James Duff March 5th 2017 ~ Proverbs

There is a business on Stirling Highway in North Fremantle with a sign that has slogans on it.  The sayings change regularly but always get me thinking as I make my way from Palmyra to Cottesloe in the morning.  The latest sign says: “Don’t stop until you are proud.”  I think this is good advice, wise advice.  I know there are times when I haven’t finished a job properly, when I have just thought that near enough was good enough even though I had the time and ability to finish it properly and proudly.When I reflected on the above saying further, I wondered if it was contrary to the gospel message?  Jesus said: “The time has come, the kingdom of God is near.  Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15).  Jesus was saying stop, change the way you are thinking and living, see this through God’s eyes and believe the good news that God’s kingdom has come in Him.When we repent, we are called to stop and see what is going on, not through our own eyes but God’s.  The Bible is clear - and experience shows us - that we often look at the world through our own eyes and that can make us unhealthily proud by, knowingly or unknowingly, putting ourselves in the place of God. Augustine and many theologians since, have seen the fall in Genesis 3 as being caused by the sin of pride.  Pride causes us to arrogantly think we don’t need God, or that we know better than Him or, most arrogantly of all, to think that God does not exist.  When boiled down, these positions show humans refusing to see life God’s way, refusing to trust Him, refusing to come under His authority.  Human pride breaks our relationship with God.  This causes us great pain and heartache but it causes God even more.  He does not like to see us move away from Him.  He grieves over us when we try to live under our own steam apart from Him.  It is not the way God and His creation is supposed to be.  The good news is He is not idle when it comes to fixing the pride problem.  We can’t do anything about this problem ourselves as that only causes more pride.  So He came to us and died on the cross for our pride.  He absolved our prideful sin by becoming it, even though he was sinless and did not deserve it, all so we can live in the will of the God. After Easter we begin a series on Proverbs.  More than half the book is made up of truth adages or, as the Bible calls them, “proverbs”.  Proverbs are situation-sensitive.  To read a proverb as if it were true in every circumstance is to commit a serious error, which biblical scholars call “genre misidentification”.  We don’t read Proverbs the same way we read the gospel narratives; just as we don’t read the newspaper the same way we read a scientific textbook.  Experience, observation, instruction, learning from mistakes and, most importantly, revelation, all lay the groundwork for reading the text, reading people and reading the situation.So is the gospel the opposite of the above slogan, “Don’t stop until you are proud”? No, it is not.  It is true that the gospel calls us to stop and let God change our prideful minds; but to believe that that slogan is the polar opposite of the gospel would be a case of mistaken genre.   I’m looking forward to the Proverbs series, to learning more about godly wisdom and how to apply it and live it practically and finish well.BlessingsJames