Ken Boa Reflections Ministries

Dr. Ken Boa: I can announce today that my very first book, which came out in July of 1975, so it was exactly 50 years ago, is now here. So we have *God I Don't Understand*. The only difference between this book and the original in some respects is just there's a section at the end that's called "50 Years Later" at the end of every chapter because the content was evergreen.

The theology, you don't want to be an innovator in theology. That's not a good thing to do. But the content was evergreen, but the cultures changed. So what would be the issues I'd perhaps address now that weren't the case in those days? So many things, whether it's on sciences or theology. I did chapters on a number of these tough questions.

This meant a lot to Karen; I gave her a copy and it's still the truth. To Karen, her worth is far above jewels, so I dedicated it to her back in '75. It deals with the mystery of the God-man. My claim is that the only approach that one should take is to hold on to the tension because one of the evidences that it's the word of God is that it would contain things that no one could have made up or ever did make up. It's beyond our comprehension.

Therefore, hold the tension, don't try to solve the problem. Because if you try to solve your problem, you're going to go to one extreme or the other: divine sovereignty too much, human responsibility too much, and so forth. So I start off with the God-man, the mystery of the God-man, the mystery of the Trinity, then I'd look at the divine sovereignty and human responsibility that and also related to the problem of evil, the resurrection body, the nature of time. My background at Case Institute of Technology, so the sciences were helpful for me, space and the transcendent omniscient God.

As I look at this, as I said before, at the end of each of the chapters, I had this as the "50 Years Later." So it was a really interesting way to go about it because what would be the things that have changed in our culture that weren't true back then? And so that's the approach. So we have them here. If anyone wants them, I think they're $20, we're giving them for $15 today.

Guest (Male): Does the spine still say, "*God I Don't Understand*"?

Dr. Ken Boa: Yes, it says *God I Don't Understand, Kenneth Boa*, but it's still the same thing. That's the mystery. God, I don't understand this guy. So that's what you've got there.

I want to go now and pick up with where we left off two weeks ago with Proverbs. As you know, I really like this, that I'm alternating biblical and topical topics. That's really nice. Now that we've completed the New Testament, every other week now it's going to be a topic of one sort or another and every other week it's going to be continuing in the Old Testament.

We're still in the book of Proverbs. This outline of the book of Proverbs that you can see here is again the prologue, which is so critical, and then the motif of the book, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." And then the principles of wisdom, but the father's exhortations found in chapters one through nine. That's why again you have to realize that all those were preparatory to prepare the student to receive wisdom. The wisdom doesn't really begin until chapter 10. And that's where we are right here. And then it has these collections and so forth.

Given that, I want to pick up where we left off. Up to chapter nine is an epilogue and an invitation. And that's really what it is. It's an epilogue. The 10, there are 10 little "my son" statements, 10 little sermonettes, shall we say, of a father to the son where he seeks to create the heart of wisdom in the son, to prepare him, to give him an appetite to draw him to it.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, but you can give him salt. So he's trying to make it something that's going to be drawing him to receive because what's the good in having a price of wisdom if there's if you have no heart for it? So he's trying to create, it's worth your while. So he's done those 10 sermons that begin with "my son," but then this chapter is as I call it an epilogue and two invitations.

So it summarizes it all where wisdom calls to all the fools except the scoffers. And so in verses seven to 12, we have two responses. The word of the scoffer. In verses one to six, wisdom has built her house. She's hewn out her seven pillars. She's prepared her food, she's mixed her wine, she's also set her table. She has sent out her maidens; she calls from the tops of the heights of the city, "whoever is naive, let him turn in here." To him who lacks understanding, she says, "come and eat of my food and drink of the wine I have mixed. Forsake your folly and live and proceed in the way of understanding."

In those verses then we see that wisdom's calling the foolish and simpletons to her banquet. What's interesting is this, that she does not invite one group. There are, as you've seen this before and here you can see this group, these four Hebrew words: the Patheem, the Keselim, the Eveelim, and the Letzim. These four words for fools is really a gallery in which, as you can see, it gets worse as you go down.

The naive are the ones who are the simpletons; they're just simple-minded. They haven't thought; they're uncommitted to the way of righteousness. They're naive. They haven't really processed things; they're uninstructed in the way of righteousness. But then Keselim is a little bit worse. One is naive, the other ones are just the plain fools; they just don't seem to have a heart for the subject.

