Grace & Peace: Proverbs 26:20

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

“The slothful man saith, there is a lion in the way; A lion is in the streets” (Prov. 26:13).

When it comes to lame excuses, we Americans have a proverbial phrase of our own—“that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

What this proverb points to is the fact that a sluggard just needs something to say, no matter how absurd it might be. Any excuse will do. Any port in a storm.

There is a peculiar form of laziness that would much rather say outlandish things than to simply say nothing. A sluggard is late, and so he says, “Aliens kidnapped me. What year is it?”

The story doesn’t have to fit with any external realities or facts—it just has to be a thing that can be repeated. Under pressure the person can stop claiming there was “a lion in the way,” and retreat to “well, I thought there was a lion in the way.” Under even more pressure they might admit that they could have been wrong, but it was a belief that they sincerely held at the time.

The thing to remember is that Scripture says that you are dealing with a slothful man. His entire point was to avoid work, and so it might be a good idea to test his excuses with more than verbal comebacks. It might work better to say something like, “Well, I’m sorry the lion gave you a scare. But it’s gone now . . . let’s hit it.”

This is the point where you discover than when he was running from what he thought was the lion, he twisted his ankle.

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

“As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly” (Proverbs 26:11).

Presumably the dog vomited the way it did for some reason. Whatever he had eaten did not agree with him, as was indicated by the vomiting. But the dog does not think things through, being a dog, and simply returns to what he just got rid of.

The dog has some excuse, again, being a dog, but the fool is in a different position. Being a man, he should be in a position to think it through—and yet he refuses to do so. This is yet another reminder that in Scripture being a fool is not an IQ issue, but is rather a moral issue. The fool does something really foolish, and the whole thing blows up. Rather than take the lesson from the affair, he reasons that he needs “more of the hair of the dog that bit him.” For some reason, he feels the need to do it again.

As it happens, this is a proverb that is quoted by the apostle Peter. “But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire” (2 Peter 2:22). Peter is dissecting the impudence and folly of certain false teachers. They were delivered from the world’s external corruptions by their initial profession of faith, but then they started to dabble in things that were best left alone. Those things included vanity, a promise of liberty, and “permitted” wantonness. From this it appears that they were abusing grace, being antinomians of some stripe.

Another proverb is quoted alongside this one, which is that when you hose down a pig, what you have is a wet pig. You can wash the mire off, but you can’t wash the pig off. And as a result of that, the pig returns to its wallowing in the mire. In short, this is a vivid picture of people who have attached themselves to the faith externally, but without the change of heart and nature that is brought in by the new birth.

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

“It is not good to eat much honey: So for men to search their own glory is not glory” (Proverbs 25:27).

When glory bends back in upon itself, it thereby ceases to be glory. Solomon compares it to taking a good thing—the sweetness of honey—and then gorging yourself on it. The sweetness ceases to be sweet. So also glory, taken in the wrong way, ceases to be glorious.

What is that wrong way? The man who is doing it wrong is “searching” it out, and what he is searching out is his “own” glory. He wants the applause to be directed toward him. He wants his name to be up in lights. He desires to be standing above the others at the awards ceremony.

But there really is a mystery here. Paul instructs Christians to run so as to receive the prize, doesn’t he?
“Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain” (1 Corinthians 9:24).
The key to understanding this is to italicize the word own in the proverb. The man doing it wrong is seeking out his own glory. The man doing it right is striving for glory, but it is because he wants his performance to be and become the glory of another.

God created us as glory-seeking creatures. We gravitate toward glory, and we can no more switch that off than we can stop wanting oxygen for our lungs. What the fall did was make us want to substitute other forms of glory for the glory that God intended for us to have. Those substitutions will either be vainglory, or they will be a dark glory. Vainglory traffics in trinkets. Dark glory gravitates toward perversions. Both of them are forms of seeking out their own glory.

But real Christians are distinguished by their pursuit of glory. What is sin itself? It is to fall short of glory (Rom. 3:23), that glory being the glory of God. And what are we instructed to pursue? Glory. “To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life” (Romans 2:7).

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

“As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to an heavy heart” (Proverbs 25:20).

“Like one who takes away a garment in cold weather, and like vinegar on soda, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart” (Proverbs 25:20).

In this fallen world, it turns out that certain things are unwelcome. You brought potato salad to the picnic, but then the wasps found it. You pull into your favorite restaurant only to discover that they are closed on Mondays now. You take a busted product back to the store only to find out that “lifetime guarantee” was referring to the lifetime of the product. The sum of everything is that we were not put into this world for pleasure alone.

Scriptures gives us a few examples of this same thing. The weather is cold, and you have a good coat, one that protects you from the cold, and then some person takes it away from you. That’s no good. That’s unwelcome. But then the problem can be ratcheted up to the next level—when vinegar is put on soda, you get yourself a reaction. That’s how elementary school kids make volcanoes for their science fair projects . . . baking soda and vinegar will give you a volcano in similitude.

We then come to the target of these comparisons. Out-of-place cheerfulness is a nuisance, a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti. A word fitly spoken is like beautiful jewelry (Prov. 25:11). And a cheerful word, a singing encouragement, when it is offered in a cumbersome and clunky way, is . . . a baking soda volcano.

Nobody needs it. Nobody wants it. It would be far better to tip toe away. Not all those who believe they have the gift of encouragement actually have the gift of encouragement. If a friend of yours is down, and you are tempted to act like you are in a musical . . . give it a second thought.

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