Plymothian

4 Do not wear yourself out to get rich;
    do not trust your own cleverness.
5 Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone,
    for they will surely sprout wings
    and fly off to the sky like an eagle.

Not Getting Rich

Many students in the world focus on getting an education to get a good job.  A good job for many is getting financial security.  The security of finances though is a false security.  It can be taken away.  Also, there are many stories that show how those who pursue finances can lose their family relationships, their health, and their character. Why should we get an education, then?  Why should we earn a salary?  Where should our security lie?  The answer to these questions is the same.  I needn’t spell out that God is the aim of our education, our salary, our very lives.  However, how do we do this?  A simple reflection every morning would help.  “What is today going to be about?”  or “Who … ?”  If it is about money, family, or anything other than God it is sin.  Sin falls short of the mark.  Our lives sin when they fall short of the pursuit of God.

Questions

1. What should not wear you out?
2. In what should you not trust?
3. How does the end of James 4 reiterate this principle in the New Testament?
4. Why don’t people think that going about their business without any thought for God is a problem?
5. How could financial security as a goal be healthily replaced?

When you sit to dine with a ruler,
    note well what[a] is before you,
2 and put a knife to your throat
    if you are given to gluttony.
3 Do not crave his delicacies,
    for that food is deceptive.

 Controlling the Appetite

The passage above emphasizes how appetite unchecked can lead to problems.  When we become prone to allowing our sexual and eating appetites to control us we will ruin our lives.  However, this verse tells us to control these appetites without telling us how.  It smacks of the useless advice, “Snap out of it!”  How exactly do we do that?  The difficulty of doing these things keeps throwing us back to the theme of the book as a whole.  The key to unlocking wisdom is to live in every area of life with God in mind.  The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.  The key to ruining your life is to live your life as if God does not exist.  In such a life what is to control the appetites?  Soe appeal to the way nature works – even then nature works because it is ordered by God and points back to Him.

Questions

1. How should a person’s appetite be when they are in important meetings?
2. How do you think meals and diplomacy were related in the ancient world?
3. How could a ravenous appetite destroy someone?
4. How successful is a date where one person is more interested in the food than the date?
5. Why do we have business lunches and dinners?  What is the role of the venue?

Firstly, the idea of the secular is that there are two ‘domains’ of living.  One that is godly and one that is secular or ‘outside the domain of God’.  This is a false notion.  There is nothing outside of God’s domain (The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it).  All movies are made in God’s world, and to have a movie that is empty of God denies the reality that God fills everything.  Secondly, Ken seems to confuse materialism (the idea that the material world is all that there is) and secularism (the idea that there are different spheres of life, music, books, entertainment).  Secularism allows for God to influence certain areas of life, but does not allow God to influence others.

A lot of indoctrination from movies comes at a subconscious level.  I learned that being a man was to be cool, dark and mysterious from Humphrey Bogart.  I also found myself highly sexualized by listening to Prince.  At the time, I could not have told you that the view of the world from the movies and the music I was listening to had any influence.  I would have said that it washed off of me like water off a duck’s back.  However, the ideas in the movies come into our subconscious as ideas and sit there.  No-one told me to learn “will the real slim shady please stand up’, but M&M’s lyrics are in my mind in such a way that I can recall them.  Think of how people repeat one-liners from movies at parties.  What movie quotes can you recall?  “When everyone is special …. “ (Incredibles)

This does not mean that I should not watch movies or listen to music.  It means that I should filter what comes into my mind.  As the Bible teaches, we take every thought captive.  We are also to discern what is helpful for building us up and what is not helpful.

In teaching there is something called the ‘null curriculum’.  This is what we teach by not talking about something.  State schools talk about women and blacks in history because for years it was part of the null curriculum.  Nothing negative was said about blacks and women.  People learned not to value them because they were just not in the curriculum.  The movies we watch often don’t talk about God.  If we do not filter this, over time it just subtly teaches us that God does not speak to every area of life.  It might seem to us that God would not be Lord of our movie-watching life.  We think it is trivial to associate God with entertainment, but Jesus himself was very entertaining.  This is one of the reasons that he drew big crowds early in his ministry.  However, Jesus did not want them to be amused.  ‘Amused’ means ‘not to think’.  Jesus challenged their thinking through comic one-liners amazing special effects.  He made them think.