But the worst, what's worse yet were the next group, the Eveelim, are people who hate wisdom and love folly. And yet it seems that wisdom invites these three groups, but she does not call out to the Letzim. She doesn't call out to the scoffers. There's no point because it would not receive it anyway. It reaches a point of no return, isn't there, in a person's life where you can't receive any more instruction, any more wisdom, and that you're not capable of receiving it. Isn't it interesting that there is this gallery of fools then?

Then in verses 13 to 18, we jump down a little bit here and we can see the woman of folly is boisterous. She's naive and knows nothing. She sits at the doorway of her house on a seat by the high places of the city, calling to those who pass by who are making their paths straight, "whoever is naive, let him turn in here." To him who lacks understanding she says, "stolen water is sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant." But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

So what is happening here is that you've got two invitations and two responses, one that receives and one that rejects the wisdom that's being offered. And so it's like a motif for the book. It's a beautiful way of kind of encapsulating the rest of this material. Now we get to go into the chapters themselves on wisdom. When we jump ahead though what we see is suddenly all of a sudden we hit the Proverbs of Solomon and we have them no longer in a topical sequence.

There are some places where a few connect together, but largely speaking, it's just an array, a collection of proverbial insight, little simple illustrations that illustrate truth about life, simple summaries. So how do we work with this? Because in the first nine chapters, we could organize them in the way we did. Here you cannot. So I want to do it topically. My plan here is to take you through topics and I want to start talking about first of all the character of the wise.

I'm going to summarize all the wisdom in that book in these various categories. What is a wise person's character? I'm going to pull out seven qualities of character today that exemplify a person who walks in the fear and knowledge of the Lord. And then after we talk about the character of the wise, we'll talk about another area about what it says about wealth and about these kinds of very practical matters as well.

If a person, all things being equal, followed the principles in this book, they'd be a whole lot better than most people ever are because most of the stupid decisions people make are covered in this book pretty well. But we'll also talk about the tongue, about speech, and that's a huge, huge category. So after we talk about the character of the wise, I want to talk about the wise person's speech, and that's a very critical area because the power of words to heal or to destroy is awesome.

So what we do now is just go through them topically and weave them together in that way. To do that then I want to begin by looking at the character of the wise. Character is a key component of wisdom, of course, because we're talking about a quality of life that you cannot live on your own. We're talking about something that requires an infusion of God and that is why the wisdom of this book is related to the fear of Yahweh.

What is that fear? A reverential awe at the very least. It means an attitude of a subject before a servant before the master, a dependency upon him. And in fact, it has various levels of fear and we've seen this before. When you look at there's a fear of the Lord can really mean several things. The fear of the Lord can be a humility, at the very least the humility before God.

Because as Bic Cardwell put it the other day, as he summarizes my one-sentence summary of the Bible, what is it Bic? "I'm God and you're not." That's it. I'm God and you're not. We forget that. We act as if we are gods ourselves and so forth in our autonomy. So that one way of summarizing the Bible, "I'm God and you're not." But we forget that. So humility at the very least is involved.

But there's another dimension of fear that relates to awe and there's a reverential awe it's described. Some sense of the manifestation of God and so as he reveals himself to us and we get to know him better, there can be sometimes he mediates himself a little bit less and it can be even a holy dread that can be described. But the most intense category is that of a holy terror.

There are several examples of that. One in Isaiah 6 when he's undone before the holiness of God. And I don't think God fully revealed himself, it would be destroyed. But he manifested himself just a little bit more but not more than that. You could not endure his presence. But to just a little bit more of a direct revelation, Ezekiel 1. What happens when Ezekiel sees the vision of God's approaching there in the chariots of fire and the holiness of God and he falls on his face like a dead man just as Isaiah did?

So does Daniel in chapter 10; he falls on his face like a dead man. So does Paul, or rather Saul at that time. And Saul on the Damascus Road sees the resurrected Christ. What happens? He's like a dead man. He's blinded and he's totally destroyed except that he spares him for a purpose and calls him for a purpose. And the same is with Revelation, the one who would lean at his breast, the intimate relationship that John had with him.

And yet when he sees the resurrected Christ in Revelation 1, he's so overwhelmed that he falls on his face like a dead man. In each case, someone has to raise them up so they can receive the message. So at the very least, we have to realize though that it is a fundamental humility that's necessary in order to cultivate that quality of character. And education without the development of character is worthless.

