All right, good morning. Let's get started here. What are we, week five of eight? This is five of eight. So we have, no. Six, I think. Six of eight. We have this one and two more. That's right. Next week we'll be doing 30 and 31, and the following week we'll do a summary, and then we'll move on to something else. Here he is again, Solomon before his temple. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. This week we're down to the second main collection of what we would most confidently call Solomonic Proverbs. The first one was there in Get this right. It's like my first day. First one was there in 10 through 22, and you'll remember those were almost distinctly couplets by contrast for those 12 chapters. There were a few clusters in there. And then we had the appendices there in 22-17 to the end of 24. And now we're starting collection two, which is 25 through 29, and this is the collection that starts out as the Proverbs of Solomon copied by the men of Hezekiah. So we know that they were somehow collated or copied or found or regathered, if you will, in the time of Hezekiah, which was a couple hundred years after Solomon. Just as a review, here's what we have used as part of our context to make sure we don't take these Proverbs and go some way with them that we ought not to go. A couple of, or four things there about how the Lord deals with His people in covenant. And as you take a look here and review those, just remember we, well, I proposed it to you. I gave you that chance to argue back, but nobody did, right? I gathered inductively those little elements out of each covenant to build this. It was so long ago, I don't want anybody to forget that we didn't say these four things are common among covenants, so we're going to impose this on the text of the Proverbs so that we can come up with something. Rather, we brought it up from the roots. We looked at each covenantal passage or all the covenantal passages. We found the similarities. We made this. Now we can move to comparing it or using it as context for the Proverbs. And this context helps us. We've talked about this before. Again, this is a review. Make sure we don't turn Proverbs into law. In other words, we don't say, if I follow this proverb, the Lord is obligated to bless me. We don't turn them into promises, saying, if I follow this proverb, the Lord is obligated to bless me. Because not that he has to bless me, but that he's promised to bless me. And then also taking them so flippantly that we turn them into, this is just one way to do life, and it'll probably work out well. So I think the sweet spot is somewhere right in there. This is not law in the sense that the Lord, in any of his covenants, did not prescribe or re-prescribe the Proverbs as a body of, this is how you and I will relate. Of course, this is the Lord's Word, just as Exodus 20 is the Lord's Word. But this is a different category. This is what we've been arguing. And again, we've tried to make the argument inductively coming out of the differences we see between the way that the Proverbs are laid out and the way that law is laid out. And as well, to distinguish it from those promises. And hitting that sweet spot there, understanding really that, Ray, I always mix our two descriptions. You say humble, no. Respect, healthy respect, and I say reverent submission. And I always try to smush those two together. But both of those are good descriptions. Excuse me. of the way that we are supposed to fear the Lord. That's what the fear of the Lord is. And so with that grounding, we can take this wisdom of the Proverbs and employ it correctly. That also helps us not to lose that sense of urgency that we felt so strongly in those first nine chapters, because as the father to the son or the father, the parent to the child in those first nine chapters, Over and over again, we saw the urgency of going the right way, the way of the wise, as opposed to the way of the fool. And if we don't understand how these proverbs work or what the nature of them is, then we could kind of just skip by that urgency as if, well, that's just what you do when you want to say something important. You put nine chapters of urgency in front of it. And of course, that's not what's going on there. uh... yeah and uh... and then really all these bottom ones flow out of that that top one we understand obedience rightly we understand provision stewardship not only of blessing not only of you know physical provision but seeing wisdom as provision seeing correction as provision and seeing the knowledge itself of the fear of the lord that fear of the lord undergirds this all seeing all of those things as a call to stewardship This is the kind of context that's going to help us take these proverbs the right way. And here's the list we've been collecting as we've gone along. I think it's a pretty robust list. I thought about maybe summarizing it down, but I think that'll all make sense to you, especially with the compare and contrast there side by side. And this list you'll see will help us today to see that we're not We're not taking a new direction. The second collection of Proverbs is not going to take new directions. It's going to restate some things. It's going to bring up some new particular topics, but it's not ultimately going to drive us somewhere that we have not been before. OK, so again, 25 through 