Why teach the Proverbs?
Text: The Proverbs
Hosts:
J. Kent Edwards
Vicki Hitzges
Nathan Norman
Narrator: Brian French
"Lessons from Agur" by Haddon Robinson
The CrossTalk Podcast is a production of CrossTalk Global, equipping biblical communicators, so every culture hears God’s voice. To find out more, or to support the work of this ministry please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org
Produced by Nathan James Norman/Untold Podcast Production
© 2025 CrossTalk Global
Brian: A proverb is a concise, clever observation about how the world works. And according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, proverbs are part of every spoken language. They are as old as humanity and remain just as popular today. Here are a couple of my favorites from Africa if you think you are too small to make a difference, try spending the night in a closed room with a mosquito. The man who tries to walk two roads will split his pants. The Danish point out that God gives every bird its food but does not always drop it into the nest. The Ethiopians say he who conceals his disease cannot expect to be cured. The Japanese say that the rich man thinks of next year, the poor man of the present moment. Belgians say that experience is the comb that nature gives us when we are bald. North American Naho Indians point out it's impossible to awaken someone who is pretending to be asleep, while ancient Greeks were also fond of saying, the bow that is always bent will soon break. Proverbs are among the oldest and most widely used genres of all time. However, what intrigues and concerns me is that the inspired biblical proverbs in Scripture are rarely taught or preached today. In fact, many Christians have never heard a sermon series or even a single sermon from a proverb in God's Book of Proverbs. But if you believe that all scripture is even the Book of Proverbs, is God breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, then you will want to join Kent Edwards, Nathan Norman and Vicki Hitskiss as they help us understand what a biblical proverb is, why they are so important for God's people today, the challenges involved in preaching proverbs, and some suggestions on how to preach proverbs successfully. Welcome to crosstalk, a Christian podcast whose goal is for us to encourage each other to not only increase our knowledge of the Bible, but to take the next step beyond information into transformation. Our goal is to bring the Bible to life, into all our lives. I'm Brian French. Today, Dr. Kent Edwards, Vicki Hitzkiss and Nathan Norman explore how to effectively communicate proverbs in the 21st century. Let's join their discussion.
Kent: Vicki Nathan, did any of those international proverbs catch your attention?
Vicki: Yes. What I like is they're true, but they're funny, most of them. The one about you can't wake a man who's pretending to be asleep. I used to do that when I was a kid and I didn't want to go to school. My mother valued sleep and sometimes she'd let me miss School, so I'd pretend to be asleep.
Nathan: Solidarity with your mom. Yeah, I love it. I was laughing at it when we saw it. Experience is the comb that nature gives us when we are bald. Right. Because it's funny, but it also speaks to. Yeah. If only I could go back 20 years with the knowledge I have now. But now it's too late to make the decisions that I otherwise would have made.
Kent: For me. I like the mosquito one. If you think you're too small to make a difference, try spending the night in a closed room with a mosquito.
Vicki: That's true.
Kent: As someone who grew up in Canada and camped every summer, mosquitoes. A mosquito can keep you awake a long time, and they are very hard to find, especially in the dark. Well, before we can begin the conversation, I think on how to preach and teach a proverb. We've got to understand what a proverb is. Vicki, I wonder if you can help us get started. Did you have a chance to create your own original proverb?
Vicki: I did. Mine's not funny, but it's true and it's short. Mine was, if you want your children to adopt your values, model your values.
Kent: Okay, good. Help us understand how you created that. Like, where did you come up with that?
