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

“Whoso loveth wisdom rejoiceth his father: But he that keepeth company with harlots spendeth his substance” (Prov. 29:3).

This is yet another proverb where the parallelism fills the instruction out, giving us quick of bit of extra detail. A son who loves wisdom gives his father joy. That is the first half. The second half is that a son who keeps company with whores is one who is wasting his money.

The first thing we should note is that wasting his money most likely means squandering his inheritance, the way the prodigal son did. The older brother made a point of saying that he had thrown it all away on harlots. Now to throw away an inheritance that a father had painstakingly accumulated over the course of many years is the opposite of bringing a father joy.

We can also see that there is a basic choice set before young men. They will either be keeping company with wisdom, or they will be keeping company women who are easy. A son who is wise is one who can see the end of the story, and not just a very pleasurable first chapter.

The lips of a woman of pleasure are like honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil (Prov. 5:3). But the end of the affair is wormwood (v. 4), that and some grotesque STD (v. 11). Your honor is shot (v. 9), your money is all gone (v. 10), and syphilis ate your brain (v. 11). While it is true enough, that would be a bad time to realize that the problem was that you hated instruction (v. 13).

But a wise son, the kind of son who gives his father joy, is the one who stays away from porn, and everything related to that world in any way.

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

“To have respect of persons is not good: For for a piece of bread that man will transgress” (Prov. 28:21).

“To show partiality is not good, because for a piece of bread a man will transgress” (Prov. 28:21, NKJV).

This proverb reminds me of an apocryphal story that has floated around for years—attributed variously to Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Groucho Marx, and others like that. The story goes this way: a man asked a woman if she would sleep with him for a million dollars. After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “yes, probably.” Then he asked if she would do it for twenty dollars. She was offended, and asked, “What do you think I am?” And the riposte is “we’ve already established what you are . . . now we are just talking about the price.”

Back to the proverb. Having respect of persons means to show partiality. And if you are the kind of person who shows partiality, this means that you are bought, or influenced, or dazzled by something that ought not to have that kind pull on you. And once that establishes what kind of person you are—the kind who can be bought—the price can gradually be ratcheted downward. The end result is you have become the kind of person who would sell someone out for a morsel of bread.

So what does it mean to avoid showing partiality? It means that we are to love everyone with whom we come into contact. Now to love someone means that we are to treat them lawfully, from the heart. This does not make us egalitarians, where we treat everyone the same. That is not an avoidance of partiality. The Bible says we are to render honor to whom honor is due. But we are to do it under divine authority, and not because the person honored has an undue influence over us. If we give way to that, then everything afterwards is just haggling over price.

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

“Boast not thyself of to morrow; For thou knowest not what a day may bring forth” (Prov. 27:1).

This proverb presents in brief compass the same instruction that we find in the epistle of James.

“Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil. Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” (James 4:13–17).

We are bluntly instructed to make sure we hold all of our tomorrows in an open palm before the Lord. The reason given in Proverbs and in James is the same. We do not know what is going to happen tomorrow, and James adds the detail that our lives are like that three yard bit of mist that came up off the river, and which you drove by on the highway at sixty miles an hour.

Boasting in our own names would be bad enough—James calls it evil. Putting everything together, it is both evil and stupid. Matters are not helped if Christians say that they have determined that it is the will of God to go to thus-and-such city and make a pile of money. You are still a bit of vapor.

We are instructed to encompass all our plans concerning the future with a qualified Deo volente, Lord willing.

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

“Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness” (Prov. 25:5).

There is a saying in American politics that represents yet another way of pointing at the truth represented by this proverb, and that proverb is that “personnel is policy.” In the government of any complex society, the chief magistrate is going to be dependent upon his cabinet officers and advisors. There will be people he trusts, and there will be people he does not trust. The reasons for the presence or absence of trust may vary, but by the end of the day, every chief executive is either advised by the wicked, or the wicked have been removed.

When the wicked have access to the throne room, one of the results is that righteousness is resisted. When the wicked are driven away from the throne, then the rule of that king, or president, or prime minister, will be established in righteousness.

The recent history of our various presidential administrations provides a good illustration of this. The point being made is not that a particular political party is an adjunct to the kingdom of God, but it is to say that you can expect better things from a magistrate who excludes those who do not fear God. And in Democratic administrations, evangelical believers in the government are as rare as a blue comet. When the Republicans are in power, the administration is crawling with them.

And one of the more difficult things to get across to the average Christian voter is the truth that we are not simply voting for “a man.” Rather, we are voting for the population that will gather around this man, as opposed to the population that will accumulate around that one. This is a truth we need to reckon with because, after all, personnel is policy.

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

“Every man shall kiss his lips that giveth a right answer” (Proverbs 24:26).

“Whoever gives an honest answer kisses the lips” (Proverbs 24:26, ESV).

A kiss on the lips is pleasant, and there are times when it is a pleasant surprise.

Honesty is refreshing. Straight talk is like a fresh breeze off the bay. Frankness is a virtue that is greatly appreciated by the honest listener.

By way of contrast, when someone is not willing to give a straight answer, the results are convoluted and messy, hard to follow, and lead straight into the muddle.

A straight answer need not be rude. Rudeness, no doubt, takes away the pleasant effect of the honesty, and is more like a punch in the mouth than a kiss on the lips. It is possible to give the right answer, the honest answer, while remaining diplomatic. If you are a guest at someone’s home, and they ask you what you thought of the soup, it would not be appropriate to appeal to this proverb as your justification for saying that it was “the worst sludge you ever had to deal with in your life.” It is possible to be truthful, to meet the terms of this parable, and say something like, “to be honest, pureed beet goulash is not my best. I am sure someone with adequate training would rate it more highly than I could do.”

There is an English proverb that touches on this principle—“honesty is the best policy.” It really is.

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