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

“Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? who hath babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; They that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; They have beaten me, and I felt it not: When shall I awake? I will seek it yet again” (Proverbs 23:29–35).

Unusually for the book of Proverbs, we have an extended bit of wisdom here. Most of the time in Proverbs, the pith is summarized in one verse, or occasionally in two. Here we have extended teaching over the course of seven verses, all of which are on the folly of drinking too much.

Who has trouble, sadness, unnecessary quarrels, complaints, random wounds, and red eyes? The answer is those who linger over wine, those who hunt down mixed wine (vv. 29-30). These are people who are fooled by how good it looks before they take a sip (v. 31) . . . later on in the evening, it bites like a snake (v. 32). Your eyes and heart go all weird on you (v. 33), and your sleep will be like trying to doze on the top of a mast in heavy weather (v. 34). As you toss and turn up there, and are tossed and turned as well, your murmured dream refrain is that you got beat up, but did not feel it (v. 35). When you wake up, it is time to go do it all again (v. 35).

When I was in the Navy, I remember a bleary machinist’s mate come into the crew’s mess one morning, and I cheerily asked if he had a “good time” last night. He said, “I must have. I don’t have any money.”

Reformed Christians are not of the teetotaling brand of Christian, and this is all to the good. God gave wine to gladden the heart of man (Ps. 104:15). We may take that as a given. But we must not let the excesses of the abstainers make us blind to the many cautions against drink that are in the Bible. Drunkards, after all, will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:10). Deacons may not be given to “much wine” (1 Tim. 3:8). In the same way, older women must not be given to much wine either (Titus 2:3). Remember there would have been a great temptation for people to self-medicate as they aged . . . that was a world without Tylenol. All Christians are told not to be drunk with wine, but rather to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18).

We have the liberty to drink, that is quite true. But I have unfortunately known of more than a few Christians who have exercised this liberty in a way that presents one of the few good arguments that the teetotalers have. And Scripture even indicates that it is an argument that might have something to it. “Let not then your good be evil spoken of” (Romans 14:16).

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

“Train up a child in the way he should go: And when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

This is a proverb that has been attended by some debate. The question is whether this is a statement that includes the spiritual state of the children, or if it is more of a practical promise.

A practical take would say that if you evaluate your child’s aptitudes wisely, seeing that he has a real mechanical talent, and you train him up accordingly, then he will grow up into real productivity. He won’t depart from what he was clearly made for. But if you try to make your philosopher into a back hoe operator, then it will just be grief all around.

Others, like myself, don’t exclude this kind of practical parenting, but also want to include the most important thing about raising children, which is bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4).

This is a sensitive subject because when parents are dealing with the grief of a wayward child, one who isn’t walking with God at all, this proverb would appear to lay the responsibility for the apostasy squarely at their feet. Why was the promise not fulfilled? Well, it appears that somebody didn’t bring them up right.

Wayward children are already a grief to their parents, a point that is made over and over again in Proverbs. “He that gathereth in summer is a wise son: But he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame” (Proverbs 10:5). But why would we be ashamed of something that somebody else did? Clearly the parents had something to do with it, which they instinctively know. Given this, it is not our place to rub it in. We should interact with such parents with grace and sensitivity. But at the same time, we shouldn’t shy away from the teaching of Scripture just because of this problem either. When addressing the subject of child-rearing, the book of Proverbs does not detach a person’s destiny from how they were brought up (Prov. 23:14).

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

“The desire of the slothful killeth him; For his hands refuse to labour. He coveteth greedily all the day long: But the righteous giveth and spareth not” (Proverbs 21:25–26).

We see here two basic worldviews. One of the worldview of me, me, men—a worldview and outlook that simple wants to gather by grabbing. This is coupled with a refusal to do that which would result in him having what he would have. He refuses to labor, but he greedily covets—all day long—those things which labor would obtain for him. His lust for stuff is mentioned twice. The proverb begins by saying that his desire is the thing that is killing him. It kills him that he wants and cannot have.