I talked about a court case between Columbia University and a student. The university student sued the university for not paying his tuition in full because his counterclaim was that they didn't owe them money, but rather they owed him money in damages because part of the purpose statement for a four-year undergraduate degree was that the university would cultivate wisdom and character. After he graduated he says, "I didn't gain any wisdom or character."

You can guess that it didn't do it, the suit didn't go well in his case, but you get the very point though. In fact, these days we're spending a quarter of a million or more to send our children off to the Philistines to be educated. Go work that one out. And so the idea so you can guarantee they're going to be educated into the way of folly and of the way of the world and it's the way of foolishness and so we have to process what that looks like.

But you're not going to get wisdom in the university. So that's the whole idea. And in our culture, it seems to become in some ways from a practical sense dumber and dumber because there's a loss of a moral consensus. At least there was basically an acknowledgment that there's a kind of a consensus: this is right and this is wrong. That's gone.

And it's very rare more and more people do not want, especially in postmodernity, to use even the word evil, the evil word, because to say a thing is evil is to imply that there's something therefore that's good. They don't want to acknowledge that there's a good. So it becomes totally subjectivized to the autonomous self. It's no longer an external tradition, nothing external to me. I am my own captain. I get to determine what's right and wrong and who I am and what life is about.

At the end of the day then their feet are firmly planted in mid-air. They're living in cloud-cuckoo-land because they may claim that this is that and that's that, but it has nothing to do with reality. The ways we look at reality are empiricism and rationalism, that is to say, God has crafted us and created us in such a way that we can use the evidences of our senses for inductive reasoning, but we also use the deductive reasoning of reason and rationality.

And reason and empiricism will get us pretty far, but not far enough to answer the fundamental questions of life: where did I come from? Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? Can't answer those. You need a third way of knowing besides reason and empiricism. What's the third way of knowing? Revelation. That God has to disclose. You see, that's why Ecclesiastes is a fascinating book because it deals with the best that wisdom can come up with under the sun.

From a human perspective without revelation, this is the best you can conclude. But you need something beyond the sun. Remember the idea of an Archimedean reference point? Archimedes said, "you give me a fulcrum and a lever, and if the fulcrum is in the right place and the lever's long enough, I could lift the earth." But you can't be on the earth to lift the earth. You have to be off the earth.

But you could do it. But that's why it's called an Archimedean reference point because it can't be on the earth. You see, Jack Kerouac, *On the Road*, you can't be on the road and grasp what the road's like. You have to be off the road; you have to have a wisdom from above the sun, not below. So what you need therefore is that third way of knowing. And the third way of knowing is revelation and only that can provide the answers to the fundamental questions of life.

But we've abandoned both the two ways of knowing that have been followed all these years. So it's an interesting time. The fool then does not have a heart for the subject and if he doesn't have a heart for the subject, it's going to carry him nowhere. So I've selected seven qualities or characteristics of the wise in Proverbs.

Here is the first one. The first one's going to be humility. So I just want to quickly just chat about these seven qualities of wisdom and what does the wise look like in this book. What's the quality of character that they have? And I think of Matthew, "Blessed are the poor in spirit" in Matthew 5:3. To be poor in spirit is to acknowledge your spiritual bankruptcy, that you bring nothing to the table.

So an acknowledgment of poverty of spirit is to realize you don't have anything that you can add, that all things come from him and through him and to him, and that you don't create anything that's all derivative. The key to humility, if you might recall, is a wonderful verse and it's one I have often used in our group here. And it's found in 1 Corinthians 4:7.

And Paul asks this rhetorical question, "Who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive?" And what should the answer be? The answer is you don't have anything that you didn't receive. Everything is gift and grace. If you did receive it, why do you boast as if you hadn't received it? So it strikes me that this verse is so simple in some ways because it outlines the key mindset. If you want to be humble, recognize you didn't bring anything to the table.

Everything you have is a gift of God. And when you recognize that, your utter dependence upon him without him you would have nothing. Don't trust your own intellect but submit your life to the Lord of Holy Scripture. So he's going to be trusting in the Lord, not in his own mind, but he's going to be actually being wise enough to submit his life to the Lord in this respect.

