Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Here we are and let me, let me stop the music here. Here we are. And we're very glad to see you here tonight. Thanks for being with us and welcome. Sorry we're getting started a few minutes late. Had a few technical issues there that we were dealing with, but got that all fixed up. Yeah, we think they're working on it right now so that I can show you the scripture. But we're going to do Bible study tonight. We're going to have a good time with it. If worse comes to worse, I'll sit right here at the desk and, you know, do it the old fashioned way. We can get it done. But welcome on this Thursday night. This is session number two of our, our program tonight on the book of Proverbs. And really looking forward tonight, we're going to get into the text. We're probably going to COVID 19 verses tonight. We'll see. You know, every now and then I have a moment of eagerness and we'll see exactly what happens. But we'll see. You know, I, I will say that when it comes to a program, excuse me, a book like prov. A lot different than a book like Romans that we did last, where in Romans you're really focusing on every, every word, every inflection, everything that's in there. The book of Proverbs, you take in much bigger chunks of scripture, much like some of the books of history that are given. So we will look at that and consider that as we go through these first 19 verses. Now there is an outline available for you to download if you would like that. And let me also then say there'll be a book coming out one of these days when we get it all done, after we go through it. But let me go back and remind you last week that we looked at this and we said, surely this is more than a book, just full of a bunch of stuff that's sometimes true. It's got to be more than that. We looked at it to then say, okay, what we've got is a, a king writing to his son. The, at least half of the book is going to be. How about that? They're working on the camera. So if it doesn't work out there, you know what, what's going on there. But it's a, it's a king writing to his son. And the son, of course, the son of a king is a prince. It is a book about instruction for the king of Israel, how to lead the covenant people, how to lead the chosen nation. So that is what we are going to consider as we look into it, and I think we'll be blessed by it and encouraged by it to look into it. And then let me also say, to add to that wisdom will speak. Wisdom, I am convinced will be. We'll get into wisdom next week. Wisdom is the Torah itself. This is very much a Torah book. You know, I think one of the things that the reason we, we as Christians struggle with this book is we remove it from Torah and Torah obedience. Put yourself, as you read the book of Proverbs, put yourself into a Torah community, a covenant. People get out of this dispensation, into that dispensation and begin to carry it out. And I think what you're going to find is all of the sudden this becomes a tremendous book of promises for the Jewish people, for their nation, creating them into the people that they ought to be. And so, if you will, if you look at it this way, it's a user's guide to the Torah, as we discussed last week, and forward to and rejoice with all through this week. So here we go. We're going to get into these first 19 verses of Proverbs tonight, and I think that we will just have an excellent time in doing so. Now, in just a moment, I'll bring it up on the screen and we'll get there. But we can handle verse one of Proverbs, and I think that we can actually handle it very well. As a matter of fact, I am going to. Oops, I need to play your music there now. Now I. I got a. I got to stop that. And I'm about there. I got. I got to find my scripture screen. Is it. That's here somewhere. And Luca, point two, scriptify on there. It's all little things. I can't see. It might be there. It is right there. Okay, so I am going to. Again, pardon me for the. The look that will be there, but here we go. Uh, the Proverbs. Solomon, the son of David, King of Israel. That's what we're looking at now. I want to take this and say, hey, guess what? It is absolutely that it is the Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, the king of Israel. A few things that we ought to look at and we ought to consider as we put this. First of all, who are we going to assume wrote it? Assume is not. That's a bad term. We are going to take right from the text and we're going to say this comes from Solomon. You remember Solomon, of course. Yeah, he's that guy Solomon is the guy that prayed for wisdom and got it in boatloads. Solomon is the guy that had such wisdom that they would come to him for judgment. He could take the child and the two women, you remember, say, cut the baby in two. That'll solve the problem. And indeed it did solve the problem. The wisdom of Solomon. He really was a wise king. I know and we might look at this as we get into it. I know that we kind of question his wisdom on some things like the book of Ecclesiastes and some of those things we say, hey, you know, is that really true? Or some of the things like 700 wives. Is that really what you would call as wise? What's going on here? So we'll look at some of that. But he certainly was known to be a king of wisdom. So here he is, he's going to write wisdom. Not only was he a king of wisdom, but he was the king of Judah at its zenith. It was bigger under him than it was under anybody. And so we can look at that and we can celebrate that of course, in, in, in wonderful ways. So here is Solomon, oh, by the way, Solomon, the one whom the Queen of Sheba would come in and she would, you know, come to see his wisdom and his wealth. He probably was the wealthiest man in the world at the time. He probably was the most powerful man at the, of the world at the time. And you, you think even, you know, Jesus comes in the sermon on the mount and says, you know, even Solomon in all his glory is not adorned as one of these. So let's consider that Solomon here tonight. And not only, you know, not only would we say, okay, here's this Solomon, this King of David. But I tell you what guys, I don't mind just swapping between the computer and me and not worrying about that if you want to, if you want to give up on that. Normally I'd be in front of the TV screen, but that's the challenge they're fixing right now. Now. But hey, I don't mind, just, well, let's see. I'll tell you what, I, the only, only problem I have here is I don't know how to swap that screen. If you can put the computer screen on preview, then I'll just swap back and forth to them. So we, we have this, you know, Solomon the, the king and the king in all of his glory. And he, he