered. When will you get up from your sleep? Here we go. I've committed this to memory. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest. And poverty will come on you like a thief and scarce to be like an armed man. Proverbs is going to, I know this is offensive to our current secular worldview, but Proverbs is going to say, yeah, poverty, one, one of the factors, not the sole factor, one of the factors for poverty is laziness. That if people are lazy, they will be poor. Now, I'm not saying all poor people are lazy. Don't twist my words. Don't get in the comments and fight. Okay, I'm not saying all poor people are lazy. All I'm saying is that we cannot overcorrect. We can't say because all poor people

are not lazy, then that means that no poor people are lazy. Proverbs are saying, hey, there are some people who are poor because of sleep. They like sleep. They like folding other hands. And poverty will come on you like an armed man. And it is the job of a good dad to make his children scared of poverty, 100%. So if Proverbs is a father's heart, a father's perspective to his children, it is the job of a good dad to make his children very, very, very aware. That's why it's very, very dangerous to spoil children, okay? Because they have to be, they have to love hard work. They have to enjoy hard work, okay? I enjoy what I do. This is my dream job. The reason I would fall asleep in this chair 'cause I love what I do. And so there are some people, it's not that you're lazy, it's that you're not living in purpose. And at some point, maybe, just maybe you're gonna have to, like, make some sacrifices and unsecure the bag so that you can actually operate according to your purpose so that you can wake up with a sense of, "I love my job." Your work does say something about your identity.

And God has a purpose for your life. And if you feel like your job is a waste of your gifts and talents, then it's gonna be really hard to get you motivated. You are gonna need a commander. You are gonna need an overseer. You are gonna need a ruler. But I've tried my best to hire people who I don't really need to oversee or rule or be a commander for them 'cause they're self-motivated. But I can only hire people for their purpose. The moment I try to hire somebody and get them to do something that they are not really designed and put on this planet to do, I'm gonna have to constantly get them to, like, focus on the job, okay? All right, chapter seven, verse two. I want you to see this 'cause it's gonna be all to the book of Proverbs, wisdom guards, wisdom protects, okay? When you adopt wisdom into your life, it protects you. It's like, it secures you, okay? Number three, third nerdy nugget, okay? Chapter seven, verse seven, it says this. I saw among the simple, I noticed among young men a youth who had no sense, okay? So who was the book of Proverbs for? It's for young people, it's for youth, it's for children. Now, everything that we know about the knowledge of good and evil actually makes it

so that the knowledge of good and evil is a good thing, okay? There's only two groups of people who don't have the knowledge of good and evil, and you'll see why this connects it to children in just a second. There's only two groups of people that don't have the knowledge of good and evil. Well, the first is pretty clear, sociopaths, okay? If you don't know the difference between mowing the lawn and hacking somebody's limbs off and putting them in a deep freezer, you're crazy, okay? Which means you don't have the knowledge of good and evil. You don't have the ability to discern the difference between what's good and what's evil. That's a sociopath, that's a psychopath, okay? That's a serial killer, that person's nuts. The second group that doesn't know the difference between good and evil are children. So when the Bible says, I saw among the simple that doesn't mean like people who aren't intelligent, that means people who are innocent. I saw among the innocent. They, my son right now, you know, literally last week pulled his penis out of the ice cream shop. I'm not joking, just pulled his pants down, whipped it out. I was like, whoa, hey, brother. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I was like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. You gotta keep your underwear on, bro. Like you gotta keep your shorts on.

Like you can't, you can't, we can't do this. Not at, not at so-me, so-me, bro. Not at the ice cream shop. Not where we get Earl Grey ice cream. You can't do that in here. Well, why would he do that? He would do that because he doesn't have the knowledge of good and evil, okay? So when the Bible says that Adam and Eve are naked and unashamed, actually what the Bible is saying is that they've not yet taken of the knowledge of good and evil. And what happens when they do? The moment they take of the trip, the knowledge of good and evil, they go from a childlike state, from an innocent state, from a simple state to understanding shame and understanding that they are naked and that it's a problem, okay? So the Bible's actually telling us they go instantly from childlike innocence to adult understanding by taking the knowledge of good and evil, which means that the knowledge of good and evil in and of itself is not bad. However, when taken, it is bad. But when God thinks you're ready for it, he would want to give it to you. So there's a difference between taking knowledge and receiving knowledge. And actually I would say that the whole,

