Grace & Peace: Proverbs 18:1

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

“Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: And he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him” (Proverbs 26:27).

We have a saying in American English that says, “What goes around comes around.” Things have a way of evening out over time.

God is not mocked, and a man reaps what he sows (Gal. 6:7). If he is full of devices and stratagems, and he sets up a minefield with mines everywhere, he has greatly increased his chances of stepping on one of his own mines.

In this proverb, this truth is expressed in two ways. The first is that when a man digs a pit, he is preparing a trap that will at some point ensnare him. And when he is rolling a stone, with the intention of hurting another, the stone is going to kick back in some way, and roll back over him.

Or as Jesus put it, the person who lives by the sword will die by the sword (Matt. 26:52). The biter is sometimes bit.

The same principle is contained in the Lord’s warning about judging others. “For the judgment with which you judge, you shall be judged” (Matt. 7: 1-2).

The world is not governed by chance, but rather by a sovereign Father, whose very name is Justice. So the point is not that statistically good luck and bad luck will generally even out. It is not a matter of luck at all. God sees. He watches. He knows where you set your traps, and He is the one who makes you back into them.

God is the one who writes the story, and one of His favorite plot devices is called comeuppance. It is deeply satisfying for a reason.

Read Full Article

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

“Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out: So where there is no talebearer, the strife ceaseth” (Prov. 26:20).

In this place, Solomon compares strife between people to a fire. And like a fire, there must be some sort of material that is combustible. The three things that are necessary for a fire to occur are fuel, oxygen, and heat. In this proverb, the essential ingredient that is named is that of the fuel.

And who is it that gathers up the fuel, and brings it to the place where the fire can continue to burn hot? In this place, that would be the talebearer. As was once said, it takes two people to seriously wound you—one would be the enemy who says a terrible thing about you, and the second one would be your friend, who brings the word to you, and tells you what was said.

It is not talebearing to tell someone the news. The talebearer is someone who knows how to take the news, and put a bit of English on it so that bounces in a particular way. How does the talebearer do this? Well, first, he reveals secrets (Prov. 11:13). Second, he delivers news that he believes is likely to wound . . . because wounding is the point (Prov. 18:8; 26:22). Third, in order to obtain access to the secrets he wants to reveal, he cultivates the sin of flattery (Prov. 20:19).

It is an iron law that you get more of what you subsidize, and less of what you penalize. If you pay any attention whatever to talebearers, you will get more talebearing. And when you do that, you will find yourself with more strife, with more fire. Do you want the fire to go out? Take the wood away.

Read Full Article

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.

Read Full Article

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.

Read Full Article