Proverbs Chapters 9 – 11

Proverbs 9:1-18 ~ The Influence of Wisdom

If God’s Spirit is not taking the truths of the Bible and transposing and transforming them into spiritual life to minister to people, then they are just words on a page. And this has caused problems. We have Bible schools that you can go to, you can take the Bible and learn it from a textbook standpoint, and it have no spiritual life whatsoever. That is possible. I have seen people coming out of Bible school totally dependent on all those scriptures they memorized and all of the professors notes that they memorized. They just pound people with this Bible information. No spiritual life whatsoever. When Jesus ministered, He ministered Spirit and life. Whatever He said and whatever He did, was transposed and transformed into spiritual life. Without that transformation and transposing, it is just dead words on a page.

Proverbs 10:1-14 ~ The Instruction Concerning the Proper Approach to Life

If you are content on the inside with Christ, you are satisfied. You have all the wealth in the world. You do not need money to make you happy. The reason why we need money is because there is something inside me that says, “I will be satisfied when I get all that money.” But if I am already satisfied on the inside, it will not make any difference. Who cares how much I have? If on the inside I am content, if on the inside I am at peace, on the inside I am happy, why do I have to take on things? I am already there.

Proverbs 10:15-32 ~ The Purpose for the Christian Life

Do I approach life looking for God’s already determined design and plan?  Or do I approach life and say, "Well, let me see.  How can I practice certain principles to make things work out for me?"

When people look at Christianity as religion they have totally missed the whole point of what it means to be a Christian. Jesus Christ has come to live inside of me to take over. Because with everything that I say and everything that I do, I am influencing everybody around me.

This can be approached legalistically, religiously, with great human effort to try to get myself to function as a human being the way I am supposed to. But the message of scripture is not the practice of certain principles. It is the realization that it is not my religious belief in Christ that saves me. I have literally received His Spirit into my spirit so that His can produce. I want people to receive from God’s Spirit speaking to them rather than me. Sometimes He lets us dangle in the flesh just to see how destructive it is to not be surrendered to Christ.

I can get upset, I can get frustrated, and I can take it out on people. It is very destructive. But God means me to be a conduit, an expression of His Spirit to give grace to the hearers.

Proverbs 11:1-6 ~ Understanding God’s Humbling Process

When arrogance has come, then comes shame: but with the humble people comes wisdom. And in the Hebrew the word wisdom is accompanying the word humble. With the humble comes wisdom.

The word humble literally means to be brought down low. So we have an arrogant person and we have a person who has gone through circumstances and situations where he or she is brought down low. God has dealt with them and brought them lowly.

And the end result of being brought down low is wisdom. Wisdom does not come with arrogance. Wisdom comes with being brough low because it is an experience that every person must have and every person must experience. You do not have wisdom unless you have been dealt with.

Proverbs 11:7-15 ~ Exercising Integrity in the Community

Biblical Christianity is not a religion. When Jesus Christ comes into a person’s life, His Spirit takes over and begins a work. There is a change in the way we think, in the way we talk, in the way we evaluate life. He changes our philosophy. We become a new creation. Because God cares about how we think and what we think. And God cares about what we say.

You will notice as we go through the Proverbs that many of them emphasize what we say with our mouth. Just like James chapter 3 says, "The tongue is just a little member, but it sets your whole course of life on fire." With your mouth, you are setting a direction for your life. It is either going to be a lot of trouble for you, or it is going to be a lot of help. So humanly, we try to watch what we say.

But in reality, it is the Spirit of Christ within me that wants to speak through me, that wants to impress His thoughts upon my mind. And that is why we study the Bible. It is to get God’s word into the mind so that God’s Spirit can take that and minister those truths to us. Then what we think and how we view life is all influenced by the ministry of the word of God.

Proverbs 11:16-23 ~ Integrity in Character

To do things in grace. Not gracefully, but in the grace of God, in consideration of others with a motivation of grace in order to add grace to the hearers. Just minister God’s grace to people. Even in difficult times, even if you have to go out and grind it out, because the end result is honor. In other words, the emphasis here is, "What are you attaining to?  What is the goal?" Is it honor? Do you want to be known for being an honorable person? You do whatever it takes to do what is right. Or how about brute force to become wealthy? The proverb of truth here is that strength of character is better than strength of arms.