Grace & Peace Archives - Page 49 of 76

Grace & Peace: Proverbs 24:17-18

Douglas Wilson on July 2, 2019

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

“Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, And let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: Lest the Lord see it, and it displease him, And he turn away his wrath from him” (Prov. 24:17–18).

We sometimes make the mistake of thinking that the New Testament introduces a radically new ethic for the people of God—as though the Sermon on the Mount were to be thought of as some kind of grand innovation. But loving your enemies is to be found in both testaments. “If thou meet thine enemy’s ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again” (Ex. 23:4). Love is to be defined as treating someone lawfully, and doing so from the heart. It is most certainly not defined by the feelings we may or may not be entertaining at the time. Our feelings should not be entrusted with anything, and most certainly not with the task of defining our most fundamental duties.

There was no greater act of love ever performed in this sorry world of ours than the death of Jesus Christ for your sins and mine. But Jesus did not go to the cross on an emotional high. The night of His arrest He tried to get out of it repeatedly, but all while entirely submitted to His Father. Many of us, when we attempt to love others, are attempting to do it even better than Jesus did, and this accounts for our failures and frustrations.

So there is such a thing as judgment from God in both testaments

“And Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty, If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.” (2 Kings 1:10).

And when Jesus and His disciples were denied lodging in a Samaritan village, the disciplines responded biblically, or so they thought.

“And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village” (Luke 9:54–56).

But it would be false to conclude from this that judgment is found in the Old Testament and mercy in the new. Both are found in both.

In this passage of Proverbs, the reason given for not gloating when your enemy stumbles and falls is that you don’t want God to let up. You want the judgment to continue, and so you take care to keep your own corrupted motives out of it.

In Romans 12, we are told to “give place” to wrath. We are not to take vengeance ourselves (Rom. 12:19), but this is not because vengeance is wrong. Vengeance is not wrong—rather, vengeance is the Lord’s. So we treat our enemies with grace, and this is leaving room for God’s wrath—and just a few verses down we see that the cops are God’s deacons of wrath (Rom. 13:4). It is the responsibility for Christians to step aside in order to let the blow fall. If the blow is one of judgment, we can say amen. If the blow is of the kind that transforms enemies into friends, we can rejoice in that. God is dealing with it all, and we are to show the kind of grace that heaps coals of fire on the head.

This is why imprecatory psalms are so important. In imprecatory psalms, we are turning the whole thing over to God. Psalms of imprecation are not a biblical version of sticking pins into voodoo dolls. We don’t use biblical passages as our way of cursing our personal enemies. We are confessing that we are not usually up to the task of cursing anyone, and so we transfer the whole matter to God. And if we see that God has arisen, and is answering the prayer, we should remember this passage, which amounts to remembering to stay out of it.

Grace & Peace: Proverbs 24:13-14

Douglas Wilson on June 25, 2019

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

“My son, eat thou honey, because it is good; and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste: So shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul: When thou hast found it, then there shall be a reward, and thy expectation shall not be cut off” (Prov. 24:13–14).

The pleasures of the physical world—and there are myriads of them; they are countless—are given to us as training wheels so that we might learn how to enjoy the pleasures of the spiritual world.

In this passage a father is teaching his son to pursue pleasure. Who, we might wonder, needs to be taught that? The answer to that question includes, unfortunately, many Christians who have come to believe that there is something suspicious about physical pleasure. The taste of honey is decidedly not a spiritual thing, right? Well, yes and no.

It is not spiritual in the sense that it is a material pleasure. But there is another sense of the word spiritual found in Scripture. A spiritual man is not an ethereal man, but rather an obedient man. A spiritual man is one who is walking in step with the Spirit, who is doing what the Spirit wants him to do because the Spirit wants him to do it. And so, if the Spirit is leading you to mix honey with butter in order to put it on your dinner roll, then a spiritual man will do exactly that. It is a spiritual activity.

And so rightly understood physical pleasures are the kindergarten of the soul. We are to begin there, thanking God for every upward step. Now if we get stuck in kindergarten, then something is seriously wrong. We have ceased to regard the myriad pleasures around us as a discipleship course, and have been distracted by them. We are looking at them, instead of looking through them. When we look through them, we see the higher pleasures, and when we look through them, we come to God Himself. He is the God of all pleasure; He is the God of infinite delight.

We start this process with the honey and the honeycomb. The God who made the honey made sure to make it good. The God who made the honeycomb made sure to make it sweet. And this same God is the one who summons us to the “knowledge of wisdom.” When we find the knowledge of wisdom, we discover that God always buries a reward in the finding. The knowledge of wisdom, just a drop of it, is sweet just like the honey is. But then, as you investigate further, you discover a honeycomb of knowledge and wisdom, and whatever your expectation is, it will not be cut off.

