Seven Principles of Proverbs

Two weeks ago, I started giving a message on the principles of the book of Proverbs. And I mentioned to you that this was a two-part series. So today we're going to go over the last part of these principles of Proverbs. And I just want to tell you about one correction I made, which I had mentioned eight, but I actually reduced it down to seven and combined two that were quite similar. So basically, two weeks ago, I gave the first four principles, and now we're going to cover the last three.

So I'd like to rehearse again these first four principles in the book of Proverbs, which is a book about wisdom. It tells us about godly wisdom. It's not talking about the wisdom that you can get at a university or a college. It's not talking about worldly wisdom. It's talking about godly wisdom, the wisdom that is based on God's Word, based on what God's Spirit leads one to do. And so I was thinking about if I could summarize the principle of wisdom in the Bible, there's a scripture that comes up, and it's right after the book of Proverbs, as you know, Ecclesiastes has many of the Proverbs of Solomon as well.

But at the very end of the book of Ecclesiastes, in chapter 12, these would be the last verses of Ecclesiastes, and it is a good summary of what godly wisdom is all about. It says here in verse 13, chapter 12, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter.

Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man's all. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil. Some people try to say that the Old Testament doesn't talk about a future resurrection or judgment, and here we have it. In the book of Ecclesiastes, it clearly talks about a future life where we're going to give account before God.

So that was understandable. And if you look at what it says here, this is the foundation of true wisdom, which is to fear God, which means to deeply respect Him, what He says, how He wants us to live, and then to keep His commandments, which are godly principles. And so as we use that as a marker in guiding us forward, then godly wisdom will come to us because it's based on these principles.

So I thought this is a good summary of what godly wisdom is all about. And as a young man, I always wanted to know what wisdom was. That was a word that eluded me. I didn't understand it very well. Even when I came to the church, that's where I started hearing about wisdom. And how all these years, fast-forwarding to today, what can you say? Well, you reduce it down into applying the principles of putting God first and keeping His commandments, all what He has, these spiritual principles that He has given us.

Know how to apply them in a balanced way, as it shows in the very book of Proverbs, as we're going to learn. So the first principle that we covered was seeking wisdom, godly wisdom in our lives. The book of Proverbs is full of verses dealing with this subject. The second one is avoiding becoming a fool according to God's definition.

So God's word tells us there in Proverbs how to avoid ending up being a fool before God. It's very tragic today. I heard the suicide of this rich man who was being judged. All the things he was multimillionaire, one of the big, and he committed suicide in his jail cell.

He just, for whatever reason, but you learn, well, before he had all the wealth, power, and all of that, but how did he end up taking his own life according to what the news says? So you don't want to end up becoming a fool before God, even if you are respected and admired by this world's ways.

The third principle in Proverbs has to do with learning to control your tongue. The Bible talks a lot about being careful, not offending, knowing when to be silent, when to speak up, and how to do it in the proper way. And then the fourth godly principle is learning to control your temper. The Book of Proverbs talks a lot about anger, about not being able to control your temper, and so that was a principle that we covered the last time. So now I'd like to start covering the fifth principle in the Book of Proverbs is to learn self-discipline and to teach it to your kids.

That might be your nephews, anybody that's close to you, that's a child that you can influence, learning self-discipline and teaching it to your kids. It is a key to lasting success. Proverbs talks a lot about this principle of developing self-discipline. Notice in Proverbs 6, verses 6-8, he uses an example from nature. Proverbs 6, verse 6, it says, So it depends a lot on a person if he has self-discipline.

He has responsibility, needs to get up at a certain time, carry out the tasks that are assigned to a person. In other words, a person that just doesn't constantly need prodding. A person that prods himself, that is able to meet with his responsibilities on time and carry them out.

As you know, ants, when you see them running around, they don't have leaders. They all have a duty to do, a job to get done, and they will communicate with each other.

But each little ant has a job to do, and it fulfills it. There's no big ant pushing them around, prodding them on. And so that's the example that the Bible gives us. The Bible describes that self-discipline and motivation as being diligent.

