Wisdom Lit - The Proverbs

For those of you that don't know, my name is Greg Hampton.

I'm one of the pastors here at the house.

And if we've never met, I'd love to meet you.

If you'd like to get a coffee sometime,

put that on your connection card.

I would love to meet you somewhere

and I'll buy you a coffee or tea or whatever it is

that's your preferred beverage and just get to know you.

We are in our third week of a series

that we're calling Wisdom Lit.

That's because there's a whole category of scriptures

that are called wisdom literature.

And so we are just looking at the different parts

of those Bibles or the themes that are found

in those Bible passages that might have something

to say to us about wisdom.

So today we're actually gonna be going to

the most obvious place for wisdom in the scriptures.

If you feel brave, I'm gonna count to three,

say the Proverbs.

That's right.

So the Proverbs are traditionally attributed

to King Solomon, but it's actually a lot like

the book of Psalms in the sense that it wasn't

actually written by just one person.

The Psalms is actually a compilation that's broken

into five different books, but there's many different

authors and the book of Proverbs actually has

at least five different authors, but one of the primary

ones that gathered those sayings together

and compiled those things would have been King Solomon.

The Solomon's origin story is pretty interesting.

It's pretty unique in the scriptures

if you're familiar with it.

He's the son of King David.

David was the second king, so then Solomon

becomes the third king.

God chooses him to follow in King David's footsteps.

Now he wasn't the oldest, he's actually right

in the middle of about 20 kids that King David had

with multiple different wives.

He's actually, but he is the oldest surviving son

of his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba.

There's something interesting when you find out

these things, oh he's the wisest man that ever lived

and then you find out his origin, you're like,

oh how amazing is it that someone with that backstory,

with some of the tragedy of where he began

of his father's choices, that this person becomes

being considered so wise.

Part of that origin story is also that when God

chosen to become king, God said, what would you like?

I'll give you anything that you want as you set out

to be king over Israel and Solomon, instead of asking

for riches, he asks for wisdom so that he would rule

over God's people with wisdom and so because he asked

for wisdom instead of riches, it says that God gave him

both, because of that, Solomon ended up building

the kingdom, growing the kingdom, expanding the kingdom.

He built the first temple for the Lord.

It was something that his father had wanted to do

but Yahweh had told him, no, this will be something

that your son does and of course we know that Solomon

became ridiculously wealthy but Solomon also took

700 wives and 300 concubines.

He saddled the people with giant financial burdens.

He made deals with countries that God had told Israel

to avoid and in his later years, he worshiped false gods

and idols which led to the kingdom splitting in two.

So was Solomon wise?

Yes.

But was he also foolish?

Yes.

This is one of those fascinating things about the scriptures.

Said this 100 times over the years, one of the things

I love about the scripture that does not hide people's faults.

The Bible will hold someone up as a wise person

or a man after God's own heart and then show you

all the horrible and sinful things that they did.

David meets consequences for his sins but he's not

stripped of his title as a man after God's own heart.

Solomon is not stripped of his title as wisest king

of Israel, there's something to be learned

in that about wisdom.

There are no perfect people of any kind.

There are only people with patches of wisdom.

And if you gather enough pieces, they come together

like a blanket.

That's how I would describe the Proverbs,

that's how I would describe the Psalms.

They are like blankets of wisdom, they are all the best

pieces that have been brought together to cover you.

Psalms are a collection of songs and poems.

Proverbs is a collection of sayings.

It's the only book like it in the scriptures.

It is a collection of sayings, there's maybe one and a half

chapters that is a little bit more like a story

or has a little bit more of a narrative to it.

But almost all of it is just saying after saying

after saying, it would be the equivalent today

of King Solomon having a Twitter account just saying

a saying, a saying, and they all got compiled together.

And verse after verse challenge us to ask, am I wise?

Is this wise?

Or is this foolish?

If you're familiar with the Beatitudes in the gospel,

the sayings of Jesus, Proverbs is a lot like that,

just the entire book, line after line, touching on

everything from finances and fighting to love and leadership.

Every day when I drive Wallace to school,

I have in his side of the car, in the door,

a Psalms and Proverbs, and every day on the way to school,

he reads part of a Psalm or part of a Proverb.

And on the way to school, we discuss what we think

it might mean.

Because this is how they're meant to be used.

They're meant to shape our steps.

It's meant to cause us to think about how we will live

today and maybe look back and consider how today we lived.

So today, we're gonna jump into the Proverbs.

