Proverbs 1:8-31: The Nature of Temptation
Last week we began looking at proverbs, and the purpose of that book. We concluded that wisdom is not simply street smarts, but the skill and the ability to navigate life in all its complexity. The purpose of the book of Proverbs, as we talked about last week, is to impart this kind of wisdom.
We normally think of Proverbs as a random collection of wise sayings, last week showed that there is a reason for this gathering of texts. As we continue through the first nine chapters of proverbs; the program of this book is laid out in more and more detail.
The author uses several devices in the first nine chapters of Proverbs. One of the most distinctive is by writing speeches from a father to his son. In the first of these discourses, the father begins to talk to his son about the nature of temptation. He lays out a temptation which would have been common to the young man, and that is the temptation to join a gang. The father puts his voice behind this gang and delivers the speech that they will give in order to entice the son. He says, “If they say, “Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood; let us ambush the innocent without reason; like Sheol let us swallow them alive, and whole, like those who go down to the pit.” (Proverbs 1:11-12 ESV) Does that sound enticing to you? Of course it doesn’t!
The father and mother in this text know what their son will be facing in life, and they are attempting to give him a glimpse behind the scenes. They know that temptation will never present itself honestly, so they attempt to paint a more accurate picture of what the son will be enticed to.
1:11-14 paints a picture of a gang
Comprised of young (maybe privileged) men
They waylay the innocent
They murder without cause
They entice with easy money, power, excitement, and camaraderie
When you get to the end of that account, you wonder “who would even be tempted by this.” For some, joining a gang for organized crime is a temptation. Probably not for us. Either way, that’s not the point: vs. 19 says, “Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain. It takes away the life of its possessors.”
What the father and mother are saying is this: Anyone who seeks money as an end in itself to the point that they are willing to break the law of God and act in disunity with the revealed will of God will suffer the consequences of their actions. He’s not only warning the son against joining the mob. He’s warning him against anyone who says “Hey, I have a great business deal for you. It’s easy money. We might have to bend the rules a little bit, but we’ll make a killing.” What the father is telling his son is that every dishonest business man is just like a thug trying to recruit you for a gang.
In other words, behind the promise of easy money, there is a reality of injustice and oppression.
Remember what we said about wisdom last week. Wisdom is not less than moral goodness, it’s more. It’s not only wrong to be dishonest in business, it’s unwise. How many people want to go to a car mechanic who constantly lies and cheats to pad his pockets? The dishonest businessman, seeking money and profit above all, is actually setting the trap for his own destruction.
Moreover, the father here is not simply telling his son to be careful of dishonest business practices. Rather, he’s trying to tell his son something of the nature of life. Particularly, he’s trying to teach him something about the nature of temptation. In other words, the father recognizes that his son will face many different stories about what life is about and how to find the good life. What he wants his son to understand is that there are only two ways to live. Wisely and unwisely.
The unwise path is cloaked behind several different disguises;
Laziness, greed, adultery, violence, mockery, power, pride, etc.
What the father wants his son to understand is that these are deceitful and false claims to the good life.
What starts as a “good business deal” ends with destruction.
What starts as a romantic fling ends in misery
What starts with a desire to control ends in domination
The father, and the book of proverbs itself, wants us to understand that life is not a series of isolated choices, but a path, with a destination. That’s why the father urges the son “Hold back your feet from their paths.” Life, here in proverbs, is a path. All the little decisions that we make take us further down one path or another.
C.S. Lewis says about this, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.” C.S. Lewis
All of life’s decisions show a commitment to a path that leads to a destination in our lives. Bernie Madoff didn’t wake up one day and say “I think I’m gonna run a Ponzie scheme.” Rather, when his investments didn’t pay off like he promised, because he had believed certain lies about success, he couldn’t bear to go to his clients and tell them that he had lost their money. So, he lied. And that lie grew into a multi-billion dollar case of fraud.
What the father wants to show his son is that a) the enticements of this false path are deceitful, b) they are stupid, c) wisdom has much more to offer than any of these paths.
Who we are
What does that mean for who we are?
Most of us think that we are essentially good people who have a couple of flaws.
We’re moody, we’re controlling, we like to drink a little too much, we’re laid back. We’re certainly not sinful people. These flaws don’t define us, they exist despite our good natures
The movie, There Will Be Blood, shows the truth of our human nature in a very poignant way. The movie chronicles the rise of Daniel Plainview from a humble prospector to an oil tycoon. Early in the movie, we see what motivates him. He has a sense of drive based on competition. He can’t stand to see anyone else do better than him. While he succeeds in triumphing over his business rivalries, it ruins his life. He devolves into insanity, alienates everyone who was ever close to him, disowns his son, and commits murder. What started as a simply competitive spirit eventually swallowed his life.