Notice in Proverbs 10 verse 4, it says, He who has a slack hand becomes poor, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.

So this is an important principle here. It says that the person who is diligent tends toward prospering because he does his job well. He's a person that's reliable, that actually gives even more than is required. Goes the extra mile. In God's word translation of this verse, it says, Lazy hands bring poverty, but hard-working hands bring riches.

And so if we want to have children that are going to be prosperous, they're going to look into home. They're going to see how their parents carried out things, and it's a lot easier for them to follow a good example. Notice in Proverbs 12 verse 24, it says, The hand of the diligent will rule, but the lazy man will be put to forced labor. In the contemporary English version, it says, Work hard, and you will be a leader. Be lazy, and you will end up a slave, or the person at the bottom wrong who stays stuck there. And so the Bible tells us, it's so important, we can't constantly have somebody on top of us prodding us to get the job done.

We need to be self-motivated, to be responsible, to carry out things as they should be.

It's one of the examples that Proverbs gives us about having lasting success. When I first heard the saying, I thought it was kind of strange, but I find that there's a lot of wisdom in it. It says, if you want to get a job done, give it to a busy person.

Why? Because that person is busy for a reason, because people rely on them. They know they can get things done. And so usually a person is known by their job, by the way they do things, and they will have more success or failure, according to how people perceive your job done.

Proverbs 22 verse 6, this applies to raising children. Proverbs 22 verse 6, it says, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

So this is a biblical principle. Sometimes it can take decades for that child that was brought up by parents that were godly, gave them principles. Sometimes it might take decades for that child to come back. But somewhere in the back of his mind and in his heart, he received something, that he finally came back. It all clicked. This is what the principle is. Now it doesn't mean it's a guarantee, but it does mean that at times the child can go astray and they will come back.

Sometimes it might be decades. The parents should never lose hope. They should always be encouraging, giving the children a good example, even when they're older.

The principle here is to teach your kids early and often to guard the words that come out of their mouths.

Teach them the proper way to train them.

In Proverbs 19 verse 18, there's another verse that applies to this. Proverbs 19 verse 18, it says, "'Chase in your son while there is hope, and do not set your heart on his destruction.'" The Good News Bible translation says, "'Discipline your children while they are young enough to learn.'" If you don't, you're helping them destroy themselves. How can you help your children to finally destroy themselves, make a wreck and a mess of their lives?

Here's how that can happen.

This is from an anonymous source, which means that whoever was the author didn't put their name on it.

It talks about the rules of how to train your child to be a delinquent. You want your child to end up being a delinquent? Here's some rules. First, when your kid is still an infant, give him everything he wants. This way, he will think the world owes him a living when he grows up, and then keep doing so through adolescence. Just give in. Give them whatever they want. Number two, when he picks up swearing and off-color jokes, laugh at him. Encourage him. As he grows up, he'll find even worse phrases that will floor you. He will learn people tolerate that kind of language, because that's the way it was in the home. They thought it was cute. They thought it was something to laugh about.

That's not the way to do it, but if you want to end up with a delinquent, that's the way to do it. Here's a third rule to end up with a delinquent. Don't give him any spiritual training.

Let him go his own way. Then wait until he's 21 and let him decide for himself. See, it's too late then.

He's already formed. Number four, avoid using the word wrong or no.

It will give your child, supposedly, a guilt complex. You can condition him to believe later when he's arrested for stealing a car that society is against him and that he is being persecuted, because he was never told that's wrong. You cannot do that. And the fifth, prepare yourself for a life of grief. So, of course, this is all kind of negative advice. Please don't do that, because you will end up more certainly with a delinquent in your hand, on your hand. Train up. When it talks about train up your child, the word train up comes from the Hebrew word, which is a term used in agriculture, referring to the training of a tree or a vine to grow in a particular shape or direction. It reminds me when we visited Bob Dichus, he has a beautiful garden, but a lot of those plants he has, they have little wooden rods where he ties them up, so they will grow properly. And you see a nice garden with a lot of different vegetables, a lot of those need to be guided or else they'll just spread out, and then a lot of the fruit will rot.

But if you have the right rods and sticks to wrap them around, you'll find that they will grow according to how they are guided. As a matter of fact, here where it talks about training a child, it has to do with bending of a twig a certain direction. And so we have the saying, as the twig is bent, so goes the tree. It's much easier to bend a twig than it is a tree trunk.

So the time to train a child in the way of life and to teach him the things of God is when the child is young. In the early years, the child's will is soft as clay, malleable and pliable.

It is when they are young that you're able to set their way, give them habits that they can follow, and to learn self-discipline, that they can't get their way.

They're going to follow mom and dad's way, because when they get older, their ways are set.

It's important then to start the training very early, even when they're toddlers, in that first year, there are things that they can learn to do.

In Proverbs 29 verse 17, 29 verse 17, it says, Correct your son, and he will give you rest.

Yes, he will give delight to your soul. There's nothing as wonderful as a self-disciplined child that becomes that young man or young daughter that knows how to live, knows how to keep their family well-guided. But all of that begins with the training at the age when they are infants. In the Good News Bible version, it says, Discipline your children, and you can always be proud of them. They will never give you reason to be ashamed.

Why? They learned from their parents self-discipline and to follow God's ways. Again, this is a general principle because there are some times when parents do everything right, but the child just has a rebellious streak and they won't listen. But we're talking about a general principle, the normal way people will react.

And then, as it tells us there, train up a child in the way that he should go.

The term way here is very colorful. It refers to the bending of a bow.

Literally, it says, Train up a child in his way. That is, in the way he is bent. The amplified Bible has it. Train up a child in the way he should go and in keeping with his individual gift or bent. And when he is old, he will not depart from it.

So this refers not only to instruction, but also to the manner given by the child's stage in life, his personality and talents.

In other words, his personal bent. Anybody who's had several children know they're very different. You can't treat them in a sense and guide them exactly the same way.

Some children are just easily led. You don't have to move them very much.

Other ones, it's like moving a wall. It takes all your effort to get them going.

And so, as a wise parent, you have to see what that child's natural inclination is.

And again, looking at it from personal experience, when we had our twin daughters, one came out of the womb with a fighting spirit. Boy, I said, this one's going to be quite a challenge. And the other came out soft and smiling and everything else. And guess what?

From the very start, I realized, well, there's one that we can guide gently. It's going to be easier. And the other one, I'm just going to have to always be guiding like two ships. I can't collide.

I have to go sideways and nudge them because they love confrontation and they love for you to raise up the temperature. And so you don't want to do that. You want to always maintain that temperature down and guide them also gently, but not confrontationally. And so it tells us here that you should train him the way he should go, but according to his natural inclination, children are like different flowers. And different flowers need different nutrition, different watering.

If you water all the flowers the same way and you give them the same nutrition, some will not grow well because they have specialized needs. And so it is with children as well.

It also means that we're not trying to live our lives through our children, but we are letting them develop and go not the way we necessarily would like them to end up having the profession they want. They have different tastes, different inclinations. You have to see how each child is going and then strengthen, encourage them. But their natural talents and the way their personality is, that's the best way to deal with all of them. At least that's the way we have found. We didn't try to mold our children to our interests. We molded ourselves to their interests. And so they all had different interests. We had to find out what is that they really enjoyed. You know, one of them, when they were five years old, I gave them a little lab laboratory test or laboratory game there where a set where they had a little microscope and chemicals and we would be there. And boy, at the age of five or six, she wanted to be a doctor. And that's what she ended up doing. But that was her natural inclination. The other ones never were interested in the same things. And so as a child growing up, they want to have the parents encourage them. But according to their enjoy and likes and the way they set up goals, I didn't care what my daughters were going to do as long as it was something good and profitable.

