Sam. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Bible study tonight. I'm Dr. Randy White and we are glad you're here. We're going to discuss proverbs and do some wisdom unveiled, I hope learning how to handle proverbs as a king. That's what we want tonight. And glad to. Glad to be back with you. Glad to welcome you to Bible study and looking forward to it. Hey, a little programming note. Next week I will not be here. I am going to visit my mother for Mother's Day. I'll be here Sunday. I'll be here both Sundays. I will not be here on Thursday night and nor Wednesday. Wednesday and Thursday night are the two nights I'll miss. And I appreciate Luca filling in for me on Wednesday night I'll be. We just won't have Thursday night. How's that? Give you some time to catch up on something. But here tonight and ready to go and excited about it and looking forward to it. You know, I also would like to invite you. I'll say. Probably say a little at the end and so I'll just say a tiny bit now. Registration is now open for our 11th annual Labor Day Bible Conference and retreat. We have it in Branson, Missouri. Would love to have you. I've got a mock up anyway of the. The book cover right here. Systematic Theology A Biblical Literalist Approach. I'm printing chapter one in a standalone version and we'll mail that out to you. You'll get a copy to see a little bit about what we're going to be teaching. Because I know you take something like Systematic theology and boy, that sounds like a winner, doesn't it? Hey honey, let's go spend the weekend in Branson. Why? Because a bald headed guy is going to be teaching system systematic theology? Well, yes, I wouldn't miss it. Wouldn't miss it for the world, right? Anyway, I hope you'll be there. It. It. It's good fellowship, it's fun and we'll have some good Bible study. We're gonna. We're gonna look at systematic theology. Now systematic theology just means all the, all the biggies of theology. The bibliology, the theology proper, the person of God, the Christology, the pneumatology, the doctrine of the Spirit, the doctrine, the church, the doctrine of end times. We'll look at it and we're just going to see what the Bible says, not what all the creeds and catechisms have said. What does the Bible say? That's where our theology ought to come from. The sole source of our faith and Practice. So we'll be doing that in Branson, Missouri, this coming Labor Day. I think that's August 29th is the Friday night ends on September 1st. On Monday, Monday, Labor Day this year is on the first. So plan on joining us there. That will be exciting. Well, we should get right into Bible study, shouldn't we? At the end of the broadcast, I would love to say hello to you. You can go ahead. Even right now, put in a little chat and say hi and we'll just jump right in and get with it. But as we come into Proverbs now, last time, session 12, I. I gave some background on a big chunk of Proverbs 10 through 29. Chapters 30 and 31 are a little different. In chapters 10 through 29, there are. What'd you tell me a little bit ago? 575, 595 proverbs. What do you do with 595 proverbs? We could teach every one of them week by week by week by week, by week. What is, what is, what is 595 times 5. Figure that out and then divided by 60, see how many hours it would take us if we spent five minutes a piece on them. I think what you would, you can already say is, whoa, we'll be here till the second Sunday of next month. We're going. That's going to take a long time. We'll never get out of Proverbs. How many hours? We got 49 hours. Okay, so roughly a year of Bible studies going through all these. Now, some of them we could maybe lump together. Say all of these are economic. All of these are, are, are hard work. All of these are relational. All this kind of stuff. We could, we could bring that down a little bit, but it would still be quite the task. So what I presented to you last week is that these proverbs are given all 595 of them. They are given as a mnemonic device, if you will, for the king, that if he were to take these roughly 20 chapters and read them a little bit every day. I mean, that's often taught in evangelicalism. Read them a little bit every day. You've got the groundwork given in chapters one through nine. This is Torah wisdom taught to you. The future king, then the future king, beginning in chapter 10, takes this one proverb after another after another after another, seemingly in random order. And we talked last time about how there is really a good learning reason why they're in random order and not grouped together, and that actually we shouldn't group them together. That's, that's the, the worst thing we can do. There's a reason they were written in random order, and that's to help, help learn these things, believe it or not. And so the king, he. He gets those, he reads those. They. They become a part of his being, they become a part of his person. He uses those for judgment. Now, one of the things that the king did in ancient days was in fact, maybe his most important job was to sit in judgment. He would sit at the gate, the people would come to him, they would say, I got a problem. And he would say, tell me about it. And the, the, the, the, the prosecutor and the defendant, whatever it is, they would stand before him, they would speak their issues, and the king would make a legal, binding judgment. And the way in which he made his judgments overall were drastically going to affect the life in the kingdom. These things would become case law, so to speak. These things would shape everything about the kingdom. So the king in ancient Israel did not really have much legislative power. In fact, I think you could argue there was no legislative power. Furthermore, there wasn't a legislature. There wasn't a group over there that made the laws. You know, they had a bill and then it went to the committee. And finally they, they didn't do any of that. They had their legislation. It was fixed. It was. You didn't vote on it, you didn't change it. It was called the Torah. Now, the king was the executive that carried out the Torah. And so he needed a way to be able to, to make judgments that were going to be Torah. True. That's what we want to look at tonight in how to take this. And I want to give you some principles tonight on how to handle the proverbs like a king. Now let me give a disclaimer up here, right up front. I'm not a king, nor are you. You and I are not kings of Judah. We don't live in a theocracy. We don't even live under the law or in the age of the law. So when I say how to handle the Proverbs as a king, I do not mean, hey, here is a perfect way for you to apply the Proverbs to your life. I think if there is any application of the Proverbs to your life, it is incidental. Now there probably you're going to find a lot of incidental application in your life. But because it's an it is incidental, you won't be able to take it and say, I can take this one to the bank, which is the struggle we've had with Proverbs all along. You remember all the way back in session one, I said, you know, the problem