Proverbs 1

CHAPTER 1You may not consider the Book of Proverbs a very thrilling story, but it is. I hope we can get in step with the spirit of God in this book, because it has a real message for each one of us. It is particularly slanted to young menand applies to young women also. It has a special message for youth. This is a day, as every day has been, when young people are looking for answers to the questions of life. I want you to notice as we get into this book that it is not a haphazard sort of thing. It has a definite message. I know a great many people who feel that we can just reach in and lift out a proverb here and there. I think it is all right to do that, but the point is that when we take it out and look at it, we should also put it back where it belongs and look at it in its context. The diamond belongs in its setting, and in this case the setting is the Book of Proverbs. Some people are inclined to read the Book of Proverbs very much like the man who said, “I enjoy reading the dictionary, but the stories certainly are short.” Maybe you feel that way about Proverbs, but I hope you will see it differently as we study the book.

Proverbs 1:1

This certainly identifies the writer as King Solomon. Evidently Solomon gathered together many proverbs from other sources. He was the editor of all and the author of some. Also we are told that he wrote more proverbs than appear in this book. The first section of the book is a contrast between wisdom and folly. This includes chapters 1-9.

Proverbs 1:2

THE BOY IN THE HOME STARTING OUT IN LIFEAs the boy starts out in life, these are the instructions that God gives him. There are ten words used in this section which seem to be synonymousand, of course, they are relatedbut they are not the same. I would like to take each of these words and put it under the microscope. We will find that they are not synonyms. Nor are they piled up to make an impressive beginning. Every word of God is pure, we are told, so let us look at some of these. “To know wisdom.” What is meant by wisdom? The word wisdom in the Scriptures means “the ability to use knowledge aright.” It occurs in this book alone thirty-seven times. It is an important word in the Bible. It means the right use of knowledge. There are a great many brilliant people who have knowledge; yet they lack wisdom. They don’t seem to use their knowledge aright. Let me add something more here. Wisdom in the Old Testament means Jesus Christ for the believer today. “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1Co_1:30). Notice that wisdom is number one. Christ is the wisdom for the believer today. And to know wisdom is to know Jesus Christ. Paul gave as his ambition: “That I may know him …” (Php_3:10). Oh, that the same ambition to know Christ might grip your soul and my soul today! We need that. Wisdom, therefore, is Christ. Wisdom is the ability to use our knowledge aright. To know Christ is not to play the fool; it is to be a wise man. I saw a bumper sticker the other day which read: “Wise men still seek Him.” Friend, you may not be brilliant, but when you receive Christ and come to know Christ, then you have wisdom. “Instruction.” The word instruction appears twenty-six times in Proverbs. Sometimes the same Hebrew word is translated by the word chasten. Now that is interesting. Let me give an example of this. Pro_13:24 says, “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.” Here, “to chasten” actually means “to give instruction.” Therefore, the word instruction means you teach by discipline. That is a forgotten truth today.

Our contemporary society is certainly out of kilter and out of step with the Word of God. For example, we are told that lawbreakers are put in prison to discipline them and to reform them. That never was the purpose for dealing with criminals according to the Word of God. The purpose there was to judge them, punish them. No other reason was ever given. On the other hand, when you are dealing with a son, you discipline him because that is a part of his instruction.

You are to chasten him. You are to teach him by disciplining him. Your purpose is not to punish him. We often hear it said, “That child should be punished!” No, that is not the purpose of turning little Willie across your knee and paddling him. I hope you do paddle him. But why do you do it?

To punish him. To punish him? No, to teach him by discipline. Our purposes are all confused todaywe discipline criminals and punish our children. We need to get back to God’s purposes. Our schools today are practicing the “new methods” of teaching.