29 is the second collection. I'm going to start up here a little bit late on purpose. As I said last time, these here, the way that I've divided them out is based on the two oldest codices of the Hebrew text. As you can see, this is like the first half of 2521 through 2621, and there's pretty much no breaks. Now, these little gaps here mainly are so that you can justify the text. I mean, if you go through and you really try to figure out why did he put a little gap here and a big gap here, well, it's because this word here, because Hebrew goes like this. So this word here was bigger or smaller than this word here or this word here, so that he had to make that gap a little bit different size to make it left and right justified. That's mostly what's going on in those gaps. What's that? Yeah, so that it fits two columns on a piece of paper. Right, exactly. He didn't have Microsoft Word, so he's got to make those decisions as he goes, which if you think about it, Yeah, I don't think he did a race thing, which makes it more impressive that he had this figured out, right? Or he. I mean, it may have been 100 different people. But anyway, the point here is that this is all one section. There are no big breaks between 25-21, 26-21. And what we'll see here is that we have mostly couplets. We have mostly comparisons, and that's not like the first collection, which was mostly contrasts. And then we'll see some common themes here. So we're going to fly right through 25, 21, all the way through 28, 4. And then we're going to go back to the first 20 verses, because there's a little bit more consistency, cohesion in those 20 verses, a little bit more thematic unity across a number of verses than you'll see in here. But again, we're going to fly by these. I'm going to let you read what's on the right here is the summary statement of the text on the left. That's just my own summary statement. And of course, as soon as I tell you that most of these are couplets right out of the bat, we see here that this one is actually a cluster in itself, right? So if your enemy is hungry, give him bread. If he's thirsty, give him water. And then the reason or the justification is that next verse. So that's actually a little bit of a cluster there. Most, however, of the Proverbs in 25 through 29 are couplets, meaning one verse with a restatement or a comparison as the second part to expand the statement of the first part. And so we're just going to go through these fairly quickly for the sake of time and just point out some common themes. So, generosity and generosity as a stewardship of the Lord's means of justice. That's not exactly something we talked about before, but you can see how it relates a little bit. We see anger and the power of the tongue. We see wickedness and righteousness contrasted, of course. And then, Down here, that facade of value, that facade of glory, that facade of wealth, that facade of character, all of that which you can bring about by your tongue, that's going to be a common theme in here as well. And then, of course, down at the bottom, discipline, of course, is prominent throughout this section, or throughout the Proverbs also. So moving on here, again, this is the same paragraph, if you will. Paragraph might not be the right word, but it's the same section of unbroken text between 2521 and 2621. You see, you know, honor and foolishness don't go together. Contrast between the fool and the wise. Here, you know, this is a famous one, right, because it kind of seems hard to figure out here. 264 and 5, don't answer a fool according to his folly. lest you be like him, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. So we won't go into it in too much detail, but the comparison here is, or the contrast here is, lest you be like him, lest he be wise in his own eyes. The thing that's the same is according to his folly, right? So the way that I would Distill that out don't fight with the fool on his own terms and in the sense of don't enter into folly in order to try to Convince him rather demonstrate his folly from outside of his way of doing things and If you don't buy that let's just think about it the context that the fear of the Lord is on the bottom of And every other part of wisdom is grounded on that, shows us or helps us to figure out that what is going on in that first part is that the fool is stuck in his own wisdom that is out here not grounded on the fear of the Lord. So don't go to him and try to reason with him out there on those terms. bring wisdom from both parties into subjection to the fear of the Lord, and that will demonstrate his folly to him. That will see that his wisdom is only wisdom in his own eyes, and it's not true wisdom grounded where it ought to be. So that's a famous one, a common one, and it's a good one to think about, because it kind of shows the process that we've been building in the last few weeks. again some more common themes we still see you know wisdom prominent uh... don't don't give full or honor to a full because it's it's a value list to bestow honor upon the full uh... this is an interesting one here and and burst and god is fair to the full and the transgressor so course God will give justice ultimately not in any particular time all at once maybe but justice will be served when it's all said and done and even now the Lord gives the fool and the