with Proverbs is we have to apologize for it. We have to say, hey, here's a book that's sometimes true. The reason we've had to say that is because we were trying to put it to ourselves. Sometimes it's incidentally true for us, but not always so. Did God write a book that is sometimes true? No. He wrote a book that is absolutely, without fail, 100% of the time. Not even 99% of the time, 100% of the time. It is absolutely infallible. For the one to whom it is written, the king, the. The kings of Judah, the future kings of Judah, those from Solomon, to. To. You know, my son, going on down further, these are the ones to whom it. It was given and to whom it should be taken. So now with. With that, I want to take a look and see. I guess we're still streaming there, aren't we? I'm not seeing the picture there, as I. As I think I should be. But. But who knows whether that's true or not. Luke will check into it. Now what. What I. What I want to do here is say that I got the thumbs up. There we go. That. Let's. Let's. Let's get into a passage of scripture here. Here we go in Proverbs, chapter 10. And I don't know, let's just. Let's let's just pick one here. Verse 7. The memory of the just is blessed, but the memory of the wicked shall rot. There it is. Stands all by itself, and then it goes on to another one. The wise in his heart will receive commandments, but the prating fool shall fail you. We can come down here. Here's randomly. He that winkleth with the eye causeth sorrow, but a prating fool shall fall. Okay, we got another pratting fool there. Wise men lay up knowledge, but the mouth of foolishness is near destruction. All of these seemingly random proverbs are field rulings. They are, as we called them last time, case law. Now, when you are the king, here's what you do with all of these. You begin with the proverb and you say, this is case law, which I can trust. Let me explain a little bit. Case law, you may have heard, you know, in some. Some. Some discussion, someone will say, well, in Brown vs Board of Education, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they'll. They'll mention these typically supreme court cases. That is case law. Case Law defines how the law is interpreted. This is case law. It is not the law. It is how the law is interpreted. Now, assuming you don't have messed up judges, and for the covenant people walking in Torah, this is proven to be exactly true to Torah. So assuming you don't have messed up judges, which is a safe assumption right here, then case law, you can take it to the bank, you can do exactly like is stated here, and you can do it without. Without having to run to Torah. Think about it. If you're the king, you're the king. You get up in the morning, there's already a line of people out there wanting to see you. They've got their issues, they've got their problems. They need to go on with their business, they need to go on with their lives. Nobody can take care of it but the king. Okay, say you got, I don't know, you got 25, 35, 50, 100 cases sitting out there day after day after day after day. It's never going to end. How are you going to take those cases and stop, say, okay, I've heard your case. Now let me go to Torah and let me go all the way through. You know, Torah and those. Well, as the rabbis put it anyway, 613 commands, and let me, let me put them all in and let me come up with this and make a Torah, a just Torah ruling. How am I going to do that? The Proverbs is his shortcut. He can take these proverbs, read through them. In a month, he'll get, you know, he'll, he'll get a once, twice, you know, one or one or two times, just depending on where he is. If he's just reading even a chapter a day, he can easily go through them. He's going to be king for, you know, how long? 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 35, 40 years. He's going to be king constantly going through. He's really going to get to know these proverbs and they are memorable. They're like a string around the finger. They're like a slap on the, like a joke you can't forget. It's all this stuff that, that is designed to help him say, okay, if I can just remember that Wise men lay up knowledge, but the mouth of the foolish is near destruction. Ah, here I've got someone who really has shown me he knows his stuff. I can immediately, if I'm the king, I can immediately say, this man is wise. How do you know he's wise? Because I can tell. He has laid up knowledge I can tell he's learned. I can tell he studied. I know he's wise. This is in the covenant community. Everyone living according to the Lord. So working and the, and the Torah is the final say here and comes about that he can do these knowing then that if he goes by case law, he may not know the Torah law that's built that that case law is built upon. He may not be the scribe, the lawyer who puts it all down on paper, but he knows I can go by this and not be wrong. This is not going to go against Torah. It is always going to go for Torah. So he learns these things and that, that, that helps because he can just come and say, okay, here I am. Wherever it is. He that hideth hatred with lying lips and he that other slander is a fool. Hey, I happen to know what he just said is slander. This guy's a fool. I don't need the rest of your story out of here, fool. I judge against you. But wait, you haven't even heard anything. I've heard enough to know you're a slanderer. Goodbye. He has immediately, quickly made the judgment. And it is absolutely going to be true to Torah, even if he doesn't know the paragraph and the chapter and the verse in which to find that ordinance. And so that fool goes off and he contests it and he calls together the scribes and he says, wait a minute, you know, he didn't even hear my case. And the, the scribe is able to go and say, no, you know, here it is right in Torah. It just describes you. You have broken the law. You do not have any rights. Next taken care of. Absolutely true to Torah. So this makes it simple for the King who once again, honestly, has way too much to do to be able to, to be an expert in Torah. You say, I want him to be an expert in Torah. I do want him to be an expert in Torah. And I also want him to make judgments. I want him to make 30, 40, 50, 60, 100 judgments a day. And I want them to be Torah. True. You can't have your cake and eat it too unless you say, okay, go by this case law in the proverbs and every time it'll come about. So number one is begin with the proverb. It is case law that you can trust. Then use the style within the proverb to help you as the King know what to look for. Let's, let's, let's go right here in verse 17. He is the way of life that keepeth instruction. But he that Refuseth, Reproof, Erith. Okay, we have one who keeps instruction, one who refuses to keep. Refuses, reproof. Now, with this, the key word right here is. But this is, as we talked last time, and I won't spend much time on it. This is an, it's an antithesis. Thesis, antithesis. This, but that gives us a comparison. Now, Solomon says to his son, hey, if you'll learn all these things you're going to