Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Proverbs Aren't Promises | The Writings | Proverbs 14

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Are Proverbs promises or principles? Are you willing to be apart of Jesus' messy church? Are you insulting God? In today's episode, Keith shares three, practical proverbs from Proverbs 14 that teach us about God, others, and ourselves. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Proverbs 14

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. Misunderstanding Proverbs can cost you your faith. Here's the key that we just can't say too often. Proverbs aren't promises. Consider the following examples. In Proverbs 10-4, it says, lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. I mean, that's true, and that laziness usually does lead to worse outcomes than, being hardworking. But it's not always true, is it? It's not always true that hard work brings wealth. I'm sure we know people who have worked really hard and still struggle financially,

as well as lazy people who are still doing okay. Or Proverbs 335, the wise inherit honor, but fools get only shame. That's usually true, but not always. Sometimes our world rewards foolishness, not wisdom. So is the Bible promising that all who work hard will be rich? Is the Bible promising that all who are wise will receive honor? Or is it stating general principles? Anyone who has studied the book of Proverbs knows the answer. Proverbs itself acknowledges that in a fallen world, things often do not work out the way they should. So my concern is that if we read the Proverbs as promises, we will be disappointed and feel like God has let us down. But the problem isn't with God and the problem isn't with the Proverbs. It's with us. After I became a Christian

in college, I met a guy at a local church that I attended, and he was a great guy. He really tried to live by his faith. He served a lot in the church. He and his wife had been married a long time, and they had three boys. They believed Proverbs 226, which says, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Well, they thought that was a promise. And so they really made choices, sometimes really hard, sacrificial choices to do their best, to train up their boys in the way that they should go. But their boys didn't turn out the way they'd hoped. Some had pretty bad addictions. Some ended up in jail. And my friend looked back and said, God failed me. God let me down. And he walked away from Christianity because he thought,

thought he couldn't trust God, he thought God had broken his promise. But Proverbs 226 did not promise him that if he did what he thought was right as a parent, that his children would all turn out well. See, instead of promises, Proverbs are nuggets of wisdom, passed from one generation to the next. They're saying this is the way life usually works. But other parts of the Bible remind us that there are always exceptions. Today we're in Proverbs 14. And I just want to take three of the proverbs in this chapter and unpack them a little bit and then apply them to our life. The first proverb I want to deal with today is Proverbs 14.4. It says without oxen, a stable stays clean, but you need a strong ox for a large harvest. If you don't have any oxen in your

stable, you've got a clean stable. The problem is that you won't have much of a harvest. If you want a big harvest, you're going to need a strong ox, but strong oxen make messes. So you have to choose between a clean stable or a large harvest. You can have either one, but you can't have both. That proverb has a lot to say, not just about farm life, but about the church, because churches can be pretty messy places. Consider a story from Port Orchard, Washington. Joe Kennedy was known as the praying coach in Port Orchard, because he was an assistant high school football coach, and he prayed after all the local high school football games at the 50-yard line. For a while, he just prayed by himself,

but then players from his team as well as opposing teams started to join him. In 2015, the school superintendent, Aaron Lavelle, said that Coach Kennedy had to stop praying after the games. But the coach didn't want to. So the superintendent put him on leave, and the coach sued the school district for violating his freedom of religion. In 2022, in a 6-3 opinion, the Supreme Court ruled in the coach's favor. Here's where it gets messy.

Coach Joe Kennedy and the superintendent, Aaron Lavelle. Well, they went to the same church. I mean, that's awkward. How do you go to the same church with the person who put you on administrative leave for praying? And how do you go to the same church as one of your employees who wouldn't follow your simple instructions? Remember Proverbs 14-4? without oxen, a stable stays clean, but you need a strong ox to have a big harvest. The success and the mess go together.

The bigger the success, oftentimes the bigger the mess. Success brings messy people into the church. If a church isn't bringing in messy people, then something is seriously wrong with that church. Sometimes people will say to me, I heard that so-and-so goes to your church, and they see that as somehow discrediting our church. Like if you were really serious about following Jesus, then so-and-so wouldn't go there. But is that true?

Just think about where people are in life. Let's say there's a spectrum from negative 10, a person who hates God and lives obnoxiously, all the way to a positive 10 that a person loves Jesus and lives their life just like Jesus does. We're all somewhere on that spectrum. And sometimes when a person who's a nudgeous, negative 10 comes to faith in Christ, there's a lot of progress when they moved to negative 8 or

negative 6 or negative 2. There's a lot of positive change in their life, but they started so far away from God that it takes a long time for them to show any of the fruit that a Christian is supposed to. Churches should be the kind of places that welcome people who are far from God. We welcome people regardless of where they are on that spectrum. We welcome negative tens, people who are far from God and who live lives that reflect that. It's good news that churches welcome everybody because that means there's a place for you. They welcome you too. So you might want to ask yourself, am I willing to live with a messiness that comes with being part of a local church that invites and welcomes messy people like me? The next proverb we'll consider is Proverbs 1412. It says,

there is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death. This is one of those proverbs that scares me. There's a way that seems right to me, but that ends in death. It seems right to me, but it's not actually right in God's eyes. It seems like it has a good destination like it leads somewhere promising, but reality is it ends in death. This proverb reminds me that I can't trust my human intuition to lead me to the right path. I can't determine what's right and wrong by my gut instinct, nor can I determine what's right and wrong by the culture. The culture gets things wrong just like I do. I have to determine right and wrong based on the Bible. I have to trust God more than myself. That's why Jesus said in Matthew 7, enter through the narrow gate,

for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it, but small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. I think the proverb would say that all the people on that broad road think it's the right road. No one intentionally takes the wrong road. Unfortunately, the broad road leads to destruction. So what's the lesson? Don't trust your instinct. Trust God's word instead. The last proverb we'll look at today is proverb 1431. It says those who oppress the poor insult their maker, but helping the poor honors him. Several years ago, my wife and I took our family to Washington, D.C. on a family vacation. We visited all the monuments and museums, but we also went to Mount Vernon,

which is where George Washington lived. Now, when you walk through that house on Mount Vernon, there is nothing special about it. It is very ordinary. In fact, a lot of people who are listening to this right now have houses that are much nicer than George Washington's, and that makes sense given that he lived there in the 1700s. So why did we drive hours and spend a lot of money to take a tour of a very ordinary house. Well, it's not because of the house, but because of who owned the house, that George Washington, the first president, owned that house, makes that house special and worth visiting. So Proverbs 1431 said those who oppress the poor insult their maker, but helping the poor honors him. Every person is made in the image of God. God is their creator. If you mistreat

a poor person, or anyone really, you are insulting God. How you treat the poor person is how you are treating God. When you help a poor person, you glorify God. So we treat every person with respect and dignity because every person is created in the image of God. You got to love the Proverbs. They are practical, everyday wisdom, and they really help guide our life.