transgressor what is due in some sense and I would say that it's actually a little bit connected here to verse 11 and In the sense of, and even so, rather than taking what the Lord gives and valuing that, the fool goes back to his own way. So I think there is a contrast there or an expansion, a restatement there between 10 and 11, maybe at one of those clusters that is so rare in this section. Again, here, this is still the same unbroken segment of text. I had to give you a new picture there because it was such a long section. But we've talked, in fact, last week was in those appendices, there was an extended section about laziness, right? So we talked a lot about laziness last week. Again, the theme of laziness shows up here. And before I forget, One of the reasons I'm doing it this way, it's a lot to chew on and you all are good note takers because you all ask me for my slides because you can't take notes fast enough. I'm going fast because there's a lot of meat here and I've explained how I'm dividing the paragraphs or the text. If you look at a normal commentary, in fact, if you can find a commentary that doesn't do it this way, show it to me, because I have yet to find one. The commentaries see this lack of sections, and so, rightfully or wrongfully, for better or worse, if you will, the sections that you'll find in a normal commentary are just thematic sections. Some expert looks at the text and says, you know what? 13 through 15 or 16, that's all about laziness. Now this one, it's pretty hard to argue that 13 through 16 is not all about laziness. But my point is that it's very It's very interpreter dependent, right? So in sections that aren't as clear that he's talking three or four verses in a row about laziness, a typical commentary is going to organize those sections thematically. I have to do the same thing. I'm trying to present it to you in a way that you can come up with your own conclusions about themes and try to stay out of the way. Just the sections that I would say are a little bit more sturdy, which would be the divisions in the old text itself. So just know that when I'm summarizing the things over here, And I'm just rolling it out. The whole reason for that is because there's probably some thematic unity, a little bit more maybe than I present, a little bit less maybe than I present. But we have to come to those conclusions. And typically when we don't know the answer and we run to a commentary, your favorite guy will give you an answer. But in this case, most commentaries, if not all, are going to organize this section thematically. Moving on, we're still in this section. I guess this is the last one of this large section here. We see some common themes again. Actually, the meddling might be a little bit of a new theme, but we see the power of words here again. Deceptive joking brings about danger. Tall tales can bring strife as well as contention. So now here we're moving on to a new section. It's a little bit smaller, but still quite large. And he continues, actually. So the title up there, The Work of Words, again, that's just my assessment of a little bit of thematic unity. You can see a couple of exceptions down here in verse 27, that wickedness is a snare for those who set it out for others. That doesn't really seem to fit in. the theme of what our words will do. But the rest of it is pretty thematically sound, I would say. Telling stories, again, it's a powerful way to persuade, to convince somebody. And on the other hand, smooth talk puts a shiny facade on an unclean tool. That's the way I summarize verse 23 there. Fervent lips with a wicked heart are like earthenware covered with silver dross. So even though there's not really any value there, you can put nice words on the outside of it and make something look very, very valuable. The same thing with lies and the same thing lies in 24 through 26 as well as down there in verse 28. Yes, sir. Okay, yeah, all right. I see that. Did everybody catch what he said there? So, and this again, this is a thematic unity that maybe I undersold. So he's saying here that the covered by the seat is a connection to the covering of the pit that somebody falls in or the covering of rolling a stone to cover that hole or that cave that the wicked digs. So the wicked, in their effort to ensnare somebody else for their own greedy gain, digs a pit or builds a cave. and then covers it over to make it look safe, right? And yeah, I mean, that's a good observation. When we get to the end here, in about 20 minutes, we'll revisit that process whereby I think we can adjudicate those sorts of things. Yes, ma'am? Well, the one that I remember is there are 16 of the Lord's hates even seven, but there are seven there. Yeah Maybe not in it. Maybe not in English, but there are seven there. Yeah Okay All right, yeah right in the middle that's that's why I Yep. Yeah, so again, just common themes. Even rebuke is something that we can steward. Wisdom in and of itself is valuable, but the use of wisdom is also Using wisdom is wisdom rather than disregarding wisdom. Using wisdom for our friends and allowing them to use wisdom to rebuke us is also wisdom. All of that rests on that fear of the Lord where we understand our place before what the Lord has revealed. These are a few that maybe seem to stick out from the pattern. Be neighborly with your neighbors. I