What about the old method of teaching by discipline? That is absolutely out. I believe the board of education being applied to the seat of learning is desperately neededboth in the home and in the school. A man asked a father, “Do you strike your children?” The father answered, “Only in self defense.” That’s about what it has come to in our daythe children are bringing up the parents! They are disciplining the parents and telling them what they ought to do. I heard recently of a young man who gave his mother and father a lecture on how they should be and what they should do. Yet that young man was under a court order: he had been arrested and was out on bail! I believe the parents needed a lecture, but he wasn’t the one to give it. They should have had a lesson on how to discipline their son, and it should have been given to them years earlier. Instruction is to teach by discipline. God, our heavenly Father, is excellent at teaching in that way. I think I have learned most when He has taken me to the woodshed. Those lessons were very impressive. “To perceive the words of understanding.” Understanding means intelligence. We have another word: discernment. We need to recognize that God expects us to use our intelligence. He expects us to use a great deal of sanctified common sense. In verse Pro_1:3 is the word justice. Justice is righteousness, and it means “right behavior.” I remember a sociology professor in college who used to teach us that right was relative. He used to ask with a smirk, “Well, what is ‘right’?” I didn’t know the answer then, but now I know that right is what God says is right. It is God who separates the light from the darkness. I can’t make the sun come up, and I can’t make the sun go down. Only God is running His universe.

He makes light; He makes darkness. God is the One who declares what is right, and God declares what is wrong. So you may ask, “Is it right to do this or that?” If God says it is right, it is right. Or you may ask, “Is this wrong?” It is wrong if God says it is wrong. Right and wrong are not relative terms except in the minds of the contemporary average man. The prevailing feeling is that what the average man does becomes the norm; it becomes the standard.

That is one of the reasons there is so much dishonesty and gross immorality today. Right and wrong have become relative terms. God says they are not. Just like light and darkness, they are absolutes. “Judgment.” Judgment means that you and I are to make judgments. It is the same as making a decision. The believer comes to crossroads in his life. He must make decisions about which way to go. Before I came to California, I had a call to a pastorate in the East, and I had a call here to the West Coast. I honestly didn’t know which way to go. I had to bring it to the Lord, and I had to test out a few things. After I had made a test, I found I was to come to California, and I thank God for it. We have to make decisions, and we should make them as the children of God. “Equity.” This refers to principle rather than conduct. The child of God is not put under rules, but we are given great principles which should guide us. For example, Rom_14:22 puts down the great principle: “…Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.” The believer should have enthusiasm for what he does. There is too much Christian conduct which is like walking on eggshells. People say, “I don’t know whether I should do this or not.” My friend, the principle is that if you cannot enter into it enthusiastically, you ought not to do it at all. What we do, we ought to do with anticipation, excitement, and joy.

We should be fully persuaded in our own minds that that is the right course of action. We ought not have a compunction of conscience after we have done it. Happy is the man whose conscience does not condemn him in the things which he allows. If you look back on it and say, “Oh, I wish I hadn’t done that,” then it was wrong for you to do. In questionable matters about which the Scriptures are silent, this is a great principle that will guide you in your conduct. If you can look back on what you did yesterday and say, “Hallelujah, it was a great day for me,” then you know that what you did was right for you to do. Another principle is that we ought to bear each other’s infirmities, rather than simply pleasing ourselves. We should ask ourselves, Is this thing I am doing an offense to my neighbor or to my brother in Christ? These are great principles of conduct that should guide the believer. “Give subtilty to the simple.” Being prudent is the meaning of giving subtility to the simple; it is to act prudently. It means to be wise in what we do. A child of God ought not to act foolishly. I remember counseling a young couple who went to the mission field. They just shut their eyes to reality, as it were, and went to the mission field. I personally urged them not to go because I could see they were not fitted for it. They came back as casualties. They had actually made shipwrecks of their lives by going to the mission field. They had not been prudent. They had not shown wisdom in their particular circumstances. Remember that the Lord Jesus said, “…be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” (Mat_10:16). “To the young man knowledge.” Knowledge is information that is useful. I remember a motto on a bulletin board in the science lab of the college which I attended. I have forgotten all the formulas I ever learned in chemistry, but I have never forgotten the motto. It was this: “Next to knowing is knowing where to find out.” That is one reason it is good to have the Bible handy and to learn to read itif you don’t know, you surely can know where to find out. “Discretion.” This means thoughtfulness. This is for the young man and young people in general who are thoughtless. I am very frank to say that I was a very thoughtless young man, and I confess that I am still that way. It is always a pleasure to find a thoughtful Christian. I have several wonderful Christian friends here in Southern California. Presently I am getting ready to take a trip to the East, and at this time of year it is a little cool back there. One of these friends came by and brought me a lovely sweater. That was thoughtful. There are many wonderful Christians who are thoughtful, and it is a characteristic all of us ought to have. The Book of Proverbs will help us see that these wonderful qualities should be incorporated into our lives.

