At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“He that trusteth in his riches shall fall: But the righteous shall flourish as a branch” (Proverbs 11:28).
Like the rich man in the parable of the bigger barns, a wealthy man who places his trust or his faith in his riches is going to discover the angular side of a proverb about money. It is true that money talks . . . it says good bye.
This proverb is interesting in some surprising ways. The man who trusts in riches will fall. But what happens to the person, the righteous man, who does not do that? Well, it turns out that he will flourish. Not only will he flourish, he will flourish like a branch.
A branch is connected to the tree, and that is the source of its flourishing. The man who trusts in his riches is the man who is disconnected from the source of flourishing, which is why he falls.
So the comparison here is between two men of means, two men who have wealth. One of them trusts in that wealth idolatrously, and the idols lets him down, as all idols do. The other man, a righteous man, has the key to continued flourishing. He flourishes because he places no faith in the fact that he is flourishing.
We all have a tendency, when things are going well, to believe that this pleasant state is somehow our birthright. This is the way it will be forever and ever. A righteous man refuses to do this—he knows that it could all disappear tomorrow, and this is the reason—a most excellent reason—why it doesn’t disappear tomorrow.
Those who depend upon their wealth will find that it collapses beneath them. Those who stand on something else, something more permanent, find that they have a stable footing, which means they can continue to hold their wealth in their hands.
But they hold it with an open palm, which means the Lord can give and take away. If we clutch at our wealth, the Lord can still take it away, just as easily, leaving us with broken fingers.