So set your expectation high. The honey of God’s knowledge and wisdom comes from a planet the size of Jupiter, covered entirely over with clover, and with bees the size of Volkswagens. The honeycombs are a quarter of an acre, and while we sometimes feel a shortage in this world, this is not because there is any real shortage. Wisdom comes to those who pursue it, and the process begins with your honey toast tomorrow morning.

Grace & Peace: Proverbs 24:10

Douglas Wilson on June 18, 2019

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

If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small (Prov. 24:10).

In Scripture, true strength is measured in the doing, and not in the accumulating and storing. Energy is given that it may be expended, and if, after all the training, there is not enough energy for the task, then the training was pointless.

In this proverb, the testing point for the strength is described as the “day of adversity.” In other words, the test that must be passed is a genuine challenge, a real situation. It is a day of adversity.

This means that the strength is really put to it. The strength doesn’t feel adequate. If it proves itself to be inadequate, then Scripture dismisses that kind of strength as “small.” If you were unable to carry someone out of the burning building, then it does not matter how much you were able to bench press at the gym.

In a real situation, there are any number of additional variables. In the gym, there is just one thing to do, the bench is straight and even, and you have a spotter, and he says encouraging things. In addition, there are mirrors everywhere so you can see how marvelous you were. With real time adversity, there are no mirrors, only duties. There are many things to do, not just one, and you have rank them. Not only that, you have to rank them on the fly.

And when you are tempted to “faint,” it is important to remember that the accumulation of strength has a telos, it has a point. That point is to acquit itself well in the midst of a chaotic present. The point is to not faint.

Grace & Peace: Proverbs 21:5

Douglas Wilson on May 28, 2019

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

The thoughts of the diligent tend only to plenteousness; But of every one that is hasty only to want (Prov. 21:5).

This is a good place to remind ourselves that proverbs are proverbs—they are generally true, and they are wise words to live by. At the same time, they are not axioms in geometry. There has never been a triangle that didn’t have three sides, but there have been hasty men who did not wind up in the flop house.

At the same time, most of the time, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. You can bank on it, more or less.

The import of this proverb appears to relate to the subject of planning. The thoughts of the diligent tend one way, while the hasty one (who did not have the time or patience for planning) winds up in poverty. The diligent are thoughtful, and their thoughtfulness begins before the actual work begins. The hasty, who rush in because “something must be done,” often find that it was false that something had to be done. Making a hasty hash of it might well make things worse than they were. And if you don’t have time to do it right, then how will you have time to do it over?

This proverb also helps prevent us from attributing poverty to false causes. We are talking about the behavior of people, which is not the same kind of thing as putting a billiard ball in the corner pocket, or getting an item out of a vending machine. It is true that the book of Proverbs warns regularly against the poverty that does come from laziness. But we are not encouraged to believe that poverty comes only from laziness—it can come from a number of other sources. And as we see here in this proverb, it certainly can come from an industrious stupidity.

Grace & Peace: Proverbs 20:17

Douglas Wilson on May 22, 2019

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

Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; But afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel (Prov. 20:17).

The Bible teaches us that sin is fun. But Scripture also teaches us that we must learn how to look down the street and around the corner. Sin has long term consequences, and those are no fun at all.

Those given over to folly are therefore, by definition, short term thinkers. Those who are in pursuit of wisdom have learned to think things out for a few more steps than that. They are long term thinkers. When it comes to a broad understanding of the moral universe we live in, we can generalize in this way. Sweetness now and gravel later, or gravel now and sweetness later.

Sometimes the godly make the mistake of maintaining that sin is never fun, not now, not ever. But this is contrary to Scripture and common sense both. In this verse, we see that there is a real kick in pulling off a successful deception. It is “sweet to a man.” But we are also told to look at the video, not just the snapshot. The gravel is coming.

The sweetness is compared to bread in the mouth. The contrast is to a mouth full of gravel, and no milk to get it down. The unpleasantness of the long term consequences far surpasses the pleasantness of the original lie. But make no mistake—the lie was sweet for a time.

We can see this in many areas. Just because something is bad and wrong does not make it unattractive. The devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of men, and their glory. If sin were wholly repulsive, there would be no temptation.

Picture it this way. A mother is standing at a supermarket check-out line with her soon to be adolescent son. There, at right about his eye level, is a magazine that is displaying more of a woman than ought to be displayed, but the family friendly line was too long. And so, after they are out in the parking lot, she reminds her son how awful that looked, and how detestable sin is. She is right about the second part, but not about the first. And her son starts to wonder. “Why is my mother telling me falsehoods?”

Bait looks good. If it didn’t look good, it wouldn’t work as bait. If we learn the lesson that all evil looks like evil, we are setting ourselves up for some grave disappointments.