And so we again we recognize this in Proverbs. So the whole idea of to realizing that "trust in the Lord with," how? "With all your heart." Remember that idea, all, entirely. "Do not lean on your own understanding. Trust in him exclusively. In all your ways," extensively, acknowledge him and what'll happen? "He'll guide your paths; he'll make your paths straight. Don't be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It'll be healing to your body and refreshment to the bone."

And so this is the basic theme of wisdom here. So when you look at "how blessed is the man who fears always, but he who hardens his heart will fall into calamity. He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but he who walks wisely will be delivered. The reward of humility and the fear of the Lord are riches, honor, and life." So to have humility and fear is to live in awe before God and acknowledging his moral laws.

So we don't want to hear the problem is contrarian counsel. Often we convince ourselves we're right contrary to the evidence. We try to rationalize our own decisions, our own position. And that leads to a failure to actually humble ourselves enough to realize we were wrong. And so there's a presumption, the sin of presumption always protecting their own vested interests.

And this pride, the opposite of this humility, produces duplicity. So when you think about God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble, "humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." So here's one you can trust.

And so before honor as well, the scriptures always tell us there's the cross precedes the crown. Before honor always comes humility. The one who would seek honor in this world will not find it. The one who seeks the Lord and humbles himself and recognizes that here I am going to face every day, Paul says, "I die daily." So every day is a mini death in that respect.

So this mindset then, we should be willing to acknowledge our mistakes and our blunders as David did with the record of his confession of his sin in Psalm 51 with the matter of Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite. And so he who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will find compassion. And so must appeal to God's mercy and loyal love and grace in all things.

So there's a danger of being humble and proud of it though. There's a perverse form of humility that I've shown you this before, but my little thing that I have on humility here. My humility cries out for recognition. You say, "I'm just a humble man, you know." And isn't it interesting that you want your humility to be noticed? You see, and I'm humble and proud of it.

I never saw a toad with teeth, but he's a very handsome creature. So some people are humble and proud of it, you know. It's a funny thing. And I have my trilogy, you see, that I also have in addition to *God I Don't Understand*. My first book is *Pride and How I Overcame It*. My second volume is *Humility and How I Attained It*. And the third volume is *How You Too Can Just Be Just Like Me*, you see.

So I know you're all going to want those, that wonderful trilogy. There are some people who actually think that that's true. It's amazing. So if you don't grasp that, you're deceiving yourself. So humility is the first of these qualities of character and the second one that we can see is this concept of loyalty. So again I'm looking at all this material in Proverbs as this rich treasure trove of wisdom.

Trying to pull out certain motifs and when you focus on character, loyalty also becomes a prominent motif that you can see. In Proverbs 23:26, one of the key texts, "Give me your heart, my son, and let your eyes delight in my ways." But we keep pulling back and giving him a half-heart. And so a half-hearted obedience, you see.

So you're in two minds; you're half-hearted. To be double-minded is to be half-hearted. So he wants the integrity of being a full person before him. And so God judges according to the consequences, but only you and I will judge according to appearances. And so we realize that appearances seem to be contrary to obedience.

And in this world often the appearances of this world would suggest that God's purposes for you may not be in your best interests. But you have to realize how do you know what's in your best interests? Remember the two things you have to realize in order to trust God enough to obey him? The two is first of all that you're not in control of anything.

God's in control of all things. And that's a very important recognition that we don't control one hour. You don't control a day. You do not know, even on your drive here, it may be that some of you had a near-death experience without even knowing it. Somebody could have been looking at this thing here. You do not know the way things are and the way that people are doing. You can't be sure; there's any number of a thousand things that could have happened because our lives are held together in the thinnest of gossamer's threads.

So you recognize that not only is God in control, but what's the second thing we have to acknowledge before we can trust him enough to obey him? We must acknowledge that he has our best interests at heart. And here's the hard part: you and I don't. You like to think you have your best interests at heart. That's why we argue with God about why things are happening. How do you know what your best interest looks like? What would you have to know to know your best interest?

The outcome, the future. You can't know the future; you can only judge according to appearances. God sees actually what's beyond the appearances and he sees the consequences. So if you're wise you will then submit yourself to that outcome that God's promising for you. He says, "I know it doesn't look right, I know it looks uneasy, it looks very bad, but I can see the outcome. And so only I have your best interests at heart. And you have to trust me enough to judge not according to appearances, but according to my command."