get, it'd be interesting. Maybe I should put Luke on this to see, of those 600 and 595 proverbs, how many of them are in this antithesis mode? This, but that. This, but that. This, but that. This, but that. This, but that. That helps the king take and put comparisons. He puts it sort of into categories, and he can take it. Now that's, you know, I, I don't know that I think about that much, but in our Ask a Theologian program, I just very quickly put in these categories, and as I, as I hear the question, I'm immediately categorizing it and say, okay, I got to go in this department of the answer. You listen very long. You, you realize, okay, that's, that's the same style answer. We go. Because what? This, but that. This, but that. This, but that. So you have that. That goes along. Then there are some that are synthetic. Perhaps this next verse. Let's see. He that had that hideth hatred with. With lying lips. And he that other utter a slander, is a fool. Okay, these two things synthesize. They go together. Or there, there are some. We won't go through all of them. There are some that are synonymous. It just says the same thing over there' Minors. There's some, some word plays that are given in there, different styles. Helps, helps the king as he's standing out there. Helps the king to be able to quickly make these categories with the people in front of him. So know the case law. I know there's a purist out there who says, no, no, no, no, no. You got to know the Torah. Do the case law. You can remember the case law quickly. It's not going to leave you. It slapped you in the face. It made you laugh. You got it. And you absolutely will never fail with Torah if you go by the proverbs. So this is what it's supposed to do. Let me give an example from, from a pastor. Now, I, I want to be a little bit careful with this because I am, of course, a, a believer that a pastor has to be a deep student of the word of God. But I. I see this especially with younger pastors, so I'll tell Luca. I see it's especially with younger pastors. Well, what's. What's the possible nuance of this letter, of this word, of this verse, compared to this reference? Oh, wait, there's 700 references over here. And this word is used 122 times, but that word is used 123 times. And so somewhere around the time I'm 45, I'll have a sermon together. Listen, buttercup, you gotta preach this week, next week, and the week after that. You got to do it three times a week. You got to get out there, you got to get a sermon, you got to get a sermon. You got to get a sermon. Okay, what are you gonna do? You're gonna learn a pattern. You're gonna learn to be able to say, I gotta get up there and I gotta open my mouth and I gotta speak. This is the same thing, only on a king level. So, number one, go with the case law. Number two, look at the patterns and the categories that are on there. And then number three, make the call, render the judgment, and let the lawyers do the fine print. Let them catch up on it later. That's what Proverbs is about, from chapter 10 through chapter 29. And so the. The king, his job is not to write the legal commentary. His job is not to write the. The. The. The judicial opinion. When it's all of the king, he makes the judgment, and he's got to do it. He's got to do it quick, and he's got to do it right. So Solomon knows this more than anyone alive in his day, and so he's writing it to his son. Hey, son, Torah is what you need. Chapters one through nine. Now, you're going to be so inundated that you're not going to be able to do the Torah study you'd like. So I'm going to give you some things here that you can remember, and you can remember them easily and quickly. Now, with that, you. You take that and begin to embody that pattern. That. Right, that. That is right there. So the king, again, he takes up. He takes it, he says, this is case law. I can take this to the bank. Every single one of these is absolutely true. It is based upon Torah. Somewhere. The judges, the lawyers over there will figure it out later. I know this. There's a Torah passage for this. You know, when I. When I first was. Was thinking about, how do you teach the. The particular pattern that's here so that you My goal may have. You may be wondering by now, but my goal is that you can take any of these 595 proverbs, you can land on them, you can give an interpretation. First, I, I was thinking, hey, this is based on. This is case law based upon the Torah. So the first thing you should do is go back and find the Torah passage that underlies it so that you'll understand this. Then I realized, no, no, it's just the opposite of that. To save you from having to go to the Torah if you're the king. By the way, if you're a scribe, the proverbs aren't for you. The proverbs are, are the, the quickie guide to the Torah. If you're a scribe, a lawyer, you're, you're, you're a teacher, a professor, all this. Well, you, you gotta, you, you go study the Torah. But this is for the King. So the King again, he takes it. He knows that it's based upon covenant law. He knows that it's 100% infallible, that it is going to work. And he can, he can say if the proverbs affirm something or. What's the opposite of affirm? Luga defirm. If, if the deny, we'll go with deny. How about that? If the proverbs affirm something or the proverbs deny something, he doesn't have to say, I wonder what Torah says about that. He can say, if the proverbs affirm it, the Torah teaches it. If the proverbs deny it, the Torah denies it. It's rooted in Torah. It is rooted in covenant law. And so he can know the case law, look at the style, in order to help him judge people, and then he can render the judgment, call it what it is, do it now, do it quick. That's what you got to do as the King. A very practical user's guide for the King. Now, we're going to get into some, some examples here and show you this. But I kind of. I wonder or I wish. I'm not sure which way I want to go here. But we'll go with wonder and then wish it. I wonder if evangelicalism, if the church today had been taught that proverbs are a king's user guide to Torah for the kings of Judah, for the covenant people, would we have made such a mess of it? Would we have apologized so many times for it? I suspect that no book has been apologized for more than Torah. Excuse me, than Proverbs again, because. Well, that's not always true. That's not always true. That's not always true. That's not. We're not Covenant people. We're not living under the law. Of course it's not always true. And we're not the king. This is not for us. By the way, if you take this, this principle and you begin to say, oh, now I know how to do every single proverb there is, and so I am going to be able to apply all of these proverbs to my life. First of all, you're going to put yourself under. Under the law. You're going to put yourself under Torah, and then you're going to be disappointed because Torah is not, not, not fulfilling its promises. Said, if I do this, this would happen, and it ain't going to happen. And so you're going to find yourself disappointed like everyone who puts