what we have in the Garden of Eden is a test to see whether or not Adam and Eve will trust God for his timing on when he thinks it's appropriate to give them the knowledge of good and evil. So the knowledge of good and evil is not an inherently bad thing. "Hey, our job is to give you the knowledge of good and evil is to help the simple, to help youth, to help the young." It's us saying, it's Proverbs saying, "I want to bring you back into the Garden of Eden so that you can go from being innocent to being wise without sinning against the Lord." There are two ways to get wisdom. The first is experience. You know, there are guys, there are a plethora of guys on the team who are divorced. And guess what? They have a bunch of knowledge around marriage, but it was through a very painful experience. The other way to get knowledge is through wisdom, which is not experience. It's saying, you know what, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Okay, how does the fear of the Lord work? It's not just me being in awe of God and me getting humility. It's also me being able to know what's going to happen if I sin. So think about the fear of the Lord. When Adam and Eve eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they feel fear and they hide from God. What happens when you have the fear of the Lord is you essentially say, "I can see around the corner. If I eat of that fruit, I am going to be afraid of God and I'm going to hide from him. Therefore, I'm going to take the fear that I will experience in the future and apply it to my life right now so that I have some restraint." And so anyone who doesn't have fear is crazy. My dad has struggled with a drug addiction because he's not scared of anything. And if you ask me, I would say, I'm very, very scared. I'm scared of losing my ministry. I'm scared of losing my marriage. I'm scared of drugs. I'm scared. I have the fear of the Lord, which isn't just being scared of God, but it's being afraid in the way that the Lord is afraid, which means the Lord knows the future. And wisdom says, I don't need to experience the force to get the knowledge of what that does. I could talk, I could get wisdom and it will make me afraid of divorce so that I never have to go through divorce. Okay? I'm going to operate today with the kind of wisdom that helps me to navigate tomorrow. Okay? I want the future manning a wrangle to be happy with what present manning a wrangle is deciding to do today. Okay? So that I want to give language around simple youth, young children, son. Why is this language

so prevalent in the book of Proverbs? Well, it's prevalent because Adam and Eve had a test of whether or not they were going to take the knowledge of good and evil or wait to receive the knowledge of good and evil and wisdom literature, not just Proverbs, but wisdom literature throughout the Bible is trying to offer the knowledge of good and evil to people who are not trying to just take it, but who are ready to receive it. All right, family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere books are sold. Literally today, I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a books a million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. Chapter nine versus seven to nine, okay? Chapter nine, verse seven to nine has one of my favorite little lessons. It says this, whoever corrects a marker invites insults, whoever rebukes the wicked and cares abuse. So this is saying, do not give dumb people advice. That's what this is saying. And then verse eight, do not rebuke markers or they will hate you, rebuke the wise and they will love you, okay? If you rebuke a wise person, they will love you. So anyone who's easily offended, you're operating in foolishness. Anytime someone gives me correction, I'm really not easily offended. Why? Why am I not easily offended? Because the fear of the Lord creates humility and humility creates confidence. And if I'm truly confident, I have no insecurities. You can criticize, you can, you can give me all the feedback you want. No, I have no qualms with, with rebuke because I'm wise. Verse nine, instruct the wise and they will be wiser still, teach the righteous and they will add to their learning a secular way or just a natural way to say this is this, a word to the wise is It's sufficient. If I say something wise to a wise person, a wise person hears it and goes, that's wise. If I say something wise to a foolish person, they're confused by it.

And then I stop talking. So Jesus says, do not cast your pearls to swine. I think there's a lot of us who have a gift of wisdom and your frustration is that you keep trying to give wisdom to people who are not ready to receive it. And not God doesn't even give wisdom to people who aren't ready to receive it. So why do you think that you can just force wisdom down people's throats? There are people who are not ready to receive wisdom and that's okay. I'll say this, no one accepts advice when they're winning. Let life beat that person up enough to get them to a place of humility. And guess what will happen? They'll come back to you and they'll want wisdom. People have to come face to face with rock bottom. They have to get to failure. And you wanna know what failure does? Failure will humble you real good. You'll get you nice and ready for wisdom. And so there's lots of you, especially if you have like a discerning or prophetic spirit about you, you'll begin to discern that somebody needs your wisdom, but you should also discern they're not in a place to receive wisdom. And you gotta get them to a place, love them to the place where they are ready to receive wisdom. There are all kinds of things that I wanna tell my son,

