Welcome And Why Proverbs Matters

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How are we doing everyone? Hope you're having a good day out there, ready for Proverbs chapter five. This is a pretty deep and interesting chapter, applicable for today in both the realm we see before us and in the spiritual realm. So let us begin. Proverbs five verse one and two here is going to be a compilation again of what we learned so far, that you must personally hear from the voice of the Lord Proverbs five. My son give attention to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding, that you may observe discretion, and your lips may reserve knowledge. Now we know that these words written in Proverbs were written by or instructed by Solomon, but the big underlying theme is all of these chapters and books in the Bible are what is called inspired by the Holy Spirit, or in other words, like everything we've been learning is you have to hear from God personally. These men who wrote in these books heard from God and wrote down what God told them. So don't think it's strange if you're not hearing from God now. We've gone through lessons on how to learn to hear. These men have gotten real sharp at it, and then they wrote down what God told them to write down so you and I could have a better understanding of what they're teaching. For us to comprehend and learn, so you could look at Proverbs as God Himself speaking to you and I, calling us sons, children of God, to give attention not to the world's wisdom but to his wisdom, and incline your ear not to the way things may seem, but to what he tells us and gives us for our understanding, and the reason for that is in verse two, that you may observe discretion, and your lips may reserve knowledge. In verse two, where it says that you may observe discretion and observe knowledge. Let's open that up a little bit more. Observe means to hedge about as with thorns, to guard yourself generally, to protect and attend to yourself. We're not talking about others. We're talking about protecting you. Here God wants to protect you with his wisdom and understanding. And what is he saying when he says he wants you to observe? God wants you to be able to observe discretion, which really means in the original text a plan, usually an evil plan or an evil device, an evil intent with a witty invention, lewdness and mischievous thoughts. We're going to see here pretty soon in verse three why God is saying listen to him, because what you're going to see out in this world is going to be evil, and it's going to be made for your destruction, so stay focused on his words and what he tells you to do. Be strong in believing what he says to you. That's God's faith, and it will protect you from the evil that you're about to run into today, tomorrow, or in the days ahead. Reminds me of this scripture that we are ambassadors of the kingdom of God, so it's up to God to protect us, but we receive that protection by believing what He says to us personally, believing it enough to act upon it. Now let's look at verse three and read three through six, and what we're need to be protected from or need a shield around us from. Verse three says, For the lips of an adulteress drip honey and smoother than oil is her speech. But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two edged sword, her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of Sheol. She does not ponder the path of life, her ways are unstable, she does not know it. Now in verse seven it kind of ends again with God saying to us, So, then my children, listen to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth, keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house. Now going back to verse three, for the lips of adulteress drip honey, a quick glance of this you envision a wife cheating on her husband, sleeping with another man, but the word adulterers here in this verse can also mean to turn aside to a foreigner and a strange profane place. And what I'm proposing to you is to look at this a little deeper than just the surface about oh don't go sleep around with other men's wives, that's pretty obvious, but what's the underlying the deeper thing that there's a devil out there whispering to your spirit and nowadays it's blatant in all kinds of TV shows and in real life every day? It's like adultery is just part of a life that this world says is common, and the pain that you go through is like, well, everybody goes through it, but you really don't have to. If you do what it says in verse two, put a protection around you like thorns, we really have to make the decision of putting that protection around us, and the only way to have it really defeat the devil is you actually have to hear the Spirit of God give you guidance on when to really put those shields up because the adulteress, not just another lover, but the spirit of the devil is as it says here in verse three, it drips like honey, not only does it sound wonderful, but your flesh starts to feel the beauty of sin, and what's weird is you get used to that feeling, not realizing that it's a demonic influence on us. I might be getting too deep, but there's a point I'm trying to make here is that words control everything we do. We think we're making decisions, and we are, but what are we making decisions from? Unless we have the Spirit of God speaking to us to give us the discernment between good and evil, then we on our own are trying to make the distinction between the knowledge of good and evil from the voices that are hitting our brain. But that's just layer one. The spirit of the devil which is dripping like sweet dew, is speaking to our spirit which is actually going into our brains, especially if you're not born again and have that wall of thorns