Psalm 46—Proverbs 31 with Shawn & Nathan
In this episode of the 13 Week Bible, Shawn and Nathan preview the Scripture for week 7: that's the rest of Psalms, beginning with chapter 46. They'll move on through the entire book of Proverbs. We not only hope you'll enjoy their fun and informative dialogue as they continue their journey through the Bible in just 13 weeks, but hope to inspire you to read or listen through the Bible yourself.
For more inspiration, visit Loveshaped.life.
Transcript
Hey, it's Nathan and Shawn again. We want to welcome you back to the 13 week Bible season two. Today we're in episode eight ahead of week seven's reading as we share in this fascinating journey through the Bible in 13 short weeks. We're both thoroughly enjoying our read and sometimes listen.
and hope you're finding it helpful too. Today we're previewing the rest of Psalms beginning with chapter 46 and working our way through the entire book of Proverbs. Sean, how are you today?
Shawn (:And well, Nathan, how are you?
Nathan (:I'm doing good, thank you.
Shawn (:Good to hear.
Nathan (:Listening ahead and my listening at this point is I'm in Jeremiah So a little bit ahead of the pace, but we're here to talk about Psalms and Proverbs
Shawn (:That's right. I'm also ahead of you, or ahead of the reading. I think a little ahead of you as well. But we've lagged behind with our recording a few weeks due to various obligations and appointments and stuff. So glad to be back in the saddle.
Nathan (:Alright, I'm here. So let's again, we're working our way through Psalms beginning at 46 and then on through Proverbs 31. Psalms is basically a collection of songs and hymns. It's interesting to me as I think of the Psalms that we have this big insight into the
worship language of the people of Israel. And I don't know what you think about that, but I think that's fascinating for me.
Shawn (:Well, that's interesting because I think we talked about this last time. The language and the imagery and the mood that is set probably would not be normal for 21st century worship because there's a full range of emotional imagery that's used and it's not just all praise, it's also lament.
Nathan (:Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Shawn (:questioning, it's repentance. These are not things that if you were to go to your local church this weekend that you'd probably expect to be singing. But I think that speaks to the legitimacy of the full range of human emotions and questions and feelings and perspectives that
wants us to bring to him. So I'm very fascinated by that.
Nathan (:Yeah, and we'll get to chat through it more in just a minute. We're also talking about Proverbs today Proverbs is a collection of sayings about wisdom Proverbs Is not entirely written by Solomon the king great king of israel son of king David but it is largely written by the wise king Solomon David
Also, largely the author of Psalms, but not just under 50% of the Psalms is written by David or credited directly to him. And anyway, let's keep going.
Shawn (:Yes, sir.
Nathan (:And I am feeling so rough today. Anyway, we're going to make it through this.
Shawn (:I'm with you.
Nathan (:So I noticed there's a wide variety in the Psalms. There's gratitude, praise, God's is a regular theme, especially this idea of God's unfailing love. And something I noticed in the Psalms is how.
Love is not so much an idea as it is an action. So God's love for his people, people's love for God and one another is. More concrete, it seems in the Psalms and maybe other parts of the Hebrew story and. Previous books that we've gone through, but that love comes out in one's actions. God.
Shawn (:Mmm.
Nathan (:moving for his people and the opposite not of less love, but when his people get wrapped up in paganism, the act is pulling back and leaving them to their own to their own.
Shawn (:Mm.
consequences, choices. Yeah.
Nathan (:Consequences, right, yeah. So anyway, I don't know what you think about that, but I thought that was an interesting kind of angle.
Shawn (:Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think there's a lot of insight there. And it's not just an abstract concept. And, you know, which is interesting because Psalms obviously is, are poetic. This is a, he uses a lot of metaphors and similes and, you know, thinking of the famous, as the deer pants for the water, you know, so my soul longs for you. So there's lots of.
Nathan (:Mm-hmm.
Shawn (:similes and metaphors. Someone has to remind me of the difference between a simile and a metaphor. But yeah, there's that sort of mystical element as well. So it is concrete, but there's also this evocative imagery that gives legitimacy. And it's kind of funny because as I'm reading, you know, doing this reading, you know, we're going very fast. And I feel like there's a part of me that's
Nathan (:Hmm.