If you wanna grab your Bible, we're gonna be opening up

to a bunch of different places in the Proverbs,

but it goes like this, it goes,

Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes.

Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes.

If you see any of those, you know that you're in

the right neighborhood.

If you don't have a Bible, there are Bibles on the tables.

There's also Bibles on the bookshelf, out in the lobby

if you wanna take one home or feel free to download

the Bible from any of the digital app stores.

But we also have a tradition of giving the Bible

our full attention when it's read in the context

of a sermon.

You can do that any number of ways, but if you'd like

to stand with me, you are welcome to do that

as you are able.

I'm gonna start in 1318, Proverbs 1318.

And I'm gonna change chapters almost five or six times here.

So Proverbs 1318 says this,

whoever disregards discipline comes to poverty and shame,

but whoever heeds correction is honored.

Proverbs 1415, the simple believe anything,

but the prudent give thought to their steps.

Proverbs 1813, to answer before listening,

that is folly and shame.

Proverbs 1821, the tongue has the power of life and death

and those who love it will eat its fruit.

Proverbs 1917, whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord

and he will reward them for what they have done.

Proverbs 29, seven, 29, seven, the righteous care

about justice for the poor, but the wicked

have no such concern.

Let us pray.

God of every tribe, every tongue, every color,

every nation, we thank you for the scriptures

that they have persisted throughout the millennia.

In this case, they were gathered together,

all the sayings put together in one place.

Whatever you have for us to learn today,

I pray that it would stick,

that it would become a part of the framework of our faith,

that our faith would become stronger

as we become more like your son Jesus.

Amen?

Amen, thanks, y'all, you can have a seat.

Whoever disregards discipline comes to poverty and shame,

but whoever heeds correction is honored.

As you read through the Proverbs,

it becomes extremely obvious that if you struggle

with correction, you will struggle to find wisdom.

I get it.

Most of us, if not all of us, have had a bad boss.

Most of us have had a bad boss.

Most of us, if not all of us, have had a bad boss.

We had a mean teacher, we had a short-tempered parent,

we had an impatient pastor.

I'm not always as patient or wise

as I would like you to think that I am.

I know that so much of the correction

many of us have received in our lives

was just a veiled kind of hurtful behavior.

Trouble is that if we don't learn the difference

between cutting to hurt and pruning for growth,

we will bristle and reject any correction

in crucial moments.

Proverbs 12.1 says, whoever loves discipline

loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction

is unwise.

I'll tell you a secret.

If you just type in a Bible verse,

just like type in Proverbs 12.1 to Google,

one of the top hits that you'll get

is a website called BibleHub.com.

And if you type in just one verse,

the nice thing that it'll do is that Bible Hub

will actually give you an entire page of that verse

in every conceivable translation.

If you go to that page for this verse,

you will only find one translation

that uses the word unwise.

85% of the rest of the versions says,

whoever loves discipline loves knowledge,

but whoever hates correction is stupid.

I was like, I don't know if I wanna use that,

but hey, here I am.

It's one of those.

The foolish reject the idea that they could be wrong

about anything.

The foolish reject the idea that they could be wrong

about anything.

And so they end up rejecting legitimate correction

if they don't like the way that it was given.

Then, of course, for any of us

that are in the position to offer correction,

we, of course, should always do so

with great understanding, great care,

knowing that we are rarely without fault as well, right?

Amen?

If we are the ones giving correction to someone else,

we are rarely without fault ourselves.

Now, some of you might know the name John Bray.

John Bray was the lead pastor

of a church called Heritage for decades,

literally, I think, four decades.

He told me that he would get negative letters now and again,

but he said he would read them carefully

considering what truth there might be in that letter

and then letting go of what was only meant to be hurtful.

He was doing his best to discern the truth,

even if it was uncomfortable,

because he assumed that he was not perfect.

Part of that process that the Proverbs lays out

is learning to listen

and then respond only after we understand.

If your kids are in a leader in me school,

you've heard the phrase,

seek first to understand and then be understood.

It's a Stephen Covey saying,

but he got from the Proverbs.

We listen to learn so that we can understand

before we speak.

Proverbs 14, 15 said,

the simple believe everything,

but the prudent give thought to their steps.

18, 13 said, to answer before listening,

that is folly and shame.

Liam, I got a graphic I'm gonna have you put up here

in just a second, ready?

There's this old movie called Office Space,

anybody seen it?

I can't recommend it to everybody

because it has a copious amount of swearing in it.

So it's not for everyone,

but if you have seen it,

you will recognize this graphic or this idea

because there was this moment where a guy was like,

hey, I've got this great idea.

