Pay attention and turn your ear to the sayings of the wise; apply your heart to what I teach, for it is pleasing when you keep them in your heart and have all of them ready on your lips. So that your trust may be in the Lord, I teach you today, even you. Have I not written thirty sayings for you, sayings of counsel and knowledge, teaching you to be honest and to speak the truth, so that you bring back truthful reports to those you serve? [1]
NIV Proverbs 22:17–21
In this initial saying, we are exhorted to pay attention[2] and turn our ear to the sayings of the wise.
In our Western thinking, hearing is not the same as believing or obeying. But in the Hebrew culture, if you didn’t obey, then you didn’t hear. If you didn’t live out the truth you were taught, then you didn’t listen, you didn’t hear. This reminds us of the Jewish context for James’ comments about hearing and doing the word:
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. [3]
ESV James 2. 14-26
Essentially, James is saying that if you claim to have faith, you’ll also have works which reveal and align with the teachings of your faith.
After hearing, we are to apply[4] our hearts to what we have heard. The force of the Hebrew means we are to firmly set into our hearts what we have heard from the wise one giving us these thirty sayings. In the visceral part of our beings, we are to fully “bake in” these teachings. They are to form part of the core of our beings and personas.
Christ said in Luke 6.45 the following:
A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.[5]
NIV Luke 6.45
That last phrase is important. The ESV renders it this way: “for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” The NASB translates it this way: “for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.” Out of the overflow of the heart, his mouth speaks.
One of the ways you can know if you, yourself, as well as others, have taken these wisdom sayings and firmly fixed them into the core of your being is to listen to how you talk, what you talk about, what interests you and so forth. How a person speaks reveals what’s inside her. What a person talks about reveals what is in her heart. The intensity of the verbs used, the assumptions about living which are behind what she says, the tone of her voice and more – all these things reveal what is in a person’s heart.
This is why the following verse makes this very connection: “for it is pleasing when you keep them in your heart and have all of them ready on your lips.” The wise one here is pleased when these sayings are set in our hearts and revealed by the words which are on our lips. Said another way, we’ll know if we have really accepted these sayings by listening to ourselves. The words we speak, the attitudes we have, our “first-blush” reactions to situations – all of these reveals what is truly in our hearts and what we really believe.
The results of accepting these sayings is as follows:
- Our trust may be in the Lord
- Be honest and speak the truth
- We’ll be truthful with those whom we serve
Trust and truth. We can’t have one without the other. You can’t trust someone who isn’t truthful and you can’t be truthful with someone unless you trust them.
So, sinking these sayings into the innermost part of our beings will result in us trusting in God and being truthful with each other.
As business owners, we need to be trustworthy and truthful. In our roles as owners, we need to surround ourselves with those who are truthful with us and trustworthy. This is why one of the core standard operating principles I bake into every company I lead is this:
The truth is never the problem.
When you make this a SOP in your company, it gives freedom for everyone to talk about the truth. They no longer need to wonder if they can mention a sensitive issue. They don’t need to worry about your reaction. They can be confident that they won’t be defined as the problem for saying there is a problem.
If we’re not discussing the truth, then we’re dealing in fantasy. There is no middle ground. If you base your decisions in your business on fantasy, then you’ll eventually go bankrupt. You can’t avoid the truth about yourself or your business and expect to succeed.
But until you and I have set these sayings into our hearts as business owners, we’re likely to avoid the truth of a given situation. Hence, we need these sayings from the mind of God, given to us through the wise one.[6] Let’s start to learn and deeply nest these sayings into the core of our personas.
[1] NIV Proverbs 22:17–21
[2] “pay attention”: שְׁמַע, hear, listen. This word carries with it the understanding that once the message is heart, one changes his ways to come into conformity with that message.
[3] ESV James 2:14–26
[4] “apply”: The root word is שׁית, to set, stand or place. To fix authoritatively. This is the word for the name Seth. This word is used 85 times in the Old Testament. Genesis 3.15: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman…”
[5] NIV Luke 6:45
[6] The “wise one” is not personally identified in these passages, but earlier in Proverbs 8, I think it is safe to say that “wisdom” is a personification of the person of Jesus Christ.