around you protecting you. The devil's always pushing you the wrong way. That's why it says in verse five, that her feet go down to death and her steps lay hold of shoal, and that the devil doesn't even ponder the paths of life, and her ways are unstable. And you know what? The devil doesn't even know how lost he is, that's how lost the devil is. That's why Jesus says he's a liar. And everything the devil says is a lie. Our problem is that we don't realize everything he says is a lie because we look around and see wealth, money, and prosperity, a place to reach, and that will bring us peace in our hearts and mind. That's just part of the lie of the devil to keep you going and running on that track or that mouse wheel. We'll get a little more into that later. But there's another point I want to make here is that when the end time comes, we are going to see the devil. And Isaiah 14 verse sixteen through seventeen says this about what we will see. Those who see you will gaze at you, they will ponder over you, saying, Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world like a wilderness and overthrew its cities, who did not allow his prisoners to go home? That is kind of telling us that we'll be shocked. It doesn't have to be a big, burly, strong, forty foot demonic looking thing that he's putting out in the TV shows. The devil is more likely a skinny, wimpy, weak looking entity. But the words that he is speaking constantly since the fall has guided mankind, i. e. you and me, who are supposed to be the rulers of this world, but we are ruling it, but we're ruling it according to what the devil is telling us or what his desire is, and that's why it's so imperative that the fancy word is get born again, it's imperative that you hear the voice of the Lord, so you can break free from the voice of the devil. Now back in Proverbs five verse two where Solomon is saying that you need to observe discretion, and your lips may reserve knowledge. Why is that? Well it ties in with verse eight here to keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house, least you give your vigour to others, and your years to the cruel one. Least strangers be filled with your strength, and your hard earned goods go to the house of an alien, and you groan at your later end when your flesh and your body are consumed, and you say, How I have hated instruction and my heart spurned reproof, and I have not listened to the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ears to my instructors. Now I'm sure it's not the first time you've listened to or heard about Proverbs, but let me tell you what the Lord showed me. That time goes by, and you may be young now and full of strength, but you will get weaker, and when you get older and you're weaker, and you look back you'll realize why did I listen to the teachings of the world? I work so hard at what the world said I had to do, or let me put it in a more layman's terms. You may be at a job right now spending forty five to fifty hours a week using your strength to make another person fulfill their goals. Now if God has you there to learn temporarily, it's temporary. God desires for you to listen to him, follow his advice, and break free and make yourself prosperous and rich, not others. And that's why you need to listen to him because he will give you ideas and goals and desires and the strength to accomplish them. But what you may not know, and I still battle with this to this day, is when he gives you an idea or direction, the first thing our mind and flesh do is say, There's no way I can do that. And this then opens up the whole teaching about the crucifying of the flesh, because your flesh doesn't want to go any farther than where you're currently at, and the devil who operates by fear if you decide to go that route you are being led to do, will put such a strong fear on you that you'll stop and quit. And that rolls all back into yesterday's discussion about the sowware and the seed. It kills the seed. So the only way to accomplish it in Christ is to kill that fear. Kill that flesh that doesn't think it can make it, and then listen to the voice of the Lord and go step by step, and he will bless it and get you out of the rat race. It reminds me of the scripture in Proverbs ten twenty two that says it's the blessing of the Lord that makes rich, and he adds no sorrow to it. That no sorrow to it means labor. Also, just a little side note, jumping into what it's saying here is that the devil wants to put you in bondage, and he'll put you into it and never let you go. These things that you hear on the internet about getting up at five AM and work till eleven PM, you must slave away, you must be aggressive, you must sacrifice. True you work, but you're not to be a slave to work. This kind of slave mentality reminds me of another scripture that says it's useless to get up early and work late to eat the bread of painful labors, for he gives to his beloved even in his sleep. Anyways, that's just a side note, just once again saying you need to hear the voice of the Lord and then act on it. But it's not easy to act on it because your non renewed mind and your actual flesh doesn't want to, therefore you must focus and grow and crush the devil. He's the one keeping you down. Now verse fourteen, I like this because what a great way a father talks to his son, real life, not dancing around issues. Solomon mentions his dad King David talking to him, and David says in four verse fourteen, I was almost in utter ruin. In the midst of the assembly and congregation, verse fifteen he goes on to say, So drink water from your own cistern and fresh water from your own well, should your springs be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets, let them be yours alone, and not for strangers with you. Now that was verse fourteen through eighteen, which encompasses more directly what I was mentioning earlier. There is a scripture that Jesus says that when you get born again out of your belly will flow rivers of living water, and back here in the Old Testament it's saying should your streams be spilled out into the street, no, drink from your own well, i. e. putting it plainly, you hear from the voice of the Lord and act upon it. Don't go around telling everyone what they think about what you heard, because then that's what Matthew seven six is referring to. Just throwing your pearls before a swine. Don't do that, don't let your water run onto the streets. You are the only one that can accomplish what God has told you to do. It's up to you now. Let's go on with verse eighteen. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth as a loving hind and a graceful doe. Let her breasts satisfy you at all times, be exhilarated always with her love, for why should you, my son, be exhilarated with an adulteress and embrace the bosom of a foreigner? Now again this is twofold when the obvious and the natural. Always be in love with the wife of your youth, but in the spirit world, you hear quite often in the Old Testament where God gets mad at the Israelites and says You're an adulterous generation, you've created adultery against me. It's not like the Jews are sleeping with another god. No, they're believing in trusting and relying on someone other than what God asked them to do or said to them, and he calls that adultery. It's the same kind of type and shadow here about always be exhilarated with his love, and don't get caught up into the love of the world. Don't embrace it. For some reason, the way we're created, it feels good to us to do sin, to embrace sin, but God's saying here to let your fountain be blessed, rejoice in what God says to you. It's a big change, it's not easy, but once you get a taste of how good God is, you realize you want to choose his ways. I'm reminded of the scripture that says a righteous man may fall seven times but gets up every time. The good thing is, once you meet the Lord and hear his voice, you're not going to be perfect, you're going to make mistakes, but you're going to also realize how cool God is. So when you fail, or stumble, they call it, get up and let's go again. God is not holding anything against you, He put all that guilt on His Son. Now let's go to Proverbs twenty one. For the ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He watches all His paths. I used to not like that verse before I really got to know the Lord, because I'd be like, Man, He's always watching me, looking for a reason to get mad, to condemn me and strip out my fun. But with the Rama of the Lord, He showed me that this is a good thing, that His always watching over me, now that I know He's a good God, and He wants the best for me, the statement. His eyes are always on me. Gives me peace because I now know He wants what's best for me. Now first thing in the morning, I've set aside a specific time aside to hear from Him, so I know my directions for the day, because I know His directions will make my, for lack of a better word, castle strong, which in Scripture refers to ourselves. So when the waves come and crash against me, I'll still stand, they come to everybody, but I want to still be standing afterwards. He will die for lack of instruction, and in the greatness of his folly he will go astray. That's the end of chapter five of Proverbs. It ends by saying it's not God that's going to make bad things happen in your future, it's you choosing to go the opposite of what he says to you. That's why it says Your own inequities will capture the wicked, and he will be held with his cords of his sin. I have seen this so much in people, even ones who are successful, they're just so tied up in their own sins, thinking that they're wise because they have a lot of money. But then I have observed how they have a horrible home life, a horrible family, and they use too much alcohol and drugs to ease the pain of this life, and there's no escaping this torment other than living in. The words of God inside of you, Proverbs is saying here that your own choices hold you, and that you actually will die because of lack of instruction, and in the greatness of your folly you will go astray. The Hebrew word for go astray in another version which I really like is sin through ignorance, a mistake, especially morally. And that's what's sad if you're not hearing from the Lord, who is the only one that will give you the wisdom to know how to choose correctly between good and evil. You're on your own, and really you're not on your own. You're under the influence of the evil one, telling you which is good and which is evil. And that ignorance is what is going to make your life miserable. And this is what David said to Solomon. And Solomon understood this, and when he met God, Solomon asked the Lord to give him this understanding, to know the difference between good and evil. And that's my prayer for us today. Thank you again for listening to another podcast on Proverbs, and I look forward to seeing what the Lord reveals to us next week as we continue our journey through this awesome book. Before we close, I just want to mention that if today's teaching resonated with you and you'd like to go deeper in learning how to recognize God's voice in everyday life, I've written a book called God, Why Won't You Talk to Me, written by Edward L. Carpenter. It's available on Amazon and it's very practical, no hype and no theory, just real everyday tools to help you understand how God speaks and how to respond with clarity and peace. Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible.