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Grace & Peace: Proverbs 17:26

Douglas Wilson on May 9, 2024

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

“Also to punish the just is not good, nor to strike princes for equity”
Proverbs 17:26

“Also, to punish the righteous is not good, nor to strike princes for their uprightness”
Proverbs 17:26

Christians who want their fellow believers simply to defer to the state whenever some decree or other is handed down are quick to appeal to Romans 13. But that famous passage does not teach us that citizens are subjects who must do whatever they are told.

No, that passage teaches us that all of us are under authority, the magistrate as well as the citizen. The magistrate is called diakonos twice in v. 4 and leitourgos in v. 6). The magistrate is a servant, a deacon, a minister. He is under orders. In that passage, he is commanded to reward the righteous and to punish the wrongdoer (vv. 3-4).

That point is reinforced in this proverb. When the magistrate rebels against his heavenly commission, and begins to punish the righteous, we have crossed over into a state of tyranny. Proverbs says that to punish the just is “not good.” In the same way, it is not good to strike at princes who are, unlike the king, standing uprightly.

If the king has gotten out of line, the princes are lesser magistrates, and they might be in a position to do something about it. Moreover, taking all of Scripture into account, they are under an obligation before God to do so.

When a citizen takes a righteous stand, say by protesting at an abortion clinic, and he is arrested and wickedly charged, this is a photo negative of what the magistrate—God’s deacon, remember—is charged to do. It is not the case that Christians who resist this are rejecting God’s authority. They are resisting a man who took the badge that God gave him, spit on it, and threw it away.

Men, Be Strong – Christ Church Downtown Exhortation

Ben Zornes on May 5, 2024

Men, you are called to strength. In Hebrew 11 we’re exhorted to emulate men who through faith became mighty. Out of weakness they were made strong. When fights came they waxed valiant. Out of the soil of evangelical faith grow the cedar trees of strength.

This strength isn’t isolated to our inner life; as if we can tuck away our faith in Jesus deep into some inner crypt. No, the strength that arises from faith forms throughout our body, soul, and mind. Furthermore, it must be trained and maintained through disciplined diligence. You won’t be resilient in the day of testing if you don’t practice resilience every day of your life. And fathers, you won’t have sons resembling the aforementioned cedars if you fail to teach them self-denial, endurance, and long-suffering.

Physical strength training is a determined willingness to die. Your body desires to not do any more reps; but if you kill that desire and do one more rep, one more lap, one more drill your strength will grow. Likewise, you fight sin by getting up early each day, putting to death the desire to linger in bed, and hardening yourself with a little less sleep but a little more Scripture.

Especially in these times of madness, you men must erect walls of security around your family time and time and time again. St. Paul’s simple words embody the life of Christian faith: “I die daily.” Provide for your family by hard labor one more day. Lead them with gentle steadiness one more time. Instruct your children in faithfulness once more. Do not grow weary. This is a command. But since it’s a command of Scripture it’s also a promise. By faith in Christ, God promises that you shall go, as the Psalmist says, from strength to strength with hands trained for war.

We live in a day similar to Ezekiel’s where all hands are feeble, and all knees are weak as water. Men have abdicated and grown weary of the warfare. Our currency is devalued through the vanity of our cultural greed. Our bodies are afflicted with the diseases of unbridled appetites. Our minds polluted with wicked imaginations. Many men have lost their nerve and have capitulated to the godless despair of our age. May God forgive men who claim the name of Christ for where we have compromised and joined in the follies of our society. And may our Lord raise up men who are girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core.

Ben Zornes – May 5, 2024

King’s Cross Exhortation

Toby Sumpter on May 5, 2024

The central thing we do is worship, but it’s important to underline what we mean. Worship is not in the first instance praise; worship is surrender. The word often translated “worship” literally means to bow down or kneel, and it is often coupled with other words that mean the same thing: “Oh come, let us worship [bow down] and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker” (Ps. 95:6). Worship acknowledges the holiness of God and trembles before Him: “Exalt the Lord our God, and worship [bow down] at His holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy” (Ps. 99:9).