comes and he writes this. Now he's not only Solomon in all of his glory, the great king. But yeah, here we go, we're going to be able to switch here. And we'll just make all this work just like this. And I'm going to just put in the King James right here. So we've got these, these, uh, the proverbs of Solomon in all of his glory. Let me move my stuff over here so I'll be, uh, all fixed up. There we go. Uh, and then he is. He is also again, the. The son of David. David. He's the son of David, King of Israel. So here's David the most. The founder of the country. Some somewhat. That's a, that's a little overstatement there. David in all his wisdom. Solomon is the son. He's inherited all. That's David, his throne. And I'm going to say his wisdom, and I'm going to say his glory. And now he comes to write a message to the nation. This might be a little bit like, I don't know, you know, there's a. There's a heritage in the United States. Anyway, I don't know how long this goes back. I know it goes back at least to Eisenhower of a president giving a farewell address. Well, we know, of course, Washington gave a farewell address that was pretty famous. And so you've got this farewell address that is given and then in addition to that, for many, many years anyway, there has been a heritage of the president writing a letter to the next president, you know, so could this be Solomon, who. Now he's come through life. He's had his roller coasters, just like David's had his roller coasters. And he comes through life. And now he comes and he says, okay, Rehoboam, you are about to take the throne. I'm going to write to you a user's guide to Torah. You need to carry it up. So here we go. Now he begins then to talk. Pardon me, I'll have to reach over a little bit right here. And he says in verse two, to know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding. This is, if you, if you will, the reason for the proverbs. First of all, to know wisdom. Now this is. This is not directed to anyone in particular. This is just whoever and whomever. These are the proverbs. They're written for you to know wisdom and to. To perceive understanding. To know wisdom and to perceive understanding. Understanding. Excuse me, don't have my papers in order. There we go. To know wisdom. To perceive understanding. Wisdom. I've got the. I've got the Hebrew word for you right here. Here we go. The wisdom is. If the word is hokma, Hokma is a very important word in. In Hebrew, a very important word in. In. In understanding. But this wisdom, to know wisdom. Now, remember that it is my position that wisdom is Torah. We'll build that case as we go along. But if this is the case, then what is it? The proverbs of Solomon. To know Torah. Right there, the word is not Torah. The word is Hokma. It is a word that of course, involves a. A knowledge. It's a word that involves an understanding. But I would say in evangelicalism anyway, I would say mostly in Christendom, nobody understands wisdom to be Torah. We're going to see when wisdom speaks beginning next week in verse 20. When wisdom speaks, that's Torah talking. So I think we can take wisdom all the way through and say, wisdom is Torah. Proverbs is written by Solomon to the Son, as we'll see. To know wisdom. Now, if you just want to take that as wisdom as we have it, it won't hurt. You know, you're going to be blessed by it. There are going to be some good things by it. But I think you're going to miss out what wisdom he's talking to. So to know wisdom, not only to know wisdom, but also to know instruction. Two things so far here. To know wisdom and instruction. Now, instruction here, the word is Musar. Instruction is. I hate to borrow from Hillary Clinton, who borrowed this, I think, from an old proverb, but it's that village. You know, it takes a village to know the Torah and the community that brings you together to help live the Torah life. Life. You know, one of the things I've been tossing around my old bald head here is how hard was it to live Torah? And I'm going to do a presentation or a book or something on it one of these days. And I'm convinced it was not that hard if you were surrounded by instruction. If you were in that village, if you were in that community where that was the ethos, that was the norm. Instruction is the word that's used here. It would be used in the sense. Not so much in the sense of a teacher in a school classroom. You know, you think of university setting with a. With a vast auditorium out there, and the professor is standing there having technical problems, showing things. The instruction that, you know, we give tonight, having technical problems, whatever. And we give the instruction. It's not really so much that word. It's far more the word of. That you would use of sitting around the family table and talking about some things. Hey, how did your day go? Oh, Well, I struggled with this. I wasn't sure about this. And dad and grandpa and mom and Grandma, whatever, they give some instruction, they give some advice, they give some encouragement, they give some insight. We might even call it some wisdom that is given. And so it's that, it's that guidance. Now also sometimes instruction would be the word that would be used for say, let's say, for discipline. You did what? Hey, now, son, let's talk here for a moment. Come over here. Sit down here. So wisdom and instruction. To know wisdom and instruction. Again, I'm taking this as to know the Torah and the covenant family that gathers together to give you some insight. Some wisdom is the, probably the word we would use here. Some guidance and even some discipline. And this is the, the first of the. Shall we call it the primary goals of the book of Proverbs? Don't miss this. And on every verse, by the way, we won't spend quite this much time, but don't miss this to say King Solomon wrote a book, book to know wisdom and instruction. That's the first thing. Torah and its ethos, Taurus and it, Torah and its community is number one. So I think, by the way, the King James got the, got the, the punctuation on here. I didn't look to, at the others, how they punctuated it, but I think they got it here. Notice that they, they give this semicolon here rather than to know wisdom, instruction, perceive the words of understanding three things. It's really two things. Wisdom and instruction is one. It goes together. Then a semicolon, a little break here. And the second goal then of the Proverbs is to perceive the words of understanding. Now perception, we understand it, we know what it means. It's the, it's the ability to filter out the garbage, to get rid of the other stuff. And then there is the understanding that comes along and you know, I think of as I think of this