Vicki: Well, you had emailed me and said, come up with a proverb. And so I was thinking. Yeah. So I was thinking about life, and I thought about. I was just rummaging around on different things, and I was thinking about how my parents had taught me growing up. And I thought, I think I've told this story once before, but I'm kind of skipping around here. But we had a friend. I had a teacher, a Bible teacher who was older. And he talked about how it was pouring down rain one Sunday night, just pouring down rain. And his father got in the car and went to church on Sunday night. And it made an impression on him for the entire rest of his life. And he thought, wow, church is really important. And his dad didn't say to him, I'm going to church tonight because it's very important, son. He just picked it up, you know, and he became a biblical scholar. And part of it is because one rainy Sunday night, he saw his father get in the car and go to church in the rain. And somehow I was thinking about that. And I thought about how when I picture my parents and we're recording this at Christmas time, I've been thinking about them a lot lately. I picture my dad sitting on the sofa, either in his office or when they lived in Denver, the sofa downstairs. He has His Bible open and he has a legal pad because it was pre computer days mostly. And I picked up his love for the scripture because he was always studying the Word. And the same with my mother. I would, you know, tear into the house and often she would be on her knees in front of a sofa with her Bible open, or she would. It would be the end of the day or the end of the afternoon and she would have her Bible open and she would have been reading it and she would have fallen asleep. But both of them loved the Word and it made me love the Lord, because they did.
Kent: Yeah. So what you just described is the only way you can make a proverb.
Vicki: What's that?
Kent: You look at life, you learn a lesson, and you summarize it in one pithy statement. That's what a proverb is. A proverb is the big idea of an event in your life which taught you something. That's what it is. So when we come to a proverb in the Bible, we see that we have a big idea that under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Solomon made that shows how best to live life. He learned these things by watching others and seeing how it unfolded in their life and summarizing it in a proverb. I came up with one a little while ago that I thought may be interesting. Sometimes the most expensive house is the least costly.
Vicki: I have to think about that.
Kent: Because it doesn't seem to make sense, right?
Vicki: Yeah, it doesn't.
Nathan: Although we just had at the parsonage a bathroom explode the other day. Yesterday, actually, while we're recording this. And, and, and I'm now thinking of maintenance. Right. Like so. So if you're buying a house that is well maintained, in the long run, it might. It might be cheaper because you don't have to do all the fixing and all the maintenance work. Is that what you're getting at?
Kent: That's true, yeah. I mean, that's true. I came at it from a different perspective, but the same conclusion. When we were first looking for a house a couple of decades ago in Southern California, we saw that there were two different price points. If you live inside the mountains, closer to the ocean, the houses are much more expensive because the weather is better and for all kinds of reasons. So we looked. I was interested in looking outside the other side of the mountains because I'm cheap and broke. So out there is kind of desert and the weather is bad and so on, but the price is amazing. And so I'm all excited about what we can get out in the desert and a realtor said, don't you dare do that. What do you mean? You don't know how bad the traffic is on those very few routes that pass through the mountains. It is some of the worst traffic in all of America. You will spend three hours getting to work, three hours going home to your inexpensive house. I would recommend you live as close to the pass but inside the mountains. And it'll be the least costly because it will save you time, energy. It'll give you opportunities to meet with people that would not be possible if you are outside. So I had to agree. Sometimes the most expensive house is the least costly. No. Proverbs are a distillation of life. Just as a vintner takes grapes from the vine and through a careful process distills the essence of those grapes for many to enjoy. The writers of biblical proverbs take snapshots of everyday life, observe how people respond, whether wisely or unwisely, and extract a moral lesson from that, a lesson that reveals to all of us the best way to evaluate and respond to similar situations when we face them in life. Proverbs are life lessons that, if followed, help us avoid life's pitfalls and to succeed. So there's only one way to create a proverb. It's by looking at life and letting others know the lesson that you learn from that situation. So having said that, there's still a question. How do we teach and preach these? What are we to do with these things? Because, you know, a lot of people have 20 minute, 30 minute, 45 minute, maybe time slots to preach. It doesn't take that long to read a proverb.
Nathan: No, it does not. Go and do likewise. See you later.
Kent: So, Nathan, how should we do that? How do we take these nuggets of profound truth and communicate them effectively to others?
Nathan: Well, the first thing you have to do is you have to look at that proverb and you have to understand what the context was. So you have to understand what are they trying to teach here, what are they trying to communicate? Because if you don't understand that, you're not going to be able to apply it. You're not going to actually be able. Able to understand it and communicate it effectively. So I think the first thing you have to do is say, well, why did Solomon or whoever he collected this proverb from, why would they have said that in the ancient Israelite world, in.