A movie can not be rated as beneficial or detrimental based solely on the rating.  Pocahontas is quite anti-biblical in its thinking and it is G, I believe.  The Passion of the Christ is a violent R rated movie that Christians should see.  American Gangsta is a great movie to challenge our ideas about justice and the kind of lives some people live in America.  It doesn’t mention God, but it highlights the need for God if we take God to the movies with us.  A good book about how every movie has a message and how Christians need to filter those messages is written by Brian Godawa and is called Hollywood Worldviews. http://www.godawa.com/ If you look over his website there are reviews of movies like Avatar that show the anti-American and animist views that are buried in some films.

There are no perfectly righteous movies.  We can not slap a Christian label on music or movies and then just swallow them hook, line, and sinker.  We need to have discernment in all things.

We are all being influenced by the various stories that we are told.  We just need to walk closer with God so that whatever movies we see and music we listen to are in his world and not an invented, neutral, secular world.  I listen to For Those About to Rock by ACDC but I don’t listen to Highway to Hell, I watch Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey but I had to turn Noah Hill’s Sitter off because it was just corrupting my thinking.  Daryl watches Cars with us, but we tell him that true, lasting transformation doesn’t just come through choosing new friends, but comes through Jesus.  Cars 1 and 2 are both about friendship.  What they say, that friendship changes you, is true enough except it doesn’t go far enough.  If you believe that choosing the right friends is going to bring redemption, it is only ultimately true if that friend is Jesus.

Finally, guilt is not a good motivator.  We do not regulate our movies because we have to but because we want to.  Like an athlete training for the Olympics regulates their eating and exercise because of what they want to achieve, if we want the freedom to grow closer to God we fix our eyes on Jesus and throw off everything that does not lead us closer to him (Hebrews 12:1-3).

²⁹ Do you see someone skilled   in their work?    

They will serve   before kings;     they will not serve before officials of low rank.

Skilled Labour

It is possible to get many cheap imitations from Asia.  It is possible to get a factory manufactured version of a piece of fine art and throw it up in the living room.  However, there is still value in being skilled in carpentry, artistry, and construction.  People with money often crave quality and those who learn their trade well master it.  They can make a good income from a well marketed trade.

Another thought about this verse is that princes and kings should probably use their resources to employ skilled labourers who can construct works of beauty and things that will last.  This is especially true when we see how the temple of God in the Old Testament was constructed.  If we have the resources that grant us a choice between something a little more expensive but well made and something less expensive but shoddy – God values the craftsmanship that went into the well made product.  The creativity mirrors his nature and the skills were provided by him.

Questions

1. Who is the verse looking at?
2. Where will they serve?
3. To whom is this verse addressed?
4. What skills for employment have you developed?
5. What kind of artisans’ work can you afford?

Do not move an ancient boundary stone
    set up by your ancestors.

 Heritage and Honesty

This verse speaks to two things.  One is to respect and to value those things that are passed on to us.  We should not quickly move things from the way that they were.  My father-in-law always chose the tried-and-tested way.  he always played it safe.  He always went with what was done before.  I thought this was both dull and foolish (things can always be improved).  Then I realised that things might be a certain way because it has always proved to be the best way.

Secondly, one rarely moves a boundary stone to decrease one’s property.  Moving one’s boundary stone is to increase one’s property.  In this context the action smacks of dishonesty and deception.  It is not a good idea to do this because, even if one gets away with it, one has besmirched one’s character which is worth more than a little land.

Questions

1. What should not be moved?
2. Why not?
3. How would boundary stones have been particularly important to Jewish people who loved land and family?
4. What have you inherited that should not be moved?
5. How might people today make dishonest moves for gain?

