Hello, I’m Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business, and I’d like to thank you for joining me today. I’m starting a 31 part series on biblical wisdom for business leaders. I’m going to be teaching my way through my book that I wrote on the 30 sings from Proverbs. These are taken from Proverbs chapter 22, verse 17, all the way through Proverbs, chapter 24, verse 34, really the end of chapter 24. I published this book about a year ago and I’m just now getting around to teaching my way through it.
So I hope you’ll stick around and over the next 30 or 40 weeks, take a look at some of these videos that I’ll producing about biblical wisdom for business leaders and I hope that they’ll be helpful to you. I write and I minister to business owners who are Christians and business leaders. Really, I do both. And so if you’re in business and you’re a business leader or a business owner, then what I do is really for you. And so before we get started, I just want you to know that my ministry is Bible and Business and you can get a hold of me in the ways that you see here on the screen.
I’d love to hear from you. I’ve heard from a lot of you already and I have kind of talked through a number of different business situations with a number of you and I kind of pay it forward. I don’t charge initially for my time unless you really want to engage me professionally through the platinum group where I’m a partner, but just love listening to you and hearing from you and working with you as you seek to serve the Lord in business and through your business to further the kingdom of God in the marketplace and in our world. We’re going to look at the prologue. I’ve titled it an exhortation to listen.
Really? To hear. This is verses 17 through 21 in chapter 22 of Proverbs. And this is what the verses say. Pay attention and turn your ear to the sayings of the wise.
Apply your heart to what I teach, for it is pleasing when you keep them in your heart and have all of them ready on your lips so that your trust may be in the Lord. I teach you today even you have I not written 30 sayings for you, sayings of counsel and knowledge, teaching you to be honest and speak the truth so that you bring back truthful reports to those you serve. And of course, the implied answer there is yes. So let’s start and just make a few notes here. First of all, most scholars note the similarity of these 30 Sangs to the instructions of Amen and Mope.
That’s how you would say that amen and Ope in Egypt. And there is the consensus that these sayings were borrowed from this gentleman, from this sage, so to speak, in Egypt. But then they were adapted and reformed to talk about the Lord. Just because content I just want to make this point. Just because content is borrowed from an extra biblical source and then used inside the Bible to give biblical instruction does not mean that the Bible is not inspired or inerrant god superintended that whole process.
And if you really want to learn about how we got the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament, I’m going to suggest that you get a hold of Michael Heiser and his podcast, the Naked Bible Podcast, and listen to the podcasts on how we got the Old Testament and how we got the New Testament. And that’s actually what they’re called. That’s the name of the podcast. How We Got the Old Testament. How we got the New Testament.
I’ll invite you to listen to that. But the Sage teaches us here that these wise wisdom sayings, these wise sangs should command our attention. They should be taken to heart and applied to our everyday lives. He starts out, Pay attention, turn your ear to the sangs of the wise and apply your heart to what I teach. Now, that whole idea of listening and hearing and applying is really important in the Hebrew culture, because back then, if you heard but then you didn’t obey, then they would say, you really didn’t hear.
You might have physically heard the words, but you really didn’t hear because you didn’t bake them in to your persona and obey them. So the Sage here is saying, hey, pay attention. Turn your ear right, turn your ear to the sayings of the wise and apply your heart to what I teach. That’s what he’s saying here. These sayings are worthy of our concentrated attention.
I like to say that there are no empty calories in the Sage’s teachings. And so he expects us, the Sage, to bake these sayings into our characters and worldviews. And in order to do that, we’ll need to spend focused quality time reflecting deeply on each one. You don’t just read it and go, yeah, I understand it. You read it and then you think about it and you pray it through and you ask God, how do I live this out?
And how do I bake this into my character? Quality reflection is grounded in prayer and meditation. So we ask God, what do you want me to learn from this saying? And then obviously we ask Him, is there any sin in my life that I need to confess and turn away from? The result of deeply nesting these sayings into our personas includes trusting of the Lord, visceral, honesty, speaking the truth, and bringing back truthful reports to those who manage us.
Look at that. Have I not written 30 sayings for you? I’m right in the middle there teaching you to be honest and to speak the truth, so that you bring back truthful reports to those you serve. Look, you will find that people who are foolish as opposed to wise people who are foolish also tend to be people who lie or they embellish or they kind of shade the truth. They know what the truth is, but they tend to embellish or lie or shade it somehow, maybe twist it, maybe exaggerate it, minimize it.