I have to trust him therefore in advance. So I had, for example, an experience on Sunday where I was going to go to the funeral of my aunt and uncle. He was career military and they were going to have the 21-gun salute and all the other things at Arlington National Cemetery. And I'd always wanted to go there and it was a unique opportunity to be with my family.

And so after I teach my Sunday morning class, Bob Margolin drove me to the airport and got there in plenty of time to get my flight. And we get out onto the tarmac and there we're sitting for about an hour and a half on the plane just sitting there. And apparently, the weather conditions there, at least that's what they claim, who knows really what, but there were weather conditions that were causing backups and delays.

So after an hour and a half sitting there, then we went back to the gate, deplaned, and waited there for a period of time. And then they put us back on the same plane. Okay, looking better. Then we're sitting there for another hour and a half. Brutal, brutal. I'm worn out. We're having a great time. And then they say the flight's been canceled.

So they bring us back to another gate, one further away. So I had the privilege of going all the way back to the airport, going from that gate, and then trying to see what I'm going to do about my baggage because I wasn't going to be able to take the next flight because it turned out it wouldn't get there in time because it was going to be on Monday morning and I just couldn't get there.

But then when I got to the baggage claim and after having the privilege of waiting around a long line there and getting that sorted out, one of them found that there was another flight that left a little bit later and would get us in about late, but still in time for me to get there to the hotel. And so I booked that flight.

Then I had the privilege of going all the way from there through the control again. You have to go through the whole deal again through the gates and all that business. So get to the gate and I managed to do that. And I got on that plane on the tarmac an hour and a half. And finally, that flight is canceled.

So then I had the privilege of going back to the airport because what about my bag? Well, if you don't take the next flight, your bag is going to be take three hours to get your bag. So I go to the baggage area there and work that out and so I have to realize I have to come back on Monday morning to get my bags.

And I'm processing all this because it was a unique opportunity to be with my relatives too. So part of it I'm seeing is what was this whole thing about? And so you're processing and you're trying to be patient and so forth, but I'm totally exhausted and it was very different. I was utterly a basket case.

And then I tried to book to cancel my next flight, the return flight. I go to the Delta the agency there and the SkyMiles premium and so forth and go there. Oh, they're not able to do that. So I have to deal with that the next day. So I then take a finally get go to the North Terminal and take the Uber and get home and I'm just a complete mess.

But I'm processing this. What's God got in mind? But on the other hand you realize I'm not just about me because there are tens of thousands of people who were affected by the same situation. So you can't say this happened because of that, but you can say in the providence of God that how does he work all these crazy things together for good when you really process and do a calculus on that? But somehow he will, but it's beyond my imagination.

So I have to receive that and recognize. And so on my drive back from getting picking up my baggage, I talk with my family and did a little thing. And so I'm probably going to do a video for them. But I don't know what that looks like. But my point is I had a certain idea of what the good day would be like, you see, and your plans you commit your plans, but you can't control a thing.

You have to recognize. So what's my process here? Did that defeat the purposes of God? I don't believe it so. But I don't know what he but he's going to do something else. It became a teaching exercise for me and a process of interiorizing that. So you commit your work, but you've got to let loose of the outcome; I can't control it.

So it's that's the way this works. Loyalty in part means I'm going to trust him though I do not understand him. Commit in advance even though I don't understand him. You cannot understand him. And then I already know this: you can't understand a molecule of water. You can't understand an atom, you can't understand let alone a cell, let alone a plant or an animal; it's beyond everything in the created order is beyond your grasp.

And if you can't understand the things that God's made in his created order, do you think you're going to understand the mind of the maker? Yet he's revealed his mind in many ways and so he says you're not going to understand me, but you're called to trust me.

Teachability is another quality that I find is the characteristic of the wise. "The wise of the heart will receive commands, but a babbling fool will be ruined. He's on the path of life who heeds instruction, but he who ignores reproof will go away." And nobody likes to have reproof; no one likes to be rebuked or corrected. But if you are not careful, you will try to have the mindset of self-defense and you won't be teachable.

And that's a danger. Remember we said when you're young what's your problem? You're naive and lack of focus. In our middle years, our main problem seems to be double-mindedness playing by two sets of rules and entanglement. But I think in our later years our biggest challenge is teachability to have to realize that you don't have all the answers.

In fact, if anything, the more we grow, the more we should gain what I call the second naivete of childlike wonder and awe because you see there you begin to realize you don't know anything and you recognize more and more you want to be teachable and open to insights and not cling to this mindset you have all the answers.