verse right here goes, goes along with Psalm 119, which of course is a celebration of the Torah. And Psalm 119, verse 130, the longest Psalm, of course, really kind of hits along with this. It says, I've got it on the right side of your screen. The entrance of thy words giveth light on the right. It giveth understanding. Let's go ahead and highlight that there. So to, to know. I tell you what, I'm going to put wisdom right here in green and I'm going to put thy words in green, okay? Wisdom and thy words, let's put those the same. It gives instruction. Let's put that in blue. And here, let's put light in blue. Okay, so just to match these up, we're playing a little, you know, Guranimals game. Let's. Let's get these all matched. Wisdom is the word of God, especially the law, which is what Psalm 130, 119 is about. So the entrance of the law gives instruction, gives light. The proverbs are written to know wisdom and instruction. Now let's go on to perceive the words of understanding. So here we've got again, understanding it. Your law, your light, the wisdom, the instruction gives you understanding. Now there is a possibility that we could say, no, actually perceive is what should be blue there. That's the light that is talking about. But either way, you want to go, I think you see a connection here that. Okay, thy words giveth light, they give understanding to the simple. We're going to see that word in just a moment. And then, of course, in Proverbs, chapter one, verse one, to know wisdom and instruction, to know wisdom and be in that spirit of the community, that ethos of the covenant community, and to perceive, that's the ability to filter everything through the mind. The words of understanding, which again, I think those words of understanding become again, that very thing that we. We take as the. The Scripture itself is that those, again, those words of understanding. So we take this, we put it together, and we're blessed by it. Now, verse two, then, these are the proverbs of Solomon. To know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding. That really is, I don't know, shall we call it the mission statement of the book of Proverbs? So for whatever degree, you and I are able to apply it directly to our lives. I think, by the way, if we try to apply this directly to our lives, one of the things that we're going to find out is that we are continually going to run into. Oh, that doesn't seem true. Oh, that's not right. Oh, that's not always true. Oh, that's. We're just going to be apologizing for the book all along because it's not our job, other than for some theological purposes, to know wisdom and instruction in this life. Wisdom as in the Torah instruction as in the Covenant community. That's not us, by the way. You know, we just finished this series on American Christianity, and in that, of course, we talked about colonial times and where American Christianity was. The book will be coming out soon. The. The Puritans, especially the Calvinist Puritans, their desire was to live under Torah and to make the United States the covenant community. You know, as, as much as we want to praise the Puritans and praise the pilgrims and all that they did, and oh, they were so righteous and holy and good, always just reading the word. They were living under Torah. They were living under legalism, they were living under the law. Their, their Calvinism was all they could see to the point that they would literally just put you to death if you did not live a Torah life, because they were living under Torah. And that's what Torah said to do. Those in the community, you cut them off, you send them off, and if they come back, you kill them. So they were, they were trying to do this. Now that's the same struggle we're going to run into if we try to take the book of Proverbs and make it ours. This is our book. Oh, I just read a chapter a day and I'm just so blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed. I don't know half of it. I can't figure out. Half of it ain't true, but I'm blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed. You know how it goes. Well, you and I just speak more honestly, right? So here's the goal. To know wisdom, Torah and instruction to perceive the words of understanding. Can I say one more time, sorry I had to reach so far to get that button there, but can I say one more time, you don't have to agree with me yet that wisdom is the Torah. I presented that idea. Now it's my job to convince the ladies and gentlemen of the jury, but we're not to the closing arguments yet, so you just hang with me. Let's just keep working on it and test the, you know, question the assumptions, test the hypothesis, see if this thing works. So he goes on then in verse 3 and shows some of this wisdom and instruction and perceiving the words of, of. Of. Of understanding. He puts in verse three, he puts some of this in action, if you will, when he says to receive this whole book will help you. Really, I think this has to be foundational. Verse two is foundational to verse three. So when you know wisdom and instruction and perceive the words of understanding, then you will receive the instruction of wisdom. Now notice here, there wisdom and instruction in verse two. And I'll just go ahead and color code that to be the same there so that we can see it. The. It just obviously switches the order. Wisdom and instruction to receive the instruction of wisdom. Now I think that we can for the most part take these to be the same. We want to Know wisdom and instruction. To receive the instruction of wisdom. Let me put that a little bit different. We want to know. We. I speak in terms of the Jewish people. We want to know the Torah. Living in a Torah community with all of that instruction and vibe and energy and. Sound like a new age guy, don't I? And, and discipline everything that comes from living in that community. Community to know Torah and its Torah covenant community in order to receive that Torah covenant communities. Wisdom. The instruction of wisdom. Now to, to, to, to dig down into this just a little bit. Let me go ahead and say the words for wisdom here in verse two and verse three are different words. He changes those just a little bit. On the instruction of wisdom. It is still. Actually, it's, it's the word instruction. Excuse me, that is different. And you've still got the, the Hokma, the wisdom, but the instruction is slightly different. And, and really the, the only difference you've got here is. No, I'm, I, I am going to get this right. Hulkma is wisdom right here. Instructions the same. Hokma is wisdom in 2. In verse 3, it is. Sakal is the root. Sakal, hokma, sakal. Two different words. Now Hulkma is gathering all the lumber and putting