Prodded by Proverbs: Act Like Royalty!

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Act Like Royalty!

Deut 29.29 is one of my favorite verses (go ahead, look it up...I'm not doing all the work!)

I think it ties in with Proverbs 25.2, "It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out."

Not sure how it is the "glory of God to conceal," what do you think? (That's what the comments section is for by the way...so we can think and grow together...)

But I do want to be king-like and "search things out." You can increase my blood pressure by telling me what your church believes, or what your pastor thinks; but I really love to hear what you think!

Of course I am, by nature, a searcher. If I wasn't in full time vocational ministry, I'd want to be a research assistant for just about anybody. As it is, I shall "study (research) to show myself approved..."

1 comment:

UnknownApril 26, 2010 at 8:24 AM
What a great invitation - to search out how it is the 'glory of God to conceal' a matter!

Moses said, 'Now show me your glory.' The Lord said, 'I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you,... When my glory passes by, I will... cover you with my hand until I have passed by.'

The Lord God said, 'The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.'

When Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai.

Your eyes have seen all that the Lord did in Egypt to Pharaoh,... But to this day the Lord has not given you a mind that understands or eyes that see or ears that hear.

The heavens declare the glory of God;... There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.

"The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But... 'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'"

"As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and... I know that his command leads to eternal life."

The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word

I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness - the mystery that has been hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.

So, what do I think?? I think God's glory is His goodness. And when we chose the knowledge of good and evil before choosing life, God had to 'conceal' His goodness from those who love evil in order to reveal the greatness of His goodness to those who love Him (the kings), who are now called to radiate that glory in the darkness.
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Important Insights Concerning Reading Proverbs

Tim Keller (Redeemer Church, NYC) offers these important words:

Some years ago I preached through the book of Proverbs, and I learned two things I hadn't known about it. First, the Proverbs only give up their meaning cumulatively. No one proverb gives you the whole picture. If one proverb says, "the morally good always have a good life" and a later proverb says, "sometimes the morally good suffer" we think it's a contradiction. That's because we think of each proverb as an individual stand-alone promise. But they are not. All the proverbs on a given subject are meant to be taken together, each one modifying the others like the parallel clauses do. One gives you information about a topic; then subsequent ones come along and answer questions raised by the first one, or they condition and nuance a more blanket statement made earlier.

Chapters 10-15 tell us that the hard-working have enough to eat and the lazy will be poor. But starting in chapter 16, the exceptions to the customary-way-life-works come along. There is an order God has put into things that we must abide by, but, on the other hand, we can't see it all and so must expect exceptions. An example of how the Proverbs only give up their meaning cumulatively is the famous Prov 16:25 -- There is a way that seems right to a man, but that way leads only unto death. I've never heard this invoked except when the speaker wants to say to the listeners "don't trust your feelings." But earlier Proverbs repeatedly said -- "The way to destruction appears right to the fool." That is, fools are terrible at making plans because they reject the way of wisdom (not getting counselors, not being humble, not watching your words or controlling your emotions, etc). But 16:25 comes along and says -- "But the way of destruction can appear right not just to a fool, but sometimes to anyone (to 'a man'.) Even if you follow the way of wisdom to the "T" and make your plans as well as can be -- sometimes your life can still blow up! This is a broken world. The wise know that sometimes all paths may run ill.

So Proverbs cannot be "dipped into". It only repays very long study in which you keep the whole book in your head and compare passage with passage. How is that best done? In a community! Some commentators argue that the book of Proverbs was originally written as a manual to be studied by a community of young men under the mentorship of older men -- for a number of years. Each proverb was to be discussed and considered and compared to the others. Examples from life were to be shared. In other words, Proverbs may have been written to be the basis for deep, comprehensive personal growth through mentoring in community. It touches on every area of life.

It is also noteworthy that in Proverbs wisdom constantly raises her voice in the city's public places -- the commerce/market (where the roads converge), the court/justice system (the gate), etc. (Prov 1:20-21; 9:1-4.) For years I have been struck by the fact that discipling people for faithful living in their vocation is different than other kinds of discipleship. When I try to disciple someone to do work in the church, it is more one-way (I am the expert in Bible and ministry) and information-driven (I download my knowledge.) But how do you disciple a Christian actor to think out what roles to take, or a Christian financier to think out how to invest and how to treat profits? The Bible does not give us so much hard and fast rules as 'proverbs' -- motives, goals, and values that have to be applied with wisdom to situations in the world. And that wisdom happens more through communal reflection on Scripture, especially a text like Proverbs.

How can we best integrate our faith with our work? I think we need more experienced people in a field meeting with younger persons in that field and working through a book like Proverbs in community, always applying its insights to the work they are doing in the world.

Prodded by Proverbs

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Sunday, April 25, 2010

Act Like Royalty!

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