Proverbs 1:5

THE CHALLENGEThis has been the characteristic of all great men. They never reached the place where they felt that they had learned everything. I listened to a young man on television the other night who had skyrocketed to fame on rock music. The thing that characterized him was his arrogance. He knew it all. I don’t think anyone could tell that young man anything. Proverbs says that a wise man will hear and will increase learning. “A man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels.” That is actually the challenge of this whole book. Solomon says that if you are smart, you will listen to what is being said in this book. The spirit of God has a lot of choice things to say in the Book of Proverbs. They are great truths, expressed in short sentences.

Proverbs 1:6

Another proverb carries this same thought: “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter” (Pro_25:2). I love that. God has given the gospel message clearly to be declared from the housetops. But there is a great deal of truth in the Word of God that is like diamonds. God has not scattered diamonds around on the ground. Jewels and that which is valuable have been hidden away for man to look for and to find. The gold and the diamonds and other precious things must be mined; oil must be drilled. That is the way that God does it. It is the glory of God to conceal a thing. The Word of God deserves all the study that you can possibly bring to it. The Lord Jesus said, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life …” He didn’t say you are not to search the Scripture. He said search the scriptures. You just think that you have found eternal life, because you haven’t really searched them. You have been reading the Bible, but you haven’t found the real message that is there. The real treasure there is Christ. “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me” (Joh_5:39).

My friend, if you haven’t found Christ in the Bible, you simply have not been mining for diamondsyou haven’t been digging deep enough. “To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.” In other words, God has put these great truths here in His Book. The tragedy of the hour is the ignorance of the Word of God in both pulpit and pew. There needs to be a serious, concentrated study of the Word of God. Somehow there is an idea today that one can read over a passage once and then you have it all. I trust you will see that you cannot get the nuggets out of the Word of God without study. When I am in Florida I always enjoy going to the home and laboratory of Thomas A. Edison at Fort Myers. There is a museum there now. The thing that has always amazed me is his search for synthetic rubber. Firestone and Henry Ford had their homes right next to Thomas A. Edison, and you can understand why they were interested in the project and were working with him. There were several hundred test tubes in his lab. Edison was taking everything that was imaginable and testing it to see if he could get synthetic rubber from it. Do you know he found some of it in dandelions, of all things. That would be the last place I would look for synthetic rubber! But that was the test he was making. As I stood in that laboratory and looked at those hundreds of test tubes and thought of the hours that he and his helpers had spent there, testing this and that and the other thing in order to try to find it, I thought, My, how little attention is given to the Word of God where one could do some real testing and some real study. The challenge of the Book of Proverbs to us today is: Dig in! It is the challenge to do serious study. “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2Ti_2:15).

Proverbs 1:7

KEY TO THE BOOKThere is an interesting contrast here: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” They do not learn from it. I heard a little bit of nonsense to illustrate this. A man driving down the highway had a flat tire, so he pulled over to the side of the road. It happened he was parked by an insane asylum, and one of the men from the asylum was on the other side of the fence. He was watching the man as he changed the tire. He didn’t say anything but just stood there and watched. As the man took off the wheel of the car, he placed all the nuts that he had taken off into the hubcap.

Then he accidentally tilted the hubcap so all the nuts fell out and went down into a sewer, and he couldn’t retrieve them. He stood there scratching his head wondering what in the world he was to do. The man behind the fence who had been watching him said, “Why don’t you take a nut off each of the other wheels and put them on this wheel? You could drive safely down to the filling station, and there you can buy nuts so that you can fix your wheel.” The man looked at him in amazement. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he asked. “You are in the institution and I am out, and yet you are the one who thought of it.” The onlooker answered. “I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid!” Well, this Book of Proverbs is attempting to get you and me out of a position of being stupid in life today. I think we shall find it to be a great help to us. This book has quite a bit to say about stupidity, as we shall see.