Kent: Their culture and their time, what would have given rise to this?
Nathan: Right? So figure out, you know, reconstruct essentially the episode of what's happening so that you understand, okay? This is the situation. It is about borrowing money from a friend. It is about accepting the marriage that you've been given and not looking outside of that marriage. It's about not chasing after ill gotten gains or envying a wicked person. It's about how you respond to an idiot. Yeah.
Kent: And it came out of an experience. So really what you have to do is use sanctified imagination tied to the text to say what is likely the experience that happened that would have led to this conclusion. So now you've got the what in Krastock we would call an ancient idea, because the proverb is the answer to a life situation. So you've got a question and an answer. Ancient. What do we need to do next?
Nathan: Well, now you got to move it up to the contemporary. So, okay, this is the ancient world and it's not exactly how the modern world. So let's move up the ladder of abstraction as we talk about in crosstalk global. Just enough, not so abstract that it has nothing to do with the original text, but just far enough up so that we can say, okay, this is how we would think about it in modern 21st century. In my context, North American terms, right. If you're somewhere else, if you're listening in Romania, if you're listening in Vietnam, you would say, okay, how do I apply this in my culture? And how would I come up with a big idea that would make sense in my context to my people, to my audience? Right? So you come up with that so you understand it.
Kent: So since these ideas are rooted in story, you really have to communicate them as story.
Nathan: I think so, yeah. Yeah. So once you understand how to like kind of the big idea from the original concept, now you're going to move, you're going to move it towards saying, how do I, how do I communicate this to a modern day audience? So what would be a situation where they would face this and need this kind of wisdom in our lives? So I know in crosstalk what we have taught is, so you basically tell a story, you tell a context to the story, a modern situation that you'll find yourselves in. Although I will say there's been a few times that I've preached these and I've told it in not necessarily a modern day story, but you know, kind of a story that has modern sensibilities. I once told a story about the people in traffic lights who make the traffic lights light up. But it made sense. But it made sense, right? But it was told with modern sensibility. So people got it and they understood the big idea. And you're going to tell this story and you're going to embellish it in the sense that you're going to put details in, you're going to make it personal, you're going to have names for your characters, you're going to have inspiration for what they do, and you're going to have reasons for what they don't do. And then you end it with the proverb.
Kent: Right. So that is your big idea. Right. So you're quoting the scripture at the end to tie it all together and make that practical application to life.
Nathan: And then people get it.
Kent: Yeah.
Nathan: The amazing thing is, you know, and.
Kent: They feel it because it's a story, there's emotion. They realize why this is so important.
Nathan: Right. And why this proverb was given to us through inspired text.
Kent: One of the challenges we have in doing this, Nathan. Oh, and spoiler alert, we're going to be giving some examples of how to do this, kind of the process of walking through this in the weeks to come. But this is at least an overview so people understand the basics of how to communicate a proverb. But one of the things we need to be careful of here, Nathan, I think you'll agree with, are the differences in application of the idea of a proverb and the idea of a communicated in like an epistle passage, such as, like Romans 5 or something. Wouldn't you agree?
Nathan: Yeah, absolutely. So to throw out a $3,500 word from seminary, I believe they would call the proverbs gnomic wisdom. Right. So it's general wisdom, generally this will happen. Train up a child in the way they will go, and when they grow old, they won't depart from it. Now, it does not take you more than 30 seconds to find an example where that is not the case.
Kent: Right. Because sometimes kids walk away.