But to be willing to be teachable is to be willing to receive reproofs. And some people who've loved me a lot have been willing to take the risk in rebuking me because you see "faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy." A lot of people want to hear flattering words, but what they really need to hear is an honest word from a friend who cares enough to take that risk.

And so being teachable though is to receive it and not to be immediately defensive. Our natural dynamic is self-defense. And so we go on the offense instead of our best defense we say is the offense. But we haven't even looked at it; maybe they're telling us there's a kernel of truth in that.

"Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid. The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel." So that's why teachability is so absolutely essential. So I claim that that is a very critical theme. There are many times when I didn't want to hear what a person had to say, but I look back and I'm thankful that they loved me enough to give me a word of honesty and a word of truth.

And that's what we all need and again "the wounds of a friend are going to be more faithful than the deceitful kisses of an enemy" who flatter you and try to appeal to you for all the wrong reasons. Any questions so far on these things? Pretty clear; I'm just working my way through, but I'm just giving a few more.

Righteousness is another quality of the character of the wise. And again these are qualities that cannot be attained by our own energy and effort but they are actually evidences of the grace of God in our lives. And so this righteousness is a pursuit and Christ became for us, 1 Corinthians 1:30 is a lovely way to see it because it's a summary of how he is in fact all things for us: that by his doing he became to us wisdom from God. Jesus is the incarnation of wisdom and he is and of righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

And so we see in his righteousness then a powerful motif and for example in Proverbs 13:5, "a righteous man hates falsehood." He hates that which is dissembling; he wants to know the real truth. Or he who profits illicitly troubles his own house, but he who hates bribes will live. He has integrity. In other words, he will speak Proverbs 12:17 what's right, but a false witness deceit.

So we're talking about qualities of honesty and righteousness and integrity. Righteousness, by the way, really means to conform to a standard. Remember that idea of righteous weights and unrighteous weights? A righteous weight conforms to a standard. It is you claim it's this amount and it really is. An unrighteous weight is is is not correct. So we have to have a standard and conforming to a standard and God's standard of righteousness.

The next one I have for us here is this one, godly speech. And we're going to be focusing on that next two weeks from now when we look at the Proverbs because I want to unpack the incredible wisdom on listening and speaking. How do you make your words fewer? How do you listen better? Because most people are very bad listeners; you many of you have noticed this.

And how do we learn the wisdom of humility to become other-centered in our receptivity of speech? And how do we reduce our words and say less than we often do? And there's some very clear proverbial recommendations here that what godly speech really looks like. So I'll be focusing on that. "He who restrains his words has knowledge and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding."

So our speech in terms of content and emotion involves a matter of a matter of self-control. You see, and you don't just blurt it out, but you have restraint and discipline. There's a tranquility and so in 14:30, "a tranquil heart is life to the body, but passion is rottenness to the bones."

And so this is 3,000-year-old wisdom, but even though cultures change, the human condition has not and we all find these timeless principles, these maxims from the ancient world to be as relevant today as they ever were in the past. Better to have a cool head and a warm heart.

So the one you want to be slow to anger. Proverbs 14:29, "he who is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who is quick-tempered exalts folly." And one of my flesh signatures is anger and so I can just lash out when I'm walking in the flesh and not in the spirit. It's obvious; it becomes very evident. I'm brutally honest about my flesh signature and I know that it's a quality that I have.

But the fact is that part of this is the restraint of the Holy Spirit who gives you self-control, one of the fruits of the spirit that's necessary. I would also say another quality of the of the righteous is this one, that he's forgiving. And so you see this is again you go through these wonderful principles that really explore the fabric, the the whole dynamics of the tapestry of life.

Life that's woven out of the threads of small decisions and they shape together. And this whole thing of forgiveness becomes a motif as well. "A man's discretion makes him show slow to anger and it is his glory to overlook a transgression." See, it's your glory because you see it's a very it's a very easy thing for us to return evil for evil and it's something we have to return good for evil and it's it's it's divine.

"Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all transgressions." And so when you think about Matthew 18:15, for example, and you go to that central text about the dynamics of forgiveness, it's intriguing to me that you have if your brother sins what you're to do? Show him his fault in private.

You know what actually happens typically? We go to the second one, if take two or more with you. We tell it to other people without telling him. You probably noticed this. If a person tells me about another person says, "you know that this person did that," what should my response be? "Did you talk with him first about this?" And of course, the answer will almost certainly be no.