But I wanted them to be the best at what they did because that's part of self-discipline that we've been talking about. And I'm sure everybody here has examples and they could give. So let's go to the sixth principle now. Help your children have a proper perspective about money.

You'd think maybe that's a subject that Proverbs doesn't touch on very much, but that's not the case at all. Training up a child also includes helping them know how to handle money. In fact, in the scriptures, you have about 500 different verses to talk about prayer, but you have over 3,000 that talk about how to manage money and your possessions. The ability to handle money can make or break many a family.

A Gallup poll indicated that the lack of money is the biggest challenge families face today.

Even in this very prosperous country, it's still the number one reason for marriage breakups, for family going to pieces. And of course, when you're dealing with Latin America, it is even worse as far as economic situation. That's the number one problem.

When I travel in Latin America, that is way the first and major problem that we're dealing with. Just trying to make ends meet.

In Colombia, we were talking to a taxi driver who knows a lot about that area, and he says that a lot of people there in Colombia, they live off of a dollar and a half a day. That's basically their income, and they just barely eat enough. And that's very common.

So the Bible wants us to understand how to handle our money according to God's principles.

Also, the average credit card debt in the U.S. this year, 2019, is over $8,000 that people have credit card debt. That doesn't include every other type of debt. That's just credit card debt. $8,000 per person.

And Proverbs has a very balanced view about money. And I could summarize it in a short sentence. Money is a means to an end and not an end in itself. Basically, you could summarize the biblical principle. Money is a means to an end, but not an end in itself.

It can be a blessing, or it can be a curse. Notice in Proverbs 22 verse 4, money in itself is not bad. It's a means of exchange. It can be used for good or for evil.

Don't blame money for the problem. It's the misuse of money that's the big problem.

Proverbs 22 verse 4, it says, by humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life. So we should be able to live, at least comfortably, if we live a life humbling ourselves before God, following Him. Obey the Lord, be humble, and you will get riches, honor, and a long life.

Your reputation is going to be very valuable. People will want to hire you.

They can depend on you because you have an ordered life, you put God first, and then everything else second, and they respect a person that is reliable and has firm moral convictions. It's not going to steal on the job. It's not going to lie on the job. It's not going to be violent or cause all kinds of difficulties. So employers will be happy to pay that person, and they want to keep them around in the company.

In Proverbs 3 verse 9, we see here another blessing that comes from God. Proverbs 3 verse 9, if we want to prosper, we need to apply this principle. It says in verse 9, Honor the Lord with your possessions, and with the firstfruits of all your increase, so your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine.

So God blesses those that remember to tithe, to give offerings, to do their part before Him.

God is looking for those He can bless, those that trust in Him and are faithful, trustworthy. In Proverbs 10 verse 22 is another scripture along that line.

Proverbs 10 verse 22, it says, The blessing of the Lord makes one rich, and He adds no sorrow with it. Sometimes people can run into money and have money, but it's not blessed. But when it comes from doing the right things before God, He says He adds no sorrow with it. It's something that is blessed, comes in a peaceful way.

But just as money can be a blessing, it can also be a cursing. Notice in Proverbs 10 verse 2, it says, Treasures of wickedness profit nothing, but righteousness delivers from death.

So people have a lot of money doing the wrong things, but it says here, eventually it's not blessed. It brings a lot of sorrows. Another scripture along that line. And let me read it in verse 2 in the Good News Bible. It says, Wealth you get by dishonesty will do you no good, but honesty can save your life. Again, a principle of work. Receive what you should. Don't take from others.

In Proverbs 13 verse 11, I have another principle about money. It says, Wealth, gained by dishonesty, will be diminished, but he who gathers by labor will increase.

Talks about here also trying to make a quick buck, gambling, doing things, putting bets everywhere, and things like that. A lot of people are ruined by that. But it says here, he who gathers by labor, by an honest day's labor, work, will increase. Proverbs 23 verse 4.