Worship means coming into the presence of the King of the Universe at His summons and laying everything that we are before Him: “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service/worship. And be not conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:1-2). In Christian worship, the King of the Universe summons His servants to appear before Him. We are beloved servants, but we are servants nevertheless. He has purchased us with His blood. All that we are, body and soul, belongs to Him. Our money is His, our time is His, our house is His, our children are His, our marriage is His, our work is His. This is what it means to call Him “Lord/Master.” We gather to hear His authoritative Word with reverence and godly fear, and we are sent out to obey.

This is why worship is central. We are servants of the Lord Jesus. We are under orders. He rescued us from sin and death and Hell, and He is worthy. We are here this morning to acknowledge that. We are here to bow down before Him. We are here to say that we are completely at His service. So this is the Call to Worship. We’re about to kneel down in just a moment to confess our sins: do not just go through that motion. Kneel before Your Maker. Surrender everything to Him in true humility and say, like Isaiah, “here I am, send me.”

Toby Sumpter – May 5, 2024

Unzipping the Anxiety Luggage – Christ Church Exhortation

Jared Longshore on May 5, 2024

Jesus told us that in this world we will have trouble. So it is not a sin to have cares and concerns. But, it is a sin to hold on to those cares and concerns. The world deals them to you. And then you must deal them to God. The Apostle Peter has said so: “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you” (1 Peter 5:6-7). This is the plague of the prideful man: He’s doomed to carry around his cares. They are too important. And he is too important, to hand them over to any other.

Now there is a difference between casting your cares upon mighty God, and simply unzipping your anxiety luggage before Him in prayer, only to zip it back up and take it with you after you have spoken with Him. “Why Lord, don’t I feel the freedom of being carefree?” “Well,” He replies, “That freedom would require you actually handing them over.”

You might object to this with something like, “Well, I simply want to be responsible. I want to make a plan. I like fixing problems.” That’s fine and good. The problem is not you taking responsibility. It is the weight, the stress, the worry, then the coping mechanisms, and the way you are trying to manipulate the people around you to solve whatever trouble you are all twisted up about. All of that goes away when you hand the care itself over to the Mighty One.

But, you cannot merely go to the Lord for advice about dealing with your worries. There must be an actual transaction. You must hand Him your worries, and He will hand you His peace.

Jared Longshore – May 5, 2024

Grace & Peace: Proverbs 17:24

Douglas Wilson on May 1, 2024

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

“Wisdom is before him that hath understanding; But the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth”
Proverbs 17:24

This is a proverb that encourages us to think that the wise thing for us to do is right there in front of us. Duties are rarely across the globe, but rather are to be found in the “next step.”

By the same token, the fool’s eyes are beyond the horizon.

A moment’s reflection should reveal why this is. If our duties are right in front of us, we can see what they actually are, and we are responsible to engage them. There they are—pick them up and go. In this scenario, our duties come to us from outside. They are assigned to us. We don’t make them up as we go.

But if we are playing the fool, and our eyes are darting back and forth, thousands of miles away, we are in a position to make up our duties, to fashion all our responsibilities to our liking, and to award ourselves with as many honors and awards as we can think of. In other words, we are set free to daydream. And all this daydreaming is detached from what is actually going on in the actual world.

Put another way, daydreaming grants us a measure of felt autonomy. When we look at the path of wisdom, however, there is no felt autonomy at all. There is the diaper to change. There is the report to write. There is the class to teach. We are summoned by the providence of God to do the next thing, which is an obvious thing. Moreover, it is an obvious thing that we are not in charge of, which is the principal reason it rubs us so wrong.

All things considered, we sometimes feel like we are lost, not knowing what we should do. But the real problem is that we do know what we should do, and we don’t really feel like it.