Shawn (:trying to get it done, you know? I'll admit to that. And I was just actually writing this morning in my own prayer journal that, man, I wish I could just slow down and not, like, I'm longing to just rest in God's presence. And, you know, that's something that's, you know, that idea generally is something that harmonizes with the tone of the Psalms where,
Nathan (:Hmm.
Shawn (:It's very, and I've used this term already, but it's mystical in the sense that there's this almost inarticulate connection to God that the Psalms communicates where there's just this sort of, you know, my soul, so to speak, in quotes, reaching out for God, longing to be connected to him and in his presence and
Nathan (:Hmm.
Hmm.
Shawn (:and united with him. And so yeah, I kind of took your point to a different direction, but I see the concrete, but I also see the sort of mystical connection with God that is present throughout the Psalms.
Nathan (:Yep, and I was thinking more of the nature of love, that God's love for his people is described more in terms of his actions toward them. Often we think of love as being sort of happy feelings about someone, and I'm contrasting it with that. The Psalms does seem to have, at least part of that perspective is this very love is an action for God's people.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. For sure. There's...
Nathan (:And poetic language, by the way, Psalms 18 is full of poetic language. It's very, I call it the poetic imagination, where David talks about God coming to him, but uses very dramatic language. And so that's another one of those examples. You mentioned the deer panting after the streams of water as a...
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Mm-hmm for the water. Yeah
Nathan (:representation of David's own heart longing to be with God, which again, he, remember we talked in the Chronicles about how the last part of David's reign he's consumed with setting the stage for the building of the temple. And you find this longing throughout the Psalms that David writes, you find the longing of his heart to be with God, to be right with God, to experience the presence of God. And
And you were mentioning that, but that is that that's the this beautiful piece in the book of Psalms.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I just want to... No, no, you go ahead. You go for it.
Nathan (:And by the way, there's yeah, go ahead, go for it. I was just going to say that there's five books in the Psalms. You may notice them in your translation, but there's you'll see a break between sections of Psalms and it'll say Book One, Book Two, Book Three, Book Four, Book Five, so just more of a trivia point.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I was just going to say, and you know, I'm sure this is something that you were working towards, but one thing that impresses me about the Psalms is it's legitimizing questions and a lack of resolution. You know, I think of, for example, in our reading, this
Nathan (:Hmm.
Shawn (:week Psalm 88, where many Psalms, they kind of start with questions and, God, where are you and why aren't you showing up? And then there are a few where they don't, but then they kind of climax in a, ah, here you are, you've delivered me, you've redeemed me, you've rescued me. But there are Psalms like Psalm 88 where there's no resolution, there's no
Nathan (:Hmm.
Hmm.
Shawn (:climax that ends with God like showing up and I think that gives legitimacy to where we are in whatever stage of our relation to God that it's not always needing to end in some sort of divine rescue and it's not a lack of faith that doesn't see
Nathan (:Hmm.
Shawn (:the answer. Now, I don't think, you know, it's good that we just stay there. Like, that would be a very challenging existence. But every once in a while, it's okay to be in that place where we don't feel like we have the answers, where we don't sense God's rescuing presence. Again, I think God wants to get us elsewhere, ultimately.
Nathan (:Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Shawn (:But there's no shame in being in that position. And again, I think the thumbs just provide legitimacy to the full range of human experience and emotions.
Nathan (:Yeah, I love that idea of normalizing, that being careful that we don't create a straw man, kind of an image, an imagined image of what it means to walk with God. We can do that when we read kind of the hero stories of Scripture, which are written for inspiration. You look at the story
Shawn (:Mm.
Mmm.
Nathan (:the best pieces of David's story with leaving a few, there are some dark sides, but not all of the dark pieces. And we tend to say, okay, that's what it means to walk with God and we forget the valleys that David went through. We forget the thing, the failures David had. And so just, I think your point is a great reminder to, in walking with God being
Shawn (:Mm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:to be careful that we don't hold ourselves to an imagined picture of what it means to walk with God, and then get discouraged when we don't align with our imagined vision, which as you've noted, sort of indirectly isn't accurate. Speaking about the idea that not all prayer times end with resolution, not all.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:days end with resolution, not all weeks end with resolution. It doesn't mean God isn't there. I'm not going to repeat what you said, but I think it's just a great reminder to just again, be careful that we don't hold ourselves to an imagined standard and just allow God to work and be present in the story and let. Let God do his work in that context.
