The Bible speaks to your left brain and your right.

Steve Brown:

The Bible speaks to your left brain and your right. Let’s talk about it, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Key Life is all about God’s radical grace. Grace that has dirt under its fingernails and laugh lines on its face. If you want the Bible to be a book of rules, you may want to stop listening now. But if you’re hungry for the truth that’ll make you free, welcome to Key Life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. I hope you guys had a great week-end, and I hope your pastor’s sermon was as good as my pastor’s sermon. I know you’re not going to believe this, but I’m going to finish Proverbs either today or tomorrow. We started it back just before the Noahic Flood. And we’ve been at it for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. And I hope you’ve learned something. I hope that you have learned how to be a street-smart Christian. I have in the study and the preparation of our Proverbs series. And let me suggest something. I have a lot of friends who read one chapter of the Book of Proverbs every day. And it’s amazing how that is transformative in their lives. So, even if you didn’t like the series that we’ve been doing for so long, maybe you can go back and start reading Proverbs and saying, God, make me like this. What we’re going to do this week is we’re going to end Proverbs, maybe today, certainly tomorrow, and then we’re going to look at the power and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It’s surprising how few books and how few sermons center in on the power of the Holy Spirit. And there’s a reason for that, I’m going to tell you when we get to it. But it is our practice on Mondays to pray before we study, so let’s do that. Father, we come into your presence and are reminded again of how kind and wise you are in writing it down. We would have gotten it wrong if we passed it along, so you chiseled it in concrete. Your word, a light unto our feet, and we thank you and we praise you for that. Father, you know the people who are listening to this broadcast. You know everything about them, you know their true name, you know the fears, you know the courage, you know the heroic acts and the cowardly ones, you know the secrets and the sins, and you know the places where you’re making us better. We trust you. Teach us to lean on you hard. You are adequate for every need. And now, Father, as always, we pray for the one who teaches on this broadcast. Forgive him his sins, because they are many. We would see Jesus and him only. And we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen. Alright, couple of things before we finish up with Proverbs. Look if you will at the book of lists. And this happens throughout Proverbs. But Proverbs 30 is a good example of that. In the 7th verse it says two things. In the 15th verse, there are three things. In the 18th verse, there are three things. In the 21st verse, there are three things. In the 24th verse, there are four things, which. What’s going on here? I checked one of the commentaries and let me tell you what it said. Old Testament numbers are often used for poetic and rhetorical impact. This usage is neither literal nor symbolically used this way. These numbers may indicate such concepts as few or many, or they may be used to intensify a point. In Proverbs 30, there’s an example of a climatic formula which builds stylistic progression and anticipation. The quantity itself, in such cases, is often indefinite. Now, if you understood that, you’re a better person than I am. But I think what it’s saying is that the Bible is written for both left brain and right brain people. Left brain people do mathematics, and logic. And right brain people sing. Now, I don’t even know whether that’s appropriate, or real, or scientifically accurate, but there are parts in our lives that are emotional. And others that aren’t, that are factual. And the Bible speaks to both of those places where we find ourselves. Sometimes I want to dance and sing and I don’t care about the multiplication table. And sometimes I care a lot about the facts because you build your life on facts and not just emotions. And so, the Bible is a Bible that takes into account human beings and what they’re like. There are places that are poetic and not to be taken literally. There are places that are absolutely revealed propositional truth, doctrinal truth to be taken literally, to mark down, to memorize, to apply to your lives. There are other places that are whimsical, and there are other places that are mythological in the deepest sense of that word. In other words, a story that is true because it teaches truth, not necessarily because it’s historical. Now, I’m not going to spend the time doing that. I’ll leave that to scholars to decide which is which. And I’ll also leave it to you, but remember that every time you open your Bible, you’re reading a message from the God of the universe who wrote it down. And the fact that he wrote it down is so good because we would have gotten it wrong. Now, let me show you one other thing, and it’s a good place to land this entire study in the Book of Proverbs. Proverbs 30:8b through 9. This is so wise and so good.

Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food allotted to me, lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.

Is that good or what? The writer of Proverbs with the wisdom that God has given the writer of Proverbs is saying something important to us. We have a tendency to look at the poor and to make them into some kind of wonderful people who have been hurt by the world. They’re sinners just like you. Or to look at rich people and be envious. And what the writer of Proverbs says in both places, when there’s too much or too little, there are great dangers. I one time served a church that had in it a number of fairly wealthy people. A number of things surprised me about it. One was that about every fundraiser in America was trying to get to me so they could talk to members of my church. And another was, I felt very uncomfortable. In fact, I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina in a lower middle class family. And I was happy with that, and all of a sudden I was thrown in this place that was very affluent. I even got a complimentary membership to the Yacht Club, and I could play golf free whenever I wanted to. And that was good, but the thing got to me and I decided these are not my kind of people. I’m going to leave, I just can’t take this. Now, part of that was Florida, I had moved from Boston. And a part of it was the cultural context where I was ministering to very affluent people. And do you know what I did? Dr. Bill Bright was in our city during that period in my life. And he was my friend and I asked him about it and I felt really, really uncomfortable and I told him so. And you know what he said to me? He said, Steve, if you stay, you will discover that people who have a whole lot need a pastor just as much as poor people. The truth was, in the first year in my ministry there, I had more suicide calls than in all my years of ministry prior to that. And I began to realize how wise Bill was. And I ended up staying in that church for over, for almost 20 years. And it was a, it was a Camelot kind of experience. As I began to realize that everybody, the poor and the rich, have serious problems. And they need a serious savior by the name of Jesus. All right, that’s it. I’m not going to teach any more on Proverbs probably for the rest of my life. I hope you got something out of it, and if you didn’t, I did. It’s how I became a street-smart Christian, 51 percent of the time. Tomorrow the Holy Spirit, right now. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Thank you Steve. And wow, that’s it. That’s the end of the road on our tour through the Book of Proverbs, a series we’ve dubbed Street-Smart Christians. Sure hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. And of course, remember that you can revisit this series and share it by visiting us at keylife.org Tomorrow? The Holy Spirit. Do join us. Speaking of the Holy Spirit, we recently chatted with the wise and winsome Michael Reeves about his classic book, Delighting in the Trinity, an Introduction to the Christian faith. If you think you’ve heard everything there is to hear about the Trinity, you might want to check this out. And you can, just call us at 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. And we’ll send you that entire conversation on CD, for free. You can also e-mail [email protected] to ask for that CD. And to mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses. Again, just ask for the free CD featuring Michael Reeves. And finally. If you value the work of Key Life, would you join us in that work through your financial support? You can charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. Or you can now gift safely and securely through text. Just pick up your phone right now and text Key Life to 28950 that’s Key Life, one word, two words. It doesn’t matter. Just text that to 28950, then follow the instructions. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And we are a listener supported production of Key Life Network.