What the book of Proverbs tells us is that whatever we build our lives around, whatever we set our ultimate hopes on, will eventually consume us. This is true with good things as well as bad.
In C.S. Lewis’ book, The Great Divorce, he chronicles a bus trip from Hell to Heaven. As the denizens of Hell peruse heaven, heavenly friends come and try to persuade them from whatever they are holding on to that keeps them in Hell. One of those people is a woman who has idolized her son. Because her son has become the ultimate thing for her, she cannot stand to be in heaven where he isn’t the central object of worship. The terrifying conclusion is that this woman would rather take her son to be with her in Hell than abandon her idolatry and enjoy his presence in heaven.
The point is that the best of our desires at the center of our being, if allowed to develop unimpeded will eventually turn us all into devils.
Speaking of Hell, many of us have a hard time with it (for good reason). It seems unfair that God is watching us and He’s silent and at the end of our lives He is gonna pop up and say “Aha! Gotcha! You made the wrong choice.”
That’s not what Proverbs is saying at all!
Note what verses 20 and 21 say: Wisdom cries aloud! In the streets and in the markets! To the simple!
God’s not sitting silently on His throne taking note of who’s naughty and who’s nice. He’s crying aloud for simple and foolish people to abandon their foolishness and come to Him. Note the passion in vs 22. “How long…” This phrase is the same phrase used by the psalmist who cries out to God for relief from his pain “How long Oh Lord!” The view of God in proverbs is not the view of an arbitrary judge, waiting to wack us. Rather, it’s a God who’s intimately involved in the details of our lives pleading with us to abandon our foolishness and follow Him. Note where wisdom cries out in vss. 20 and 21. Not on the mountaintop, not in the desert, but in the streets, in the markets. God’s primary work in our lives is to get us to set our lives on something that if it consumes us will not destroy us, namely Him.
What’s more than that, if we take the proverbs to be simply stating the best way possible to live, it has serious problems. If proverbs was saying “work hard, be honest, take care of others, and you’ll be rewarded; lie, cheat, steal, and kill, and you’ll get yours,” it would be wrong. The plain truth is that often, the righteous suffer, the wicked prosper. This is the issue in Psalm 73: Why do the innocent suffer while the wicked prosper? For every despot that’s deposed, there are hundreds of tyrants who die in their beds.
All of us see the injustice in this. How irritating is it to be around someone who never seems to get caught? Who takes sick days to go to the beach and gets the same pay as you. What about the person who steals our sale? Steals credit for our jokes? Etc. We all want justice for other people. At least for the people we don’t care about.
Here’s the thing. If we’re going to understand Proverbs, we need to understand that walking this path is not simply a matter of interacting with an impersonal universal order. Remember, “The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” The problem with these fools is not simply that they refused to be wise, they refused God. Look at verse vss. 24-5, “Because I have called and you refused to listen, have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded, because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof.” What would you do with someone like that?
John Newton wrote this in a letter to his daughter:
If you could form a ‘little creature’ and make it live–and if it hated you and opposed you, slighted your kindness, and took pleasure in displeasing you–would you not soon be weary of it, and, instead of feeding and taking care of it, be provoked to tread it under your feet? But, oh, the patience of God–though He could destroy rebellious men much more easily than you could kill a loathsome spider–yet He waits to be gracious, and has so loved them as to send His own Son to die–that they may live!
Sin has not only filled the world with woe–but it was the cause of all the woe that Jesus endured. He groaned and wept, and sweat blood, and died upon the cross–only because we had sinned! May I live to see you duly affected with the evil of sin–and the love of Jesus! There is nothing more that I desire for you!
We consider it unjust if we have to suffer for someone else. Jesus considers it His joy! This is the difference between Christianity and every other religion. In every other religion, you die and you’re judged. If you were unwise in your life, you pay for that in death. In Christianity, God actually takes our judgment for us and die in our place!
So, who is the truly wise person? Our gospel lesson for today has something to say about that. Luke 7:37-8:3 tells about Jesus in the home with a Pharisee. A sinful woman, who has foolishly ruined her life and reputation comes in and honors Jesus. The religious people see this and are affronted. Jesus tells them a parable with this point, “He has been forgiven much loves much.” Here’s the point, if anything carries the ultimate meaning in our lives besides God, we are walking down a path for destruction. But God loves us so much that in order to turn our hearts away from all the empty, finite things of this world, He takes on flesh and is lifted on a cross for all the world to see. The only wise person is the one who recognizes their foolishness and comes to have it covered by God. The only way we can get wisdom is if we join the woman in Luke’s Gospel and weep at the feet of Jesus.
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