When you need to make a decision,

you just use this thing, get it?

You jump to a conclusion.

Dude, most of us have one of these, don't we?

Whether we actually have one at home or not,

most of us have one of these in our heads.

Most of us have one of these things in our hearts.

It feels like it has become more and more rare

for people to really seek to understand something

before jumping to a conclusion,

especially if they think they already have the answer.

Thanks, Liam.

There's actually research that shows that across more than,

listen, 35 million public posts

that contained a link to another page or article

when they got shared on Facebook between 2017 and 2020

that around 75% of those shares or reposts

were made without the person

actually clicking on the link first.

In other words, three out of four people

just believe what they saw in the title

and passed it on without reading it,

like they understood what it said.

Why?

The blunt answer is foolishness.

The scientific answer is called confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is when we interpret new evidence

as confirmation of what we already believe.

Your body will actually do it.

You'll hear something or see something

and you'll have this sense of, oh, I like that.

That's your first warning sign.

Why do we do that?

Because when we get information that confirms

what we already believe, our brain gets a surge of dopamine.

And that feels good.

We take the easy route

because our brain has to work harder

to find out if something is actually true.

If it sounds like something we already think,

it's just easier and it feels better

to assume that it's true.

Which leads us to then only seek out

and accept information that agrees

with what we already think.

So whether it's politics,

whether it's how your boss corrected you,

whether it's considering whether the Bible means

what someone told you that it means,

critical thinking matters

because critical thinking is connected with wisdom.

It is not the fullness of wisdom,

but it is connected with wisdom

because then how we think leads to the way that we what?

That we speak, that we behave.

Proverbs 18, 21, the tongue has the power of life and death.

Those who love it will eat its fruit.

15, four says the soothing tongue is a tree of life,

but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit.

Some of you guys know that I do a bit of improv

at Comedy Sports along with Andy over here.

And it is funny and Andy probably can attest this.

It is funny how often we will talk to people

that think they can do what we do.

They see you doing it and they think,

oh yeah, I could do that, I could do that.

And I was talking to someone the other day about it.

And I was, my son Wallace has baseball practice on Wednesday

and so I'll go over to the Riverfront Grill

and hang out while he's at baseball practice

because it's right down there.

I don't wanna drive, I'm sorry guys,

I don't wanna drive all the way down there.

I'm gonna drive all the way across the river again.

I'm that guy now.

And so my arm is gonna hang out at Riverfront Grill

and I was talking to this guy, he goes,

oh you do that improv thing.

I was like, yeah, yeah, he goes, oh yeah,

I could definitely do that.

And I was like, oh okay, we do auditions

a couple times a year.

And he was convinced that he could do it

until I asked him one question.

Can you work clean?

He said, oh no, I definitely can't do it.

He was so convinced that he could be funny in improv

that he was like, oh I definitely can't do those things

because I can't control my tongue.

Of course the Proverbs were talking

about more than comedy, right?

Solomon was a king.

So when a king says the tongue has the power of life

and death, he also means that literally.

His words had the literal power of life and death

for everybody that he led, for everyone in his kingdom.

The same is true today.

The higher you are in leadership in any organization,

what you say and what you do will either prove wise

and give life or prove to be foolish,

negatively affect everyone that follows you.

We need to be open to correction.

We need to know how to hear so that we know how to speak

because it all comes together in a way

that has real world consequences.

Because to do what is right and just is more acceptable

to the Lord than sacrifice.

Because the righteous care about justice for the poor

but the wicked have no such concern.

Now I'm gonna do something that I have,

to my recollection, I don't know that I've ever done

something like this before in the context of a sermon.

I've mentioned current events before in passing

or pointed at something, but what I've never done

is taken something that happened in our world

and then said, let's take what we're learning

and actually consider what this means.

I have a pastor friend in Minneapolis

that he believes that pastors needs to tell

their congregations who they should vote for.

That pastors should be endorsing candidates

and I said, listen, my job as a pastor

is not to tell a congregation what to think

but part of my job is to help a congregation

know how to think because that's wisdom.

Wisdom is learning how to think about

what is happening in our world and then responding,

not just taking something someone said

and regurgitating, right?

So we're gonna talk about something that happened

this past week and I want you to keep in mind,

I'm not saying any of this because of any affiliation

to a political party, I'm talking about this

because it has real world consequences

because it specifically has to do

with wisdom and foolishness.

This last week, there is a young man, 25 years old,

his name is Marco, that resigned from his role

with a government agency.