The contrast with the righteous is pronounced, presumably in both way. The righteous gives, and is able to giving without stinting. The reason he is able to give without stinting is that he has a lot. He has a lot because of the implied contrast here with the slothful one, the one who is unwilling to work with his hands. Not only is the work profitable, but so is the generosity.

Scripture teaches us that work brings in an income. In addition, we learn that generosity functions like compounding interest. Works adds, and generosity multiplies. We think again of Bunyan’s short little poem about the man, “some thought him mad, the more he gave, the more he had.”

God’s way to wealth has safeguards built into it. The short term thinker is the one who wants to “get rich quick” now, and is constantly on the lookout for short cuts. Ideally, the way to wealth is to win at Powerball—a tax on people who are bad at math. There are no guardrails here, and the fact that the person concerned doesn’t have any money does not prevent him from being in bondage to it. The guardrails for the godly are build into the nature of the case—work hard, over an extended period of time, and make sure to be generous all along the way. When you arrive, your money won’t have you by the throat.

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

“He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life, righteousness, and honour” (Prov. 21:21).

If we were to summarize the structure of this proverb, we could say that the person who pursues two things will find himself with three things, and one of those three things will be one of the two things he was initially after.

The one who pursues righteousness will find . . . righteousness. He also pursued mercy, but his finding of mercy is not mentioned. This does not mean that he did not obtain it, only that it is not mentioned by name.

What is mentioned in that he comes upon life and honor. In addition to the righteousness he sought, he finds life and he finds honor. Surely that is mercy enough.

Those who seek honor for its own sake will only find dishonor. Those who grasp at the things of earth will forfeit Heaven, and then will discover at the last that they have forfeited earth as well. At the end of the day, we lose whatever it was that we fashioned into an idol. At the end of the day, we are given back the things that we surrendered for the sake of the kingdom.

Scripture teaches that we reap what we sow. The Bible tells us that those who seek first the kingdom of Heaven will obtain a number of other things besides. God is the God who overflows. God is the God of superabundance. He is not a tight-fisted God.

What does it mean to pursue righteousness? “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6). The pursuit of righteousness must not be lackluster, but rather be the kind of thing that is characterized by hunger and thirst. At a certain point, hunger and thirst both become the predominant thing. Hunger and thirst are the kinds of things that grow to the point where you can think about nothing else.

And those for whom this is true will find three things at the end—life, righteousness, and honor.

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

“Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right” (Proverbs 20:11).

Moral agency is not something that is suddenly flipped on in a person’s soul when they turn twelve, or turn eighteen. We can often tell what sort of plant something will be in the seedling. But there are layers.

Our common sense understanding that moral agency is on a dimmer switch does have some scriptural backing. When God spares Nineveh, one of the things He says to Jonah is that He will willing to be merciful in that the city had scores of thousands of people who did not yet know their right hand from their left (Jon. 4:11). When Solomon, using hyperbole, compares himself to a “little child,” he says that he did not know how to go out or come in (1 Kings 3:7).

So the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not a tree of moral understanding—if it were, then Adam and Eve could not have sinned by eating from it . . . as they had not yet eaten from it. Rather, the tree was one of maturity in judgment. Our parents grasped for rule before they were ready for it. When David seeks to reward Barzillai by giving him a position in Jerusalem, he refuses because he is too old to “discern between good and evil” (2 Sanm. 19:34)—i.e. too old to be a good judge. The judgment of little children, in a similar way, is not yet mature, and so they are not as responsible. But as per our proverb, this does not mean there is no responsibility.

And Paul says that at one point in his life he was alive apart from the law, but when the law came, sin revived and he died (Rom. 7: 9). So moral agency exists in children, and a time comes when full moral responsibility arrives. But it is not true that there is no responsibility before that. Even a child is known by his actions.

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