James 3:17 | Character - What Proverbs Says

In James 3:17, we are given a portrait of wisdom that is not merely intellectual, but deeply moral and relational—marked by purity, peace, gentleness, openness to reason, mercy, good fruit, impartiality, and sincerity. This character-based wisdom is the same wisdom championed throughout Proverbs, which opens with a call to fear the Lord as the beginning of knowledge (1:7) and wisdom (9:10), framing the entire book around the central tension of two paths: the way of the wise and the way of the foolish. The Proverbs—whether from Solomon, the wise, Agur, or King Lemuel—consistently point to the fear of the Lord as the foundation for godly character. Integrity secures and guides; peace flows from humility and restraint; truth and humility make us open to reason; mercy overcomes vengeance; and sincere love covers offenses and brings blessing. True wisdom is not just about what we know but who we are becoming—a life formed by the fear of the Lord and shaped by the character of Christ.

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Transcript

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Well, thanks for joining us this Memorial Day weekend. While we continue in our study of the Book of Proverbs. We've been working through Proverbs one chapter at a time. Proverbs is known as the Book of Wisdom, and we've worked through chapter one all the way up through chapter nine, taking them a chapter at a time. Now we'll transition into studying various topics across the book of Proverbs. This week we'll be looking at the topic of character. What is the Book of Proverbs have to tell us about shaping good, godly, Christlike character? What do we see in the book of Proverbs on that topic? When I think about character, I think of it in terms of training truth into our intuition. It takes time, it takes training, it takes intentionality. And hopefully over the course of life, it becomes automatic. It becomes intuition. The famous boxer Joe Frazier said that if you cheat on your training in the dark early mornings, you'll get found out under the bright lights of the ring. What you do to train your character is what you carry with you into the rest of life, and that's what others will see. What is the Proverbs going to tell us about how we develop good character? Part of the reason why we're now going topic by topic rather than chapter by chapter, is because of the way the book of Proverbs is structured. And I'm going to spend just a minute on that. If you didn't get a hand out, raise your hands because you're going to want to peek at that. There'll be people around. Just keep it up till someone gives you one. We have people with copies ready to hand out. But you remember last week we looked at Proverbs chapter nine and how it really wrapped up chapters one through nine because it ended. And if you see there in your handout, it ends with this verse, chapter nine, verse ten, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And because that verse was there and we know chapter one started with verse seven, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. You see that as bookends. Wrapping a wrapper around those whole first nine chapters saying, the emphasis of this section is pursue the fear of the Lord. But also we saw in chapter nine this big contrast, and it happened all through chapters one through nine. This contrast of the way of wisdom versus the way of folly. And this became the central issue of the first nine chapters of Proverbs. And ultimately, it's the central contrast of the whole book of Proverbs. You got two paths to choose, which you're going to go down. Are you going to follow wisdom? Are you going to follow folly? Which way are you going to go? There's no middle path, by the way. You're either moving towards wisdom or you're moving towards folly. There's not a middle path to choose. Now here's why all that's important. Here's why all that is interesting. That sets up where we're headed. If you understand that that's the central issue of Proverbs, you'll see how chapter nine transitions transitions us into chapter ten. And you see this on this structure. If you have the handout, I just put an outline of the structure of the Book of Proverbs. Just a brief overview, and it is based on the titles of the authors of the sections. So you saw that with verse one Proverbs Solomon, son of David, King of Israel. But here in the second section, chapter ten, this section will go all the way through chapter 22. And it has the title The Proverbs of Solomon. Now here's here's why all this is important. Bear with me. I'm going to get into some detail. It all fits together, I promise. Chapter ten through

22: 3:41

16 is the next big section. There are 375 proverbs in that section, and each of those proverbs is just a pair, a contrasting pair sometimes contrast, sometimes complements. The reason why that's important is chapter nine has set us up for that. You got two paths to follow. Which way are you going to go? You're going to go towards wisdom. You're going to go towards foolishness. And then all along the way for the next 375 verses, you get the contrast. Which way are you going to go? You get reminded two paths to choose which way are you going to go? You see this in the very first verse of chapter ten. After you get past the title, the Proverbs of Solomon, here it is. If you look at chapter ten, verse one, which isn't in your notes. So you'd have to turn to your Bible for this. A wise son makes a glad father.

