Grace & Peace: Proverbs 23:27–28

At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

Let not thine heart envy sinners: But be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long. For surely there is an end; And thine expectation shall not be cut off (KJV).

Let not your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the Lord all the day. Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off (ESV).

Proverbs 23:17–18

One of the problems that the godly have in this game of life is the fact that the rules seem to be set up in a cock-eyed way. We have no problem challenging and confronting the godless, but it does bother us that everything is set up in a way that allows them to cheat. We compete against them on the field of life, but all the penalties get called on us, and they cheat in the most brazen way. 

In such circumstances, the godly can be tempted to envy them. Everything seems to be going their way. They have power, they have money, they have influence, they have the media, and they get to resort to dirty tricks whenever it suits them.

And so the ungodly have “an advantage” the godly do not have. They get to cheat. But God has arranged things so that it all evens out. The saints are told not to do something—which is to envy the sinners their lot. And then the saints are commanded to do something else, which is to walk in the fear of God constantly—all the day long. The end result of this is an assurance that what God promises here will in fact come to pass. There is a future coming when envying the sinners will be the last thing on our minds. The hope of the godly will not be cut off, and the implication is that the hope of those who have refused to fear God will in fact be cut off, and that eternally.   

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At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; He shall not stand before mean men (KJV).

Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men (ESV).

Proverbs 22:29

Scriptures teach that cream rises. Excellence excels, and craft competence will out. That is the basic principle.

But this proverb begins at the end of the business. In other words, we see the diligent man being finally honored for his accomplishment. He wins the award, he is recognized by the president, he performs for the rich and famous. All very satisfying.

So we see in the proverb that there is nothing inherently sinful about fame. It is a good thing when a king recognizes excellence, and we should never pretend that it is not a good thing. But there is an unmentioned qualification in this proverb. 

Where did the diligence come from? When the diligent man, when the skillful man, is finally honored, that honor is not given in obscurity. But more often than not the reason he is being honored is because he labored for a long time, and thanklessly, in obscurity. That is how a man usually achieves high levels of excellence. 

Those who are scrambling for the limelight, lusting after fame, are treating glory the way a redneck who just won the lottery would treat his newly-won riches. If you come into fame too quickly, or too easily, it is easy to fritter the whole thing away. But if you labor quietly in the shadows for years, you will get to levels of excellence that simply cry out for recognition. In other words, those who strive to find the short cut are playing a fool’s game. 

The camera hound will come to nothing, while the person who honed his craft in diligent solitude will find the cameras have come for him.

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At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

A foolish son is the calamity of his father: And the contentions of a wife are a continual dropping.

Proverbs 19:13

Because we live in egalitarian times, we don’t really know what to do with the doctrine of sin. And because we don’t know what to do with sin, we don’t understand the fact that at the very beginning of human history, God established a foundational antithesis between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent (Gen. 3:15). Because of this antithesis, this natural antipathy, every generation sees a standing contrast between righteousness and unrighteousness, between wisdom and folly, between holiness and iniquity.

This means that things can go wrong anywhere, and this includes a man’s family or household. Our proverb says that a foolish son is a man’s calamity, and that an ornery wife is a constant drip drip drip. 

The Bible teaches that children are a blessing, and they should be received as such. But they are not an automatic blessing. The man who marries does well, but he is not blessed automatically. In other words, when great blessings go wrong, or when potential blessings fail to materialize, the effect is worse than the way it was before. It would better to have no sons than to have one foolish one, and it would be better to have one foolish son than five foolish sons. But people who make “family” the standard can’t understand this. No, the traditional family at its best is what it is because it is under a standard, that standard being the authority of God’s Word. 

So then, it would have been better to remain unmarried than to marry a shrew.

But because of our egalitarian times, any statement like this is taken (dishonestly) as an attack on women generally. But when Scripture says something blunt like this about foolish women, this is not an attack on wise women. How could it be? And the women who represent it as a “misogynistic” sentiment are—wait for it—the foolish women that Scripture warns us about. If a woman is a constant drip drip drip in online discussions, the effect is not calculated to make all the gents in that thread think something like, “Boy, I wish I was married to that.”

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At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)

He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord; And that which he hath given will he pay him again.

Proverbs 19:17

We must always remember that we are dealing with proverbs, and not with axioms in geometry. To be precise, we want to make sure we understand what we are dealing with when we are talking about “the poor.” But before we rush off to say what this verse cannot mean, let us take care to understand what it does mean.

In the sense of this proverb, when someone is poor and in a pitiable condition, it is appropriate for a godly man to have pity on him. If someone takes pity on the poor man, and gives him sustenance, this is tantamount to having the Lord borrow money from you. If you give twenty dollars to a poor man, this is as though the Lord borrowed twenty from you. And what the Lord borrows, the Lord will always repay. This means that when you give to the poor in such circumstances, it is not good money after bad. It is not money down a rat hole. The Lord is a meticulous bookkeeper when it comes to matters of generosity. 

Scripture is clear that the giving of alms is a proper and righteous thing. The prayers of Cornelius were heard, in part, because he gave alms (Acts 10:4, 31). Jesus assumes that His followers were going to give alms (Matt. 6:3). The disciples of Christ are instructed to sell what they have in order to give alms (Luke 12:33).

But to ask who are “the poor” is not necessarily the same kind of thing as asking who your neighbor is, in an attempt to get off the hook (Luke 10:29). There are plenty of poor people, including in the book of Proverbs, that we are not supposed to subsidize. A little sleep, a little slumber, and the deacons’ fund will pick up the tab. But if a man is not willing to work, he shouldn’t eat (2 Thess. 3:10).

That said, our default settings should be on the side of generosity. 

“But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:17–18).

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