But they’re really not truthful in the sense that we would think of truthfulness. This is a quote from my book. I actually quoted one of the commentators here. He says this even the most brilliant moral sayings are powerless without personal application. And there’s a lot of truth there, right?
You can have an incredibly good saying, an incredibly truthful saying, but if it isn’t baked into our personas, what’s the point? Why have it, right? So how do we know when we have accepted these sayings? It’s a good question. We will know primarily by the words that flow out of our mouths.
The sage says that these sayings will be ready on our lips. We have genuinely accepted these sayings by observing the words that we choose to speak. Especially in unguarded moments. What we say reveals our attitudes and our beliefs. Like I say here on the slide.
Especially in unguarded moments, our character and the affections of our hearts are laid bare by our first blush reactions to our day to day situations. And I think the Holy Spirit uses these things and can use them to shape our affections, our assumptions about life and our beliefs. But if you really want to know what a person believes, just listen to what they say. Just listen to how they talk. If you want to know what you believe, listen to your gut, first blush reactions and unguarded moments.
And that’ll tell you exactly what you believe, what you value, that type of thing. Look, luke 643 through 45 says a good tree doesn’t produce bad fruit. On the other hand, a bad tree doesn’t produce good fruit, for each tree is known by its fruit. Figs aren’t gathered from thorn bushes or grapes picked from a bramble bush. A good man produces good out of the good storeroom in his heart.
An evil man produces evil out of the evil storeroom, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. I wasn’t able to find the exact version, but I remember memorizing this and that last phrase, I memorized it. As for out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. And maybe that’s an old King James version that I don’t have access to anymore. I don’t know.
But look, an evil man produces evil. A good man produces good. And what we have to understand is the words that come out of our mouth reflect what’s in our hearts. If you want to know what’s in your heart, just listen to what you say. The sage also tells us in this passage that he’s giving us counsel and knowledge.
And so just a couple of notes here. First of all, when we gain wise counsel, we gain a new perspective maybe on how to proceed in a given situation. And when we contemplate and find new insights, meanings or values from other council, then I think we have gained knowledge. So the sage tells us that we’re not just receiving valuable data about which we can enjoy a hypothetical conversation in these 30 sayings. What he’s really saying instead is that his sayings will give us actionable insights to produce predictable, visible results in our character and in our faith in God.
And let me tell you something, this is not about monetary success. In none of these 30 sayings does the sage promise us material or financial success. Instead, success is entirely defined in terms of personal character, faith in God and faithfulness to God. You cannot hold to a prosperity gospel which really equates financial success with God’s approval, in God’s favor and then expect to live out these sayings the two are mutually exclusive. So by adopting these wisdom sayings, I want to be clear here, we will understand more of God’s mind and how we can live blamelessly before Him and what is in his heart and thus live out his character as his image bears in the marketplace.
But if you are pursuing success, if you are pursuing financial success, if you are pursuing money and you’re using Christianity to get there, you know what, you might actually become rich. But that doesn’t mean that you have God’s blessing. Rich people don’t necessarily have God’s blessing. In fact, I would submit to you that the most mature people that I have ever met in the Lord, they were not financially wealthy, they didn’t have positions of power, they didn’t have a long list of contacts that were influential, they didn’t wear fine clothes, they didn’t have a long list of accomplishments. But you know what?
When they prayed they could move the heart of God and they could hear God’s voice and they knew what was going on in the spiritual realm, these people, these people are the people that we need running businesses because these kinds of people will transform the marketplace and help set the table for revival in this country. So look, in our next episode, which will really be the first saying, we’re going to look at Proverbs chapter 22, verses 22 through 23. And I’ve titled that first saying do not exploit the poor. So until we see each other again, I want to thank you for joining me. Thank you for taking the time to watch this video or this episode.
And please take time to subscribe to the Bible and Business YouTube channel here and make sure you get over to Bible and Business.com and check out the articles and the other podcasts and some of the other goodies that I have over there for Christian business owners and Christian business leaders. I’m Bill English, the publisher here at Bible and Business. Thank you for joining me. I hope you go out and make it a great day. Take care.