Notice what verse 15 doesn't say. It doesn't say the rich man is safe. It doesn't say his wall is fake. It says he has a city — walls, gates, the whole thing — and it says it flatly, with no comment. Solomon is describing what money feels like from the inside. And then fourteen verses later he builds a second fortress, and this one belongs to somebody else: "The way of the LORD is a refuge for the righteous."

Two walls in one chapter. Every man is standing behind one of them right now, and here's the problem Ryan and Brett work through in this episode: from the inside, they feel exactly the same.

Hosts:
Ryan Reeves — PhD, Cambridge; historian and theologian
Brett Clemmer — President and CEO, Man in the Mirror

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Last episode left a man standing in the street between two houses, with two women shouting word-for-word identical invitations at him. And then the story just stops.

You turn the page expecting chapter 10 to tell you which door he picked. Instead you get this: "A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son grief to his mother." One line. Then another one. Then another one, about three hundred and seventy-five times.

This is where most men who try to read Proverbs quit.

In this episode Ryan and Brett cross the seam into the second movement of the book, and Ryan makes the case that the genre change isn't the book losing the thread. It's the book handing you the thread.

Hosts:
Ryan Reeves — PhD, Cambridge; historian and theologian
Brett Clemmer — President and CEO, Man in the Mirror

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Two women. Two houses. Two invitations. And the part that should bother you: they say exactly the same thing.

Verse 4 and verse 16 of Proverbs 9 are word for word identical. "Let all who are simple come in here." Wisdom says it. Folly says it. Same sentence, same street corner, same audience, same volume. If you were listening from down the block with your back turned, you could not tell which house it came from.

Hosts:
Ryan Reeves — PhD, Cambridge; historian and theologian
Brett Clemmer — President and CEO, Man in the Mirror

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Before there were oceans, wisdom was there. Before there were mountains, before there was a single grain of dust on the earth, wisdom was already beside God.

That's the claim in the back half of Proverbs 8, and it is the summit of the whole first section of the book. In this episode Ryan and Brett walk through it — the origin hymn, the controversy it caused, and the surprisingly ordinary place it lands.

Hosts:
Ryan Reeves — PhD, Cambridge; historian and theologian
Brett Clemmer — President and CEO, Man in the Mirror

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Website: maninthemirror.org
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Last week a woman worked a street corner at dusk, in the shadows, with a whisper.

This week another woman climbs to the highest point in the city, plants herself at the busiest intersection, and she does not whisper. She shouts. Same city. Same men. Opposite hour, opposite volume, opposite destination.

In this episode Ryan and Brett open Proverbs 8, the high point of the first nine chapters and one of the great poems in the Old Testament.

Hosts:
Ryan Reeves — PhD, Cambridge; historian and theologian
Brett Clemmer — President and CEO, Man in the Mirror

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The father in Proverbs 7 does something he does nowhere else in the book. He walks to the window, pulls back the lattice, and says: let me show you something I watched happen.

Then he narrates it. A young man crosses the street at dusk. He turns at her corner. He takes the road toward her house. Just like a dumb ox.

Hosts:
Ryan Reeves — PhD, Cambridge; historian and theologian
Brett Clemmer — President and CEO, Man in the Mirror

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Website: maninthemirror.org
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Can a man carry fire against his chest and his shirt not burn?

Everybody knows the answer. That's exactly why the father asks it. In Proverbs 6 he doesn't argue that adultery is wrong — he assumes his son already knows. Instead he asks a physics question, and then tells him that sleeping with another man's wife runs on the same law as fire. It isn't that you might get burned. Fire burns. That's what it does.

In this episode Ryan and Brett work through the second of the three faithfulness lectures, and they start where the father starts, which is not where most sermons start.

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Most men have heard that there are seven things God hates. Almost nobody has been told which one He saves for last.

In this episode Ryan and Brett walk Proverbs 6:1–19, where the book breaks off the long warning about temptation and gets strangely practical. Don't guarantee a debt you can't cover. Don't sleep through your life. Don't become the man nobody can trust.

Hosts:
Ryan Reeves — PhD, Cambridge; historian and theologian
Brett Clemmer — President and CEO, Man in the Mirror

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#proverbs #biblestudy #wisdom

Almost nobody wakes up one morning and decides to blow up his marriage.

That's not how it happens. It starts with a text that runs a little warm. A lunch that runs a little long. A door left open one inch. Proverbs 5 is a father who has watched enough men fall to know exactly how it works, and he walks his son right up to the edge and makes him look all the way down.

In this episode Ryan and Brett work through the whole chapter, and they follow it to real practical conclusions for men.

Hosts:
Ryan Reeves — PhD, Cambridge; historian and theologian
Brett Clemmer — President and CEO, Man in the Mirror

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#proverbs #biblestudy #wisdom

Most men are guarding the wrong thing.

There's a camera on the doorbell, a password on the phone, a code on the garage, insurance on everything in the driveway. We are the most guarded generation of men who ever lived. And Proverbs 4 says there is one assignment that outranks all of them, and most of us leave it completely unwatched.

In this episode Ryan and Brett work through the last lecture of Proverbs 4, the passage that gives us verse 23: "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life."

Hosts:
Ryan Reeves — PhD, Cambridge; historian and theologian
Brett Clemmer — President and CEO, Man in the Mirror

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Website: maninthemirror.org
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