Nathan: Absolutely. And they have great parents who've trained them well and who have loved them well. And yet they can make the choice to not. But generally speaking, right. If you teach your children, they're going to take all of those things. I have two siblings. There's three of us in total. Two of us are following after Christ imperfectly, and one is not. But the interesting thing is the one who isn't still kind of has this framework that his other non Christian friends don't have. It's really strange, but it's generally true. Right. But it's not a promise. It's not like a promise for salvation that Jesus is going to work all things together for the good of those of us who are in him. It's not a promise like that. It's not a promise of eternal life or forgiveness by the blood of Jesus Christ, but it's generally, if you do this, then this will happen. Generally. And even some of the warnings like not to go after ill gotten gains, don't be a crook and cheat people out of money because you'll get caught. You can find examples. Actually you probably can't find examples of people who that hasn't happened to. And the reason we can't find examples because they haven't been caught yet.
Vicki: Yeah, yeah, good point.
Nathan: But it's generally true and it's generally the case. And so you also want to communicate that to your listeners. This is generally true. This is general wisdom. You can find exceptions, but this is how God has made his creation to work.
Kent: Vicki, it seems like we see this general principle coming to light in Proverbs 26, 4 and 5, don't we?
Vicki: Yes, they sound like they contradict each other. Proverbs 4 says, do not answer a fool according to his folly or you yourself will be just like him. And then it says, answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.
Kent: So those are general principles. Why are the opposites given here? Why do you think?
Nathan: You know, it's situational on how you're responding to a fool? Right. Essentially there's cases where you're going to respond to them and there's cases where you're not going to respond to them, but ultimately you're not going to respond to them in the same way that they are viewing the situation. Right. So you have somebody comes at you cursing and swearing you're not going to respond to them. That way you have someone coming throwing up straw man arguments. You don't throw a strawman argument back at them. Right. There's cases where you're going to say something, there's cases where you're not going to say something, essentially.
Kent: Yeah. So I think this is a good example of Solomon telling you you need discernment in a given situation, given who the person is and what the events are, to decide whether you should engage a person to correct their thinking or when to stay silent to avoid pointless arguments being dragged down to their level. Sometimes you should do the first, sometimes you should do the second. Sometimes you should reply with a silly sounding answer to show how foolish their idea is. Other times just silence. Redirection is better and just to dismiss it. But it's not an absolute. But it is a general principle that one of those responses is Good to deal with a fool.
Nathan: And as New Testament believers, let me tell you, you got to rely heavily on the Holy Spirit on how to figure out what to do and what not to do. Because I'm of course, the mindset of always answer.
Kent: So they're general principles that we find that are helpful, necessary for successful living. That's why they're in the Bible, because they're necessary. But yet there are some objections that some of our listeners may have arguments against preaching proverbs, at least preaching them as proverbs. Nathan, you've probably run into some of this.
Nathan: Yeah, I know there is a lot of movement again in North America, not necessarily around the world, that every sermon needs to end with a gospel presentation. Right. Or it's not Christian or it's not Christian. And I can remember even a kid, I mean, this has been around for a while. My mom would listen to Christian radio and there was one speaker, I'm not going to say his name, we'd all know that she loved to listen to. And she would listen to a point and she would turn it off at the end because he would always like, you know, do the gospel. And at one point I'm like, why are you turning this off? You love him. And she said, I've heard his same gospel presentation for the last five years. I don't need to hear it again. Right, but you run into that because then you're like, well, what did Jesus do? Did Jesus end the sermon on the Mount with a gospel presentation and he did not. Right?
Kent: No, it was calling for concrete behavioral change.
Nathan: And you have the apostles give messages. Paul is confronting Peter about his racism. It's not ending with a come to Jesus moment. It is because we follow Jesus. We should not exclude the Gentiles from full fellowship within the church community. Right. Concrete behavioral change.
Kent: Right. Some also say, well, to interpret proverbs properly, we need to do so through a Christ centered lens where we look at the proverb and then we hold up Jesus as the ultimate embodiment of God's wisdom. Yeah, but we want to do what the original author intended to do. And the original author's intent and purpose was not necessarily to show us Jesus, although Jesus is a fine moral example, of course. But I don't think we need to proof text everything by showing how this one proverb was shown in Jesus life all the time. That certainly wasn't the point of the gospel writers. So. Yeah, I don't think so. On a personal note, I just say if you want to make sure your church Stays Christ centered, which it needs to put up a symbol, you know, like the empty cross, so that is prominent. And maybe follow. We could follow Jesus example as often as you get together, celebrate the Lord's Supper. So there's always a time, not just the first Sunday of every month, always a time in a Christian service where we remember what Christ did on the cross. But it doesn't need necessarily to be in the sermon.