But here's the contrast: 4:30

a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother. You see that pattern all through these next 375 verses, one choice or another sometimes contrasting, sometimes complementing, sometimes building on another. But it's always just these two line statements, these contrasting or building statements, which continues to build off this idea of you’ve got two paths, which way are you going to go? And it hits it over and over and over again. Now, part of why that's important is I think some of the temptation when we have read Proverbs in the past, I know mine was is to think that it's just a random, scattershot collection of ideas, and I hope maybe I'll happen upon something of interest, but I don't know how it fits together. I don't know if the person who compiled it had some grand idea in mind, but even here, and you've seen, especially last week, there is order, there is structure, there is intent, there is a design. Even if we don't fully see it. Let me just point out one way this shows up in this section of Proverbs. So chapter ten, verse one, and this is in your notes in the outline, it starts by calling it the Proverbs of Solomon. I said, there are 375 verses in that section. Now some people make too big a deal of this, but many of the commentators I looked at said, we think this is actually what's occurring here. But the word Solomon, every Hebrew word, every Hebrew letter, has a number attached to it. And you can add up the numbers of a name and get the total of that name, though the name Solomon. When you add up the letters of that name equals 375. That's not a coincidence. Sometimes it is. Sometimes that can get over analyzed, but there's plenty of places where it's very intentional. Matthew, the opening chapter of Matthew with the genealogy, you see it repeated 14 over and over again. Jesus from David, David's name, when you add it up, is 14. It was very intentional. We're saying that Jesus comes from David. There are places where it's intentional. And the point here is just to point out, there is intention. There is design behind the proverbs, even though it may seem kind of scattered and random when you look at it. Now, here's what I love about that. By the way, I know that when I turn to any book of Proverbs. And by the way, how many of you have done this where you know, Proverbs has 31 chapters, and whatever day of the week it is, you turn there and you read that chapter for the day. How many have done that at some point in your Christian journey of reading the Bible? A lot of people, by the way, if you haven't read the Bible much, that is an easy way to get into reading the Bible. The beauty of that, and part of the reason why I think Proverbs is designed this way, is that any day of the week you come to, there's going to be something for you that day. These different topics are going to get cycled over and over again in chapter by chapter as we go. 10, 11, 12, 15 as you work your way up over and over again, you're going to find something. Every chapter you turn to, it's going to relate to your life, but it's not in some kind of direct, step by step program. Life doesn't work that way. And the Proverbs reflects that life can be rather messy. How many of us are here today? And you go, I'm not quite sure how I ended up where I am in life. Somehow I got here and I'm not quite sure. I thought I was going this way. And I went over there and I came back and I circled around a few times, and here I am. There's not a direct path. There's not a step by step program that you got handed when you were born that you just followed step by step. In fact, one commentator said it this way about the Proverbs I love this. This guy's name is Tremper Longman. He said the random collection of Proverbs reflects the messiness of life. It seems random. It seems like it's hitting me out of nowhere. But when you turn there, there will be something for you. And I promise, when you turn to God's Word and you are looking for him to speak to you, he speaks. He does over and over again. And Proverbs tends to work that way. So seemingly random. Yet in the midst of the chaos, God is at work creating order. Now, character is the topic that we want to address this week. We're going to end up addressing ten different topics. When we looked at the book of Proverbs, we, Colby and I sat down together and we said, what are some of the main topics that stand out but that also are relevant to us today, to this part of the world, to this time in history? And we just came up with what we felt like were some of the ten main ones we're going to address. So this week is character. What does Proverbs say about character and how can I grow in my character? When I think about that word character, I think there's different ways to think about how we develop character. I heard one guy describe it this way. He said the Greek word for character refers to the idea of stamping an image on something, or cutting an image into something. In particular would have been best known for the coins of the day. If you wanted to know what the emperor looked like, you would turn to a coin. When Jesus held up the coin before the Pharisees and asked them, who's on here? Whose likeness, whose image is on here? That's probably the only chance you would ever have of seeing the Emperor is on a coin. You didn't dial up the internet back in those days and find out who the Emperor was. But there's that idea of etching, of cutting, of leaving a mark. And when you think of your character, the choices you make day by day leave their mark, cut their path, and over time, that path becomes the path you go to naturally, automatically. You easily go there. We all are trying to develop good natural ruts, habits, patterns in our life and those things become our character over time. In fact, another commentator said it this way I love the way he says this. He says your character is the one thing, and I read this last week, you cannot borrow, lend or escape, for it is you. It it's who you are. It's the way you do things. It's the way you live. It's the way you make decisions. How do we develop good character? There's a lot of different character qualities of wisdom we could point out. We're going to look at five and they're based off of what James says about wisdom. James is in the New Testament. James is often referred to as the Proverbs of the New Testament, the Book of Wisdom in the New Testament. And on your sheet you'll see James chapter three, verse seven. Here's what James says about wisdom. Here is some of the character qualities of wisdom. Verse 17 actually. The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. This is what James, when I describe the character qualities of wisdom, James says, here are some. Now we're going to look at five of these. The ones that I have in bold in here purity, peaceable, open to reason, mercy, sincere. Five character qualities across the Book of Proverbs, across the many chapters of Proverbs. What does Proverbs say about building good character? First, let's look at this word pure or purity. And I think when I think of purity, I also think of the issue of integrity, of wholeness. That word integrity comes from the word integer, which is a whole number, a complete number. When you think of someone who's a person of integrity, they're complete. They're the same person in private, they're the same person in public. They're not duplicitous. James talks about the double minded man, unstable in all his ways. They're one person in private. They're another person in public. You can't trust them. They can't trust themselves. They don't know where they stand. But the person of integrity you can trust, there's a purity to who they are. Job said it this way of himself, Till I die, I will not put away my integrity from me. At the core of who he was, he considered it integrity to be central to how he lived. Now when Proverbs speaks of integrity, notice the contrast here in these three verses I have listed on integrity. There's a contrast between integrity and crookedness in each of these. Look at each of these. Chapter ten, verse nine. Whoever walks in integrity walks securely. But he who makes ways crooked will be found out.