themselves under Torah today is. So don't say, now I know how to do the proverbs in my business. Now I know how to put proverbs together in my. In my home, in my family, in my church. You will mess it up royally. I'll say it again, and I'm going to say it rather bluntly. If there is any application whatsoever in the book of Proverbs for me and you, it's incidental. Some things are just universally true. So, you know, it's true for an Egyptian, it's true for an American, it's true for the, the. The king, but some things are not some things that. And there are promises in here that will mess you up every time. Okay, let's, let's go through, and let's work through some of these proverbs and give you an, an example, if you will, of. We'll just, we'll. We'll go see how many. See, see how much time we have. Uh, and, uh, look at them. But here, Proverbs, chapter 10, verse 4. He that becometh, he. Excuse me, he becometh poor, that dealeth with a slack hand. But the hand of the diligent maketh rich. Okay, the king has two people in front of him. They are arguing with one another. They've got, you know, some issue. Who cares what the issue is? They've got some issue. The king has to make a judgment. He can do a study. He can call in the scribes. He can spend the next 25 weeks on this if he wants to, but the kingdom is going to fall apart if he does. He needs a snap judgment. He can then come and say, you know, it seems kind of cruel to say that poverty comes from A slack hand. But that's what Torah says. Poverty comes from a slack hand. I know, Taurus says that. So where does Torah say that, King? I don't know where it says it, just says it. Trust me. You go talk to the lawyers if you want. But Taurus, as poverty comes from a slack hand, the hand of the diligent maketh rich diligent. They're going to be diligent in doing Torah. There are absolutely promises in Torah that say, hey, you do Torah, you live Torah life, you're going to get rich. Absolutely. They're in there. This is where health, wealth, prosperity, gospel comes from, by the way, because they take passages that don't belong to them. But the king doesn't have to know this. He just has to know, okay, here's a guy who is in front of me. I got a poor guy, I got a rich guy. How am I going to categorize this? You know, this is going to sound unbelievably cruel. What should the King do? He should give judgment in favor of the rich man. But you don't know the case. He should give judgment and favor the rich man. Because they were in a society in which, guess what? God makes them rich. The rich man is like Abraham. The rich man is those who's carrying out the kingdom. Very different than our society today. Would any judge be considered just if he just said, okay, the rich man gets it, the poor man doesn't? No, not at all. So here we go. He that becometh poor dealeth with a slack hand. Now, probably what the King would want to do is say, I'll use this figuratively, just a little bit. But hey, show me your hands. Show me hands. Oh, what tender skin you have on your hands. It doesn't look like you have had a hoe in your hand for a long time, chopping those weeds down. You haven't shoveled, you haven't put a hammer. You hadn't fixed anything, have you? No wonder you're poor. We live in a society which is based upon God's economy. He blesses the diligent. This guy over here is hard working. Did he make a bad decision somewhere? I don't know. But he's the godly guy and so the judgment can come down. Okay, I checked your hands, I looked at your work ethic. I can tell that you are one who's not diligent in your work, nor are you diligent in Torah. That is not the kind of person we want in our society. I hereby judge against you and I judge for this man. Sounds cruel in the end, you know, it gets contested or whatever. I don't know that they had a, a federal judiciary that would appeal this, but it gets appealed, goes to the appellate court. The, the lawyers over there. This is always going to stand. It's always. They're gonna, they're gonna dig on it enough until that guy's gonna lose. This is how the king was to use these proverbs. Let's go. That's chapter 10, verse 4. Let's go to chapter 10, verse 19. In the multitude of words, there wanteth not sin, but he that refraineth his lips is wise. Now, as we look at that, in the multitude of words, there wanteth not sin. He. That refrain of his lips is wise. Begin to look at it, and you've got the king has this guy who's talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking. And here's another guy, refrains his lips, just barely gives his case. Puts the bare minimum out there. Tell you what, go with the guy who's not talking too much. The guy who's talking so much, that's the guy that's trying to cover up something. That's the guy that's your problem. Well, does that, that match with Torah? I don't know. Go talk to the lawyers. What you'll find is absolutely. That's how the King, because he can remember these things, that's how the King can make these decisions. That's chapter 10, verse 19. Let's go to, down to chapter 10, verse 27. And here it says, the fear of the Lord prolongeth days, but the years of the wicked shall be shortened. Okay, He. The King comes. He knows I can trust the case law. I can, I can take this to the bank and I can take it literally. Don't have to spiritualize this or anything. It was given from. For me, the King. And I don't know, you know, maybe he's got a wrongful death suit or something like this, or maybe he's got, you know, some, some, some young, sick guy here and some old, old healthy guy here. What this takes care of it. Under Torah, the fear of the Lord prolongeth days. Now, you know, I did a little bit of work on this just today, and not enough to say I, I've completely studied the matter. But young people that died in the Old Testament almost completely are evil. Nadab and Abihu, the children of Aaron, offer this strange fire. Boom. God knocks him down. One after another after another. You see these Absalom, you know, Is wicked. What happens? Boom. Knock down the old people. Guess what? They're righteous now, clearly. I think we can probably find an exception. The closest thing I could come up with, an exception would be Jonathan, Saul's son. Just Jonathan. You know, it's awfully hard to tell there. Jonathan seems to be supportive of David and understands that his father is wicked and some of these things, but he also goes to war with his father in a war that you shouldn't have gotten into. So he dies young. You know, where. Where do we put some of these? You know, we'll let the lawyers figure it out. But over and over, the. The Scripture affirms this. I should say the. The. The Torah affirms the fear of the Lord prolongeth days. We've seen this already in the Book of Proverbs. We see it like in the Ten Commandments, you know, honor thy father, that your days might be long in the. In the land which I'll take you to, and just, you know, I bet. I bet easily we could come up with a dozen explicit promises that the fear of the Lord prolongs days. It makes you live a long time. So the king