Nathan: Yeah. One other on that point, though, is in the Hebrew text, wisdom is the word is Sophia. It's a feminine name. So if we try to say, well, Jesus is the wisdom here, are we feminizing? Right. Oops. And oftentimes Solomon personifies wisdom as lady wisdom. So you could say, yeah, there's parallels in everything. Sure. Of course, just like Kent and I can have moments of wisdom. But if you overemphasize that, I think you're trying to do something with what scholars call typology, where you're seeing Christ in all these areas a little too far. That is saying something the text never intended to say and it's taking away from.
Kent: The main thrust is to change people's behavior, to warn them about situations like this. This is how you should live differently. You'll lose the thrust and the impact if you do that. But objections could come again and say, well, you're just advocating moralism. Somehow that's wrong. No. Every sermon in the Bible calls for moral transformation. Every single sermon in the Bible goes beyond information and calls for transformation.
Nathan: Yeah. And I guess as you preach these things in light, you're going to preach them in light of the New Testament.
Kent: Right.
Nathan: And so when it says things that are hard to do or that are impossible to do or that we might say is counterintuitive, we can say, yeah, but as Christians, we have strength to follow these guidelines, this wisdom, because we have access to the Holy Spirit because of Jesus. Right. So, yeah, you might lack the ability or the wisdom or insight to follow them. But as Christians, we understand that because of the God of the Holy Spirit, we can ask God, the Holy Spirit to lead us and direct us so that we can follow more faithfully what he's told us in his Word.
Vicki: Well, Jesus also told Proverbs, I'll give you three real quick. From Mark, he said, it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. And also from Mark, he said, if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand in Matthew. And in Mark he said, where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather.
Kent: Wow, Sounds like proverbs. To me.
Nathan: And you know what's interesting with that last one is we had talked about that a few months back, and I had never really understood that. Kent, you gave a really good explanation of what that was. And that just was like, oh, okay, now I understand this proverb because I'm not a sailor. And you explain that. Okay, so, you know, the birds. The birds gather where there is food. And I. Oh, okay, no, that makes sense. Now I understand.
Vicki: Remind the rest of us, what does that mean? Where there's a dead body, the vultures will gather. I mean, it makes sense in itself, but what's it trying to teach us?
Nathan: So it's a weird proverb for him to say, because Jesus is talking about his second coming, and he says in verse 26, so if they say to you, look, he is in the wilderness. Do not go out. If they say, look, he's in the inner rooms, don't believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of man. So you're going to see it. You're going to see it in a miraculous way. And then he uses this kind of negative image to communicate a positive reality. His second coming. Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. Right? So he's saying, just in the same way that you figure out where the fish are or, you know, where the bodies are or where the dead animal is that you shot hunting in that same way, you're going to see the vultures, you're going to see a very clear sign that I have returned.
Kent: Yeah, I found it interesting to note that the Hebrew word for proverb directly related to the Greek word for parable. In other words, they're really the same thing. A parable is a proverb with the story. It is just an expanded proverb. So, for example, the Good Samaritan, how should we love one's neighbor? Well, the parable shows us by providing tangible assistance to people, even strangers, who are in physical need. That's what it looks like. That parable is showing us in concrete terms how we should respond to that situation. And if our listeners were with us in Matthew, in our podcast through Matthew, they'll know in Matthew 24:25, the four different parables Jesus gave, showing people how they must be morally different in order to be ready for his return. And the last one is perhaps the most clear when it says, there are sheep and goats. And the king will reply, we read in Matthew 25:40, Truly, I tell you, whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine. You did for me. But to those on the left, he says, depart from me. You are accursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Wow, that's really clear. That is a proverb on steroids today. You don't have to be an expert to know that. According to Barna research, many of God's people are living ungodly lives today. Even those who claim to be Christians. There's often very little discernible moral change in their life. I think that's because sometimes, at least, they don't know how to make good choices in life, and so they make unnecessary but unrecoverable errors. Our people need the wisdom of Solomon and the other writers of proverbs to live morally effective lives. Nathan, as we wind up, what recommendations would you give to those who are interested in creating a series of preaching, teaching on the book of Proverbs?