Shawn (:Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Well, it's interesting, you know, going back to our reading of Job, I noticed that I didn't make this point when we discussed Job, but it makes me think of it now. You know, at the beginning of Job, when Job is lamenting the loss that he's experienced, it said that his three friends, I think it said for one week, they didn't say anything.
Nathan (:Hmm.
Shawn (:The book would have been so much better if that's the way they remained, right? They just kind of sat with Job and his pain. They didn't try to offer explanations. They didn't try to, they just, and you know, Nathan, you're doing chaplaincy work and you know the deep importance of significance of just being present with people and not trying to come up with explanations and resolutions and so forth.
Nathan (:Yes
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Shawn (:And, you know, I was talking with a friend a few weeks ago, and he was noting how a family member or someone close to him had passed away. And he said, you know what, we in America, we don't really do funerals anymore. We do celebrations of life. And his point was it speaks to our inability at times to just sit in the pain. We always have to
Nathan (:Hmm.
Hmm.
Shawn (:We always have to make up, have a positive spin out of everything. And, you know, the scriptural authors and many people elsewhere around the world, they know how to do lamentation a lot better. They know how to just sit in that pain, sit in that confusion, sit in that turmoil. Whereas we in America, I think, are quick to try to bypass that, get through it.
Nathan (:Hmm.
Shawn (:not just sit in it. And again, the Psalms, I think, model for us the importance of and the legitimacy of and just the power of sitting in that experience and not trying to bypass or rush through it.
Nathan (:Hmm. That is so good. Um, and maybe that's a good opportunity to mention two Psalms specifically that we have context for many of the Psalms were not given context for, but two of them. Um, well, I'm going to highlight two. There are others that have context, but two, uh, Psalms 51 and Psalms 52, both have context to them one, um, Psalms 51.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:is a psalm written after David's affair with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband. That saga after that David writes Psalm 51 as he's wrestling with the fallout. And then 52 there's the story of David fleeing to the priest at Nob and then Doeg seeing that and Doeg on behalf of Saul killing
Shawn (:Mm.
Nathan (:just cold-blooded murdering everyone in the village, David writes Psalm 52 in the wake of that massacre. So it's interesting just to note that some Psalms you'll come to have a very specific, just brief introductory line, and it's helpful to sort of note that. You can think back over the stories we've already covered and how sort of that moment is captured. The internal side of that moment is captured.
Shawn (:Mm.
Hmm.
Nathan (:And again, I love the songs because they bring in. In a different way, they bring in kind of the internal language, internal dialogue, internal thinking that's happening in. In life, whether it's David's life or Israel's life in a larger sense, even all the way back to Moses, who's there's a prayer credited to Moses in the Psalms, and then there is at least one Psalm.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:that is written in the exile timeframe. So interesting, widespread that we find in the Psalms. But that's kind of the end. Basically, we're coming to the end of Book Two, actually. I don't know if you have anything else. Book Two goes through, I think through 72 is the end of Book Two and ends with lines about praise to God.
Shawn (:That's right.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:So beautiful way to wrap up book two of the Psalms. Book one and two of the Psalms, both largely written by David. And then book three is mixed authorship. And of note is that David set up choirs and musicians. It seems like, well, I think I have first Chronicles 15, a reference here.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:So just remembering we've read this, there's brief notes of it in the history portions that we've read already, but one of the central pieces to Israel was the music and the Psalms, a part of that. So you'll find some of those credited to Asaph and he was part of the music ministry in Israel at one time.
Shawn (:That's right.
Nathan (:You know, we don't hire pastors to sing in every church. There are certainly music ministers, and there are a few in our tradition, there's a few churches that do have full-time music ministers. In the worship of Israel, music ministry was an essential element of, like, there were paid music ministers. You could even say there were paid music warriors, because there are distinct accounts of the musicians.
Shawn (:Hehehe
That's right.
Nathan (:preceding the armed men as they went to war. So that's high engagement of music, high use of music in both worship and even the rhythm of Israel's life.
