PROVERBS
*LEADERS STUDY GUIDE 10.11.2020
WISE LIVING FROM PROVERBS:
Framing
OPENING QUESTION:
Ask your group members how they did this week at Reframing? Were they successful? How was it helpful?
Have members share their experience from this past week with the group.
This week we’ll be looking at how framing can help us to have a right vision of life.
OBJECTIVE: Today’s objective is to understand that the Bible, at large, is designed to reframe our thinking, feeling, speaking, believing, and living. We must have a fixed reference point to navigate life by, and God’s word gives us that fixed point of reference. There is a considerable amount of solid evidence that we are all susceptible to “bad” thinking (The Bible Calls “Bad thinking” folly), which can lead to mental, relational, spiritual, and physical problems. We must understand none of us are immune from faulty thinking. We all must exercise caution and put strategies in place that align with this great self-awareness and let God’s word reframe our thinking once again.
LESSON DISCUSSION 1: Wisdom or Folly
Q1: Over the last year we’ve looked at the two main path’s people go down, the path of wisdom or folly. In your own words, how would you describe the two paths?
Answer: Proverbs tells us how life can be better and/or can get better by asking the question of who will we trust. Basically, there are two main different paths a person can take. Wisdom is God’s path and folly is any other path (this includes your own).
Discussion: Have your group read through the following passages and discuss. I’ve included the questions with answers to help spur on discussion. Remind the group to think about what the proverb is reframing, why it’s reframing it, and what the implications are for their own life.
Proverbs 11:4 – Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death.
- What saying of Terry’s does this verse remind you of? What matters most at the end matters most now.
- What is the day of wrath? Day of our death
- How important is wealth for us on the day of our death? Worthless. It won’t help at all.
- What is righteousness? Perfect right living. Humans are not capable of this as we are prone to sin.
Romans 3:23 and 3:10 - How does one become righteous? This is why Jesus came to earth so that we could be made righteous through his death and resurrection on the cross. When we choose to trust and follow Jesus, we are then declared righteous. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Righteousness alone has the power to take us through death to life.
Proverbs 12:28 – “In the way of righteousness there is life; along that path is immortality.”
- What does God’s path bring us? Life and immortality.
- How is this reframing current cultural thought?
Read Luke 12:13-21
- What did the person in the crowd want Jesus to do? To tell the brother to share the inheritance.
- What does Jesus instead tell this person in the crowd? To guard against greed.
- Then Jesus launches into a parable (which is a story with a point). What is the point of this parable? We are to be rich towards God.
- Look at how many times this rich man uses the word “I”. (5 times in my version). Never once does he ask the question of what would God have me do.
- What label does God give of this person who would store up things for themselves without being rich toward God? Fool
Read Luke 12:22-34
- What are we not to worry about? What we will eat or wear.
- What is God’s opinion about worrying? It doesn’t accomplish a thing. Terry said this morning that “Worry is seen in running (mentally, emotionally, actually) from the things you fear and running towards the things you think you must have to really live.”
Read again Verses 31 and 34
- What are we to do instead of worrying? Seek God and his kingdom, putting our treasure into building God’s kingdom.
How do we know if we have a heart for things that matter? You look at things you spend your time thinking about or watching? You look at what you spend a lot of time doing or praying or talking about. Then ask the question are these things that matter eternally.
How can we wrap our hearts around the Kingdom of God? By investing our time, money and energy into building it…This can happen through serving somehow, through loving and interacting with the people in the church, through tithing, through prayer, through reading God’s word or stories of how God has been is at work, etc.
Now Make it Personal: Name some things you are doing to get or keep your heart wrapped around God and his Kingdom.
Application:
Seek first the Kingdom
Remember, where your treasure is your heart will be also.
Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death.
Scripture used in Sermon:
Proverbs 11:4
Proverbs 12:28
Luke 12:13-34