the plans together. Sakal is taking the hammer and the nail and putting it together. But the King James translators, who were far better than I, or can I even say collectively we will ever be at Hebrew, they said in our English understanding, we can understand both of these as wisdom. So though there's a bit of a shade of difference, I don't think it's going to make any difference. I think the King James translators again said, yeah, this is, yeah, there's, there's, there's a little shade here, a little shade there. But, but you can use them even poetically as synonyms interchangeably. So I think this is the best thing to do. Now, you've got four things right here, really. One is the instruction of wisdom. Now the, this, this instruction of wisdom. Let me, let me go on just a little bit to, to show you how the book of Proverbs is going to help us with the, the discipline, the counseling of the community that they're going to give towards Torah. What do you do when you come to a thing that the law didn't spell out? This happened. There's nothing in the law. You know, my neighbor's donkey knocked over my market stall and he caused me to lose 14 pomegranates. What do I do? What do they do? What's, what is the instruction of wisdom. This, I think maybe I'll even say epitomizes the Jewish community sometime. If you've never watched it, watch Fiddler on the Roof. And it gives a little bit of a taste of this in the Jewish community where for Jews or, Or go to, you know, look at Hasidic Jews today. They. They characterize this, I think, very well. Their whole life is sitting around getting some instruction of wisdom. They go to the yeshiva. At the yeshiva, it's school, but. But not school in terms of, oh, the rabbi is going to lecture to us today about Exodus, chapter 20. Not that it is. They're all going to be there studying. It's a big study hall. They sit there and study. They talk over it. They have discussions, Torah discussions all day long. So it's the. And. And what they're discussing is, you know what happens, you may remember in the. In Fiddler on the Roof, they come to a place where they find the rabbi talking and, rabbi, Rabbi, we have a question for you. Is there a blessing for the tsar? Remember that line? And he says, a blessing for the tsar. Why, of course there's a blessing for the tsar. May the Lord bless you and keep you far away from us. That's the blessing for the Tsar. Okay, a little humor twisted in there. But all of the things of life that the law doesn't relate to. Here's a user's guide. The book of Proverbs, it's going to provide some help. So the book of Proverbs is going to give this instruction of wisdom. Now, three more things, let's lump them kind of together. Justice, judgment and equity. That it is saying here, here's what you will get. Justice, judgment and equity. You live out the law. Verse 3 almost describes here is what the nation is supposed to be. The nation is supposed to be a gathering that comes together to get the instruction of Torah in order to have justice, judgment and equity. That is Israel at Israel at its best. Justice, judgment, and inequity is going to be described in a different way in Proverbs 31 when we get there. But justice, you know, it is. It is. It is righteousness, it is that. You know, nobody's going to stack the deck on here. There's going to be justice. Everyone's going to be treated righteously. They're going to be treated the same. And again, you've got the principles or the wisdom in Torah, you've got some of the practical application of that given in Proverbs. Judgment, I would say judgment. Don't think of this as laying down the judgment as the judge gives the judgment. Rather think of this as making a judgment, day to day judgment. Again, the, this judgment, it keeps the ship pointed in the right direction. We use it today when we say, oh, he has very good judgment. She's got very good judgment. I'm not worried about her. You know, she's got good judgment. This is by the way, what we want in our kids and our grandkids as they grow up. We want them to have good judgment and so they come along with that. Now equity then is the third thing. You know, equity again does not mean everyone has the same thing, but it does mean there is a fairness to it. Just like in the gospel that we live under. You know, there's neither Jew nor gentile, there's neither slave nor free, there's neither male nor female. The gift is given across the board. It is given equitably and it is the full gift given to anyone who'd come by grace through faith. Now the Torah community or the covenant community is to come. They receive this, bringing these two verses again together. The Proverbs is written so that Israel would know wisdom and instruction. They would perceive the words of understanding and receive the instruction then of wisdom. And that would result in justice, judgment and equity and bring all that together. And these are the three or four qualities I guess of the, the outworking of a, of the covenant life. Now let's go on. He gives a further purpose to it to give subtlety to the simple. To the young man, knowledge and discretion. Now, subtlety to the simple. First of all, let's talk about the simple. Who are the simple? They're simple minded. They, we might use the word naive. They're loving, they accept things. They could be easily swayed. They're just kind of an open book and an open door. The simple. Sometimes it's out of, you know, things that they can't help. We, we have a fine, wonderful young man and Archer Church might put him here. Unbelievably intelligent but also because of some, some issues. You know, I think we'd say simple. So what, everybody, you know, gives them a hug and a handshake and another hug and another handshake and a third hug and a third handshake and says, oh so good to see you today. It's a blessing, a hug and a handshake and, and, and, and yet the proverbs can give subtlety to the simple. Now the word subtlety here is a word that could be used negatively, but here it's used Very positively. And let's just, let's just go with the word savvy. You've probably met some simple minded people. They, you know, yeah, they, they just can, they're an open door. Anybody can walk in, but at times they can smell a rat better than anybody else. It says here, here it is. Let's give this subtlety to the simple. Now not only that in subtlety to the simple, but to the young man, knowledge and discretion. Now it's just open. This is, this is open to anyone here. Knowledge and discretion. Knowledge, you know, I think, I think we know what this means. It doesn't take a lot. Knowledge is, you know, something, hey young man, know something, have some, something up there, you know, and discretion