And what's the obvious next question? Why you telling me? You had the you see it's easy to tell about another person to a third person, but to tell them directly requires a measure of courage and honesty and integrity. So that this is part of it as well, self-restraint. And so you confront him in love seeking to have win him over because you're not trying to criticize him; you're trying to bring him back to a realization that there's something that needs to be dealt with.

And so you want to seek to honor that. So it says if he listens to you, you've won your brother. That's the whole point. It's interesting before I go back to this if I go to Galatians chapter 6 for a moment, it's and look at this: if anyone is caught in any trespass, Galatians 6:1, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness or humility, each one looking to yourself so that you too will not be tempted.

Here's what happens: when a person, say a prominent figure in Christendom, is caught and he's been found to be guilty of some sins and he had to live a double life perhaps sometimes some have gotten away with it for years because they had zero accountability. They had the impression of it but not the reality. And so when they're finally caught, you know what often happens is we shoot our wounded.

And so we basically we criticize them and we actually people get virtue signaling by criticizing those who fell. It's an astonishing thought. It's just the opposite of this text. What should your response be? Two-fold. Number one, restore such a one in a spirit of what? Gentleness or humility. You should be seeking to restore him number one.

And number two, each one looking to yourself realizing you could have done the same thing. So let that be a reminder to you that you are capable of doing the very thing that he's doing. And you are forgiven much and far you've been forgiven far, far more than you were ever asked to forgive. Far, far more.

Remember the one who got 10,000 talents and and he's forgiven by the king? Then he goes off and throttles his servant who owes him 100 denarii, 100 days' work. I worked out the math and it turns out the difference between 100 denarii and 10,000 talents is about 600,000 times. He was forgiven 600,000 times more but he's throttling the guy to give him back what he want. You see the point here? He never asks you to forgive more than you were forgiven because he gave you better than you deserve. What's our call? To give them better than they deserve.

And so this is the mindset that we have. So as we're as we're looking at this this text these texts of scripture then we see and then we go to the Matthew 18 I won't go into more detail, but then the next step was to bring two or three and then the then after that the the body of believers group. And so it's church discipline that's not very often practiced.

"He who conceals a transgression seeks love. He who repeats a matter separates intimate friends." So do I ever repeat a transgression? Do I honor the person by giving not re not blabbing it around but if but I keep I hold it to myself. So I conceal that transgression.

In Proverbs 20, "don't I do not say I will repay evil. Wait for the Lord and he will save you." Instead of seeking your own revenge allow God to take care of it. Proverbs 24:29, "Do not say, 'Thus shall I do to him as he has done to me. I will render to the man according to his work.'"

Now it's demonic for us to return good with evil, isn't it? It is human for us to return good with good, but it's divine for us to return evil with good. That requires the grace of God. That's something noteworthy. And so Romans 12 many practical exhortations that go along this whole idea of manifesting this mindset of blessing those who persecute you and rejoice with those who rejoice.

And so this never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, as far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. You can't control their response, but if you have offered forgiveness or requested forgiveness and if they do not respond properly, you've done all you can do and they can't blackmail your joy.

You've done what you can do, but insofar as it's up to you, be at peace. You have to be a peacemaker but I can't control their response, but I cannot let that determine the outcome. So there's a lot of wisdom in this. Never payback evil for evil, respect what's right in the sight of all men. And so because it's God who will deal with the outcome.

And in our I'll jump ahead to the part number seven. And that this seventh quality that I have is thoughtfulness. So here's a seven-part character list of the wise in Proverbs. Thoughtfulness and let me unpack very briefly what that looks like as well. So when I think about thoughtfulness, I'm talking about here, these standards go beyond the law itself; they're not found in Torah. A lot of these go into more detail in the fabric of life than the broadsides of the prophets and so forth.

But the idea of "without consultation plans are frustrated, but with many counselors they succeed." Be thoughtful. Look before you leap and this idea if you want your plans to succeed seek out godly counsel. Now I know some people who seek out godly counsel but they tend to ignore it after they've gotten it. I know some other people who have a habit of telling them what they're playing to do and asking for your approval.

Little late. Maybe it would have been a good idea if you wanted counsel to do it before you made your decision. You see, so they're just looking for affirmation. That's not exactly a thoughtful thing. So even if it returns in results in turning away from our plans, you will profit from that.