can. Again, he can come to this and he can say, hey, there's. There's no exceptions. If. If you're dying young, you're wicked. I may not have found the wickedness yet, but you're wicked. There is a benefit to being king and that you don't really have to prove yourself. You just make your. Your decision and go on. And so the king, you know, he was. He was blessed. Unlike, I suppose, you know, a leader today. Rightly so. A leader today has to explain themselves very well. Has to, you know, give evidence beyond any shadow of a doubt. King didn't have to. King just had to make a judgment. And those judgments overall had to build a great kingdom. He's telling them how to do it here. How can you spot these? It sounds cruel to say, watch out for the young, sickly person. Yeah, that. That there's some wickedness there. If we said that today, we would be absolutely wrong, because we're not in a day in which any of these promises are true, that we're outside of the days of these promises. That's why it sounds so unbelievably wrong to us to be able to say this. But if we were the covenant people living under Torah, under Torah's blessings and curses, one of the blessings of Torah is that if you carry it out, the fear of the Lord, you'll live a long time. And you'll be rich, by the way. So what does the king want to look for in his kingdom? Old rich people. Old rich people are blessed and honored by God. I remember one time years ago, you know, sometimes when you're a pastor, you remember the people that didn't like you. And so there was a guy that didn't like me and the church at that point, it wasn't, it wasn't growing like we wanted it to do. And of course, this is, I, this is before I had left the church growth movement. You know, do everything you can so you can get another 5%. So you can, you know, prove it in the denominational record. Look how godly God's hand is upon us, ladies and gentlemen. We grew 10% last year, and so we had actually shrunk that year. And I remember the guy saying, now don't you believe that if God wanted you here, the hand of God would be blessing you? I was too dumb to know what to do then, but, you know, today I might say I don't believe we're under the Torah. That's Torah kind of talk. You're, you're, you're talking about under the Torah. Absolutely had these promises in the covenant people. There is no other place and no other time in history in which you could take the proverbs like this. You can't do it for the king of England, King of Siam, wherever you want to go, you can't do it. Couldn't do it in that day in Babylon or in Assyria or down in Egypt. Wouldn't hold true. It only holds true in Israel under the law for the king, he can do these perfectly. Now, excuse me. It would be fascinating one of these days to, to, to, to take the time. I don't know that I'm going to do it, but to take the time to really build for all 595 of these, the case to say, look how strongly this is built on Torah. I'm convinced, everyone, you would end up with three or four pages of support and examples over and over and over again. Support and examples. Okay, that's 10:27. Let's go down to chapter 11, verse one. Here's an easy one. A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight. King has a case come before him and a fella's got some false balances. Let's just say here he is and he has. He. He's. He's there for the. What was the old term that was used there that when, when they would. The spoil system. There we go. The spoil system where you know, the, the winning political party gets gave, give out all the political jobs. And so here comes a guy, he says, yes, I want to be director of the office of red headed stepchildren. I, I, boy, I, I, I'd be good at that job. And we look at back in his past and say, oh, let's see, you've been here a few times on false balances. Sorry, see you. But wait, I am the most qualified guy in the country. No, what you did is an abomination of the, to the Lord. I don't need to research it anymore. Goodbye. Adjust weight is his delight. Whatever that case is that's before him. You got a guy that's before him, maybe in a, in a case. And, and, and the guy says, you know, he cheated me 1/8 of a cent because, because of his false weight. That's an abomination to the Lord. We do not allow that. Away with this man. Put him out. But don't you think you ought to consider his family? Don't you think you ought to consider his past? Don't you think you ought to consider the circumstances? No, it's an abomination to the Lord. Now you can get rigid like that today and say, you know, I am not going to allow this. No, never. You probably won't have any friends. We don't live under that, under that, that, that setting where you know, we, we would never consider someone because of, you know, some false balance they had out, out there. But under the king setting, there it is. Let's go to verse 14 in chapter 11, verse 14 and see another. Once again, let me just say you take the proverb exactly literally for what it is, you know, it's based upon the law. You see, if there's any pattern there to help you categorize people and you make the judgment over and over and over. That's the three things you do. So you take the proverb, where there is no counsel, the people fall. But in the multitude of counselors there is safety. Ah, that's good to know, especially if you're the king. Now here comes some, some, some advisors to you. And one says, hey, you know, I know a lot of people are going to tell you, but you need to, and they, they push you away from counsel. This is not talking about psychological therapeutical counsel, by the way. It's talking about in a legal sense, a magisterial sense. Where there's no counsel, the people fall. In the multitude of counselors, there is Safety. So you got a guy on your. What do you. What do you call your royal. Royal staff, your royal council, the. The. I don't know, the Dukes, you know, whatever they are out there. Yeah, you got all that and one of them saying, hey, yeah, you know, we really. This would be so much easier if. If there weren't 30 of us, there were only three of us, immediately, the king knows. Watch that guy. That's probably not the guy we're gonna want right there. Don't promote him. Let's get rid of him right there. You. So how do you do. How do you handle this? Like a king. You take it, you memorize it. When it comes time, you act on it, knowing it's based upon Torah. Chapter 11, verse. Verse 14 there. So, you know, go. Go with the multiplication of advisors. There's my judgment, my ruling. Chapter 12, verse 10. Again, we could. We could stop and go through every one of these. I think you probably are beginning to get the hint and saying, yeah, maybe we should not go through every one of them. 12, 12, 10. A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast, but the tender mercies of the wicked cruel. Now this one is. You've got a. You've got a. But a comparison here between the righteous man first and the wicked man. The righteous versus the wicked. Well, what's a king doing with all these judgments? He's trying to figure out, I got two people right here, who's righteous, who's wicked, and the righteous man regardeth the beast. The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Now, you notice how that's a little bit of a sarcasm, perhaps you would say that. You've got some guy who, you know, his tender mercy is to say thank you twice a year and becomes just. His tender mercies are nothing. They're not there. Okay, I'm trying. I'm the king in Judah. I'm trying to decide who should I favor. I got a line of people out there. I got to do something. And so maybe he just comes along and he says, hey, sir, you got. You got any pets? You got any animals? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. Well, how you treat them? Find out. You know, one of the things I've noticed, if. If you're in an animal world setting anywhere, there's some animals around, you pretty quickly see who regardeth the life of his beast and who doesn't. You can see who's cold, heartless and cruel really quick. So all of a sudden, the king. Yeah, I'm saying this. The king is able to know he is righteous because he takes good care of his dog. That's why I know he's righteous. And that makes this huge difference. That again, he doesn't have to dig into the case or he can look. And here's this wicked man doesn't know he's wicked, but he begins to ask about, you know, hey, tell me, tell me about your, your employees. I had them show up at 8:00. I had a guy show up at 8:01 once and I allowed him to keep his job the first time, but the second time I did not because I am a strict task master. That is what the Lord would have us to do. Okay, fella, you take good care of your dog. You get to. You. You get it? Your tender mercies show me that you're a wicked man. These are things that are tattletales. What I mean by the tattletail. I remember one time and a guy was showing me my water meter, he said, see that one that's moving right there? A little thing? I said, yeah. He said, that's the tattletale. He said, if you got a leak, that one's moving, you won't be able to see the other ones moving. You know, be several hours, you'll be able to see that one moving. Of all your waters turned off, that one's moving. There's a tattletale. Okay, these are, this is a tattletale right here. So just look around. Or, you know, if you have to, you call in his neighbor, say, how is he with his animals? What's the nicest thing he's ever done? You find out. There you go. You know, let's, let's talk about it. Incidentally, Incidentally, there's probably some universal truth right here. There are people who aren't really very kind to the waiter or the waitress. They're, they're, they, you know, they, they. Their tender mercy is they actually paid the bill before they left. No, they're not gonna. I. This used to be me a little bit. I'll tell you my own story. I. 30, 25 years ago, at least, I don't know, there was a Taco Bell near our church. And me, some of the staff guys, we would run over there quite often at lunch, was walking distance, go down to Taco Bell, and I would get the small drink because I knew the machine was right there and I could fill it however many times I want. I could drink. So why should I pay 50 cents more for the big drink? And then it dawned on me. They know who I am. I Don't want them to think I'm cheap. Pay the 50 cents, you're gonna drink it. And tell them thank you and be kind and ask their name. You know, all that kind of stuff. Sometimes there are some people who really don't have many tender mercies. Their tender mercy is, I was your customer. Isn't that good enough? No, it's not good enough. It shows you're wicked. It really does display a lot about the heart. And we ought to think about these things. Okay, that's chapter 12, verse 10. Let's jump down to chapter 13, verse 24, just again, getting a sample of these that we could look in. And we'll get there eventually. 13, 24, here we go. Ah, he that spareth his rod hateth his son. But he that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes. Betimes, by the way, means lickety split. He does it quickly, spare the rod. You know, there's, there's others. Spare the rod, spoil the child. Also I think that's Proverbs 20, 24, 26. But here, he that spareth his rod, hateth his son. So you, you, you, you come along and here is, I don't know, maybe it's. Maybe it's some discipline or, excuse me, a case between father and son, maybe, who knows? And what you've, what you've got there. Sorry about that. Buzzing. What you've got there is the king can say to the grown son. Tell me about your dad's discipline when you were growing up. Oh, you know that dad didn't believe in spanking. Dad, dad. No, no, no, no. He, he believed in talk. It, he. And several days afterwards, you know, he'd. He let it go for a while and then a few days later he would say, you know, I want to talk about something. And I would. I just want you to think about. And the king knows that's not the Torah way. And the king is, is really able to say, okay, now this son's got a case against his dad. And I can go back and see how he spared the rod on his son and say, this guy hates his son. I mean, some people do. This guy hates his son. So he may sound like he has a good case, but the King, he's got a tattletale. That's what these proverbs do. And they're, they're worded in such a way that you could, if you're the king, you could memorize these. You could know these things. You could recall it to mind pretty quickly. May not be able to get the chapter and verse. But hey, you can, you can do this and you can carry it out. Let's look at one more. Chapter 14, verse 12. And this will be the last one for this evening. There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Ah, sounds good. Familiar familiarity. So the king's got his advisors out there, his royal court. That's what I was trying to talk, I think of earlier. He's got his royal court and there is a guy that is arguing, let's, you know, let's, let's do this, let's do this, let's do this. And he seems really sincere about it. I mean, he believes it from the bottom of his heart. But maybe some others are saying, wait, wait, it goes against this, this proverb of our king. Or it goes against, it goes against the Torah. It goes against the teaching of the, of Moses. And the king said, yeah, but man, he expresses that so well and he feels so passionately about it. All he's doing is asking for a chance, you know, hey, can we start the department of education? This will be good for the children. It'll be good. And he, you know, goes on in this passionate, logical, economically feasible. Everything about it seems right, but it's against a few of these principles that we've got. There's a way which seemeth right to man. I don't make the judgment as the king. I don't make the judgment based upon how sincere you are about it. I don't make the judgment based upon how logical it sounds. I don't base. Make the judgment based upon how you can tell me that every king is doing it and how wonderful it is in their kingdom. Does this align with our covenants, with our Torah? That's how I'm going to