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Primum Mobile is a quarterly web magazine. This issue and all its contents are © Copyright 2004-2009 by the editors. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.
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The Gospel According to the Proverbs, Chapter 3
A Selection
by Paul Lytle
Over the last year, Primum Mobile editor Paul Lytle has been blogging through the book of Proverbs, one verse at a time. Please feel free to stop by to say hello. We have made all the blogs from chapter 3 available in a handy PDF file, which you can download here. Chapter 1 can be downloaded here, and chapter 2 here.
Below we have picked out four of the chapter 3 entries to republish here. We hope you will enjoy them.
The theology of dad
“Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.”
-Proverbs 3:7
A good father gives us so much insight into the relationship between the Christian and God. It is unfortunate that a good father (or fathers in general) has become so rare in our society. There is so much theology that can be learned by just having dad around.
Maybe that’s why the Church has become so weak in this age. At least that’s one of the reasons. We are so confused about the way God works because we didn’t have fathers or our fathers were jerks.
The fear of the Lord is one of those things that get people worked up now. They do not understand how a loving God can and should also be feared. I don’t have an issue with it. Maybe it’s because I had (and have) a good dad.
I don’t have a doubt that my dad loves me. It never occurred to be that he didn’t. He was always there for me, always supportive, always ready to help. He is a loving father. But I also feared him. He had authority over me. It was ultimately his decision if I could go out and play ball or use the Nintendo. He could punish me, and often did. (Let’s face it – I deserved it a lot.)
I never got too full of myself in that house. I never started to think that I was in charge of the family or that my words had any sway beyond a kind and honest consideration. I never became too proud of my position there, as I am apt to do in every other area of my life. Why? Because of the fear of my dad. There is no question that my parents were in charge.
Our heavenly Father is like that. We can go to Him, talk to Him, get His advice, learn from Him. He loves us, and He wants us to go to Him with everything going on in our lives. And we should also fear Him, for He does have authority. He does have the ability and the will to chastise us. Our prayers should not be commands. Out of love He will listen and kindly and honestly consider us, but it is He who is in charge here.
Does that frighten you? It does not frighten me, because whatever punishment I received from my earthly father helped shape me into a better man. He was not doing it out of revenge or sadism, but out of love, to guide me and instruct me. I am thankful for it. So too does God guide us (and better still), sometimes through pain.
Despite our Father’s love, many of us do not fear Him, and the result is we become wise in our own eyes. We become proud. We start thinking we’re in charge of the household, when we are only children under His care. Have you seen children like that? The kind who walk over their parents as though they were the ones with authority? Such a terrible sight it is, the likes of which I have never otherwise beheld. It fills me with such sorry misery when I see it that I am left shaken for days.
Do not be so bold with our Father, because unlike some parents who do not care enough to punish a misbehaving child, our Father is worthy of reverent fear.
He is also worthy to be trusted with all things. Like a good father He is ready to forgive a wayward child as soon as that child returns home. He may punish, but He will always love. He loves so much that He sent His Son, Jesus, to die for our sins, to take the wrath and just punishment for our sins instead of us.
Return to Him in repentance and faith, and you will find Him waiting for you with arms wide.
He’s a good Dad.
The theology of navels
“It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.”
-Proverbs 3:8
At one time in my life, I would have looked at this verse in a certain way. I would have seen healing and refreshment and said, “Ah, yes, so it is. When we turn to the Lord in times of trial, it is like healing and refreshment. He comforts us and gives to us peace. He guides us through the hard times, just as in Psalm 23:4, ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.’”
That’s what I would have said. And I would have been true, but rather missing the point.
And while I love the ESV translation of the Bible (which is why I use it almost exclusively now), the ESV misses it here too.
The King James Version is a bit more literal when it says, “It shall be health to thy navel.” Navel? Yep. Well, doesn’t that just mean it provides the body with healing, just like it says in the other versions? Well, yeah.
But the image here is not one of momentary and occasional healing, but of a feeding and provider through an umbilical cord. That image is so important to the verse, because if you don’t get that image, you’re going to miss what Solomon is saying.
I once saw the provision and healing of God as something we need in times of trouble, when our soul gets heavy and we become weary. Then we would turn to God and be drawn into Him, and He would heal our spiritual (and sometimes physical) wounds.
That is true, but it is more than that. God’s healing does not come like a meal – at certain times of day and to varying degrees – but it is rather like a mother’s provision for her unborn child. We are constantly connected to God, constantly being protected, guided, fed, and formed. So, yes, God is with us when we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but Psalm 23 never tells us that this is the only time He will be with us.
So too is the next image. By “refreshment to your bones,” Solomon, I believe, is speaking of the constant circulation of blood through the marrow that keeps the bones strong. If you remove that source of life, the bone becomes brittle and breaks.
In other words, it is not that we should turn to Him in times of trouble, but “In all your ways acknowledge him” (Proverbs 3:6).
Guidance and provision come from God continuously. When we submit to Jesus as Lord, we are given the Holy Spirit. Not for a moment, but for the rest of our days. Hebrews 7:25 tells us that Jesus is always making intercession for us with the Father. James 1:5 tells us we can go to the Father for wisdom.