have a moral compass for the one who struggles in the covenant community of Israel to, to make it, to know where to go. Go to the proverbs. The proverbs, young man, will help you. They, they will give you knowledge, a moral compass. They're going to help you out. And he says, I, I want to do that. So once again these proverbs become, if you will, they become a user's guide to the Torah. Okay, but now he switches gears here. He's kind of given the purpose of the proverbs and he switches gears. He says to give subtlety to the simple, to a young man, knowledge. But then notice when he gets into verse five, a wise man, ah, this is on the other end. A wise man will hear and will increase learning. A man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsel as we go here. You know what it tells us is even the best can get something out of this book. Even the best can get something out of Torah. There's never an end to it. So hey, in these proverbs, a wise man will hear and increase in his learning. A man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsel. Gonna say, yeah, that's brilliant. I, you know, sometimes some of the things that are said most simply are the things that are most amazing. And then moving on to verse six, he says, to understand a proverb and the interpretation of the words of the wise and their dark sayings, we don't have any problem. Okay, Understand a proverb. Yeah, I understand that. And their interpretation. Yeah, okay, we can even get that. The words of the wise. Yeah, amen. That's wise. Look at this though, isn't where I want to spend my time. They're dark sayings. The what, what dark saying? The, the dark sayings of the proverbs. Now dark here is used as a, as, let's Go with, with perhaps the word secret. Dark as in it's kind of hard to find it, it's sort of hard to see it, it's hard to get through. So here you've got these secret. Last week we talked about those, those various levels. This one is down here. Now here's one of the things we ought to, ought to give. If we just go through the proverbs and all we get is a stitch in time saves nine. The early bird gets the worm. You know, all these, these various, excuse me, various proverbs that, that come along. What's that? Old Chinese proverbial. Never trust a naked man who offers you his shirt. There you go. You know, you take all these proverbs, if we just take it that I think that we will, we will miss it. This verse right here, verse six, to understand a proverb and the interpretation of the words of the wise and their dark sayings just is like a neon announcement that says there's more here, don't miss this, you gotta catch this. It's part of understanding the proverbs. This is not just fortune cookie kind of wisdom that we're giving, but indeed there is more. And so then he comes into verse seven, of course, the one that we know where he gives the bedrock of wisdom and says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. But fools despise wisdom and instruction. So here we go. If you are going to know and to be able to live Torah, what is it you're going to need? He says, start right here, the fear of the Lord. Now that ought to display, I don't know, just a general reverence I saw today. It just happened to pop up on, on a YouTube feed a thing about Teddy Roosevelt's future funeral. Okay, it's breaking news. Teddy Roosevelt's funeral. 105 years ago, 106 years ago now. And it happened to show this in 1919. It happened to show he, he had already been buried with this point in the in. And it showed at his tomb three children. They were, they were, you know, little school aged children, I'd say six, eight, nine, you know, in that age. And they, they came and they, they placed some flowers there and then they knelt down on their knees and they bowed their head in prayer. Now I don't know if it was staged, I don't know anything about it, but let's just assume it's not. They were, they were from a family. I could tell you they were from a family and probably a community and a culture which said show Some respect there. There's. There is a God, there is death, there is reverence, There is respect. Kneel down, bow your head. Now that kind of. Let's call that the ethos, that community, that the community of wisdom and instruction. That is what we've got when we say in Proverbs 1, verse 7, when Solomon says, as the fear of the Lord, he's really saying to Israel, hey, you want to raise a. Raise the covenant community to be everything that it can be. Let me tell you where to start. With reverence. Reverence for God. Respect for God, Fear for God, awe for God. This is where you begin. If you take that and come into the Word, then you will find knowledge. Oh, but by the way, fools despise wisdom and instruction. Can we back up there to know wisdom and instruction? But fools despise wisdom and instruction. Torah and the Torah community is how I really came to understand. Those fools despise Torah in the Torah community. So don't raise a fool, Mama, he says, teach your children the fear of the Lord. I think we can do that in very honorable ways. Just, just a little bit ago, we were having some, as you know, some technical issues. And so I called Nathan and Hallie, our granddaughter just happened to be there, and it was all on speakerphone. And I said something like, you know, well, do I just push this or do that or whatever? I don't know what I said. And she said, yes, Pops, and if it doesn't work, just ask God to help. Now that is a child who has a reverence for the Lord, an awe for the Lord, a fear of the Lord, if you will. Not scared anything like that, but a beauty and a love and a childlike simplicity for the thanks to the Lord. And the. The Lord helped and Nathan and Luca too. And now, you know, we, we, we. We made it. Not quite like we planned, but we made it just fine. So here he comes again. The fear of the Lord. This is where you gotta start again. I think verse two is the. The billboard. This is what it's about. Torah and Torah community that will give light to help you understand. Now let's back up into it. End with understanding. And you've got. You got the way to get there. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of this understanding. This understanding. That is the knowledge that we perceive. We come together, we have it in a community, and we end up with Torah and being able to live in Torah. Now, with that, I want to move on into verses 8 through 19. I know that already. You're saying, wait Wait, wait, wait. You can't do that. But I can. First of all, we started a few minutes late. And second, as I mentioned, at the beginning of the hour, you, you read proverbs differently. You read a chunk and you, you get the moral out of it. Now verses one through seven are a little bit different than many of them will be. But I want us to take verses, verses 8 through 19, and we'll get as far as we go. I promise to let you out by 2:00am no, really, we won't be much longer. But I, I do want you to hear this. He. He shifts in verse eight to say, my son, My son. I think there is only one way we can take this. I'm going to put that in chartreuse, my son. The Proverbs of Solomon. That means that we then are talking about Solomon's son. Solomon's son. I'm going to take it, you know, just literally there. Solomon's son is Rehoboam. Rehoboam is going to be the king. He's going to be the last king of the United Kingdom, but he is not going to be the last of the Davidic line. That's going to go on for several hundred years in the kingdom of Judah. Kingdom of Israel is going to split off under Jeroboam and whatnot, but the kingdom of Judah is going to continue. It's just going to be, be split. So he, I think he's talking directly to Rehoboam. Now. All of the my son passages will be to the king. We're going to test this out tonight. It passes the test to see is this kingly information, Is this kingly stuff? Is this royalty stuff? I think so. And I think that will show us us. Hey, this is not stuff that we should just take in a blah, blah, general way. This is instruction to those in royalty in the Davidic line. So here it is. Hey, Rehoboam and those that would follow. Josiah, you know, whoever it is, those that would follow in the, in the Davidic line, but we'll call it Rehoboam. Hear two things. Hear the instruction of thy father. I want you not to miss the instruction of thy father and forsake not the law of thy mother. Now what have we got here? The instruction of thy father, I think, is the instruction of the father. Wise king Solomon, don't you know, after Solomon, we believe Solomon served 40 years. At the end of that 40 years, who wouldn't say? Yeah, I would like a, a meeting there. You know, I don't know if you could. I asked Luca the other night, I said if you could have dinner. Was it dinner or lunch? If you could have lunch. I think it was with dinner. Okay, if you could have dinner. It makes a difference with anybody. Down through history, outside of the Bible, who would it be? Now I can't even remember who you said. Dante. Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember. Yes. Dante wrote greatest literature there was outside the Bible. I think he chose Dante. I don't think I ever gave my answer, did I? Yeah, I'll save that in the Bible. I know there's a lot of competition here, but Solomon in all of his glory, at the end of 40 years, he @ least has to make the short list, right? I'd like to visit with you. So here Solomon, son of David. So he's got all of David's experience that he's inherited. David's experience and knowledge, his own experience and knowledge. Rehoboam, listen to us. Do you remember right here, my son, hear the instruction of thy father. That was what split the kingdom, is that he didn't. Rehoboam skipped the instruction of the father. Father. So hear the instruction of the father. I'm going to take it plain, surface level now. Forsake not the law of thy mother. Now obviously we could laugh at that a little bit. Dad's got some instruction, Mama's got some laws. Maybe in reality, Rehoboam's mother, I don't remember who it is, you know, maybe she was a lay down the law kind of woman. Forsake not the law of thy mother. But listen, I think if we just take this verse and we make it, hey, boys and girls, honor your father and your mother. We can get that from the beginning of the Torah, wisdom. Absolutely. But I think that there is a sense, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna dig down into maybe the darker things here, the dark secrets. I'm gonna go ahead and say the law of thy mother. Could you say that, Rehoboam? And any prince you know, you take, I don't know, Prince Harry, Prince William, whatever William's boys are. They're kind of kids of the country. They belong to the, to the whole kingdom. Rehoboam, Israel is your mother. You, you belong to this nation. She gave you birth. She's got a law. Once again, it's Torah. Now I know that that's not right on the literalist level, but we, we talked last week. As a biblical literalist, why you better not just take the book of Proverbs and just go literalist. You're not going to get anything out of it other than a book of things is sometimes true. You want more out of that? So again I think he says, rehoboam, take the wisdom of Solomon and the Torah. You know, as a matter of fact, this, this word right here, law, it is Torah, if you were to look at as tourette, because it belongs. It's here reference to the mother, so it's turned into the feminine, the, the Torah, the torat of your mother. Take your mother's law. You know, I mean, maybe in a literal sense, I. We don't know this, but maybe he's saying, I didn't live the bull all so well, but man, your mama did. I think more though, he's saying, hey, the motherland, this is her law, this is hers. Hear my wisdom, but don't forsake the law of your mother. Now in verse nine, he tells what those will provide for they instruction and law. They shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head. Now let's make this yellow because I'm gonna put it there. Ornament of grace unto thy head. The word ornament. You know, we just put away the Christmas ornaments, right? Well, because it's Valentine's, you're supposed to by now. The. There's no ornaments you put on your head. You know, you, you might have a hair bow or a hair clip or something like that. People don't do ornaments. Well, except that lady I saw at the gas station, she had some ornaments, but you know, you don't. You might have a hat, but if you're the king. An ornament of grace unto thy head. The word ornament is a. A victor's crown. Let's just go with crown. The instruction of thy father will be a crown of grace on thy head. It's that literal crown of jewels that displays your authority. But the one that really matters is you. Carry on my wisdom again. Unfortunately, Rehoboam didn't have that ornament of grace on his head. He just had his dad's crown. He didn't have his dad's instruction. He turned to that as side. Now not only an ornament of grace on my head, but chains about thy neck. I'm going to put this in green, so. And I'm going to make these corresponding. Whether they should be or not, I don't know. But you know, Hebrew poetry often works this way that you make these kind of parallels. So the instruction is, is a crown of grace. The law is chains about thy neck. Now what are we talking about here, we're not talking about shackles, that the law is going to chain you up. But in the, in the book of Genesis. Do you remember where that was? You probably forgot the reference in Genesis 41, 40, 42. Thank you to my good helper there. Here's, on the right side of the screen, Joseph. Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand and put it upon Joseph's hand and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen and put a gold chain around his neck, about his neck. Now all of these things again, the ring, very important. The fine linen displayed the position that he now has a gold chain about his neck. Let's get back down here to verse 9. Chains about thy neck. What I'm trying to say here is this is royalty. This is not something we should just take and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is, hey, boys and girls, honor your father and your mother and they'll just be grace to you. You and wonderful adornment. That's nice and good and it's like Oprah, but this is Rehoboam. Do you want real authority? A display of authority? Yeah, I, I think of the, the academicians. I'm not a big fan of academicians typically, but some of them are good. But you know, you got the academicians and at commencement or something, they come with this big, you know, the big scene. The president probably especially carries, has that thing around his neck or you know, at the, the graduation time, you know, they got the, the stoles and the tassels and all this kind of stuff that says, hey, I am somebody. And, and it displays something. Now just the same, this will display something like it did for Joseph. And, and, and yet what we need to see is. Let me bring this back up that the, the toret of thy mother, your mother's law, Israel's law will be really the adornment that displays your power. Now, that interpretation removes it from us. Us. Because I'm not a king, I'm not a prince, I'm not even a duke. Right. Whatever that is. And so all of a sudden this becomes not mine. It becomes insight to me on how Israel is supposed to live. And we will see that carry out. Because he's going to go on. We're going to stop here in verse nine, but it's going to go on and say some things, My son. If sinners entice thee, consent thou not. Okay, that sounds like for anybody. If they say, come with us, let us lay wait for blood. Let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause. How many of you ever had that happen? I'm not talking about sinners enticing you. I'm talking about someone coming, saying, let's go in there and kill. Kill them. Let's take their stuff and make it ours. I would venture to say none of you have those kind of friends, you know, unless you fresh out of prison or something. But the stuff that he's saying here is stuff that very much would come to a king. These are temptations of a king. Not a popper, not a butcher baker, a candlestick maker of a king. And we're going to find that to be true. We'll, we'll again, we'll pick up in verse 10 next week and go probably all the way through the chapter as we'll finish out 10 through 19. And then when we begin in verse 20 through the end of the chapter, we are going to have Wisdom herself give her first speech. So if I can summarize this, it is from Solomon who says, I've got to pass on the kingdom, I've got to give it away to another. It is going to go to my son. I am going to write a book of wisdom, a book that will for anyone, provide Torah instruction that it will help them to have understanding or instruction of wisdom to apply justice and judgment and equity. But especially I want to speak to you, my son. The thing you need to do is follow the instruction of your father. I'm writing some of it down here. It's got some dark sayings in it. You'll have to stop and think about them. But it is going to give you what you need to be a crown of grace on your head. But you need more than that. You need your mother's law, you need the Torah, and that will be the chain around thy neck. I think we're going to see again that what we're going to end up with is this amazing how to guide for Israel, which will make the book of Psalms finally have some. Some sense to it. Okay, thanks for being here. I would love to greet you here tonight and I will do so here in just a moment. Could I encourage you on one thing, and that is if you go to dispensationalpublishing.com and when you get there, all you gotta do is click. There might be some nice books there you might want. In fact, there's a free one right there, the Gospel of Christ. It's just a free download. As soon as you order it, look down the list and you'll see it. And a Lot of other good stuff there. But the blog, the blog's totally free and we're working on a daily answer from our Ask the Theologian program. Here's one we had just a couple of days ago. How much study time should a bi vocational pastor dedicate to sermon preparation? Does Acts 6, 7 mean new revelation was given a grace based response to salvation? All of these very recent from Ask the Theologian put into blog form. Thanks Luca for helping put that together. We'll try to get one up just nearly every day. So go to that blog thing a lot and, and check that out and I think you'll like that. And pass those on to your friends. Hey, you might like this. You ought to read this and check it out and see it and it'll be a, a joy to you. Okay, I want to say greetings here, uh, tonight. Do me a favor, Luca, on this, uh, check the uh, uh, the uh, YouTube and the worship comments and make sure I got both of them feeding in over here because I don't want to miss anyone saying hello to you. And if you haven't said hi yet, stick it in now. Tell us who you are, where you're from. Always a blessing to see this. If those, those of you like you know where. It's late, late, late. If you need to go, I understand, but you might just be so excited about now coming to a fresh understanding of the proverbs that you say. I'm staying up for the greetings, but Jim, Piedmont, South Carolina, thanks for being here. God bless you. Scott in the hill country of Texas. And Chuck, good to see you. You got got in on time here for the whole show, he says. Nicholas in Bowling Brook, Illinois, thank you for being here. And Mike in Smithville, Missouri, can't wait, he said. I'm glad, hope it was worth the wait. And Jennifer up in starts with a C in Vermont, glad you're here. Thank you very much for being here. Eric in Ohio, God bless you. Thanks for giving us a vice president and we appreciate it. Debbie and Dere, good to see you in Crystal Springs, Mississippi. Hope you're doing well. Lisa, Glenwood Springs, Colorado. And Herb and Sherry down in Lafayette, Louisiana, God bless you. Ed, Nancy and, and, and Forest should be joking. Say hello. Glad to have Forest the right divine dog to hear. Alan in Portland, thanks