Proverbs 1:8

That is the important home relationship. There are many who are reading this who have come from homes in which they had a godly father and a godly mother. They were instructed by them, and they have never gotten away from the things taught them in the home. On the other hand, may God have mercy on the parents who are not instructing their little ones in the things of God!

Proverbs 1:10

TEMPTATION OUTSIDE THE HOMENow the movement is outside the home. When the little fellow goes away, who is the first fellow he meets? Generally that contact will be with a sinner because most of the human race falls into that categorythey have not come to Christ. All of us are sinners, but the boy will meet the unredeemed who is really living in sin. So what should his attitude be? “Consent thou not.” You remember that I said you would find a proverb which would fit characters in the Bible. Probably you can also find a proverb to fit every one of your friendsalthough you may not want to tell them what it is! This is a proverb that fits someone in the Scriptures. Wouldn’t you say it describes Joseph when he was taken as a slave down into the land of Egypt and was enticed by Potiphar’s wife? He did not consent to her. This proverb is an example of his experience.

Proverbs 1:11

The sinner has a plan and a program to get something for nothing. He lives off someone else and makes someone else suffer in order that he might prosper.

Proverbs 1:14

This is the philosophy of the hour: Let’s all live out of the same purse. Generally those who hold this philosophy are doing nothing themselves. They want the working people to share what they have worked for, but they don’t have any contribution to make to it at all. That is a false philosophy, but it is one that is common among young people today. It is the thinking and the mood of the present hour. Use all kinds of methods, even crooked methods, to get something for nothing. After my father was killed in a cotton gin accident when I was fourteen years old, my mother took my sister and me back to Nashville, which was her home. I had to go to work: I couldn’t continue in school because we had no finances at all. I got a job at a wholesale hardware company. They sold practically everything, including candy. I worked in the mailing department with several other boys. I want to tell you, they were mean fellows.

They had figured out a way to get into a box of candy and take out just one piece and never be detected. Since it was a wholesale place, there were about fifty boxes, and by taking one piece from each box they could fill up several boxes for themselves. I must confess that I cooperated that first day, and then my conscience bothered me that night. I thought, This is not right. I was stealing. The next day I made things right, but I couldn’t return the candy because I had already eaten some of it. After that, the management would let me buy a box of six candy bars wholesale. I would sell them a nickel a bar to the men and women who worked there in the office. That last candy bar was my profit because the whole box had cost me twenty-five cents wholesale. That was the way I got my candy. I had to work for it, and I felt that was the best way to do it. It is so easy for a young man to fall in with a group that is doing shady things. And it is easy to join in with a group who “goof off” at work, as they say today. They do not return a full day’s work for a full day’s wages. It is so easy to cooperate in that type of thing. That is why the young man is given this advice when he leaves home.

Proverbs 1:15

This is the kind of separation on which the Bible is very clear. “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord …” (2Co_6:17) was referring to idolatry, but it certainly can be applied here. Solomon said, “Get rid of that crooked crowd that you’re with.”

Proverbs 1:16

When you get into that type of thing, it will eventually lead you to your own destruction. You will be caught in your own net.

Proverbs 1:19

This is the condemnation of the beginning of covetousness. We live in a materialistic age today. I have an article here that is written by a Ph.D., a college professor. He takes the position that colleges must get away from the teaching of crass materialism. Therefore, they must return to religion, as he expresses it. You see, there are a few who are beginning to wake up. Covetousness is the great sin of the hour. That is what the proverb is condemning here.

Proverbs 1:20

INVITATION TO THE SCHOOL OF WISDOMWisdom is urging the young man to come to school and really learn something. Come to her college.

Proverbs 1:21

Simplicity is stupidity. She asks, “How long will you be stupid?” A young man (who is in his twenties now) told me he had been on drugs for three years. He kept repeating, “Oh, how stupid I was, Dr. McGee.” Well, here is the question: How long are you going to be stupid? When are you coming to the school of wisdom?

Proverbs 1:23

Now I will drop down to the end of the chapter:

Proverbs 1:32

It is spiritual suicide to turn from Christ.

Proverbs 1:33

What an expression this is! I wonder if this could speak of our nation? We are an affluent society; we measure every man by his bank account, the home he lives in, the car he drives. Are we enjoying the prosperity of fools? Are we living in a fool’s paradise?