Self-Control Is Self-Training

One of the most basic abilities a person must possess to have a chance of working with others and being productive is “self-control.” “A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls” (Proverbs 25:28). According to Luke, the need for self-control was a basic feature of the Apostle Paul’s preaching (see Acts 24:25).

While my book is about what SOLOMON SAYS (Amazon, Kindle), sometimes it might be helpful to consider what his father, King David, sang. And what he might have taught Solomon to sing. For example, God speaks through King David:

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you.
Psalm 32:8–9 ESV

Lady Wisdom & King Lemuel’s Mother

Proverbs is made up of books—seven by my count. Though some split it in two, I think all of Proverbs 31 is an oracle by King Lemuel’s mother warning him about women and drink and encouraging him to value a godly wife.

I am not the only reader who has noticed that the books of Proverbs seem to begin and end on a similar not. Proverbs 1-9 is features exhortation to respond to the invitation of Lady Wisdom and spurn the seductions of Lady Folly, which parallels the exhortation to be faithful to the wife of one’s youth and resist the temptations of the adulterous.

Judges is About Needing God as King, not Man

The book of Judges is not a lesson in how Israel needed a king. It is the opposite.

I’m not saying that Judges rules out the possibility that a righteous king could have helped with some of Israel’s problems. Moses had allowed that the tribes of Israel might choose a king in the future, and gave them God’s rules for a king (Deuteronomy 17:14-20).

But Judges isn’t a story about Israelites refusing a king. It is a story about attempts to exalt a man as king and the catastrophic results of those attempts. From the story of Gideon onward, Judges is a history of rulers who began toying with dynastic ambitions. Then the book ends with with two horrific stories. In those stories we meet the statement, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6; 19:25 ESV; see also 18:1; 19:1). But those stories are about degenerate Levites and come at the end of a history of God stopping his chosen judges from becoming kings.

Solomon Against Strength Privilege or “Toxic Masculinity”

I have, from youth, liked superhero stories, as well as other kinds of action hero stories. But I wonder to what extent some of them encourage something that might be accurately labeled “toxic masculinity.” A more precise label might be “strength privilege.”

Before I delve into the pop culture side of things, let’s establish that Proverbs is concerned with strength.

Does God Want to Brag about Us?

“My son, if your heart is wise, my heart too will be glad. My inmost being will exult when your lips speak what is right” (Proverbs 23:15–16 ESV).
“Be wise, my son, and make my heart glad, that I may answer him who reproaches me” (Proverbs 27:11 ESV)..

Proverbs shows a father finds joy and public vindication in the acquired wisdom of his son. In my book, Solomon Says (Amazon, Kindle) I write quite a bit of how Proverbs relates to Genesis. The first father-son relationship in the Bible is God’s creation of mankind. That may not seem obvious at first, from Genesis 1 and 2, but Genesis 5 gives us an interpretive key:

This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.
Genesis 5:1–3 ESV

How Do You Stamp Out the Fire?

Sunday I preached a sermon on Genesis 3 which I entitled “The First Lie.” It concentrated on the Serpent’s communication strategy with Eve (using Adam as a passive partner in his plan). I began with a quotation from the Charlie Daniels Band and ended with a quote from C. S. Lewis.

I don’t know how many of you have read The Silver Chair. That story involved two children sent on a mission in a magical world to rescue a missing prince. In this world (or the fictional version of it), the boy and the girl were basically trapped in a progressive school called “Experiment House,” where they were propagandized and bullied.