Shawn (:Well, this practice continues even to this day within the Jewish community. I have a number of Jewish friends and one of my close friends is a Jewish rabbi. And that's a, that is a critical skill and job, you know, responsibility that they have is they have to sing through all these prayers and different liturgical readings.
Nathan (:Hmm.
Shawn (:including lines from the Psalms and so forth. And I just, I, cause I sometimes go and I just sit there and marvel. I don't, I don't know how they, they sing a acapella and I don't know how they've memorized all of these. And I'm like, I'm thinking to myself, are they just making it up as they go? You know, are these melodies something that, but anyway, it's just, yeah, this was a critical part of the worship life of the ancient, you know, Israelites and
that continues to a large degree to this day where singing was important.
Nathan (:Mm-hmm. I think it you know as you're talking it brought to mind this idea that we are we're whole beings and sometimes we can favor the intellectual side, you know, we We want the answers one two three ABC. However, you want to make your list we want to logically figure things out and there can be times where
Shawn (:Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:where individuals who are more emotive, more feeling aware are sort of discredited or dismissed as not serious humans because they don't have the ABC facts, right? But the Psalms tells us and the worship of Israel tells us that preference of letting one or the other lead the
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:or be the thing that has the highest value that we need to hold that with a bit of caution because any extreme in either direction is actually not healthy.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Well, it's funny because I've been going through, again, we're going to get ahead of ourselves here, at least I will, Isaiah and Jeremiah. But what just struck me as fascinating was here were these very critical, serious messages from God that God wanted delivered to.
Nathan (:Hmm.
Shawn (:whether it was the king of Judah or whether it was the king of Babylon or whether it was Assyria. And the form that these messages take are poetry. And I'm just like, what? How does that make sense? Like, if you have a hard message for somebody, if you want to give a warning to somebody, if you want to offer a critique of somebody, like doing it via poetic, lyrical writing, doesn't seem like the...
Nathan (:Hmm.
Shawn (:the best and most direct way to do it. But, and yet that's the vehicle that God so often used to express his will and his message to these people in invitation of reform. And so we see that in the Psalms as well. Like half of the Bible is like in poetry almost. And it's just like, what does that tell us about God? What does that tell us about the human condition? What does it tell us about the ways we operate? I know that's a question probably for another day that has a.
Nathan (:Hmm
Shawn (:big, you know, warrants a big discussion. But yeah, it's just fascinating that this is the way God chose to deliver his message so many times.
Nathan (:Yeah, it is fascinating. I was thinking of modern music. Again, this is not a rabbit trail, we're going to go down. But you look at even the modern music and during times of great upheaval, the music shifts as the lyricists and writers of the music both in
Shawn (:Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:in the tone and in the content there's this reflection of the turmoil or the current state of the nation or the community that's quite fascinating and some music written in protest as an effort to re-imagine a better future or to critique a certain
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Nathan (:political wing or a certain social failure. Anyway, that's a deep, deep space we could go to.
Shawn (:No, I mean, somebody famously said, you know, give me the songs of a nation and I care not who makes its laws because there is so much maybe greater power in the sort of artistic, you know, approach than just wrote lifeless, you know, lawmaking, so to speak.
Nathan (:Hmm.
Shawn (:the point he was making is that there is great influence in this medium that probably reaches beyond what happens in the halls of congress or whatever.
Nathan (:Yeah, and I just I think it's important. This is such an important thing. I think it's worth doubling down on that we are thinking and feeling creatures at our core. We're not one or the other like who we are is made up of both those pieces intertwined. And again, that if we're not healthy, if our feeling side is not healthy, if there's trouble there, that's a that's actually a problem now.
Shawn (:Mmm.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:If our thinking side is not on track, there's trouble there too. Both of those are indicators of both the shape of our moral character and the shape of how we function and our health as a human being.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Great point.
Nathan (:So Psalm 73 is a great Psalm when it comes to struggling with doubt. We've talked about some of the vulnerability and the openness that comes through in the Psalms, and Psalm 73 is one of those where the author of the Psalm is just straight up wrestling with the problem of evil in the world. So not a new question and not a foreign question even to the writers of
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:don't see God on a day-to-day basis, Red Sea parting, etc. But they still wrestled with the problem of evil. And I think that's, again, kind of affirming, as Sean mentioned in the beginning, of the full range of the human journey. It's part of that includes puzzlement about the problem of evil.