Finally, Jesus told us this, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). He is truly with us always. Though He died for us on the Cross, He rose again, and lives still. He is eternal, and through Him we can live forever with Him. Repent and believe in Him, and you will find Him. He will not leave or forsake you, not even after death.
Driven into waiting arms
“for the LORD reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.”
-Proverbs 3:12
You know, I was listening to a sermon series by Mark Driscoll a few months ago, and this particular sermon was on trials. Even though he set the sermon schedule a year in advance, he knew that particular was going to be rough. If a sermon on trials was coming up, it would undoubtedly be surrounded by trials. In the same way, my mother, who is a Bible study teacher, has vowed to never teach the Book of James again because of all the trials she went through while teaching about trials.
I hope no one misunderstands. This is not God punishing people for teaching certain passages. Quite the contrary! This is God timing things so that when you face trial, you’re already reading the right passages. He’s timing it so you see what He is doing right from His Word while He is doing it.
In my case, I had just started my little series on pain when the call came. There was a death in my wife’s family. We hurried down to her hometown over the weekend for the funeral. I am writing this on the very day we got home.
Right now, my wife is on the phone, trying to comfort a family member. I really don’t know whether she’s going to help much or not. She is pointing to Jesus, because He is the only real comfort either of us knows. This family member will either hear the call to Christ, or think my wife is being terribly insensitive.
It has been a very painful half year for my wife, and there have been times when I have made the same plea to her. Turn to Jesus. It has been the sort of pain that could have broken her, sent her into wild depressions. It didn’t. She leaned on God for strength, and now she is passing on the message of the Cross to her family.
I’m proud of her. More than that, I’m happy for her.
Pain can either turn you to the right road or the wrong road. It can either make you see the folly in your life and cause you to change, or it can make you chase folly all the more. God calls out to us through pain. In pain He tells us that all is not okay, that it is not right.
Not that He is to blame for death. That’s ultimately our fault. If it had not been for sin, there would not have been death. But we sinned, and we earned death. Death is here because of us. But God can use it. God can use pain to try to reach us.
A good parent, this verse tells us, disciplines his children. This we should already know. Only the worst parents let their children grow up without boundaries, without discipline, and without consequences. We, like wayward children, have run after our own desires and lusts. Out of love, God allows pain to come into our lives. It is through trials that we become “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:4).
Like wayward children, we have a choice as to how to respond to that pain. Do we recognize our own folly? Do we realize the futility of our pursuits? Do we come to realize what is really important? Or do we run farther into ourselves?
I don’t know how my wife’s family will respond to her pleas tonight. I am praying that this pain will not be wasted. I am praying that this pain will drive them into the arms of Jesus.
Creation by wisdom
“The LORD by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens;”
-Proverbs 3:19
I had a friend point this verse out to me a year or so ago, and ever since it has not ceased to stun me. The implications of it make my mind quake with the possibilities.
By wisdom He founded the earth. He measured every curve, every orbit, every weight, and every pull, set this place upon a divinely ordained path, perfectly set for His creation. Every mountain He built, without error, down to every electron that spins within an atom. The weight and makeup of the air He created, flawlessly. It is His hand that guides history, turning everything toward the good for His children. He draws people to Him, even when their entire beings seek rebellion. Each person He knows from the womb and before, and He knows each hair on a man’s head. He provides for the birds and causes the flowers to bloom. All of this in magnificent balance He controls: all for His glory.
I am listening to Wagner as I write this, and I am amazed at how much musical understand it takes to compose a prelude as he did. The understanding of tone, of rhythm, and emotion. Where to swell and where to hold back. How to draw a heart into a piece of music.
This particular prelude is about eight minutes long (from the third act of Tristan und Isolde, if you are curious). In these eight minutes Wagner has done something that I have not the understanding to do. I have studied music my whole life, and I cannot compose like this. It is wondrous. And yet Wagner merely holds an orchestra together for eight minutes. How much greater still is He who holds all of history together for all of eternity!
I wonder how much wisdom I really bring to my own life. Am I coming to my marriage in wisdom, or in something else? What about my friendships? My job? I can hardly hold my own life together, I fear. How much greater is He who holds together even the cells in my body?
It’s strange how we follow our own wisdom in life, that same wisdom that has so often failed us. It’s strange that my default mode is to fix it myself instead of turning to God. In this, perhaps, I show how little wisdom I truly have.
By wisdom God created all that there is, and by wisdom He created me too. Perhaps the most wondrous thing of all is that He still loves me. He still hears me. He still speaks to me.
He died for me.
This verse is a pun. I’ve been reading it closely for a year, and I only now just got it. We’ve been talking a lot lately about how Wisdom, as depicted in this section of Proverbs, is a symbol for Jesus. So when it says that God founded the world by wisdom, it means that literally, but it also means that God founded the world by Jesus. And that’s exactly what we find is true in Hebrews 1:2: “but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.”
It was through Jesus that the world was created, and it is also Jesus that we can be saved. In my own wisdom, I have ruined nearly everything I’ve touched. I have no right to claim anything from God. And yet He has given me the right to be His adopted son through Jesus. How are we so stubborn as to not make Him to focus of our every breath? How is it we think we know better than Him? Does it not make sense to seek His way in our every turn?
By wisdom God founded the earth. By love He chased me, even into death. By grace He gives me life. By awe, wonder, and love I am brought time after time to Him.
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