mean, the wise son turning away reproach, that's a pretty common theme. Wise counsel being a delight. But yeah, hunger makes provision sweeter. I found it a little bit harder to slide that into the construct that we've we've been working with so far. An out-of-place man is vulnerable, just like the bird that wanders from his nest. Maybe there's a connection there between being an individual in a group of folks, but not actually getting to the point where you become neighbors or friends, where, as verse 10 says there, you are in need, and instead of going to your neighbor, you travel past all those people to go to your brother, because you know he'll help you. And the proverb is saying, be neighborly in the sense that you can turn to the folks that are right there rather than having to travel to somebody who you know will help you out, your brother. Yeah, we've seen the prudence versus the simple. This is another one that we've seen before, the staking collateral. Now this one's a little bit different in the sense that it appears the writer is saying If someone's going to make the mistake of providing surety or collateral for a stranger, don't let him. And the way that you don't let him is that you take his garment so that when he tries to do that and make that collateral for the seductress, he doesn't have the means to do so. So that's a pretty urgent call to not let your friends stake collateral that they ought not be staking. If nothing else, these are entertaining. Even friendliness should be joined with tact. Or, he who blesses his friend with a loud voice rising early in the morning, it will be counted a curse to him. Maybe you all have friends like that. But even friendliness should be joined with tact. The contentious woman, so 15 and 16. Now, Proverbs 31, of course, is gonna be the antithesis to the contentious woman, which will be the virtuous woman. That'll be next week. But contention is like a leaky roof. The man who tries to contain that contentious woman will be like trying to contain or restrain the wind there. So he will do so in vain, of course, is the point. And then here's another famous one. I think it's pretty simple. But whether or not it fits into some larger theme, again, is the tougher question. So honest friendship sharpens a man as iron sharpens iron. So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. OK, so again here with the false value of false words. Again, that's just the theme that I've put onto it. You know what, maybe I've misspoken here. Yeah, I think that's a mistype. Sorry about that. Yep, that's just a mistype. Sorry about that. So carrying on here, again, fruit comes to the patience. You can't take the folly out of fools. The reputation is a measure of a man. These are themes that aren't exactly in line with what we've seen before, but as you can see that they are corollaries, and as you can also see that Most of these still are couplets, and most of these are still restatements by comparison rather than contrast. Okay, so now here we are, 1723 through 284. Now this, you can kind of see here how this happened to be on a new page in the Aleppo Codex. This at least is a smaller byte. This seems more like a normal paragraph or a normal size of a paragraph anyway. I think it makes it feel like there ought to be more of a thematic connection. I mean, if I see a huge run-on paragraph, then I'm kind of expecting that there's going to be more than one theme. But if you see a smaller paragraph, it kind of feels natural to me to assume that there might just be one theme. And in the first four verses, here we see, I think, a theme. Stewardship, contentment, these are themes that we've addressed before in the first collection. But I would say be diligent, your provision will suffice, and otherwise, in other words, what the Lord provides is going to be enough for what He expects you to do, so then that makes it to where we can see our goal as stewardship and contentment therein, rather than, oh, I don't have enough, or oh, I think the Lord wants me to go this direction, but He hasn't provided me the means to do so. And then on the back half of that paragraph, yeah, the paranoia of the wicked who builds that facade on, you know, after the greedy game, but builds that facade on fake things, false words, lies, deceits, wickedness, and of course, he's always going to be anxious that the calamity will come and wipe it away in one fell swoop. On the other hand, righteousness will set the land right. Oppression is like the rain without benefit. Yeah, there's no value there. And then, of course, the law and the wicked, they're in verse 4, don't go together. They bring contention. OK, so that was a flyby. And you all look like you've just been on an airplane for three hours, so I'm sorry about that. Again, I wanted you all to see the nuts and bolts there, to see how the thematic gatherings are a lot more difficult than... And so many come to the conclusion, and this is, I think it's at least a legitimate thing to think about, maybe we're not supposed to try to group these together. So, how do we then decide, is that section, I mean, when there's a space in the text above the paragraph and a space in the text below the paragraph, that says to me that there's some sort of unity for what's in the middle. what kind of unity or why the author or why the writer thought that that was