but he's four. And so that's not age appropriate. In the same way that I love my son, not for just where he's gonna be, for where he is, there's a lot of us, especially passing leaders. You can't just love people for the potential that they have. You gotta love them for who they are right now. And you gotta love them into the person that they're gonna be, and they might not be able to handle the wisdom that you have for them at the moment. Last nerdy nugget, chapter eight versus 22 to 31 is a creation poem. So we saw a lot of creation poems in the Psalms. And chapter eight versus 22 to 31 gives us another creation poem. Okay, it actually says wisdom was the first of God's works. Okay, it says the Lord brought me fourth as the first of his works. Before the deeds of old, I was formed long ago at the very beginning when the world came to be, when there were no watery depths. You see, the proverb is shining light on Genesis chapters to one, okay, and giving a creation poem. So we saw this with the Psalms, and now we're seeing it here in Proverbs. And then you know what, I'll give you one last one. The knowledge of the Holy One is something that is gonna be talked about, and I'm trying to find the exact verse where it was.

Proverbs chapter nine, verse 10, it says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." We already know that part, but then Proverbs nine adds to it. It says, "And knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. "Knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." I would say this, by knowing God, you know everything else. Okay, so knowledge of the Holy One means that I know his character, I know his attributes, I know the character and the nature of God. Knowledge of the Holy One means that, I'll say it this way, I don't look at the sun to study the sun, but by the light of the sun, I can see everything else. And I don't study God just to see God, but he lives in unapproachable light. And so when it says the knowledge of the Holy One, what we're really saying is, I get to know God so that I can understand everything else. And if you ask me, what do I think the most important thing to study is, I'd say theology, because no A.W. Tozer says this, no person can rise above their idea of God. And so really, you may think you have a wisdom issue, but you may actually have a, I don't really know who God is issue. And the moment you begin to really know who God is, the moment you can apply that to your life, it actually finds wisdom.

That's the last thing I'll leave us with, and that gets us into our timeless truth. So let's talk about Lady Wisdom, Lady Folly, okay? The thing that the Book of Proverbs trying to get you to see is that Lady Folly only tells you how things are pleasurable in the short term. Lady wisdom is making you fight for delayed gratification. And so the ultimate test of wisdom is gonna be whether or not you make decisions for the short term or decisions for the long term. Making decisions for the future is going to be the ultimate test of wisdom. So I wanna ask you a hard question. Do you have impulse control? Do you live with delayed gratification, okay? If you struggle with impulse control and delayed gratification, it doesn't matter how many of these proverbs you read. It's not actually going to get down into the fruit of your life, because the key that unlocks all of this is do I live for the moment or am I living for my future, okay? Everything that Folly brings to you is quick gain, quick riches, okay? Okay? You know, whenever, when I first started investing, wise people in my life were like, just plan on owning that house for 30 years. If you own it for 30 years, you will make money. But if you wanna flip it,

if you wanna like buy a house and like flip it in two years, you're gonna struggle. If you wanna own stocks and keep them for 30 years, you're gonna make money. But if you just wanna like, you know, flip, you know, day trade, you're gonna lose money, okay? So you gotta be someone. If you're just thinking about, you know, oh God, how can I have sex right now? You're gonna end up doing something, you're gonna end up selling your birthright for a bowl of soup because you're allowing the need of the moment to drown out long-term strategy. And so the thing that unlocks your ability to really get the wisdom that God has for you is short-term versus long-term thinking, impulse control versus delayed gratification and making decisions for the present versus making decisions for the future. And that is a timeless truth. You are going to have to control your impulses and rest in some delayed gratification. That is the thing that would make you go to college for four years. That is what would make you do a master's program. That's what would make you get a doctorate. That's what would make you choose marriage. That is what would make you be okay with having a toddler because you're thinking about, well, hey, one day I'm gonna marry this boy off or marry this girl off.

I'm living for them in my 20s and 30s. It's the thing that would make you wanna say for retirement even when you're in your 20s and 30s. It's a thing long-term. The book of Proverbs is going to make you focus on what are you trying to accomplish with your whole life. And you've got to begin to control impulses and delay your gratification if we are going to see any of this wisdom actually take root in your life. That isn't just true for Solomon and his son, David and his son, that's true for you and I. That's our timeless truth. - Tomorrow, we got day three, oh, five. We're gonna be in Proverbs chapter 10 to 12. The tone of the Proverbs is gonna change. Okay, we're at a hinge point. When we get out of chapter nine, once we get into chapter 10, the sayings are gonna be short sentence sayings, it's gonna be more aphorisms. It's gonna be awesome. I can't wait to see you tomorrow. Same time, same place. So proud of you. Choose wisdom, see you tomorrow, peace. - Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment,

share with a friend and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebobaldapartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.