It says, Do not overwork to be rich, because of your own understanding, seize. Some people just overwork. They just can't stop. I've got to make more money. Yeah, I know. I've got to work overtime. I've got to do all this. But you know, I've got all of these bills. I've got all of this. And you're just in this treadmill all the time. And it says you can, in that sense, sell yourself to your work. And you lose the proper balance. Maybe your family is being affected by that. Your friends, you don't have enough time for your own self to recover, to enjoy getting some exercise. Healthy things. Why? Because the tremendous stress level, and a person just wants to make more money. Have you known somebody that just is in that treadmill, that just can't stop? And yeah, to me, I just got to accumulate more. The most important thing is how big my bank account gets to be. And many times the Bible here says, you've got to stop that foolishness. You can't take it with you. Somebody else is going to enjoy it once you die. You're not going to really enjoy all of that. People can just be led by greed to the point where they're damaging their own health, their own relationships. Notice what it says in Proverbs 15 verse 27.

Proverbs 15 verse 27, it says, He who is greedy for gain troubles his own house, but he who hates bribes will live. I'd like to read this in the contemporary English version.

It says, Being greedy causes trouble for your family, but you protect yourself by refusing bribes.

Agreed is the big problem with money. It can become a disease. It can become an addiction, just like a drug. In 1st Timothy 6.10, in the contemporary English version, it says, The love of money causes all kinds of trouble. Some people want money so much that they have given up their faith and caused themselves a lot of pain.

So again, money is not a problem when it's a means to an end, but when it becomes an end to itself, just accumulating wealth, just to be able to feel more powerful and richer, then you've lost the real purpose in life. And so we have, toward the end of the book of Proverbs, a section called the Golden Mean, which means the golden balance. Proverbs 30, verse 8 and 9.

It says, Remove falsehood and lies far from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food allotted to me, lest I be full and deny you, and say, Who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God. So it's good to have the funds that you need.

Always have a reserve accumulated there for emergencies. But it says if you become just wildly rich, you're going to have all kinds of temptations come upon you. But if you're so poor that you can't even have enough to eat, you're going to be tempted then to steal, to acquire that food in an illegal way. So we have to teach our kids the proper perspective about money. If they see that you make it into a God, they will tend to make it into a God.

If they see that you don't, that money is necessary, but that's not where our purpose in life is all about. And we're going to leave it one day. So we're going to leave it to our kids and grandkids. Hopefully we'll have enough to be able to help them along the way. But our lives get shorter. We age. We can't enjoy things like we did before. And yet some just want to continue selling their souls to just accumulate more and more money. That's a sign of insecurity.

That causes a lot of damage in people's lives. And also the children, again, are going to follow a lot of their parents' example.

The final principle, the seventh, is teach kids to develop spiritual habits.

As we read before, as the twig is bent, so the tree grows.

And of course, to teach kids to develop spiritual habits, the most important thing is the example in the home. Notice Proverbs 24 verse 3.

Proverbs 24 verse 3.

It says, Through wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established.

By knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.

So again, looking at godly wisdom, a person who fears God, who keeps his commandments, who is going to build his home on that foundation, you're going to see that it's going to be founded on a rock. That rock is God, his way of life, and it's going to be solid. It's going to be well established. And so we have to ask, what kind of home are the kids going to grow up in?

When you train up a child, the biggest influence in their lives are the parents and the example they set in the home. Proverbs 15 verse 17. It says, Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fatted calf with hatred.

So the principle is that what kind of atmosphere do we have in our home?

Are we living in peace? Or is it all fights and contention? Because it doesn't matter how much money you have. If you're just fighting all the time, you're going to be miserable. And it says here that even in a modest home where you just barely have enough to eat, but where everybody, it says here, where there is love, where there is a caring home, you're going to have a good peaceful home. The kids are going to grow up in a good environment. Proverbs 17 verse 1.

Again, similar to the other verse. 17 verse 1. It says, Better is a dry morsel with quietness than a home full of feasting with strife.

In the God's Word version, it says, Better a bite of dry bread eaten in peace than a family feast filled with strife.