Do not be one who shakes hands in pledge     or puts up security for debts; ²⁷ if you lack the means to pay,     your very bed will be snatched from under you.

Do Not Pledge

The modern economy usews a lot of debt and borrowing.  It seems the Bible doesn’t approve.  Save up money and then pay cash.

Questions

1. What will happen to those who pledge?
2. Do the foolish pledge on behalf of themselves, others, or both?
3. Why do you think the Bible is anti-pledging?
4. How should we approach loans and securities?
5. How could you save more before you spend?

²⁴ Do not make friends with a hot-tempered person,
    do not associate with one easily angered,
²⁵ or you may learn their ways
    and get yourself ensnared.

Hot Tempered Friends

We need to reach out to people of every temperament.  However, we need to be careful who we bring in to our inner circle.  The reason is that we become like those we most closely associate with.  we adopt their values, eat their food, talk their language.  My father’s vocabulary was choice at times because he could get angry and fly off the handle.  I remember being at the other end of the golf course and heard him miss a putt.  My mother and I both had words leap to mind in difficult (an playful) situations which were profane, vulgar, or rude. 

Fear can lead to anger.  How do your friendsw deal with their fears?  Do they discuss and defuse them or do they explode?  Explosion might feel cathartic for the one unloading, but those around are wounded by the shrapnel.  It is hard for a deeply wounded household to function.  Also, those around become fearful of the next outburst and that fear creates a cycle of anger.  It may be passive aggressive (an implosion rather than an explosion), but it is still destructive.

Stop the cycle by making friends with those who curb your anger and do not feed it by their own anger.

Questions

1. With whom should the wise not make friends?
2. Why is it foolish to make friends with some people?
3. Does this mean that wise people do not talk to people who do not fit the mould?
4. Why do men have so few intimate friends?
5. Describe the character of those whom you let in the closest?

Do not exploit the poor   because they are poor     and do not crush the needy in court, ²³ for the Lord will take up their case     and will exact life for life. 

Justice for the Poor

It is about time that the poor realised they live in the land of opportunity in the western world.  Welfare and Social Security are neo-marxist tools to keep the lazy masses poor.  Welfare also supports many other kinds of social ills like teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, and apathy.  Parents and churches need to take responsibility to educate children that a strong work ethic is a sure road to health, prosperity and happiness.  State sponsored institutions create more of the ills that they seek to solve.  They create a victim mentality where passive millions rely on government handouts rather than seeking to be productive and creative.

There may be some truth to the ideas of the previous paragraph.  However, I have heard these views parroted too many times by those who understand very little about poverty.  Maybe we should try and truly understand the causes of poverty in our world and do something about it.

Questions

1. Do you know anyone who is poor?
2. Why are they poor?
3. What would God do through people to reach out to the poor people you know?
4. How might God use you to reach out for him?
5. What did your parents teach you about the welfare system?

Pay attention and turn your ear to the sayings of the wise; 
    apply your heart to what I teach,
18 for it is pleasing when you keep them in your heart
    and have all of them ready on your lips.
19 So that your trust may be in the Lord,
    I teach you today, even you.
20 Have I not written thirty sayings for you,
    sayings of counsel and knowledge,
21 teaching you to be honest and to speak the truth,
    so that you bring back truthful reports
    to those you serve?

 Back to Basics

This passage once more takes us back to the basics of Proverbs.  We are to teach children to look for wisdom, but not for material gain, but because God has designed the world to operate in certain ways.  We are to find wisdom, because in being wise we truly develop a relationship with God.  the converse is also true.  If we find God, we will find what it means to live a life that is truly wise.  God is Lord of all of life.  A Lord has absolute authority but we are naturally rebellious and create the illusion that our lives are actually our own. 

Questions

1. What themes are emphasized in this saying that were emphasized in chapters 1-9?
2. Why gain wisdom?
3. How do people today have a kind of godless wisdom that is worth nothing?
4. What would you do in the summer vacations to emphasize wisdom with your children?
5. What did your parents do to cultivate godly wisdom in you?