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

It is the glory of God to conceal a thing:
But the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

Proverbs 25:2

The work of growing up into a godly maturity is actually a cosmic game of hide the button. The task of dominion actually consists of men finding out things that God has hidden.

God hides things, and we are to find them. Not only so, but it says that it is the glory of God to hide things. The word for glory there is kabod, which also has the connotation of weight. In English, the word associated with the kings is different, but in Hebrew it is also the same word kabod. It is a kingly glory to seek, just as it is a divine glory to hide. It look a number of centuries, for example, but God hid silicon in the sand, and eventually we found iPhones there.

God hides, and kings find. This means that the pursuit of dominion through a wise investigation of the world God made is actually to aspire to royalty.

So how are we to aspire to this wisdom? Do we go into a corner in order to try to think innovative thoughts? No. It is not a coincidence that this saying is found in the book of Proverbs. The Hebrew word mashal means to “speak a proverb.” But the Hebrew word mashal also means “to reign as king.” The wisdom literature is literature that trains us up into God’s idea of royal wisdom, and this is particularly the case with the book of Proverbs.

And this seems odd to us because the book of Proverbs often seems somewhat straightforward and pedestrian to us. “Don’t cosign a note. Rotate your tires. Change your oil every three thousand miles. Give the hoochy-mamas a wide berth.” We want royal wisdom to be more sophisticated than that. We want royal wisdom to be in alignment with us and our contemporary street smarts.

But the street smart generation that doesn’t want to dabble in such pedestrian wisdom, remember, is a generation that is deep sixed under an oceanic amount of red ink—trillions of buckets of red ink.

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

Prepare thy work without, and make it fit for thyself in the field;
and afterwards build thine house

Proverbs 24:27

This is a proverb that teaches us a crucial principle of business—first things first.

So the immediate application is this. If you buy a fertile piece of ground, you should prepare it, work it, and plant your crop. After that, you should feel free to go ahead and build your house. In other words, the idea is to make the piece of ground productive before you start drawing your new resource down. Grow the celery before you eat the salary.

Our natural tendency is to want to enjoy the benefits prematurely. One illustration of this bad mistake is what happens to a number of entrepreneurs. I should correct that. It doesn’t happen to entrepreneurs the way the flu might happen to them. Rather, it is something they decide to do.

They get an investment for their hot idea, and let us grant for the sake of discussion that it is in fact a hot idea. But instead of putting the bulk of the investment into the hot idea so that it might start paying off sooner, instead they start paying full salaries to the start-up team, as though the hot idea was already paying off. But—it isn’t. However hot the idea is, it cannot pay off before it is birthed. The harvest cannot be enjoyed while the sacks are still full of the seed.

And this proverb hits on something we see in a number of other proverbs. It is the contrast between short-term thinkers and long-term thinkers. The wise investor, developer, or entrepreneur seeks to defer taking his cut while the foolish one assumes that his cut is what he has coming to him as some sort of birthright. To not take his cut would not be “realistic.” His wife thinks the same.

The lack of wisdom in this can be seen in this. The person has removed a particular kind of immediate pressure from himself, meaning that he will not be as motivated as he might otherwise be to get his hot idea to market. He is able to pay his monthly bills right now, and that is not going to run out until next year sometime. For a short-term thinker, next year is on the other side of forever. And so it is that the following year he has to go back to the investor looking for a second infusion of cash. Or an extension. Or a time of awkward conversation. Or something.

The wise man is hustling from the get-go because every day matters every day. He gets after it today because something needs to break loose today. “A worker’s appetite works for him; his mouth urges him on” (Prov. 16:26, ESV).

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

The mouth of strange women is a deep pit:
He that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein

Proverbs 22:14

The beating heart of the essential sinful attitude is the conviction that somehow, some way, God is not in charge. The standard and natural assumption does try to give God His due, and acknowledges that there is this thing called the Last Judgment. Okay, we say, at the end of the whole program God will come in, break out His grade book and tell everybody how they did. He is in control at the very last, when He tells us how sinful we were being. In short, we think we control events by sinning, and then God seizes control at the very last moment by judging us for that sinning.

But there is another sense in which God’s control is much more profound than this. For example, in Romans 1, homosexual deviance is not simply a sin for which God will execute wrath. Paul goes even farther and says that the sinning itself, the rebellion itself, is an instance of the wrath of God. Because men did not honor God as God, and because they would not give Him thanks, therefore God has given them up to disgraceful passions (Rom. 1:24). This judicial action of giving them up to their passions is described as the wrath of God (Rom. 1:18). Homosexual behavior will certainly incur the wrath of God, but it must also be seen as the wrath of God.