a section to be divided out. I mean, there's not much data really to rest on. Again, most of the commentators turned to a thematic sort of grouping. We're going to revisit the tool that I introduced a couple weeks ago. Before we do, let's just take a review here of what we've gathered. And again, now that you've seen a few chapters of the section 25 through 29, you see that there were a lot of things that were revisited, maybe a couple offshoots, but Most of that's still connected. Again, grounding the wisdom that the Lord has revealed to us on the fear of the Lord, that healthy respect, that reverent submission, usually helps us sort out both the individual things and some of the thematic questions as well. Okay, so I'm going in reverse order, but 25, 14 through 20. Again, this is one paragraph, if you will. And I did mention this a couple weeks ago, but here's the little Hebrew letter that the Leningrad Codex puts off to the side to mark a paragraph end, if you will. Again, paragraph might not be the right word. I think this one has a little bit more unity than most of the rest of the section. So let's just take a look and see if you agree. For your benefit, I put this one and this one in italics because those seem to be maybe a little bit farther outside of this unified theme. But I think, again, we've seen this theme before, the facade of value. in the way that the wicked goes about gaining versus the way that the righteous or the wise way to go and build wealth. I think we've seen that before and I think this section reiterates that theme anyway. Verse 14, there's no value in false generosity. There's lesser value in angry persistence there in verse 15 versus gentle reason or reason by truth. And this is maybe a good one to park on a little bit because it's a little bit complicated. I chewed on it a lot this week. But by long forbearance, a ruler is persuaded. Now, Law and Forbearance, I don't really like the translation. Of course, I'm not an expert, so I kind of have to just take folks' word for it. But very concretely, it says, by length of anger. I think that actually would be a better translation to see the contrast there. By length of anger, a ruler is persuaded. On the other hand, a gentle tongue breaks a bone. So the gentle, truthful tongue is actually more powerful than the thing that seems like it ought to be more powerful. Usually, persistent anger is loud, is violent. On the other hand, gentleness of truth can be spoken gently and it turns out to actually be more powerful. So again, It seems like there's value in that angry persistence, but rather the real value is that wisdom that's built on the fear of the Lord. Verse 16, too much of a good thing is not as valuable as the right amount of the good thing. Again, 17 seems maybe to be a little bit outside of the theme. Seldom set your foot in your neighbor's house lest he become weary of you and hate you. Or in other words, maybe you have a lot of wisdom to share with your neighbor, but the right amount is more valuable than all of it, especially loudly and in the morning as we saw before. uh... the value of a false testimony as a as a powerful weapon you can uh... use your testimony for good you can use your testimony for wickedness and that false testimony is a powerful what weapon uh... down the wrong path uh... verse nineteen confidence has little value in the unfaithful man or or in other words the man the fool who has built his reputation or his character on the facade of value When his friends come and actually try to lean on that structure, lean on that value, they will find themselves feeling like you feel if you have a bad tooth or you have a sore foot. And then down there in verse 20, this is a little bit of a new theme, I suppose. In situations that are heavy and have made hearts heavy, singing a song is not the appropriate way. So not even what words we use, but how we choose which situations go with which wisdom is an important thing to think about. So this is just one section, again, where I've found a little bit more unity in theme. I presented it to you, but you'll have to take it or leave it. I think that all kind of rests on what we've seen in the previous sections about the wise way builds wealth, builds value on real sturdy things, whereas the foolish way goes after that greedy game that will crumble instantly at some point. Do you have a question? Comment? Okay. Okay. Yeah. I think that adds a little bit of clarity in my mind, too, that when you're dealing with people who are in authority, if you are calm and don't get angered easily, I know it's just being in the military, that sometimes if you go to someone and you're all fired up about something, they kind of put up their defenses right away. No. I have a suit, too. So I find that coming in calm, collected, Okay? Alright, yeah, thank you for that. Alright, I am going to rush a little bit so we're not pressed for time here. So, this first section, this first paragraph, I think actually has the most thematic unity. which kind of makes me think maybe it's something overarching I want to remember as I go through the rest of the collection between 25 and 29. After the statement about where these proverbs come from, we see it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter. Now, again, I mentioned this briefly before. This is the construct we used a