Next in 11: 13:19

3, The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them.

19: 13:25

1, better is the poor person who walks in his integrity than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool. The contrast here is between the crooked path and the straight path. And last week in chapter nine, we saw that the call of Lady Wisdom and the call of Lady Folly was the call to the simple who was walking on the straight path. Even though they were simple, they were trying to walk on the straight path, and Lady Folly wanted to pull him away from that, to pull him off that path to a crooked path. But a person of integrity says, I'm going to continue down the right path. I'm going to keep moving towards wisdom. I'm not going to be pulled aside. I'm not going to let my heart be divided and split up and torn a lot of different ways. We want to keep moving towards integrity. We want to be people who are trustworthy in private and in public. I remember when I went to work for FamilyLife, Marriage and Family Ministry. I went to work in this role for Dennis Rainey, who was the head of the ministry, and he had a role where young guys would come in and try to learn leadership principles from him for a couple of years and then move on. And the guy was replacing who was his time was up, he was moving on. He said to me, John Dennis is the one guy that I've gotten to know in my life, the one man that as I've gotten to know him better, my esteem for him has gone up. He's the one man I've spent time around that there's the same person in private that he is in public, usually for this guy's experience, as I've gotten to know any man I've seen, it all falls apart. They're one person in public, they're one person in private. He said, but with Dennis my esteem for him has gone up and I know many men that way. I was so sad for him to hear that. Many men in this church, women as well, many people as you get to know them, your esteem for them goes up. You see, they’re not putting on some show. And by the way, they're not acting perfect either. They'll be the first to tell you I'm not perfect, and they'll be quick to apologize when they mess up. We want to move towards integrity. That's a key character quality. Second is peace.

