In this enlightening episode, we explore the timeless wisdom contained in the book of Proverbs, uncovering how it acts as a guide through the trials and decisions of life. We delve into the essential components that build wisdom, including experience, knowledge, and meditation, highlighting the importance of learning not just from our own experiences but from others as well. The teachings of Solomon come alive as we discuss practical applications of understanding, justice, and equity in today’s complex world. Gain insights into how the fear of the Lord serves as the foundational step toward true knowledge and wisdom. This
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
SPEAKER 02 :
I suppose we would all agree that it’s a good thing to be wise. When you face hard decisions, it’s good to be able to decide which way is best and which way is, well, it’s going to be hurtful. It’s always good to avoid getting hurt, and sometimes wisdom is what keeps us out of trouble. It would be good, wouldn’t it, to have a power of discerning and judging what is true or right in all kinds of circumstances, and it would be good to have a reputation for being a wise person. But do you have any idea how men get to be wise people? To tell the truth, I’ll bet a lot of people assume that some men are just, well, they just are wise. And some men, well, they just aren’t wise. That maybe it’s in the genes. Maybe it’s just luck. Who knows? But there are people out there who are wise and there are people who are, well, sorry, fools. But what if it’s not that way? What if there is something that makes the difference? Something you can do about being wise in any generation. What do you suppose that would be? Well, I think wisdom mainly comes from a combination of experience, knowledge and meditation. Now, meditation is nothing particularly secret about that. There’s nothing even necessarily spiritual about it. It’s just good old-fashioned thinking. Sitting down, working your way through problems, something that seems increasingly foreign these days. I’m afraid a lot of us really don’t like to be alone with ourselves. We never have a chance to just sit on a rock and stare in the distance. It’s one of the standing jokes we’ve got. Where in your house is the reading room? Well, it’s the bathroom because, well, we don’t even like to be alone with our thoughts in there. So thinking about things, knowledge and experience, these are the things that create wisdom. But experience can be a very expensive teacher. And sometimes the experience comes so late in life that the damage is already done. It’s too late to be of any value to you yourself. But there is an alternative, you know, to learning from your own experience. You can learn from the experience of others. Haven’t you had the urge to share your experience with someone else, to tell someone who was about to do something really stupid, Oh, don’t do that. I did that, and this is what happened. Oh, yeah, you’ve been there, and you’ve done that. The alternative is learning from the experience of others. And this is what Solomon had in mind when he collected all the wisdom he could find. and distilled it in a book. I doubt that you even need to buy this book because you probably already have it. It’s the book of Proverbs, and it’s in the Bible. You’ll find it right after the book of Psalms. Now, Solomon started right out in this book of Proverbs by telling us the purpose of the book. In Proverbs 1, verse 1, he says this, The Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel. To know wisdom and instruction… to perceive the words of understanding, to receive the instruction of wisdom and justice and judgment and equity, to give subtlety to the simple, to the young man, knowledge and discretion. So what’s my purpose? Well, we’re going to give wisdom. We’re going to give instruction. We’re going to give understanding. We’re going to give justice, judgment, equity, all these good things to the simple-minded and to the young man. So good grief, you know, you have to start somewhere. Why not start when you’re young? And to learn wisdom, one obviously starts from a place of not having an awful lot of wisdom. You don’t have to wait till you’re old to be wise. You can start learning wisdom right now. He goes on to say a wise man will hear and will increase learning. A man of understanding, well, he’ll attain unto wise counsels. All these things are the purposes of this book, to understand the proverb and the interpretation and the words of the wise in their dark sayings. I think it’s encouraging to know that you don’t have to wait until you’re old to be wise. It seems to work out that way because most people wait around about learning things until they learn from their own experience. But you can start when you’re young and inexperienced. Now, notice the elements of this thing we’re talking about. They are understanding, the ability to look at something and grasp it and understand the elements of it. Wisdom, which is the ability to make decisions and wise decisions based upon your knowledge and experience. Justice, a good solid sense of fairness. Judgment, which means the ability to discern between two different courses of action as to which is likely to be best, which is likely to hurt. Equity, a balance in your dealings with men. Subtlety, that means the ability to back off and be careful and to find your way at something by way that doesn’t do harm, doesn’t do hurt, or that doesn’t generate resistance in the part of the people you’re talking to. Then comes discretion, that is the wisdom or the common sense to know when to speak and when to keep your mouth shut, what to say and what not to say, the ability to choose the right word or to choose the right course of action. And finally, knowledge. Now, all these things are desirable qualities in any man or woman, right? The core value in this whole thing, the bottom line in wisdom, is judgment. That’s the ability to look at a thing and judge it right. That is, judge it correctly and to know whether you’re on the right side of the issue or not. You know, the foundation of our legal system is the jury. But the jury system presumes that citizens who are of age will have the wisdom to judge rightly. I honestly believe that one of