do. Because if, if we just go with our heart, the end thereof leads to death. You're gonna have to bring something more to your than your hearts to this royal council and carry it out there. Now, I think you see the example here that the examples here that you can go through and you can look at these and see, okay, ah, these are quick ways for the king to make his judgments. I probably said that enough times that you're wishing. I wish you'd quit saying that. Quick ways for the king to make his judgments. Here's the danger. Someone goes away from here tonight and says, ah, the proverbs are quick ways for me to understand how to make judgments in my own life. Life that will mess you up. Because I want you to remember, neither you nor I are the King of Judah. Neither one of us are living under the covenants of the, of the Old Testament. And to misapply, let me say that different, to apply these proverbs to our life is to misapply them. Sure, pick up the, the good, wonderful nuggets that are there, but don't make this a principle in your life. If you're going to do that, base it upon something else because it's going to lead you to disappointment, heartache if you do it. Because we're not the king, we're not Israel, it's not ours. It worked for the king and it were it. It only works for the king and it only works for the king in their covenant. Even Benjamin Netanyahu couldn't carry this out. Today he lives in a, in a democracy, in a parliamentary system. It's not for him. They're not under the Torah today, can't carry out the book of Proverbs today, only the kings of Judah when they're under the covenants. And then you can take them. Now here is what we're going to do. In just a moment. I'm going to say hello, by the way, if you haven't put your name in. But you know, we went through some, some representatives, passages from chapters 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14. There's 15 through 29. I would love to hear from you. How's this? Here's what I think I'll do, but I might change my mind. There we. I can go through 15 through 29. Let's find the ones that are biggies. Train up a child in the way you should go, and when he's old, he's not depart there. Let's find the ones that are biggies. Let's go through that. But let's just know we've got this three point pattern. You memorize the proverbs knowing that they're based upon Torah. You look at the pattern in proverbs to help you make some decisions, quick decisions in life, and boom, you do it. Do we need to go through 595 proverbs to figure this out? Probably not. Would it be much of a blessing to you? Probably not. So I tell you what, let's, let's go at it this way for the next session, which is two weeks from now. For the next session, you go through chapters. Well, I'll go 10 through 29. Anywhere. 10 through 29, you find the proverbs, you say, I'm kind of interested in that one. We'll dig a little deeper on those. We'll carry those out and then we'll do chapters 29 and 30, which are very, very different than the rest of it, really. Three segments, four almost, you could count it, four segments. In the book of Proverbs, there's chapters one through nine, there's chapters ten through. Then there's chapter 30, and there's chapter 31. Those two at the last, again, are going to be very different as we look through those. So send me your proverbs. You look and I'll take the list. You can send it to randy randywhiteministries.org or put it in Ask the Question on the question box@askthetheologian.com and we'll take care of those. And I think that'll get us through to say, okay, I know the pattern of these. Be interesting to read. I'll read them. I'll know how to apply them from, from here on out. And we'll do that. Okay, let me now say hello to you. And I am going to look over, look over here. Get everything set up where I can see it. And let me say hello to the Giles family. Good to see you. Forney, Texas. Roger and Maryland in Wabasha, Minnesota, thanks for being here. Jack and Teresa down in Houston, Texas, good to see you. And the hall family in Auburn, Kentucky, welcome. Oh, Chris, that's a good comment. Sometimes proverbs are used inappropriately by believers against other believers. Yeah, you could probably just stop, say, sometimes they're used inappropriately, but that is one of the cases, you know. Well, you know, the proverb says that and it's, it's this application thing of trying to put it everything in our lives and carry it out that way. Jim and Piedmont, South Carolina, welcome. Glad, glad you're here. Good to, good to see you. And thank you very much. Here now. Whoops. Okay, I'm moving a little farther. I tried to, I tried to increase the font and I couldn't because I don't have the, the keyboard there. But I'll tell you what, I'll give it to Luca. He'll do it. Put that keyboard on there and do a control plus. But Alan in Portland, good to see you. Thanks for being here. Mike in Smithville, Missouri. Lucas, dad. So behave. You got to plug it in. Good to see you. And we've got. There you go. Linda in Lexington, thank you for being here. Eric in Ohio, God bless you. Appreciate you being here as, as well. And Lisa, good to see you. Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Did you get any snow? We got a really nice snow this week and was superb. And there now I can see it. Okay. Anyway, Lisa, Glad, glad you're here. Herb and Sherry and Lafayette, Louisiana, thanks for being here. God bless you. Daryl and Debbie in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, by the way. Let's see, I know Herb and Sherry and Daryl and Debbie have already signed up for Branson along with a good number of other people. People would love to see you there. Jim, good to see you. Grace Bible Church in Houston, Texas, thanks for being here. Pastor Luca, good to see you. Thanks for fixing my screen there. Jeff in Trinidad, Colorado, hey, congratulations. You know, Jeff works at the tourism division in city of Trinidad and there, what do you call it, Jeff, their welcome center that he runs was just voted the best public bathrooms in the state of Colorado. How's that? And he's one of our listeners. Ladies and gentlemen, what an honor. We're glad that Trinidad is known for good bathrooms. Rich and Jody, good to see you. Thanks for joining us this evening down in Pensacola, Florida. Winston Salem, North Carolina, glad you're here helping us unveil the proverbs. Stephen Green, God bless you. And Jennifer, good to see you in Vermont. Lovely Vermont. Thank you. Carol and Roger, they're going to be in Branson. With us out in Fresno, California, Ed, Nancy, and the right dividing dog, Forest, recuperating from two big dogs attacking him well last Friday. Well, my goodness, he how did did he rightly divide those dogs? That's what we want to know. But glad he's recuperating. And Ed, Nancy, and maybe even Forest. We'll see you in Branson. Looking forward to that Christ new creature. Good to see you, Ohio. Thanks for joining us. Appreciate that. Toby Duncan, Oklahoma, God bless you and glad you're here. Good to see the Schultz in Omaha, Nebraska. Hope you're doing well. Shirley out in Ridgecrest, California, God bless you. Thanks for being here. And oh, there's that's Nancy brings up something good here. Wouldn't it be easier to go through the proverbs and say this one you can take to the bank? I tell you what, I'll look through as we prepare for the next session as well. And see in chapters 10 through 29, is there one that is absolutely true in every dispensation? It's a truth built into the created order? There might be. And those would be very worth having, wouldn't they? And, and then there's, there's, there's others, you know, probably if we were to categorize this. I don't know, you got me thinking, Nancy. We, there's there's Maybe out of 595, maybe there's five. I'm going to guess that we would say these are true promises for anyone, anytime, anywhere. And then there's probably, I'm going to go with maybe even 60%. It's a little bit of a guess. 