14: 15:48

30 says, A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.

And then 17: 15:56

27 says, whoever restrains his words has knowledge. And he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding. I love those phrases a tranquil heart, cool spirit. These verses are describing a person not easily rattled, not easily thrown off course by what other people say to them or about them. They have a centeredness to them. One author I've read described it this way. He said they have a non anxious presence about them. I love that phrase. You've been around that kind of person, a non anxious presence, a strength of presence, just being around them calms you. They don't have to say anything. You can sense it. That's the kind of people we want to move towards, being people of peace, so that life doesn't just send us off course when someone says something. In fact, we had a big debate about this among our staff recently. I read to them a line out of this book by Marshall Rosenberg. I'm going to read it to you. Get ready, because this is a lot to chew on. This is next level stuff. Okay. Get ready. It's just one sentence. What other people do is never the cause of how we feel. I’m going to read that again. Chew on that for a second. What other people do is never the cause of how we feel. Now, as you can imagine, there was quite a bit of debate around that. Really, never? Okay, maybe that's a strong word. Maybe it's a little bit of over speak sometimes. Proverbs is that way. To try to get you to think. Here was his explanation. What do you mean? What other people do doesn't determine how I feel. Here's how he explained it. If someone arrives late to a meeting, you had a meeting planned, they show up late, and you needed reassurance from them that they care for you, you're likely to be hurt. You're likely to be disappointed. You're likely to think, how rude are they to not care for other people? You're likely to be maybe even angry at them. He said, but if your need was not there, reassurance and comfort for you as a person if your need instead was 30 minutes of quiet and solitude, you're quite happy that they're late. It's no big deal. You're overjoyed. You're full of delight. The issue wasn't what they did, it was what the need was within yourself. It was the expectation within yourself. Here's what I need from them that caused the feeling. Now, whether you agree with that or not. Okay, look, I get that there are some things people do with the intent to hurt you. They're hoping to hurt you. And some people go to extremes to do that. Yes. Okay. I'm not minimizing that that shouldn't cause a reaction. And maybe but here's the point of this. Are we going to be people who are easily manipulated by others, or are we people centered in the peace of Christ, knowing that our significance is in him, not what other people say? And do we have a non anxious presence rooted in him? That's the kind of person I want to be. That's the kind of peace I want. And I think especially in this day and age, that is one of the most powerful ways to do evangelism in our culture, because you can talk about Jesus all day long. But if your life is utter chaos, if you never have peace, if you're easily stirred up to anger by the slightest thing someone says, people are not going to care what you have to say about Jesus. In fact, they're going to reject it. But if they see that the things that rattle everyone else, no big deal, that you can weather it, that there is a peace, that there is a centeredness, they're going to want to know where does that come from? Where do you get that? How do I get that? That's what I'm longing for. That's what everybody wants. I think it's one of the most powerful ways to proclaim the gospel in our world. That'll open doors to the gospel unlike almost anything else in life. So we want to be people of peace. How do we move towards peace? Growing character of peace. That's what we want. That's part of godly character. Look at this next one here we have integrity, we have peace, and then we have open to reason. Open to reason. I put truth and humility. I think we talked a lot last week about someone who is teachable, you know, the scoffer’s not teachable, but the person who's wise, you teach them, they'll be wiser still. I think there's two other elements, though, to the person who's open to reason, a person who's open to reason loves truth. And there's an element of humility to them. Look at what the Bible says Proverbs says about truth here. Chapter 30 verse five says, every word of God proves true. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. His word is truth. The person who's open to reason loves truth. They want to hear truth, and they trust that God's Word is true. Not only is it true, it protects, it says it is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Not only is it a protection, a shield to ourselves, but it is also to others. Look at chapter 14, verse 25. A truthful witness saves lives. The truth of God's Word is a shield for your life and for others. And it is true you can depend on it fully, completely, entirely. And by the way, this goes against the mantras of our modern world. Now who are you to say what's true or not? How can you tell me what my truth is? I have my own truth. You make your truth. There's no absolute truth. You might hear them say. Which, by the way, is an absolute truth statement. You can't have it both ways. You can't make truth statements about truth and not believe in truth. So you see the madness of that. And you gotta have something to offer people they can stand on. If it's not truth, what are you going to give them? Just temporary good feelings. I mean, those can help for a season. They're not going to last. I went to a wedding yesterday, a friend of mine's daughter got married, and the wedding was held in this ultra liberal church. And by that, I mean they don't believe in the authority of God's Word. They believe it's probably helpful, but it's not authoritative over life. There's probably some good ideas in there, but there's plenty of ways they would say that it's wrong or unhelpful. And I was sitting there in this church and they just rented the facility they didn't attend there. They thought it was a pretty building. I was sitting next to my friend and I said, and I meant this sincerely. I asked him, what do you think they're offering people here? If you're coming here for church regularly, what are you hoping to get? What are they hoping to offer people? Because it's not some basis of truth. And we talked around a lot of things. Of course they're offering something. I mean, they're offering, like I said, good feelings. A motivational speaker will offer you ideas that help get you inspired and motivated. But at the end of the day, it's going to fall short of truth. You're not going to have an absolute standard to stand on when times get hard, and that's going to struggle to shape your character. Truth is one side of character shaping, open to reason, but also humility.