the reasons we’re in so much trouble in this country now with our legal system is that as far as I can tell, there is no special value at all placed on wisdom and common sense in jury selection. The last time I was called for a jury and was sitting there listening to the lawyers go through their routine, they sat right up there and lied to us. They told us that they wanted people on that jury who would be fair and would simply judge by the law according to the facts. It was a lie. They didn’t want wise men and women on that jury. They wanted people who would give them the verdict they wanted. Forget about justice. They wanted results. You could tell. You could tell by the choices they made, the preemptive choices they made in knocking people off the jury. The wise, the people of experience, the people who obviously showed some element of leadership were passed right over. That was not what those lawyers wanted. Well, Solomon says that what we really need in a man is judgment. Then he goes on to talk about the way in which this type of thing develops or grows in a man or a woman. And in verse 7 of the first chapter of Proverbs, he says this, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools? Ah, fools despise wisdom and instruction. Okay? We have the starting point. For all knowledge and all wisdom, it is this, to respect and stand in awe of God. Now, what that means is that you listen to the words of God with great attention and great care. And the reason for this is simple. The law of God is not arbitrary. It defines the difference between right and wrong. Now, remember, what we’re talking about in this matter of wisdom is having the ability to judge the difference between right and wrong, right? Well, God’s law is based upon a good, solid foundation of right and wrong. He made man. He created woman. And He knows how we work. And he went to great pains then to tell us how we work, what will help us, what will hurt us, what will help our neighbor, what will hurt our neighbor. And in the process of helping and hurting our neighbor, we just help and hurt ourselves, right? Because we can’t live in peace in a neighborhood and among our neighbors without taking some kind of consideration for what helps them and what hurts them. So God comes along and tells us what is right and what is wrong, not just arbitrarily, but because of what works and what doesn’t work. Now of all the foolish things that children say, perhaps the most foolish one is this, “‘Aw, Dad, you never want me to have any fun.'” Again, anything would be more exasperating for a parent to hear from one of their children. Well, that’s the way fools approach God. Oh, God, you don’t want me to have any fun. Why didn’t you say, thou shalt commit adultery, instead of thou shalt not commit adultery? Well, the reason he did was because God could not say that and be honest. The only way God could be honest with us is to say, whatever you do, be faithful to your wife. Don’t commit adultery. You’re going to hurt her. You’re going to hurt yourself. You’re going to hurt your children. You’re going to screw up your life big time. Don’t do it. And that’s why Solomon said, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Because it takes you to the Word of God and His law as words of knowledge to tell you right from wrong. How can you judge right or wrong unless you have got some kind of standard? Okay? The fear of the Lord is the first step. What’s the second step?
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We’ll talk about that after these words.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, so we know where we start. We start off by having enough respect for God that we pay really close attention to the knowledge and the instruction that he has for us. It’s all written down. It’s called the Bible. We go on from there to the second thing. My son, he says, hear the instruction of your father and don’t forsake the law of your mother. They’ll be like an ornament of grace on your head and like chains around your neck. He means gold chains. He doesn’t mean binding chains. The second step is a balanced family with a father and a mother who instruct the child, who lay down the rules of life. and who set examples against which this child can judge himself and find out who he is and how he relates to men and how he relates to women and how they’re going to run their life. The child who grows up with only a father or only a mother enters life at a terrible disadvantage because a great deal of the foundation of wisdom is simply not there. You know, very early in life, we come into contact with others who lack wisdom and who think there is a shortcut to getting what you want out of life. Solomon begins in verse 10 to develop the theme for a young man to consider. He said, My son, if sinners entice you, don’t listen to them. If they say, come with us, let’s lay wait for blood, let’s lurk privily for the innocent, let’s swallow them up alive like the grave and whole as those that go down to the pit, we’ll find all precious substance. We’ll fill our houses with spoil. Cast your lot in with us. We’ll all have one purse. Why, good grief, you’ve got a bunch of pirates here. They’re going to go out and steal and kill and hurt people for gain. and share all their wealth. Well, that’s pretty extreme, I suppose, to suppose that a young man would go off and join pirates. But in this little metaphor here, what he is saying is that as a young man, you’re going to come into contact with a lot of young fools who think there is a shortcut to getting what they want. And he says, my son, don’t walk in the way with them. Keep your foot out of their pathway, because their feet run to evil and they make haste to shed blood. He says then, surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird. In other words, if you’re trying to catch a bird with a net or a snare, you don’t put it out there in plain sight where the bird can see everything. Most birds will be smart enough to stay out of it. And what he is saying in the case of these young men is that they’re not even as smart as a bird. They’re bird brains. They can’t even see to stay out of a net that’s being spread for them. They lay wait, not for the blood of others, but for their own blood. They