60% of the these proverbs, we would look at them and say, hey, there's a lot of truth here. There are some, there's some human dynamic things, group dynamics, individual psychology things that, yeah, that's a pretty good tattletale even in our day that you say and not, you know, don't, don't take this as a promise, but a lot of truth there. And then there's probably 40% of them in which you would say we saw some of those tonight. Which you would say, whoa, if you made that judgment as a judge in our society, you would be so messed up. And that's because there are some very unique covenant issues that are in there. One, you know, the, the, the, the, the diligent person is going to become rich and live a long time. That one's going to be hard to take to the bank, isn't it, in our day. So be interesting, put them in that kind of category. Thanks. Appreciate it. There's a proverb from Ohio. I always judge people by how my dog reacted to this. That's, it's probably a lot to that. Nicholas Bolingbroke, Illinois. Good to see you Miguel, Good to see you from the Dominican Republic. Hope you are doing well down there and glad, glad, glad you're on with us. Hope you're doing good ministry down there. We sure appreciate you and thank you very much and any others that I missed there. My apologies. Very glad that you are here with us. Go to randywhiteministries.org Click the Events button. You'll read all about Branson. You might have gotten it in our an email that went out the other day, but sometimes those get blocked and go to spam and all that kind of stuff. So randywhiteministries.org click the events button. You'll read all about our Branson conference. And again, systematic theology, a biblical literalist approach. It will be a full systematic theology from a biblical literalist approach, which is a dispensational, rightly dividing approach. And we'll I think we'll have fun and good fellowship with it and that'll that will be a blessing. And if you have questions about it, send it to randy@randywhiteministries.org be be fun to see you there. I got a new hotel this time. It's in Branson west and that's it's about five miles out of Branson. It's not just 10 minutes from downtown Branson over by Silver Dollar City right next door to Silver Dollar City. By the way, if you want to get in a little early and go don't plan on getting late by the way on going after the conference. If you want to go to Silver Dollar City because it's closed after the conference season ends there but it's open before so show up a few days early if you want to do that and in enjoy some time there. The, the Branson conference will be live streamed. Yes and yes. Herb, thank you for, for reminding me that you actually have to register twice. You register with us for the conference this year and then you call the hotel and register for them or go online. Now we have a group rate but it's not the best rate you'll find if, if you get on bestwestern.com look, look around, join the rewards program, use some points, whatever, especially early like this. Later on it's going to change. Later on will probably be the best price. But now, hey, go on now. Get the, get the good prices in and don't worry about being on our group because we don't get anything out of that anyway. We just want to you you get there as ch as cheap as you can and we're going to go to. Let me, before I say that, let me just say that clearly you make your hotel reservation totally separate from us and then you do your conference fee with us and the conference fee will clue include breakfast wherever you stay. By the way, we got, we got breakfast. We've got the David show at Sight and Sound. I'm excited about it because I've written a book on David, the Davidic Chronicles and so we'll be doing that on I believe that Saturday night. We got of course the book which probably I won't be surprised if it's not, you know, 400 page book or so. It's going to be a big one and we will have of course the conferences and the snacks and the Friday night potluck welcome time. All that kind of stuff would be a lot of fun, kind of a big family reunion. So I am very much looking forward to it it and thanks to each one of you. I think maybe I said hello to everybody and if not hello. Let me lead us in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father thank you for your, your goodness in helping us to understand these proverbs and make some sense of them in a way that all of a sudden makes them make sense that these are things that the King could take to the bank and could use to very quickly define Torah without perhaps completely knowing all the chapter and verse. And yet he could be a Torah righteous leader. So here in 20 chapters of this book, it gives him the little short sayings that he can just read through the day and put in his mind and his heart. And by fulfilling these, these issues within Torah within, within proverbs, he would be fulfilling the commands of Torah. We're grateful for it. In Jesus name, amen. Thanks each one of you for joining us around the great big electronic table tonight. Been fun. Sunday is Mother's Day. Mother's Day. We will not have the Bible study time. That's because we're having a breakfast for the ladies and the families. If you'd like to come make it to Taos, New Mexico, come on over. And we got breakfast during the Sunday school hour, so that will be off. But we will be with Ecclesiastes. If you haven't joined us for the Ecclesiastes study, it's online, you can check it out. We've got what, one, one, two, two sermons already? This will be the third one this Sunday. And looking at a little of Solomon as he comes on the front porch. So the book of Proverbs is the royal book. The book of Ecclesiastes is the front porch talk by the King, preacher, assembler. And we will check that out this Sunday as well. And then I'll be off next week. Not missing Sunday, but I will be missing Ask the Theologian next week and Wednesday and Thursday night. But Luke will be on Wednesday night and we'll broadcast then. Thanks very much. Sure appreciate being here and having this extended family. And you all are a blessing. I'll see you maybe tomorrow on Ask the Theologian. Thanks, Sa.