Sermon for August 27th, 2017

Proverbs 1:1-19

1 The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:

2 For learning about wisdom and instruction,
    for understanding words of insight,
3 for gaining instruction in wise dealing,
    righteousness, justice, and equity;
4 to teach shrewdness to the simple,
    knowledge and prudence to the young—
5 let the wise also hear and gain in learning,
    and the discerning acquire skill,
6 to understand a proverb and a figure,
    the words of the wise and their riddles.

7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
    fools despise wisdom and instruction. 
8 Hear, my child, your father’s instruction,
    and do not reject your mother’s teaching;
9 for they are a fair garland for your head,
    and pendants for your neck.
 
10 My child, if sinners entice you,
    do not consent.
11 If they say, “Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood;
    let us wantonly ambush the innocent;
12 like Sheol let us swallow them alive
    and whole, like those who go down to the Pit.
13 We shall find all kinds of costly things;
    we shall fill our houses with booty.
14 Throw in your lot among us;
    we will all have one purse”—
15 my child, do not walk in their way,
    keep your foot from their paths;
16 for their feet run to evil,
    and they hurry to shed blood.
17 For in vain is the net baited
    while the bird is looking on;
18 yet they lie in wait—to kill themselves!
    and set an ambush—for their own lives!
19 Such is the end of all who are greedy for gain;
    it takes away the life of its possessors.

Walk This Way: The Wisdom of Proverbs

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a proverb as a "short, well-known pithy saying, stating a general truth or piece of advice." It comes from the Latin word proverbia; pro (forward) + verbia (words); words put forth.

I thought I'd start our sermon series on Proverbs by putting forth some pithy words or sayings of my own this morning. These are not sayings I invented, but rather are ones I have collected through the years. Some are from people I admire,or from posters hanging in my office, but most are anonymous quips from bumper stickers, facebook, or other internet memes. You might think of them as "Pastor Neal's top 20 favorite accumulated wisdom teachings."

1. When everything is coming your way, it usually means you're in the wrong lane.
2. There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can't.
3. Peyton Manning: Pressure is something you feel when you don't know what the hell you're doing.
4. When you stop to think, don't forget to eventually start again.
5. You never truly understand something until you can successfully explain it to your grandmother.
6. Henry Ford: If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.
7. The only difference between a grave and a rut is the depth.
8. A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.
9. Wayne Gretzky: I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it's been.
10. If you tell someone there are 300 billion stars in the universe, he will believe you. If you tell him a bench has wet paint on it, he will have to touch it to be sure.
11. After all is said and done, more is usually said than done.
12. The man who leaps off a cliff has too quickly jumped to a conclusion.
13. He who laughs last probably didn't get the joke.
14. Steve Jobs: A lot of times people don't know what they want until you show it to them.
15. Everybody is somebody's else's weirdo.
16. A complex problem always has a simple, easy to understand, and thoroughly incorrect answer.
17. If you want a track team to win the high jump, you find one person who can jump seven feet, not seven people who can jump one foot.
18. Expecting the universe to treat you fairly because you're a good person is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian.
19. A fool and his money are soon...elected.
20. Sattinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in.

For the next few weeks, we'll be studying the Book of Proverbs, which is one of three books in the Bible considered to be Wisdom Literature. The other two books are Job and Ecclesiastes. I've often said that Ecclesiastes is "Advanced Wisdom," the Book of Job is "Intermediate Wisdom" and Proverbs is "Wisdom 101." So a great place to start, as we begin a new school year, and as we begin our season of emphasis on the commitment to study together as a church community, to pursue wisdom in our faith journeys, individually and collectively.

In just about every book of the Bible except for Proverbs, the core teachings are presented as coming from on high to those below--Direct revelation from God to the people, or Moses going up the mountain and coming back down with the law completely and fully formed. Even in the New Testament, wisdom comes from Jesus to the masses, or from Paul or another apostle to his audience: This is wisdom from above, or from one to many.

Proverbs, on the other hand (to borrow a quote from one of my seminary professors) is Wisdom from below. It's a collection of popular sayings and teachings circulated and passed on from generation to generation. It's folk wisdom, or the accumulated wisdom of the people, from the many to the one--the "one" being the young reader or listener addressed throughout the book as "my child."

But wait a minute, Pastor Neal--I thought Proverbs was written by King Solomon! Doesn't it say that right in the first verse? "The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel."

While traditionally the Book of Proverbs was attributed to King Solomon, there are several problems with this:

First, the Hebrew language and vocabulary used in Proverbs is much later than what would have been used in Solomon's time. Even if Solomon is the author of a few of the proverbs, they would have been written down hundreds of years later.

Second, many of the Proverbs are similar or identical to much older Egyptian and Mesopotamian wisdom writings, indicating influence from outside of Israel. Even within the book, other sources are named, like those attributed to "King Lemuel, which his mother taught him," or the "words of Agur" or those that "the scribes of Hezekiah copied."

Finally, some of the proverbs disagree and contradict each other, like Proverbs 26:4, which says "Do not answer fools according to their folly,or you will be a fool yourself" followed immediately with Proverbs 26:5, which says "Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes." That kind of contradiction is not usually common in a work with a single author, but very common in folk sayings. Consider our modern proverbs "The early bird gets the worm" which is contradicted by the equally popular proverb "Good things come to those who wait."

So why does Proverbs begin with an attribution to King Solomon? In the 21st century we are obsessed with authorship and proper attribution of source material. But that wasn't really a big concern to the ancients. Or rather,