Earlier in the week, he was one of only two people

that was allowed access to the treasury department system

that is responsible for dispersing

more than $5 trillion in annual payments.

But then what happened is that some journalists

found a bunch of old tweets that Marco had posted

and as a result of that, he resigned.

Those tweets were as follows, last July, 2024,

just for the record, I was racist before it was cool.

In September of 2024, you could not pay me

to marry outside of my ethnicity.

In September, he also posted, normalize Indian hate.

In December of 2024, less than two months ago,

he posted, I just want a eugenic immigration policy,

is that too much to ask?

His boss happens to be Elon Musk and Elon posted a poll

to his Twitter account and asked,

should I bring back the staffer who made inappropriate

statements via a now deleted pseudonym?

385,000 people voted, 78,000 said yes, rehire him.

One of those yes votes was from our vice president

who then retweeted and he said, I obviously disagree

with some of Marco's posts, but I don't think

that stupid social media activity

should ruin a kid's life.

Elon said he will be brought back because to err is human,

to forgive is divine.

And when the president was asked what he thought of it,

he said he'd not heard about it,

but he would side with the vice president.

Now, consider what we've been learning about wisdom.

What does wisdom tell us?

First, I think that wisdom might separate forgiveness

from employment.

There is no doubt that Marco needs forgiveness, amen?

He needs forgiveness.

He, everybody, everyone needs forgiveness, everyone.

And I hope that he apologizes,

I hope that he works on himself.

I hope that he considers why he said those things.

Jesus does not want anyone to hate Marco,

even if Marco hates someone for the color of their skin.

Jesus does not want us to have hate or animosity

in our hearts toward him or anyone else

that is in this scenario.

Jesus, going back to two weeks ago, he wants us to what?

To pray for him, to bless him, if at all possible.

But wisdom is taking the time to consider

should someone that as recently as December

that was posting racist comments online,

should that someone have a job like that?

The next question is,

is there wisdom in how the story was framed?

What do I mean?

What did we learn earlier about online activity, right?

What percentage of people don't actually read the article?

75% of people don't read the article.

Who remembers what percentage of people said,

yes, rehire him?

78%.

Tracks a little bit.

Do we think that most people looked up

what actually happened?

Chances are that a lot of people

didn't look up what happened.

They saw someone made an inappropriate post.

Should they be rehired?

Sure, give them grace.

Absolutely.

But wisdom asks,

why didn't the question ask,

should we bring back the staffer that made racist comments

online over the course of six months

and as recently as six weeks ago,

instead of asking, should we bring back the staffer

that made inappropriate comments?

Wisdom would ask, why was it framed

as stupid social media activity from a kid

instead of racist social media activity

from a 25-year-old man?

Wisdom would ask, when you are asked

if you had heard about this story

and what you think about it,

but you don't know any of the facts,

should you blindly agree with your coworker

or should you take a minute?

Or should you take a minute and find out what happened?

And then I think finally, wisdom would ask,

if your pastor uses a real story from this past week

from the country you live in,

should you spend some time later today

looking into it for yourself?

Because it's not my job to tell you what to think.

It's not even my job to tell you what happened

in our world every week.

It is my job to help you think,

at least in this series, about wisdom.

You, we, all of us have to develop our ability

to separate wisdom and foolishness.

Because if we don't, it is, according to the Proverbs,

it is the vulnerable, it is the poor,

it is the marginalized that will be left behind.

It is those that are affected by racism

that will be left behind.

So read the Proverbs, maybe every day.

At an extremely important time in my life,

when I had come back from college,

after I had had a failed internship,

I had a mentor remind me that the Proverbs has 31 chapters.

Just enough, every day.

Read a verse, read a chapter.

Develop, develop, develop.

Read a verse, read a chapter, develop this wisdom within you.

Because while Solomon was a deeply flawed man,

so are every single one of us.

And fortunately, the greatest hits of everything

that Solomon ever learned got put together for us,

so that maybe we could avoid some of the mistakes

that he made.

So that maybe one of us in this room

might actually, with their daily life,

exhibit greater wisdom than even him.

So read them, consider them, talk with each other about them,

and let the Scriptures shape the shape of your heart,

the strength of your faith.

As you become more like Jesus.

Amen?

Amen.

Amen.

Let us pray.

Father, we thank you for the work that you did,

and the work that you're doing.

We pray that you would continue to develop wisdom in us

as we approach the table.

We're reminded what you did on the cross.

What you did on the cross, amen.