Grace & Peace: Proverbs 26:11

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

“It is not good to eat much honey: So for men to search their own glory is not glory” (Proverbs 25:27).

When glory bends back in upon itself, it thereby ceases to be glory. Solomon compares it to taking a good thing—the sweetness of honey—and then gorging yourself on it. The sweetness ceases to be sweet. So also glory, taken in the wrong way, ceases to be glorious.

What is that wrong way? The man who is doing it wrong is “searching” it out, and what he is searching out is his “own” glory. He wants the applause to be directed toward him. He wants his name to be up in lights. He desires to be standing above the others at the awards ceremony.

But there really is a mystery here. Paul instructs Christians to run so as to receive the prize, doesn’t he?
“Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain” (1 Corinthians 9:24).
The key to understanding this is to italicize the word own in the proverb. The man doing it wrong is seeking out his own glory. The man doing it right is striving for glory, but it is because he wants his performance to be and become the glory of another.

God created us as glory-seeking creatures. We gravitate toward glory, and we can no more switch that off than we can stop wanting oxygen for our lungs. What the fall did was make us want to substitute other forms of glory for the glory that God intended for us to have. Those substitutions will either be vainglory, or they will be a dark glory. Vainglory traffics in trinkets. Dark glory gravitates toward perversions. Both of them are forms of seeking out their own glory.

But real Christians are distinguished by their pursuit of glory. What is sin itself? It is to fall short of glory (Rom. 3:23), that glory being the glory of God. And what are we instructed to pursue? Glory. “To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life” (Romans 2:7).

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

“As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to an heavy heart” (Proverbs 25:20).

“Like one who takes away a garment in cold weather, and like vinegar on soda, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart” (Proverbs 25:20).

In this fallen world, it turns out that certain things are unwelcome. You brought potato salad to the picnic, but then the wasps found it. You pull into your favorite restaurant only to discover that they are closed on Mondays now. You take a busted product back to the store only to find out that “lifetime guarantee” was referring to the lifetime of the product. The sum of everything is that we were not put into this world for pleasure alone.

Scriptures gives us a few examples of this same thing. The weather is cold, and you have a good coat, one that protects you from the cold, and then some person takes it away from you. That’s no good. That’s unwelcome. But then the problem can be ratcheted up to the next level—when vinegar is put on soda, you get yourself a reaction. That’s how elementary school kids make volcanoes for their science fair projects . . . baking soda and vinegar will give you a volcano in similitude.

We then come to the target of these comparisons. Out-of-place cheerfulness is a nuisance, a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti. A word fitly spoken is like beautiful jewelry (Prov. 25:11). And a cheerful word, a singing encouragement, when it is offered in a cumbersome and clunky way, is . . . a baking soda volcano.

Nobody needs it. Nobody wants it. It would be far better to tip toe away. Not all those who believe they have the gift of encouragement actually have the gift of encouragement. If a friend of yours is down, and you are tempted to act like you are in a musical . . . give it a second thought.

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

“As an earring of gold, and an ornament of fine gold, so is a wise reprover upon an obedient ear” (Proverbs 25:12).

The way this proverb begins, it makes us think of a very different one. “As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion” (Proverbs 11:22). This would be a study in contrasts—a piece of fine jewelry that clashes with the swinish reality it adorns. The beauty of the woman is the jewelry, and the lack of discretion is the pig.

But this proverb is one that represents true adornment. It does not try to be the woman’s beauty, or to hide the woman’s spiritual ugliness. What jewelry does is augment, supplement, highlight what is already there. But in order for it to do that, the reality must already be there.

In this case, when a person is receptive to admonition, that is called an “obedient ear.” The end result of what happens here is that such a person is adorned as a consequence of what happens. But notice that it is not just any old reprover. This is a wise reprover.

A wise reprover is like a talented jeweler, who knew how to set the stone. He was a cunning man, who knew how to shape the gold, fashioning it into something that would make a beautiful woman far more beautiful. So in the parable, receptivity to correction is compared to a natural beauty. The man who brings admonition in all wisdom is a talented jeweler, who knows how to avoid doing too much, and how to keep from being ineffectual by doing too little.

And notice also that to be the recipient of a wise reproof is nothing to be ashamed of. Wear it with your head held high.

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

“Go not forth hastily to strive, lest thou know not what to do in the end thereof, when thy neighbour hath put thee to shame” (Proverbs 25:8).

“Do not go hastily to court; For what will you do in the end, when your neighbor has put you to shame?” (Proverbs 25:8, NKJV).

We might summarize this proverb right at the beginning by saying that we “shouldn’t start what we can’t finish.”

The key word here is “hastily.” Just as a king should not go to war without counting his troops (Luke 14:31), or a builder of towers should take a third look at the budget (Luke 14:28), so in the same way an aspiring litigant should take a long, hard look at his case.

The only people who almost always profit in such circumstances would be the lawyers. This is one reason why court cases don’t easily end, as the joke goes, because lawyers bill by the hour, and not by the outcome.

So this proverb is urging is to avoid the legal system equivalent of road rage. In the heat of the moment, when the “offense,” whatever it is, has just been committed, a man’s anger can make absolutely everything seem open and shut. When he tells his family and friends about it, they concur, and because they have not remembered Proverbs 18:17, they urge him on.

The thing that we are being encouraged to avoid is the shame and embarrassment when your neighbor pulls out the contract that you forgot that you had signed and, as it turns out, he did not forget that you had signed.

With all this said and acknowledged, we need to remember that there is a difference between “hastily” and “suddenly.” A hasty move is impulsive. A man who has been careful to think things through beforehand might, when the occasion is right, move suddenly and decisively. But that is not at all like the lurch of the imprudent man.

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