Look at these next two verses 15: 23:13

33-- The fear of the Lord is instruction and wisdom and humility comes before honor. If you want to gain honor, start with humility. And the way you become humble is you humble yourself before the Lord. That's where you find true humility. You put him first. That's why fear the Lord is at the center of Proverbs. He comes first. And through that I find who I am. And there's a great example of this in the next set of verses. Do not put yourself forward in the king's presence, or stand in the place of the great, for it is better to be told, come up here, than to be put lower in the presence of a noble. You don't want to put yourself in the main seat and they go, no, no, no, sorry, that's not for you. You need to be back here. You want it to work the other way around. And here's the beauty of that. Christians don't put their identity on where they are seated. I don't place my identity in am I seen as important by this group of people? Did they put me in the right seat or not? What does that communicate about my power or status in this world? We don't care. It doesn't matter. Put me wherever you want and I'm going to trust that God wanted me in that seat. He had somebody he wanted me to talk to. We're going to walk in humility and trust that he's the one in control, not the perception of others in this passing world. And a person who is open to reason walks in truth, the truth of God's Word. And then the humility of submitting themselves to the fear of the Lord. Next is mercy. I love this verse in chapter 25, verse 21 through 22. If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink, for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you. Now this might seem like a contradictory section. Okay, give my enemy something to eat and drink with the goal of frying his brain. Well, I think the wording here and we talked about this in first Peter really means something like to sear his conscience. You've had this happen where you wanted to hurt someone and they killed you with kindness and it deflated you. You've had that happen? I've had it happen. Man, I wanted to get them. They returned my evil with kindness, and it totally unnerved and unsettled me. And it seared my conscience. And it made me realize the path I was headed down was wrong. That was mercy. And that's what the Christian is called to do, is to show mercy, not just to react and retaliate. That's what we want to do by nature. In fact, my dog is a great example of this. Okay, my dog loves to capture a baby rabbit. Now you would think they would just go ahead and eat up the rabbit and be done with it. But no, no no, not my dog. She loves to then go out into the middle of the front yard, set the rabbit down and watch it run off and chase it back down again, over and over again. It's a great little chase toy. It's a great squeaky toy, by the way. It squeaks like crazy when she catches it again. She's having the best time in the world, even though we're all going. No, stop torturing the baby rabbit. And she's just had full of delight and joy because it's in her nature. And part of our animal nature says, I will get you back. You're going to wrong me. I'll get you back. But Proverbs says, don't do that. Verse chapter 24, verse 29, do not say, I will do to him as he has done to me. I will pay the man back for what he has done. That's not what the Christian is called to do. The Christian shows mercy. Lastly, we have sincerity. And I think when I think of sincerity, I think of love. The person who is sincere is not two faced. They show love both private and in public. Public. If you're sincere towards me, you have a sense of sincerity and love towards me. And what we see here in Proverbs is one of the tendencies. When you are sincere, a person is here in chapter ten, verse 12, hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses. Love seeks to cover up offense. Chapter 19, verse 11. Good sense makes one slow to anger and it is his glory to overlook an offense. If I'm extending love towards someone, I'm not trying to highlight their flaws and imperfections. I'm not trying to highlight the way they messed up. And of course, I'm not talking about times where justice needs to be served to protect others. That's a whole nother conversation. But you know what I'm talking about. There are those who delight in pointing out the ways you are wrong or imperfect. It's called middle school. We've talked about that a lot. They love to point out where you messed up. If you've read about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and if you haven't, by the way, put it on your list this year to read a biography about him. Eric Metaxas has a great one. I think the audio is free at the library. You can listen to it. It is so profound. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor in World War Two, and he was one of the few that stood up and said, we cannot continue to go down this road of following Hitler. Many pastors just went along with whatever he was saying. He said, we can't keep down this road. We've got to stand up against this. And he eventually even joined the plot against Hitler, one of the plots with the attempt to take him out. He was so convicted that that was the path God was calling him down to stand for truth. His life is amazing. One of the things that's amazing about him, though, is he was also a very gifted piano player, and his family would often gather to play music. You know, this was back before TVs and the internet and all the entertainments we have at home. They would play music together. And his family knew that one of the things he was most skilled at was that when someone else was also playing their instruments and they messed up, he would match their imperfection. He was that skilled that as he played the piano, he wouldn't highlight their imperfection by continuing to play what's right. He would match right along with them to cover up their imperfections, to not highlight them, to not show them, to not make them stand out. Love covers a multitude of sins, and we want to be people in our character who are known for love and sincerity. How do we move that direction? Look at this last verse. Whoever brings blessing will be enriched and one who waters will himself be watered. We want to be known as people who are giving life to others. We're pouring out water on a thirsty ground. That's where we want to be. We want to be so rich in character that it's building up others around us. Now here's the hard part of all this how do we get there? How do you shape up character? There's no easy way. It's one small decision at a time. Every small decision is either moving you towards good character or moving you towards bad character, and every decision matters. It does. The enemy wants you to think that the little things in life don't matter. He want you to think that the little bad decisions don't matter. He wants you to think the little good decisions don't matter, but they do. If you're building a brick wall, every brick matters. Every brick you put in place matters. It's all building. And so when we're seeking to build character, it's one decision at a time. And the way you walk in godly decisions moment by moment,

is found in Galatians 5: 31:21

16, walk by the spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. This is the call of Scripture. If you want to know wisdom, walk by the spirit which requires that you know Christ. And as Isaac said today, if you don't know Christ, I'd love to talk with you about what it means to know him and follow him. Yeah, we can make good decisions in life, whether you're a Christian or not, but man, if you want to know abundant life, what real life is meant to be, the joy of walking through life even when hard times hit. If you want to know what it means to walk by the spirit, we'd love to talk with you about that. I'll be down front after. Let's pray. Thank you, God, for what we see in the book of Proverbs about character. And thank you that in the coming weeks, we get to look at many different topics you speak to all of life. How do we work in a way that honors you? How do we live in relationships whether it's marriage or parenting? How do we handle our finances in a way that honors you? How do we control our temper? What about caring for our heart? Thank you for so many ways that you speak to us through your word. Help us to see you in the book of Proverbs. In the coming days. We love you, Jesus. Amen.