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

When a wicked man dieth, his expectation shall perish: And the hope of unjust men perisheth.

Proverbs 11:7

The Scriptures teach us that for the wicked, this life is the best that he will ever experience. For the righteous, it is the opposite—this life contains the worst things that will ever happen to him. For the godless, all his gold will turn to lead, and for the godly, all his lead will become gold.

A wicked man can labor, and hope and strive, but at the very end of the process, like an angry exclamation point, death awaits. And when he dies, his expectation (of whatever it is) perishes with him. The hope of unjust men, just like the unjust men themselves, dies.

There is no more maneuvering room. There is no time for adjustments, and nothing can be renegotiated. Another way of putting this is that God has seen to it that this world operates with a hard deadline. There is, literally, a drop dead deadline. When our time is up, that’s it. 

Kirkegaard once said that when a tyrant dies, his rule ends. When a martyr dies, his rule begins. This points toward this same truth. Godliness is something that outlasts this life. Wickedness does not. The penalty must be paid for that wickedness, but the work of the ungodly man comes apart in his hands. Nothing lasts, nothing endures.

This is why Paul teaches us that fire will judge the quality of each man’s work (1 Cor. 3:11-15). In that place he is talking about the work of ministry, which is why he says that the slipshod minister will be saved “yet so as by fire.”

The metric of Heaven doesn’t work the way we tend to think. God has a different way of evaluating things. The Temple scales register things that we don’t notice at all, and we think things are weighty indeed and God considers them to be so much cotton candy. Not only so, but the temptation to reverse things like this can operate in very conservative theological circles, as it did with the Pharisees.

“And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.” (Luke 16:15). 

It would be bad to be a wicked man, and have all your expectations come to nothing. But it would be far, far worse to be a religious wicked man, and to have those expectations artificially inflated, and to have them come to nothing.

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

Whoso boasteth himself of a false gift is like clouds and wind without rain.

Proverbs 25:14

There are those who want the credit of having given without the burden of having actually done so. Notice in this proverb that the point of it is to enable or equip the boast.

This is the sin that caused Ananias and Sapphira to be struck down. They did in fact give a gift, but they wanted to have the credit for having given a much larger one. This is why Peter rebuked them for lying to God. They were like clouds and winds without rain.

When people give ostentatiously (Mark 12:41), the point is to be seen. And that is just a small step away from being willing to be seen as giving, when you didn’t really give. You get the reputation for generosity, and you don’t have to pay the price of generosity. David had the opposite impulse. He refused to sacrifice that which cost him nothing (2 Sam. 24:24). But hypocrites, when they come to give alms, want to announce that fact with trumpets (Matt. 6:2). The point is to be seen as generous, and in the world of the hypocrite, the ideal solution is to be seen as generous without actually having to be generous. Ordinary people look for the rain; the hypocrites are content with the clouds and the wind.

One time I was speaking at a conference being held at a church in a distant state, and before one of the events I was wandering around in a narthex section of the church, and I stopped to read a bronze plaque on one of the pillars. The plaque said something like “this wing of the church was made possible through the generosity of Mr. & Mrs. VanderHoot.” As I was reading this plaque, saying nothing about it to anybody, the pastor of the church came up behind me and said, “Yeah, I know Jesus said not to do that.”

But some need their reward now.

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

I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was brPut not forth thyself in the presence of the king, and stand not in the place of great men: For better it is that it be said unto thee, Come up hither; Than that thou shouldest be put lower in the presence of the prince whom thine eyes have seen.

Proverbs 25:6–7

This principle in Proverbs provides a good example of how the Lord’s teaching in the gospels was not as “innovative” as some people have thought. The Lord Jesus was steeped in the Scriptures, and His “you have heard it said” was directed at misapplications of the Word, not the Word itself. He taught us to love our enemies, for example, but so did the Old Testament. “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; And if he be thirsty, give him water to drink” (Proverbs 25:21).

In this proverb, we see the background for the Lord’s teaching on the scramble for good seats at a wedding reception. 

“And he put forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he marked how they chose out the chief rooms; saying unto them, When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him; And he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee. For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” (Luke 14:7–11).

The fact that this proverb provides a backdrop also helps us to a fuller understanding of what is going on as people are jockeying for position at a banquet. The banquet is not a stand alone event, where conceited people can throw elbows about who gets the happy seat. In Proverbs we are talking about the “king” and “great men,” which means that we are talking about ambitious men. The seating arrangements are representative of power and position.  

And so the Lord’s teaching applies to petty individuals who are concerned about the honors of the evening, and it also applies on a grand scale to courtiers and princes. The principle is constant, while the settings can change radically. The heart issues are constant, and the settings—the king’s court or the pecking order in an eighth grade classroom—simply determine how many chips we push to the center of the table. The heart that relinquishes “honor” (in principle) has to be the same kind of heart, regardless of how big the honor might be. It could be an MVP honor for a high school basketball team, or it could be a cabinet seat. A follower of Christ should respond the same way.  

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

I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; And, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction. Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; and thy want as an armed man.

Proverbs 20:1

In reading a proverb like this, the first striking thing about it is how obvious it all seems. There is a man who owns a piece of property, say, a field, or a vineyard, and this man is lazy and “void of understanding.”

Because he did not understand how the world works, because he was a sluggard, his agricultural endeavors were overgrown with thorns and nettles, and the stone wall around it was broken down. This is the part that was not obvious to him, to the owner, but which is obvious to us. If you don’t weed, you are going to have weeds. If you don’t repair the wall, the wall will be in a state of disrepair. 

But notice how the author of Proverbs talks about this. He “considered it well.” He mulled, he reflected, he pondered. When he considered it well, having looked, he received instruction. What seems intuitive and obvious to us now is actually a topic that will repay meditation. God has placed us in a world of cause and effect. God is not mocked—a man reaps what he sows. If he sows laziness, he reaps nettles. But there is something in the fallen nature of man that wants to grasp at the possible exceptions. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and sometimes a man wins Powerball.

Yes, but not usually. The true results happen regularly enough to be called predictable. Poverty comes like “one who travels.” Several translations render this as “robber,” so perhaps we might combine the senses and say “highwayman.” The second expression brings the full sense. Poverty comes like a mugging. For however obvious it is, it takes wisdom to see it all clearly. 

And this brings the sense home. There is a character in a Hemingway story who says that bankruptcy came upon him slowly, and then suddenly. It is like that here. The consequences of laziness and ignorance are cumulative, and they accumulate slowly. It can be managed—for a time. But then the disaster comes. Poverty sticks the gun in your ribs and says, “Hand it over.” 

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

Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: And whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise (KJV).

Wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise (NKJV).

Proverbs 20:1

For over a century, the evangelical church in North America was overwhelmingly dry—that is, they had adopted the temperance approach that had begun to gain traction in the 19th century. This movement culminated in Prohibition, a 13 year ban on alcohol in the United States (1920-1933). In truth Prohibition was a spectacular failure, but sometimes people mistakenly imagine that the problem it was seeking to address was therefore an imaginary problem. But that was not the case—drunkenness was a significant social problem prior to Prohibition. Perhaps we could think of those thirteen years as America’s time in rehab.  

Now “temperance” was actually a misnomer because the word should refer to moderate use of alcohol, not to an absolute requirement to abstain from it. The word temperance did not originally bring teetotalism to mind. But the period after Prohibition actually was pretty temperate.

Something similar happened with the gradual relaxation of attitudes toward alcohol among evangelicals. At first, alcohol is approached carefully, gingerly, like it might bite. This is all to the good because Scripture teaches us that alcohol does bite, like an adder (Prov. 23:32). 

But we live in a time when substance abuse of various kinds is increasingly common, whether pot, or opioids, or prescription pills, or alcohol. Christians there need to make sure they don’t let down their guard simply because the outside culture is giving way to dissipation. A good check on our spirits is to remember the words of this proverb—wine has an attitude problem; it mocks. Whiskey is violent; it is a brawler, and can beat you up. Both of them together are liars, telling you that you are far more temperate than you actually are.

When people ask for my advice on this, I have a pretty simple rule of thumb—only one.  

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