lurk privily, he said, for their own lives. So are the ways of everyone who is greedy of gain, who take away the life or the livelihood of the owners thereof. It’s really, you know, you’ve got to learn to respect the property and the rights of other people. And this is one of the things that parents should teach their children early on. Don’t look for shortcuts to wealth. Don’t take things that don’t belong to you. Don’t try to fill your purse or your house with other people’s property. If you do it, you’re killing yourself. These are the ways of those people who are greedy of gain. And that greed for gain will lead you into a lot of heartache and a lot of trouble. Now, he goes on, having made that point, to tell us that wisdom is not that far off, and wisdom is not that hard to come by. What Solomon does in Proverbs, beginning about verse 20 of chapter 1, is to use a literary device called personification to make his point. Personification is where you take an abstract— idea, concept, and you let it speak as though it is a person. In this case, wisdom is presented as a woman who can speak to us, and she says this, “‘Wisdom cries without. She utters her voice in the streets. She cries in the chief places of concourse, in the openings of the gate. In the city she utters her words, saying, “‘How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity?’ The image of it is taking it in the world in which it was given, is that no matter which way you turn, if you turn down the right-hand street, if you go left at the corner, if you stand in the gate and you read the newspapers and you’re always around where these things are going, wisdom is crying out to you from every corner. It comes to you off the front page of your newspaper. You see it on television. Oh, not that the people who are speaking to you from television are giving you wisdom themselves or are wise necessarily. But they’re giving you knowledge, insights, ideas. These things come at you all the time. Your biggest problem, probably like mine, is that you sometimes neglect to take the time to think about what you see, to think about what you read, to evaluate your experiences. Like the simple ones, we tend to love our simplicity. We are what we are. We like it, and we’re content to leave it that way. But the truth is, as long as you are content, you’re not going to grow. How long, wisdom cries, you simple ones, are you going to love your simplicity? And the scorners, how long are they going to delight in their scorning? And how long are fools going to hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof. Look, I will pour out my spirit to you. I will make known my words to you. Wisdom is everywhere, and she cries out to us. She isn’t subtle. She hollers at us as we walk by, reaches out and grabs hold of our sleeve. You know what this tells me? This tells me that anyone who wants wisdom will have no trouble finding it. But what wisdom tells us is that the simple-minded love their simplicity. We go on in life being stupid. Apparently, we love it. And apparently we love the results of it because we have just no desire to do anything about it. Wisdom keeps telling us, hey, this isn’t hard. You’ve just got to pay attention. Life, you know, is a big gambler, and all of us are inherent gamblers. It seems if we can get away with something, we’re going to try it. And it’s very, very hard for us to take the long view. It’s hard for us to see out into the distance and say, you know, this is going to work for now, but it’s not going to work later. Later, it’s going to cause me a lot of trouble. There is a thing called the law of unintended consequences, and there are too many consequences that we just can’t see. And so it’s easy to understand why not being able to see long term, we would make a mistake. We’ll do what feels good now without worrying about what comes later because we can’t see it. Our problem is that we won’t listen to someone who will tell us what the long-term consequences are. Wisdom is everywhere, in the experiences of others, in the knowledge of God, the Word of God, and sometimes in meditation, that is, thinking. You ought to try it sometime. You ought to schedule about an hour sometime to go out by yourself somewhere, sit on a rock, stare off into space, or go into a private room somewhere and close the door with no books, no nothing, and just sit there for a moment and think about your life, about where you’re going, about what you want, about what you don’t want, and about all the ways in which you’re lying to yourself. And about all the wisdom that’s been clamoring for your attention and you haven’t had time to pay attention to it. Think about it. You know, there is a time to get wisdom. And there is a time when it’s just too late. In verse 24 of Proverbs 1, it says, Because I have called and you refused. This is wisdom still speaking to us. Because I have called and you refused. I have stretched out my hand and nobody would even look at my hand. But you have said it nothing, all my counsel. You wouldn’t listen to my advice or my reproof. Okay. I will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when your fear comes. When your fear comes as a desolation. And your destruction comes as a whirlwind. Then distress and anguish comes upon you. I know what’s going to happen. Then you’re going to want me. Then you’re going to call for me. but I won’t answer. Well, there’s hardly any point. It’ll be too late. Oh, they’ll seek me early, says wisdom, but they’ll not find me. For that they hated knowledge, and they did not choose the fear of the Lord. They would not have any of my advice, and they despised all my reproof. Therefore, they shall eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. Note well, God doesn’t have to lift a finger to punish. The punishment is in the consequences. In verse 32, For the turning away of the simple shall kill them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. But the one who listens to me shall dwell safely and be quiet from fear of evil. The prosperity of fools. As long as what we are doing seems to work, we will keep at it until it’s too late. Unless we have enough respect for God to listen and to respond to what He tells us. Stick around. I’ll be back in a moment.
