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New Post at Kuyperian: QUICK to Obey–not Slack

The first draft of the Proverbs book is done so, while I’m arranging for publication, the blog is moving back nearer the center of my attention.

So stay tuned!

In the meantime, I recently posted at Kuyperian.com. Here’s the beginning:

Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.

Colossians 3:22–4:1
The Quick & the Slack

The typical way I think this passage is applied and preached is to exhort Christians to be better employees because they want to please God by obeying him. Since we’ve eliminated slavery as they practiced it in the ancient world and later, these texts are usually applied to the employer/employee relationship. But I’d like to do something a little different here. I’d like you to consider how the way you work to please your employer should influence how you obey God.

QUICK to Obey!–not Slack (Audio version included)
Read the rest at Kuyperian.com.

John Locke on the authority of mothers

It may seem strange to quote a political philosopher on a website dedicated to Biblical wisdom. But John Locke’s First Treatise on Civil Government was essentially a Bible study. A book had been published arguing that the Bible demanded absolute monarchy, reasoning that there was kind of authoritarian succession from Adam to kings. Locke exposed many flaws in the author’s argument. One of those flaws was that he left out the role of Eve and all mothers.

Thus, Locke points out:

“My son, hear the instructions of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother,” are the words of Solomon, a king who was not ignorant of what belonged to him as a father or a king; and yet he joins father and mother together, in all the instructions he gives children quite through his book of Proverbs.

This has ramifications outside (or perhaps before) politics. It means a young man who only respects his father is probably not on the path to wisdom.

Continue reading “John Locke on the authority of mothers”

From Proverbs to Ecclesiastes and the book(s) of wisdom

We know that Ezra is supposed to follow Chronicles because the last statement in the last chapter of Chronicles is repeated and elaborated in the first chapter of Ezra.

So how does Proverbs end and Ecclesiastes begin?

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vapor,
but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her in the gates.

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Vapor of vapors, says the Preacher,
vapor of vapors! All is vapor.

I’ve never thought about the order or wisdom books in our English Bibles before. But it looks to me like Proverbs is supposed to be followed by Ecclesiastes. The Proverbs 31 man (not woman) leads to further thought and meditation.

(The Proverbs 31 man is the man who knows what to look for in a woman because he remembers what his mother told him. The Proverbs 31 woman can be derived from the text, but that is not the point. This is King Lemuel’s mother giving her son advice on a wife. Read it for yourself.)

I can’t help wondering if Canticles builds on Ecclesiastes. It certainly seems to extol love as the highest good. Which would fit well with the advice of Ecclesiastes, such as:

Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.

Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head.

Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

And what about Psalms? If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, then wouldn’t Psalms naturally come before Proverbs? Could this be how Solomon himself was prepared to be a wise man?

And then Job could be an introduction to both Psalms and Proverbs, the story of a wise king vindicated from his enemies–subject matter for both Psalms and Proverbs.

One book of wisdom in five movements?