So then we move into book five, which begins at 107 and book five brings us across the midline of our 13 week read through scripture by the end of book five, you will be on the downslope of this 13 week journey. In fact, it's about three and a half weeks from the midpoint of our reading the midpoint of this week to the.
Shawn (:Mmm.
Nathan (:the Jesus story in the gospels and the early church. So we are, yeah, again, less than four weeks out from the middle of this week, we're less than four weeks out from the first lines of the book of Matthew. So kind of a cool thing to just pause and recognize that, hey, we're actually getting there and maybe getting there faster than you expected.
Shawn (:Yep, skiing down the backside, Nathan.
Nathan (:That's right. So Psalms 119. A couple of things I wanted to mention. One is it's really way late to mention it, but Psalms one fascinated me because. And you'll see the connection between Psalms 119 and Psalms one. But I found Psalms one capturing the essence of God's point to his ancient people. And it's this flourishing as a human being, a human society, a sustainable society.
Shawn (:Mmm.
Nathan (:is the result of honoring God's law and abandoning the way of evil. It's a theme that plays out over and over again in the historical books, in the prophetic books. And it's interesting that Psalms one begins with this opening reflection on the prosperity, again, not necessarily financial, not necessarily goods and stuff, but the social
and relational flourishing that comes from doing life God's way versus the antithesis of that by doing life against God's principles. And so the connection to Psalms 119 is that it is a reflection on, largely a reflection on law.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yep. Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day long. Yeah.
Nathan (:So I'm wondering as David's, you know, I think of David as I was reading through one of the things, this is one of the things I thought about. And that was David's context, his cultural context was seeing human sacrifice like this was not ancient history. This was not some. I'm guessing it still takes place in rare cases in in.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:This was not rare, rare in David's time. The nations around the Israelites, the nations that the Hebrew people displaced had vicious religious practices. So I wonder if part of it is David sees the contrast between the flourishing of God's people as they live in harmony with his law. And then he contrasts this to these people
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:to the surrounding peoples who suffer from moral degeneration, moral brokenness. I wonder if that's one of the reasons, as David contemplates this, he recognizes the beauty that is achieved, that is experienced by a nation or by an individual as they live in harmony with God's way of love versus the dysfunction. And that's putting it mildly.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:killing with just no motive just like oh that guy looked at me crosswise I'm going to kill him like that happened this way and so David's looking at the contrast I don't know what do you think.
Shawn (:Yeah, I think that's definitely, definitely a lot of it. I think also, you know, when it comes to the other gods, there's a certain level of unpredictableness and volatility that comes with my relation to those gods. I don't know exactly where I stand with those gods. Have I done the things the God wants me to do? Have I not?
Nathan (:Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Shawn (:I don't know exactly what those God's expectations are. So I'm always a little insecure about my standing with those gods. Contrast that with the God of Israel, who's very clear on the parameters, the outline, the expectations. You don't need to guess with this God. Like he's open about what his expectations are. So I think there's a certain...
Nathan (:Hmm
Shawn (:There's a certain liberty that comes with that, you know, that I don't have to wake up in the morning worried, okay, did I, you know, did this behavior upset the God or my God or did it make my God happy? You know, you just know what to expect, you know, the basic outline and expectation. So I think that has something to do with it as well, is that there's great freedom.
Nathan (:Mm-hmm.
Hmm... Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Shawn (:and knowing the boundaries, it takes the guesswork out.
Nathan (:Yeah.
It does. And I think as well, the goodness of God comes through over and over and over again in the principles laid out for a just and flourishing and sustainable society. I actually, as I listened through and read through this time, had a greater appreciation for the law side of scripture.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm, that's right.
Mm.
Nathan (:that sometimes, you know, it's been hard to sort of, when it's abused, law can be destructive and we'll find that coming up in Paul's writings in the early church period.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Well, I think there's definitely that word law has so much baggage. It carries so much freight. And so, you know, understanding the original, you know, meaning of it and understanding the positive side of it. You know, I don't know if coming up with a different word even, sometimes literally words can just, they're impossible to disconnect from the baggage that.