So a wise man manifests a measure of caution. "The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage," Proverbs 21:5 says, "but everyone who is hasty surely comes to poverty." Don't be in haste in all these things. We can, "a prudent man sees evil and hides himself. The naive proceed and pay the penalty."

So the this whole concept that we see is to be prudent to ponder possible blunders in advance to be thoughtful in that respect. And then I have a few other qualities of the wise that you could have included including one of them is diligence. "Have you found honey eat only what you need and do not have eat in excess and vomit."

Always want to do things don't want to do something to excess. Or being a companion of wise people. You want to be wise you walk with the wise. Doesn't mean you're not going to have relationships with people who are outsiders. You are called to be an agent of transformation, salt and light in the world. But we need to be careful about our deepest, most intimate associates that there needs to be a quality of wisdom in that as well. Leave the presence of a fool you're not discern words of knowledge.

And then a wise person's also concerned for the poor. The righteous is concerned for the rights of the poor and so compassion is displayed here. So these are qualities that I see that are very critical. And Christ, as I look at these qualities of of these, and so we could have look at a list like this.

Look at the life of Christ and if you were to look at any of these seven and look at Christ's life in the Gospels and pull out how does he exemplify let's say humility or loyalty or teachability righteousness and so forth. But of course the ultimate life of Christ is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, the fruit of the spirit.

So how he fulfills that. But in even in Hebrews 5, it even tells us that Jesus learned wisdom from what he suffered. In the days of his flesh, he offered up both prayers and supplications with crying and tears to the one who was able to save him from death and he was heard because of his piety. So we learn through our adversity.

So couple weeks from now we're going to look at taming the tongue. I want to talk about the value and the power of speech, the characteristics of good words and the source of good words. We'll have last two minutes for questions. This is terrible. Yes.

Guest (Male): Where are you pulling your notes from?

Dr. Ken Boa: Oh, these are notes that I have from a transcription I did on my teaching and I'm going to make it available to you. Right now I'm highlighting it so but these notes I want to I want to put them in your hand. So I did a teaching on Proverbs and then we did a transcription and then what I'm doing is highlighting it now. But I haven't finished highlighting it so I'll send it to you.

But it's helpful just the visual the eye gate really helps and just connects it. But my it's a kind of a guide but I went through I did two different series in Proverbs and we transcribed them and that's where the that's where it comes from. Yeah, yes.

Many of them were his as and we have these specifically ones from 10 to 24 are are him but then the men of Hezekiah made a collection in 25 to 29 then Agur and Lemuel and we don't even know who they were. But some of these were collected and so there were schools of wisdom as well. But Proverbs but he did in fact author many of them perhaps most of them.

That leads to that fundamental dilemma: how on earth is it possible that this wisest of men in this latter part of his life could become so foolish because it's just amazing. He multiplied the three things that a king was not to multiply: horses, women, and wealth. And if a little was good, more was better and too much was just right. Yeah.

I think my encouragement is to be a be in the word, the man of the word, receiving it daily but receiving it with a receptivity that desires desires application. And so rather than trying to do something the thing is to respond to the daily word and so having some source.

We have for example a daily growth email that we make available and makes it easy for people to pray scripture back to God at the KenBoa.org website and that's one option one has. But here's the thing: when you are exposing yourself daily to the word, your response to it is what's going to happen. And so it's then it's a matter of he will give you the word that you need for that day.

And that's that's today's bread and so you want to have fresh bread. So you cannot go for long on yesterday's food; you've got to have fresh bread and respond to it. So ask the spirit to guide you, how do I apply that word? You see, and then the word will one will speak to you wisdom, one will speak about humility, one will speak about forgiveness, one will speak about righteousness.

But a lot of it has to come down to these things and I'm and I'm out of time and I'll I'll quit, but when I talk about my the this whole idea of these these four issues: meaning, identity, purpose and hope. The scriptures alone provide answers to those fundamental questions. They answer the question of where did I came from, who am I, why am I here, and where am I going.

So if I allow the word of God to guide me in this he'll provide and as I'm exposing myself I think the spirit can use that text. And the very same text when you read it next will speak something differently to you because it's alive and active. So my response to it is the most important thing. But I have to be in a context where I create a I'm in a greenhouse. I have to be in a greenhouse where I'm I'm exposing myself to that to that truth. I know we're over time. Thank you.