Because of his divinely bestowed wisdom, King Solomon composed 3,000 proverbs (1 Kings 4:32) in which he concisely expressed a profuse amount of truth.
Because he lived and died nearly a thousand years prior to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Solomon never had the opportunity to apply his proverb-making skills to the greatest sermon ever preached. If he had, maybe some of his proverbs from Matthew 7 would have sounded something like this:
- Hypocritical and hypercritical judgment are foolish. Judge with righteous judgment instead.
- Just as dogs and hogs are completely deficient of discernment, some people are completely devoid of spiritual discernment; avoid them.
- Like air to a bird, so is persistence to your spiritual life.
- Because of who God is and who you are, treat others as you want to be treated.
- Just as a tree is known by its fruits, a false prophet is likewise identified.
- On the tree of faith, do not confuse the leaves of lip service with the fruit called obedience.
- Doing “great things” for God is no substitute for faithful, lifelong obedience.
- The rains, floods, and storms of life come to all men—the righteous and unrighteous alike.
- The seminal difference between a wise man and a fool is found in what each does with the word of God after hearing it.