couple weeks ago. I think this construct will help you if you want to dive in and try to do what I did this week and try to take a couple of proverbs individually and see and test out if they're connected or if they're part of a larger group, right? So I'll go through this one in a good bit of detail here in the next 10 minutes or so, and you'll see, I think, how at least you can try to make some of those decisions and have some confidence that you're not off on an island by yourself. So here's what we used before. Now remember, most of the ones that we applied this to before were contrasts. And initially, we see this word but, and we think, of course, contrast. Now, you might remember, I hope you do, that little letter in Hebrew. It looks like this with a little point on the end. It's just a conjunction, and it can mean either and or but. So again, even the interpretation between and or but there is an interpretive decision. And I'm going to try to give you some tools so that you can make that rather than just depending on somebody else. So it looks like a contrast. As we start to look for the hinge, it's pretty easy right away to see that there's glory in both segments. So we'll go with that initially. But then we move to the end, and we see that there's matter on both lines as well. So now we've got to think about our hinge a little bit. The glory to be had in dealing with the matters is the way that I chose to put it here. Then we see the wrong way versus the right way. God conceals. Kings search out. And here's where we start to think maybe this construct isn't going to work anymore, right? He's not saying that one outcome, glory, is a bad outcome, and one outcome, glory, is a good outcome. That's not the contrast the writer's trying to make, right? So let's just rethink our categories. And I don't think this was too difficult, so I'm confident that you all can do it because I figured this out on myself, so I think it'll make sense. The contrast here is not between a good way and the outcome that it brings and a bad way and the outcome that it brings. The contrast is what dealing with the matters is supposed to result in the glory for different people. So the contrast is just how dealing with wisdom works with the Lord and dealing with wisdom works with the king or the ruler here. So, the glory to be had in matters in God's economy is that he knows all wisdom, yet he does not reveal all wisdom. Whereas the glory to be had in wisdom from the king's economy is that he does not have all wisdom, yet he is wise to search out all the wisdom that is available to him. And in both ways, those those dealings with wisdom glorify the one in that economy. No. No. His glory is to know that there's wisdom out there and to go out and seek that wisdom in his rule. Right. So how are we to take this? I think we're just to see the order of wisdom and authority, right? And this should not surprise us because all wisdom is grounded on the fear of the Lord. And he's only revealed some wisdom to us. He has not revealed all wisdom to us. And so the kings, the rulers that he has ordained to be an authority, they have some wisdom. And it is wise for them to search out the application of that wisdom as they take their place in the economy of wisdom, if you will. And so the way that I summarize that there, I'll just read it to you. The comparison is a corollary into that reverent submission, which is the fear of the Lord. The Lord's glory is demonstrated that He knows everything, but reveals some. The King's glory is that He knows some, but seeks all in the rule of His people." Now, maybe that process helps you get there. At least it'll get you somewhere. But I think the value of it is, OK, so now, is this verse 2 connected to this verse 3? Or is it all out there by itself? Let's go through another one and we'll see if we can make some conclusions that we can be confident about. So I won't go through the details there, but what I concluded here, as the heavens for height and the earth for depth, so the heart of Kings is unsearchable. Okay, so, the heart of Kings is as unsearchable as the heights of the heavens and the depths of the earth. That's what that parsing exercise would have kind of got us to. I think this is a, there is glory to be had in the use of wisdom by both the Lord and the King. The King's heart is unsearchable, meaning it's as unsearchable as your heart. That's probably an easier comparison to make. And as we figure out whether or not verse 4 and 5 go with it, or maybe explain it a little bit, I think what we're going to see is that the two at the top kind of help us see a conclusion here in verse 4 and 5. The Lord has all wisdom, he reveals some. The king has some wisdom, he seeks after all. His heart is unsearchable, meaning he may go the right way, he may go the wrong way, he may apply wisdom correctly, he may follow the wickedness of his own heart. Therefore, verse four and five, take away the dross from the silver, and it will go to the silversmith for jewelry. Or, in other words, refine out the wickedness from the king's process of applying his wisdom in his court, in his thinking, in his ruling. And if you take out the wickedness of that unsearchable heart that is prone to go either way, taking out that wickedness or refining that unsearchable heart will lead that king to a more true application