Proverbs 10 marks a change in style, with this being the start of ‘the wise sayings of Solomon’. A proverb is ‘a short pithy saying in general use, stating a general truth or piece of advice’ and here we have a whole host of punchy sayings that convey simple truths.

Sometimes the proverbs have a common theme, such as how to live well, for example, or laziness or the ongoing theme of wisdom. It’s impossible to look at every verse in detail (well, if we want to make it through each chapter in one day, that is!), but these are the verses which really stood out for me today:

“The wise in heart accept commands, but a chattering fool comes to ruin” (Prov 10:8)
This verse reminds me that we all live in submission to others and have to accept authority over us, something that can be hard to do. It also reminds me that the Bible teaches us to listen well before talking! (see James 1:19)

“Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out.” (Prov 10:9)
I like this continuing theme of paths and am reminded that there is nothing invisible which will not be made visible one day. God sees everything; nothing is hidden from Him.

“Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers over all wrongs.” (Prov 10:12)
I’ve just finished reading 1 Peter which says “love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Pet 4:8), echoing this verse. It’s so easy to stir up conflict and to allow anger, bitterness and hatred to colour our relationships. God wants love and forgiveness to be the hallmark stamped on our characters.

“The way of the LORD is a refuge for the blameless, but it is the ruin of those who do evil.” (Prov 10:29)
It’s a common style of proverbs to contrast two opposites. I suppose I find it reassuring to think of having a refuge, but equally this verse reminds us that there are only two ways in life. We either follow God’s way or we do evil.

The cinematic nature of Proverbs recurs in Proverbs 9, with Lady Wisdom seen inviting us to a wonderful banquet and Madame Whore (or Folly) also on the scene again. This chapter contains perhaps one of the most famous one-line proverbs in the whole book: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” (Prov 9:10) . If we wanted to sum up the whole of Proverbs, this verse would probably suffice!

Wisdom without God just doesn’t work, for God is the Creator of the universe and the Maker of everything. Our ultimate aim in life, though, should not simply be to be wise. We want to know God. Jesus said that “this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3) . That is our ultimate aim: to know God and to be like Him.

Sometimes in our modern society we think that life is very complicated. In actual fact, the Bible constantly reminds us that the choices we face are not really that complicated. We can either choose God’s ways or the devil’s. There are only two kingdoms. We are either ‘foreigners and strangers’ or ‘fellow citizens with God’s people and members of His household’ (Eph 2:19). There is no middle way.

Since 1790, the US President has given a ‘State of the Union’ speech each year, usually in January. Last night, Dave gave us his ‘annual review’, looking again at Jeremiah 29:11-13. This is a passage God has repeatedly brought to mind over the past few years. He preached from it in April 2006, looking at the thought ‘when the time is right, God will fulfil His promises to us.’ Through that period of faithful waiting and praying, growth happened. In late 2007, the message he brought was ‘are we serving God in our own generation?’, looking at outreach into the local community. By 2009 the church had seen numerical growth, to the point where we were outgrowing the building in Beever Street.

God’s plans have indeed been to prosper us and not to harm us. We have a new building in a more central location and God provided the money to purchase and refurbish that building. We have known God’s prospering – the word ‘Shalom’ means peace, being safe, comfortable, happy, in a state of well-being. On 6 June 2010 the church held its first service in Market Street and throughoug 2011 we have seen ongoing work in the building (both main halls have been redecorated, with new windows and blinds purchased) and this past year the drains have been replaced and the car park resurfaced. The building on Beever Street was sold in late 2011. Community outreach has continued, with new groups being added (Slimming World, Alzheimer’s Society, a meeting for the autistic and Zumba classes are held in the community hall, in addition to the youth work, Mums & Toddlers and coffee mornings run by the church.) Moreover, the prophecy brought by Joan from Isaiah 43:5-8 has also started to be fulfilled, with families coming from different areas.

Nonetheless, Dave warned that there is danger for churches if they become too comfortable. Rev 3:15-16 remind us that there is great danger in being lukewarm and in taking our eyes off God. We are engaged in spiritual warfare and need to be vigilant to maintain our spiritual walk before the Lord, as Mark reminded us this morning. Our part is to seek the Lord: “you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jer 29:13). The midweek prayer meetings and Bible studies are, in general, poorly attended, and we ought to realise the importance of these meetings. We should also be coveting spiritual gifts and the voice of God speaking clearly in our meetings. As William Carey said, our attitutde should be “expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.” We have a part to play in the work God is doing here and we need to be dedicated and committed to seeing His promises fulfilled in the local church.

Mark preached on the topic of Living Water this morning. In our country, we often take water for granted – it’s available from the tap; we can bathe or shower whenever we like. But if for any reason we have no water, we realise immediately the problem we have. Water may be freely available to us, but that’s not the case in many countries.

Water quenches our thirst. Without water, we would die quickly. In Biblical times, water was taken from wells or natural springs. The water Jesus talks about in John 4 and John 6 is not just natural water, however; it is spiritual water.

The spiritual water Jesus offers us means we will never thirst again (John 6:35, John 4:13). Moreover, that water becomes a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John 4:14). It truly is ‘living water’ (John 4:10). We need to ask God for this water, which first of all refreshes us and then overflows to touch other people’s lives.

One of my favourite places is Evian-les-Bains, a spa town in France, famous for its water.