We find something very similar here—a heterosexual version of the same thing. The mouth of a seductive woman is a deep pit, it says. But notice that it does not say that if someone falls into it, then as a consequence God will abhor them. Rather it says that if God abhors them, then as a consequence they will fall into that deep pit. An adulterer ought certainly to be concerned about the judgment God will bring down upon the adultery. People who live in that way will not inherit the kingdom (1 Cor. 6:9; Gal. 5:19-21). But it is also important for someone who has fallen into that pit to examine himself to determine what sins he was committing beforehand that brought about the judgment of adultery.  

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

The horse is prepared against the day of battle:
But safety is of the Lord.

Proverbs 21:31

When it comes to how the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man relate to one another, it doesn’t take much to get our little pea-brains to overload and blow a couple of fuses. Does God do it, or do we? Does God do 99% and then look at us to throw in our 1%? Are we to work as though it all depends on us, and then pray as though it all depends on us? This last question is closest to the truth, but we have to be careful, even here.

The relationship of God to man does not have any strict parallels. We are taught by Scripture to use analogical comparisons, but there are no exact comparisons. Remember the old joke about the test in a philosophy class—“Define the universe. Give three examples.” We are taught to compare God to a Father, but our fathers are not exactly right. We are taught to compare Him to a king, but He is much more than that. We are taught that He is a Rock, and His works are perfect, the analogy does break down.

But we don’t get to abandon the task of reasoning this way. It is mandatory. Hypocrisy is certainly present when someone is living in a way opposite to what they profess, but Jesus teaches us that it is hypocrisy to refuse to apply our knowledge of the natural world to the spiritual world. Hypocrites can discern the signs of the sky but not the signs of the times (Matt. 16:3).

And so God wants us to be prepared for the battle (Prov. 21:31). He wants us to measure our resources before undertaking the building of a tower (Luke 14:28). A prudent man thinks ahead (Prov. 14:8). Unless the Lord builds the house, the one who labors does so in vain (Ps. 127:1). If God is not guarding the city, the watchman can stay awake all he wants, and it will do no good (Ps. 127:1). Rather, we ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will go to thus and such a place, do business, and make money (Jas. 4:15). It really is true that man proposes, and God disposes.

The eye of faith is what enables us to prepare for contingencies as best we know how, knowing that this is what God expects of us, while at the same time understanding that apart from the blessing of God all our preparations are nothing but a loose bale of hay in a tornado. A cynical version of this can be seen in Woody Allen’s comment, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”

Looking for that blessing from God needs to include diligent planning on our part. The trick is to plan diligently without trusting in diligent plans. The plans themselves are worthless. As Dwight Eisenhower put it once, “plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” So as we make our plans, remember that they may or may not come to fruition. But the same moments are encompassed by God’s plans for us (Eph. 2:10), which always come to fruition. Nothing misfires.

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

The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD,
as the rivers of water: He turneth it whithersoever he will

Proverbs 21:9

We are told numerous times in Scripture to honor and respect the king. For example, Paul tells us not to resist their authority (Rom. 13:2). Peter tells that while we are to honor every man, we are particularly to honor the emperor (1 Pet. 2:17). Paul says that we are to be ready for every good work, and to obey the magistrates (Tit. 3:1). But while we are to honor the persons of such authorities and respect their authority, the one thing we must not do is absolutize them. They are deputies of God on earth, but no more than that. Their authority is given them by God, and is circumscribed on account of that gift.

This means that when they tell us to do something contrary to what God has required of us, we are to respectfully refuse. For example, the three friends of Daniel refused to bow down to the statue of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 3:16-18). When King Aretas tried to restrict the preaching of the gospel, the apostle Paul felt free to run his roadblock (2 Cor. 11:22-23). The apostle Peter disappeared from the book of Acts as a wanted man (Acts 12:7ff), and this was not in conflict with his instructions to Christians to be dutiful citizens. And when the authorities in Jerusalem told the apostles to cease their preaching in Christ’s name, they flatly refused to do so. “Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

Because such kings of the earth rarely have a biblical perspective on themselves, this set of priorities will often cause law-abiding Christians to come into conflict with our earthly authorities. When this happens, the one thing we must never do is fear them. They may bring a trial to us, but it was God who sent the trial to us.

So when we see kings and authorities acting with great folly, we must remember that the King of kings behind them all is on the ultimate throne, and He is directing the actions of all earthly authorities, even those which are most sinful or most foolish, and He is doing so with great wisdom. He turns the hearts of the kings in whatever direction he wants. It does not matter what mere men declare about their own powers—the Lord is the only one who really manages the sluice gates.

We may live our lives below the dams of men in complete security.

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