Nathan (:Bye.
That's right.
Mm-hmm.
Shawn (:You know, it might take just, and that's a perfectly legitimate thing to do. I mean, the way we translate a word has not been inspired by God. So like, that's fine to do that.
Nathan (:Yes it is.
Right?
Yeah, yeah, and I definitely use that regularly. So Psalms ends with Psalms 150, a couple things. Psalm 137 is the latest Psalm written. It was written during the Babylonian exile. And then Psalm 135 to the end are basically Psalms of praise. And then to probably my. Oh, yeah, so many good Psalms.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
There's so many good Psalms to set. Yeah. Yeah, I'm thinking you, we didn't even get to talk about props. My two favorites, Psalm 103 and Psalm 139, but that'll be for another day.
Nathan (:Yeah.
Well, that's so keep your eyes open as you're reading the text for Sean's favorites. That's 103 and 139 you meant to write both of those both beautiful Psalms. So Proverbs is written to my son and my sense from reading Proverbs is that Solomon is passing on wisdom to his heir.
Shawn (:That's right.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:so that his heir can, heirs, perhaps it is not used in plural, but so that the king who's about to sit on the throne can rule well.
Shawn (:I have to admit Nathan, I want to be full disclosure here. I used to not like Proverbs at all. It wasn't until about probably five or six years ago that I started liking Proverbs. So I'm just being open about it.
Nathan (:Hmm.
That's awesome. Yeah, you know, there's some books in the Bible that really stand kind of alone in the text. You know, we looked at history books, Genesis, Exodus. There's several, but you know, there's a bunch of history. Right. Genesis is carries unique history about the beginning of the world. But then you look at Exodus, Leviticus numbers, they have their place in the uniqueness, but there is some redundancy. Right.
Shawn (:But I like it now.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:brings us some remarkable insights into the struggle between good and evil. And I think for me anyway, in my understanding of the world, there would be a big missing piece if Job was not written. It actually has some profound insights. The same thing for me with Proverbs. I find Proverbs to be a really important book because of how the writer
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:depicts the cause and effect nature of reality. The writer spends a whole lot of time trying to communicate and teach this idea that wrong actions. Result in bring destructive results, there's this cause and effect. You you set a net to trap somebody and you're actually setting a net for your own feet. You show kindness.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:someone and you're actually preparing the way for your flourishing like this direct connection it's not that in other words Proverbs lays out this idea that the consequences for good and evil are not imposed by God as much as they are inherent to the cause and effect nature of reality that God has set in motion as creator
Shawn (:Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that's really good. I also do want to point out Proverbs is unique in the biblical canon and yet There are parallels within the ancient Near Eastern context. So it's not unique Necessarily within the wider literary corpus
in the ancient Near East, which presents its own interesting insight. I mean, obviously, it's not like it's just a carbon copy of other writings, but there's other nations, Egyptian, Assyrian, etc., that do the same thing. They're presenting wisdom sayings and little pithy
Nathan (:Hmm.
Shawn (:interesting in and of itself because it shows that God, you know, he utilizes the same sorts of methods and approaches to life that, and by the way, we didn't touch on this, but there is a psalm that some speculate was taken from an Egyptian pharaoh or was like, you know, similar, very similar too. And so it just shows that God...
Nathan (:Hmm.
Shawn (:there's wisdom outside of the Hebrew canon and the Bible as well. Like God is giving wisdom to others. And we're not to say that there isn't anything significant or unique or important about the Bible. It's just saying that there are other people who have insights into wisdom when it comes to life.
Nathan (:Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Yes, and I think we just can say it straight up. God's work in the world is not restricted to the people who believe in him. We're going to find out that New Testament writer or that the early church writer Paul argues that, just openly argues that. And so I think that's a great observation to
Shawn (:That's right.
Yep.
Nathan (:value scripture for the gift it is for the insights it brings, but recognize that we are not the only ones that is people who believe in scripture are not the only ones to whom God is communicating and to whom go ahead.