for being here. Bringing up the West Coast. Here comes more west coast people right here. Allen in Portland and down A. Shirley and Ridgecrest, California, thank you. Linda in Lexington. And Phil and Dream are also in Lexington. I don't know how you all Always come in like the same order as you come in the room here. But welcome Cliff in Kitchener, Ontario. Delighted to have you. And we've got Jeff and Trinidad, Colorado. Oh, at my daughter's basketball game. And we'll watch later. Well, thanks for dropping in anyway. And we hope they win. Let's see, what are they there? The, the. The Horner farmers, something like that. I. I'm trying to remember. What do you call a girl farmer? A farmer. A farmer in a dell. I know. We hope those farmers. Are they farmers? I'm trying to remember. I hope they do well. And Alex, good to see you. I appreciate that. Oh, oh, thanks. Thanks. Alex in London, who says, I now understand the mystery of the last chapter of the Proverbs 31 woman. I was struggling to see if it was Terry. Terry's Alex's wife. I hope he's not watching. What you're supposed to say is, I thought it was Terry all along and now I find out that it happens to be Israel. But anyway, God bless you, Alex. Appreciate that very much. And good to see you. Let's see, did I already say Chuck? I think I did. Chuck and her. Hershey. Hershey. The other right. Riding dogs here in west Western Oklahoma. Thank you for being here. Helen in Virginia, good to see you. Thank you, Char. I'm getting my, my Charlotte's, Charleston, Charlottesville. All the. Those, they, they run together between the Virginia and the. And the New Hampshire, whatever we said earlier. Vermont. That's what I'm trying to say. John, good to see you back. John in West Virginia, Hope you're doing well. Thank you. And Gerard, I'll get to your question tomorrow on the Trump and the Gaza Strip plan. I spoke about it. This is not Gerard's question, but I spoke about it. Those of you who are interested, do you remember what day that was? Was not today. Must have been yesterday. Wednesday. I think it was on the Wednesday broadcast. For those of you interested in my opinion, and I think it was up for. It was the very first question. If it wasn't Wednesday, it was Tuesday, but it was the very first question. So if I get into it and don't get in on Gaza and you're interested. Interested. And then. Then switch to the other one. Wednesday, I think maybe Tuesday. But I did see you've got another question there on that. And I will get to it, I think, tomorrow. Thank you, Gerard in the Netherlands. Appreciate that. Oh, going to pronounce it Halton. I may be wrong there now. Halton are you from. I saw something that confused me Are you from Brazil or are you from New Mexico? There are different places. I was thinking Brazil, but then I saw something that made me think New Mexico. So Halton, good, glad you're here. If you're still listening, I would love to, to, to meet you more know where you're from. Thank you, Jennifer. Appreciate that. Vermont question. I love to study on proverbs. Thank you, Pastor. I appreciate that. And I, I think we're gonna have a great, a great time through proverbs. I, I think as we go through proverbs, we're going to find over and over again that the farther we go, the more we get it, the more we say, oh, yeah. Because right now we just have these concepts that we're trying to put together and I think, you know, I, I don't know, probably we're going to get three or four or five chapters in. We're going to say, yep, we got this down. Smooth sailing on. It's what I think we'll find out. Might have to eat those words, but we'll find out. Out. Tammy and Birdie in Missouri, good to see you. Hope you're doing well tonight in Monet, Missouri. Well, that's a nice comment there. Also back in Vermont, can't get enough. Right. Divide in teaching is so liberating and refreshing. Yeah, that, that it is, Jerry. And summary, Southwest Georgia. My Georgia kids told me about that the other day. It's seem like summer. And Rhonda, glad to see you. Smithville, Missouri, Brazil. Thanks, Halton. Am I even saying it right? Halton? I hope so. But oh, oh, that's, that's, that's what it is. Okay. I didn't have an option for my country on your publishing site. You're right. And so you, you were Halton's a smart cookie there. I think you got the free book, if I'm not mistaken. And, and it probably wouldn't let you do it because you were in Brazil. So you did the right thing. Lie. It's just a free download anyway. God bless you. I like for figuring that out. Thanks for being here with us, everyone. I'm going to have a word of prayer in just a moment, but Sunday we're going to do either the last or the next to the last. I don't know. I don't know if I'm going to I may do a summary, but we're going to look at the sanctification work of the Spirit. Been a interesting and challenging series and then we'll continue. We're going to talk about the I'M going to go with the. The dispensation of the tribulation. Normally haven't called that a dispensation in the past, but we'll go with that on Sunday and take that through Ayton. Did I get that right? Ayton. Thanks for helping me pronounce that. Ayton. I got it. Help me remember that tomorrow. Okay. It's eaten. God bless you in. In Brazil. And now let me lead us in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for your watch care, your blessing, your goodness to us. And once once more we come into the Word of God and it begins to come alive to us as we take this book. That certainly was a blessing to us in many ways and yet perplexing also. And we begin to take some of the perplexing nature out of it and see the deeper meaning to it. And I pray that as we go as I mentioned, that it would just become more and more clear each step along the way and that each one of us would be as iron sharpens iron, dear Heavenly Father. And that we would help one another in understanding and in growth. And that that would be blessing to all of us who sit here around this great big electronic table spread out around the world and the encouragement that it is to come together for the liberating teaching of rightly dividing the Word of God. As Jennifer said, we are grateful, dear Heavenly Father. I'm grateful personally for each one who comes and spends their time here with us on these Thursday nights and then others in the later time that they watch and what a blessing they are if we pray encouragement on each one of them. In Jesus name, amen. Thank you again ladies and gentlemen. I do appreciate you being here and look forward to seeing you maybe tomorrow. If not Sunday. If not, we'll be back next week. It's been very nice to see you and have you. God bless you. We will see you.