In the centre of Evian, there are a number of fountains, such as this one:

As the psalmist says, ‘all my fountains are in You.’ (Ps 87:7). God is able to make our lives overflow, even in places where we would not expect abundant water:
“water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert… The burning sand will become a pool; the thirsty ground bubbling springs.” (Is 35:6-7). Wherever we are, no matter what our situations, God can bring healing and joy and new life and transformation of our environment. The grass, papyrus and reeds will grow in unexpected places (Is 35:7). God can move in miraculous ways.

1) We need to ask for the living water for ourselves, for we all need spiritual refreshment.
2) We need to pray for God to spring forth in dry and barren situations, so that all may have their thirst quenched by Him.

The video is of the Chris Tomlin song based on Ps 87:7, ‘All My Fountains’:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J01VYTDssmc

This chapter is devoted to wisdom, again using the literary device of personification. Wisdom is calling out to us, showing us the best ways to live. There are many things we can base our lives on (fame, money, family, ‘looking after number one’), but the Bible repeatedly shows us that a life without God is really just like building on sand (see Matthew 7:24-29)

In this chapter, we are told: “Prefer my life-disciplines over chasing after money, and God-knowledge over a lucrative career. For Wisdom is better than all the trappings of wealth; nothing you could wish for holds a candle to her.” (Prov 8:10-11, The Message; in the NIV, it talks about wisdom being better than rubies or silver or gold.) Wisdom is linked to prudence (or sanity, interestingly, in the Message version), knowledge and discretion; good counsel and common sense are characteristics of wisdom (and therefore of the wise.)

Wisdom is age-old, we discover in this chapter. Sometimes we shun things because they are old, preferring the new, thinking that because something is shiny and gleaming it must necessarily be better. Each generation tends to discover truth for itself, thinking that it’s the first to uncover these things… only to find out that, as Ecclesiastes reminds us, ‘there is nothing new under the sun.’ (Eccl 1:9) History has a lot to teach us, if we will only pause to listen and learn from it.

The chapter ends “When you find me, you find life, real life, to say nothing of God’s good pleasure. But if you wrong me, you damage your very soul; when you reject me, you’re flirting with death.” (Prov 8:35-36) . If we want to find favour with God, if we want to please Him and live well, a good place to start is finding out what He considers the best way to live and live accordingly. Ps 119 encourages us to do this with all our hearts and when we pursue God’s wisdom, we can be sure of finding God’s favour.

One of the literary devices used in Proverbs is that of personification, ( ‘the attribution of a personal nature or character to inanimate objects or abstract notions, especially as a rhetorical figure’ , or ‘ the representation of a thing or abstraction in the form of a person’). The Message version brings out this vividly by giving names to ordinary nouns (Lady Wisdom, Madame Insight and so on). Writers use personification to bring something to life so that we see beyond the mere words to the human drama involved.

The writer does this again in Proverbs 7, where again we are warned against adultery. You’d think we’d have got the message by now, wouldn’t you? But when warnings are given repeatedly in Scripture, we do well to ponder carefully why. The command ‘Do not fear!’ is reputedly found 366 times in the Bible (I confess I’ve never counted myself, but can well imagine God needing to repeat this one enough times for one each day of the year, including leap years, since I know my own propensity to fear!) So it’s clearly important that we grasp the significance of this ongoing warning against adultery and in order to do this, the writer engages our mind and emotions through this dramatic device.

We are onlookers to a young man’s folly, seeing him seduced by a woman who is clearly the predator in this scene. We hear her ‘honeyed words’ and can picture the scene with all its colour, allure, fragrances and sense of heady intoxication. You only have to read this chapter to feel you’re in the middle of a powerful cinematic scene. If you’re like me, you can hear the music, smell the fragrances and see that this young man doesn’t stand much of a chance of resistance. There is inevitability written all over this scene.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. We all like to think there is inevitability about sin, because then we can shrug off personal responsibility and blame someone else. Adam blamed Eve back in the Garden of Eden; Eve blamed the serpent. Playing the blame game is second nature to us; we learn it at such a young age that we don’t even think about it most of the time. When we come to know Christ, however, our consciences are awakened and we understand that temptation is not the same thing as sin and that He gives us power to resist temptation. The ammunition the young man needed to resist the wiles of the Seductress is revealed at the start of the chapter: “Treasure my careful instructions. Do what I say and you’ll live well.” (Prov 7:1)

The world has a proverb ‘do as I say, not as I do’. That’s not the way of the Bible. Jesus is our great example on how to resist temptation (Matt 4:1-11) and He provides us with the means to resist temptation, no matter what shape or form it comes in. Those means are spiritual: “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Cor 10:4-5) or, as the Message version translates this latter part, ‘fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ.’

Yes, this chapter is talking about a specific sin (adultery). But I think the repeated emphasis on adultery is not simply a warning about the powerful nature of sexual sin (which should never be underestimated.) The cinematic nature of this chapter gives us insight into human nature and helps us to see the dramatic process by which sin is translated from thought into action. The scene ends just as dramatically, with the consequences of sin: “Her house is a highway to the grave, leading down to the chambers of death.” (Prov 7:27) The smooth-talking seductress has given way to a scene worthy of any horror film. We’d do well to remember that this is always the ending to sin; as we’ll see later on in Proverbs: “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.” (Prov 14:12)