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SPEAKER 02 :
What follows here in Proverbs chapter 2 is a classic if-then situation. In other words, if you do this, then this will happen for this reason. Here’s the if. My son, if you will receive my words and hide my commandments with you, if you’ll do that, so that you incline your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding. In other words, if you’ll do something about this, you actually lean toward it, if you’ll apply yourself to it. In fact, if you’ll cry after knowledge, if you’ll lift up your voice for understanding, if you will seek her like silver and search for her like hid treasures. And it makes a whole lot of sense to do this, folks, because in wisdom and knowledge and instruction and the Word of God, there is silver and there are treasures. That’s One of the reasons why some people have it and some people don’t is because they apply their minds to the things that work as opposed to the things that don’t. So if you do all this, then you shall understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. Hey, wisdom’s out there looking for you. So if you’ll make some kind of an effort to find her, you are going to get together. Why should you do this? Well, verse 6, 4, the Lord gives wisdom. Out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. He lays up sound wisdom for the righteous. He’s a buckler to them that walk uprightly. He keeps the paths of judgment and preserves the way of his saints. It really works for you is what he’s trying to tell you. And he continues, if you’re going to do all these things now, if you really will seek this and work for it and apply yourself to it, then, verse 9, you shall understand righteousness and judgment and equity and every good path. That means when you come to a hard decision, you can take a look at it, and you’ll know which way to go. You won’t have to flip a coin. You won’t have to guess. When wisdom enters into your heart and knowledge is really pleasant to your soul, ah, well then, you see, discretion shall preserve you and understanding shall keep you. When you have the wisdom and you have the knowledge, then along with it comes these other things that are so valuable, discretion, the ability to make discernment between different things, understanding, to be able to grasp the meaning of things that are happening around you. All that stuff will come to you to deliver you from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaks perverse things, who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness. What’s going to keep you out of the dark? Doing those things, learning those things, understanding the things of God. To stay out of the way of those people who rejoice to do evil and who delight in the perverseness of the wicked, whose ways are crooked and they are perverse in their paths. To deliver you from the strange woman, even from the stranger that flatters with her words, who forsakes the guide of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God. Her house, this loose woman that’s going to invite you over to hers, her house inclines to death, and her paths to the dead. None that go to her return again. They don’t take hold of the paths of life. You know, that sounds a little severe, doesn’t it? But the truth is that once one gives in to those urges, and goes on with a strange woman, as it were. Basically what he’s talking about is the adulteress, the wife of another man who’s trying to get someone to leave the right paths to go to bed with her. It’s a way that leads to death. Now, do all this, he said, that you may walk in the way of good men and keep the paths of the righteous, for the upright will dwell in the land and the perfect shall remain in it, but the wicked… shall be cut off from the earth, and transgressors shall be rooted out of it. I want you to understand something, folks. This is promise. This is true. This is going to happen. There are actually two ways that are set before you, good and evil. And there are two sets of results, good and evil. Now think, pay attention. You don’t have to be very smart to realize that the results you want are the good results, not the evil, right? But for some reason, it seems so hard to get through our heads the idea that the good path leads to good results and the evil path leads to evil results. We are deluded into thinking that we can walk the evil path and get good results. Am I making this too hard for you? Or can you understand that? Just back up for a moment to what I asked or what I said earlier. That this knowledge, this understanding, this wisdom and discretion and discernment God gives you will deliver you from the way of the strange woman. That’s a way that leads to hurt and harm and destruction. If you walk down that road, you’re going to get hurt. The good path, that leads you away from the strange woman. It doesn’t take you to bed with strangers. It keeps you from making that kind of stupid mistake. The people that walk down that path… are a pack of losers, and God has better things in mind for you. Until next time, this is Ronald Dart, and don’t go to bed with losers. You were born to win.
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The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560 White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1 888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
SPEAKER 01 :
Christian Educational Ministries is happy to announce a new full-color Born to Win monthly newsletter with articles and free offers from Ronald L. Dart. Call us today at 1-888-BIBLE44 to sign up or visit us at borntowin.net.