of the wisdom the Lord has revealed. Now again, You don't have to buy all of this. I'm trying to show you that the process at least can help you come to some conclusions about the theme here. And I do think that this section is very thematically tied. I think it's the most logical section as far as a logical flow of things in 25 through 29, which would make sense that it's right there at the beginning. And the next verse is another conclusion. In summary, take your place before the king when he finds wisdom. In other words, don't use your words to build a false view of you before the king. Rather, Build your value before the king on the wise path, the thing that has real value. And when he sees it, then the king's view of you will be real. It will be sturdy. It will not come and go with his whim, because he will know that it's built on real value that he's assessed on his own. So rather than by self-exaltation, by excellence, build the king's view of you. And similarly, this proverb about do not go hastily to court for what will you do in the end when your neighbor has put you to shame. In the same way that you can build a false view of yourself by self-exaltation before the king, you can Build a false view of yourself before the king by showing up in his court, demanding justice, and then you find out actually that justice is not in your favor, and his view of you. There's the calamity, right? So you build this false view of yourself before the king, and then you show up to court, and you are on the wrong side of the justice, and now that false view that he had of you is torn down because you showed up You showed up when you shouldn't have you rushed to court to make the king decide justice for you when you should have You should have been more patient and we'll see this in the next verse You should have dealt the justice with your neighbor on your own rather than going before the king and Sorry, maybe I missed one. In other words, work out the wisdom of the matter yourselves so that your wickedness does not end up before the king. And of course, this is not wickedness in the sense that you are on the wicked way, but if you have done something unjust, work it out with your neighbor, reconcile it with him rather than endangering the view that the king has of you. And then, again here, we're at words, right, and the power of words, and I think this is a big because on the end of it here. So, a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver, like fine jewelry, in other words. Finding and accepting wisdom from your neighbor is wisdom in and of itself. And then finally, A faithful messenger is also refreshing to the one who sends it. So I think this is the conclusion. The Lord who sends wisdom is refreshed when that wisdom is taken and applied rightly. The one who receives your wisdom when the Lord sends it to them through you or through a messenger is refreshed. So a faithful messenger is refreshing to the one who sends it. The delivery of wisdom is a blessing to the Lord who reveals it and to the king who administers it. So if we all take our place, our rightful place, in administering wisdom, grounded on the fear of the Lord, administered through the kings and the rulers, and administered through our own personal relationships, all of that wisdom has the benefit and the blessing and the value that the Lord has intended it, because it's all built upon the fear of the Lord. Alright, really quickly here. So, I just summarized it, but since I took quite a long time, I'll just let you take a quick look and then we'll conclude here. Finally, here are the last three verses. Again, I think there is a little bit of a conclusion here. I'll go through it very briefly, and actually let me just read it. I'll tell you what. The fear of the Lord, the fear of man rather, brings a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe. Many seek the ruler's favor, but justice for man comes from the Lord. An unjust man is an abomination to the righteous, and the one who is upright in the way is an abomination to the wicked. So I think this is a fitting conclusion to this section that is a little bit more pointed towards kings, rulers, the administration of wisdom, all the way from the Lord, the Lord top down, or the Lord grounded, as in the fear of the Lord, we've grounded all of it, whichever way you want to look at it. But the proper administration of the wisdom the Lord has revealed through his proper authorities and through our own relationships, I think there is at least a little bit of a sense of that cap on the front and this smaller cap on the back here. And that lines up with what we've been thinking all the way along. So it helps us to make sense out of it. All right, any final questions or comments? I've stunned you all. OK, great. Let me pray for us, and then we'll move on to further worship. Lord, thank you for your wisdom. Thank you that you've ordained rulers to be authorities to administer justice in your world. Lord, help us to find that wisdom, help us to cherish that wisdom, help us to apply that wisdom in our place in the economy that you've built for that wisdom. Help us to trust the promises that you have given us, turning your punishment into discipline and turning us to point or to rest all of our hope on your son who has saved us, Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.