Nathan: Yeah, full disclosure, I have been chewing on this for the better part of a decade on how do you put together, like a whole series if you're going to go through the whole book of proverbs? I don't even know the answer. You know, I'm not.
Kent: I'm not. I'm not sure. Well, I don't. I wouldn't. I'm not convinced.
Nathan: You could actually do that verse by.
Kent: Verse through the book.
Nathan: Right.
Kent: Any more than I would Preach all of 150 Psalms in a row.
Nathan: Yeah, yeah. Not effective. Well, psalms is easier, though, because it's broken up into five books. Right. So you could say, okay, we're going to do book one this year and then five years later down the road. But yeah, I think it would be helpful to. Especially when you're in the later chapters of Proverbs that just. It's like one verse. You can group proverbs on the same topics together. Right. So you can apply those in succession in a message. That's helpful. You can look at stages of life. Right. Because they have proverbs that are talking to young children. There are proverbs that are talking to young men and women. They have proverbs that are talking to people who are married. They have people who are talking to people who are not married people at the end of their lives.
Kent: Yeah, I think that's what I would do. I would maybe take two months and take a look at different stages of life and pick proverbs that I think are particularly relevant and helpful to my congregation. How to walk wisely through life. I think that might be helpful. I will say that. Vicki Last week on the airplane as I was flying home after speaking in a group, I listened to a sermon I had downloaded onto my iPad by your father and he preached years ago. I think it was at Dallas Seminary. I know it was at a graduation a sermon Lessons from Agar from Proverbs 30.
Vicki: I remember that sermon. It was excellent.
Kent: 24:38 so let me just tell all our listeners if you just google this or go to YouTube and search for.
Nathan: This, I'll find it and put it in the show notes.
Kent: It's an excellent sermon. He takes a natural unit of five verses and explains it so well. It's a point sermon because this is an unusual portion of Proverbs, but he just does an exceptional job. If you want to hear Proverbs come to life, listen to that message. Friends, the people God has entrusted to our care cannot make good decisions in life by taking cues from Hollywood, TikTok and Instagram. Give your people what they need to succeed in life. To avoid catastrophic mistakes, they need the wisdom of Scripture. Give them proverbs. God knows they need them.
Brian: Making wise decisions is difficult for all of us. You can help yourself and those around you make wise choices in nearly every aspect of our lives by exploring God's proverbs. The wisdom God has given us in Proverbs can keep us from making life destroying decisions and help us make choice choices. I trust that today's discussion of God's Word has been helpful and serve as an encouragement to not just be hearers of the Word, but doers together. Let's bring God's Word to life to our lives. This week, the CrossTalk Podcast is a production of Crosstalk Global Equipping Biblical communicators so every culture hears God's voice. To find out more about this educational nonprofit organization, please visit www.crosstalkglobal.org. crosstalk has trainings coming up in Cuba, Kenya and Kansas. Help us train the next generation of biblical communicators. All you have to do is click Donate in the show notes and make a donation of any size. You can also support this show by rating it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're enjoying it. Be sure to listen next Friday as the team reflects on keeping Christ in focus during the busy Christmas season. You won't want to miss it.
Kent: Instead of what? But why Proverbs?
Nathan: Okay, how about Got Proverbs?
Kent: You could do that too.
Nathan: You could. There are a lot of things you could do.
Kent: Yeah, they are covered with excrement oh, from the dog. They live to poop those.