Shawn (:I think, oh, and I just think it, and I think we've touched on this before, but it speaks to the I'm going to use a term here that may not be fully understood by people, but the incarnational nature of God where He is coming into the human experience in the language and context that human beings experience. So, He's taking, it's not like
Nathan (:Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Shawn (:genres or these forms or these approaches fell out of the sky and like God introduced them to the world. He is taking the common genres, approaches, literary, you know, methods of the people he's reaching and say, okay, there's this, there's this genre called proverbs or you know, whatever. I'm going to use that so that I can speak
Nathan (:Hmm.
Shawn (:to people in the language that they can relate to and understand. And I think that's important, you know, again, we're not doing much application to today, but I think that's important to recognize that God utilizes the tools that we have at our disposal rather than using this completely other worldly method that we would not be able to relate to in order to communicate his revelation to us.
Nathan (:Hmm.
That's a great observation. And I had noticed that chapter eight of Proverbs depicts the creation of wisdom. And I thought that was just fascinating, which really goes back to your point that there is a, if we believe in God as creator of the human family, then. There are fundamental elements to.
Shawn (:Mmm.
Nathan (:who we are, how we operate that.
are present, regardless of our attitude or opinion about God, belief in or lack of belief in that impact us just at the core of how we operate and who we are. Anyway, so I thought it was fascinating again, noticing that God says, you know, I created this framework, this and going to the cause and effect side. This is how I built reality. This is the way I formed it. That.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Sorry.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:When it comes to God saving human beings, he's not saving them from himself. You know, I'm very angry. I'm going to strike you. So I'm going to put somebody else there. So I strike them instead of you. No, God is saving us from the actual impact of evil, not from his, his anger.
Shawn (:Yeah, that's right. Cause and effect.
Nathan (:Right. And proverbs really helps to make that case for me. That's the big thing to keep your mind and heart open to in proverbs to read it, reflecting on the nature of reality that the that the wise man articulates. There's some fun proverbs that you'll come to toward the latter end of the book that are just one right after the other. My favorite, probably my all time favorite, just paraphrasing.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:is that the person who sings songs in the morning to a friend is like worse than a curse or something like that.
And I laugh because my wife is a night person and I'm more of a morning person. And so it's very easy for me to be happy and cheerful and joking in the morning and she's still trying to get her feet under her. So that's that probably actually plays out in our home on a regular basis.
Shawn (:Yeah, amen.
So you're not more drawn to the proverbs about a contentious wife. It's better to live on the corner of a roof or something like that than to be married to a challenging wife or whatever.
Nathan (:Right, right, right. So interestingly, if you think of the story of Solomon and he had like nine hundred women in his life that he was officially connected to in some capacity. And he said, everywhere I've looked, this was interesting. I think it's Proverbs. I may be in Ecclesiastes, but I think it's anyway. I think it's Proverbs. He said, I looked up and down. I didn't find one wise woman.
Shawn (:Mm-hmm.
You had a lot to write about.
Nathan (:But he found wise men. So that's the listen, the that assessment is only because he never came across a wise woman. It wasn't because they didn't exist. It's just all the women he was attracted to were not women of wisdom. There are plenty of women of wisdom in scripture in the world. But I just find that fascinating, kind of humorous that
Shawn (:Yeah.
Yeah.
Nathan (:Solomon's taste for wisdom left him with all the shallow women and apparently he overlooked the women of wisdom.
Shawn (:Well, Proverbs 31, of course, assumes the presence of some virtuous wife, though he apparently does indicate that her worth is far above rubies, which implies that it's very hard to find, because those things which are of greatest worth are rare. So yeah, I mean, he had some level of optimism about...
Nathan (:Yes.
Right?
Shawn (:the female gender, but for sure. Yeah.
Nathan (:Right. Well, that is it for this week. So enjoy your finishing of the Book of Psalms and sitting in those beautiful psalms as much as you can, as Sean has mentioned. He's been very tempted to slow down. Just remember, you can't afford to slow down. So kind of slow down on a few of them like when you. Yeah. Come back to it or pick a few that you're just going to sit with.
Shawn (:I'm going to go ahead and close the video.
Hahaha.
Come back, come back to them.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (:And then through the Proverbs, good stuff. And my our wish for you is that you would see God more beautifully and come to love him more deeply as you work through the text of scripture. Until next time, enjoy.
Transcribed by Riverside.fm.