And again, talking about the importance of the atmosphere in the home where the kids are going to grow up in. Do they see us praying? Do they see us setting apart the tithe and the tithe to go to the feast? Do they see the blessings from being close to God? Do they see the parents growing spiritually? Proverbs 4 verse 18. It says, But the path of the just is like the shining sun that shines ever brighter unto the perfect day. The way of the wicked is like darkness. They do not know what makes them stumble. They're always with troubles.

They don't know what makes them stumble. But if the children see that we're growing spiritually, that we're applying these principles, although we never do a perfect job, but just like it says, here, about the path is just like the shining sun. It's just like ever brighter unto the perfect day, like the dawn. It just continues to grow. The light is growing.

These are the spiritual principles that kids see in our lives. In Proverbs 3 verse 11. Proverbs 3 verse 11.

Part of it has to do with also the right correction in the home.

Verse 11 says, And here talks generically because it has to do with the father or their mother, saying here that they also correct them in the way that they should go because they delight. They love their children. They're not going to let them just get into all kinds of wrong paths along the way. We have to be strong. We have to teach them these principles.

In Proverbs 14 verse 1, here's a principle that goes along the way. It says, The wise woman builds her home, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands. The parents are so important to be able to lay a good foundation, especially the woman, because she's there with her children and she's there with her husband, and she is a key person in the family. She can either edify the house or she can undermine it with her behavior, with her actions, with the way she acts toward her husband. Also, the husband can destroy his house. It might be the wife that's laying the good foundation, and it's the husband that is destroying the foundations because he's not showing her the love, the affection, the care he should.

And so the children see that and they get turned off. And there's something that affects just about every child as they grow up, especially in their teenage years, is to see hypocrisy in the home, where you preach one thing and then you do the opposite when nobody's looking. God does not want that type of a double-minded person or double-faced in that way. We need to live according to the principles mentioned here in the book of Proverbs. So again, I'd like to just reiterate the three points that we've covered today. The first one is learn self-discipline and teach it to your kids.

Because it's a key to lasting success.

Look at the ants, how they are able to organize themselves without having leaders prodding them on.

Each one is self-motivated. That's what God wants us to learn from that principle.

Number six, help your children have a proper perspective about money.

Let them have a little savings box of some type. Let them learn to manage their money.

Let them get burned sometimes when they overspend and they don't have any money left and it's supposed to have lasted. They have to learn to discipline themselves.

And the seventh principle is teach kids to develop spiritual habits. And basically, it's from the example they see in their parents. Parents don't have to be trumpeting. They don't have to be out there telling everybody when they pray. Kids know if their parents are praying or not, if they're drawing close to God or not. Kids don't like parents to be preachy and always beyond them. And, oh, you should do this and you should do that. It's simple. If you're doing it, they will want to do it too. They will learn to pray. Give them the instructions, but give them space for them to put them into practice according to their personality.

Some are more spiritually oriented than others. And again, it's a parent's job to adapt to their child so they can be bent in their natural inclination towards something good and lasting.

And so it means being selfless, thinking about the kids first, their welfare, their future. And now, for many of us, it's grandchildren. And we're still training them along the way. And also, as the twig is bent, so grows the tree. And you start seeing, well, how does this one go? And how do you apply this one to be able to shape them in the right way? I'll use a final example.

Here, close by, we have Disneyland. And one of the things that I think everybody marvels, you remember how some of those bushes are shaped like different animals? And some are elephants and other bears. And you think, how in the world did they get those bushes to be shaped that way? Well, they start out with very small bushes, and they have a wire mesh. And as they grow, the mesh grows with them. And the plant naturally adapts. It inclines or inclines toward where that mesh is. And that's the way they have this beautiful presentation. It's the same way kids can be shaped, but they have to start when they're small and gently guiding them, finding out what their inclination is all about. So here are seven principles of life found in the book of Proverbs.

These principles apply not only then, but now they are timeless principles because they were inspired by God for our welfare. And so this is some of the godly wisdom that we should seek that is found in this wonderful book called Proverbs.