Grace & Peace

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

“Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; And the end of that mirth is heaviness” (Prov. 14:13).

Not all laughter is a reliable indicator of what is going on. When someone is burdened with a particular sorrow, or if they are carrying some kind of weight or heaviness, they have a tendency to turn to makeshift means of dealing with the problem. Two of the more common makeshifts would be anodynes and distractions.

Anodynes would be alcohol or painkillers. The sorrow is still there, but the person carrying the sorrow has figured out a way to club the sorrow over the head with a chemical. Sleep aids could be another one. At best, these devices can make the sorrow recede for a bit, but they are not in any way a cure or a solution. You wake up in the morning with a hangover, and yet, mysteriously, the best girl you ever had is still gone.

The other device is what this proverb is pointing to. The person who is sorrowful wants to be diverted. He wants distractions. He might throw himself into a frenzy of activity—hang gliding, rock climbing, bungee jumping. He might seek out entertainments, such as plays, concerts, movies. Or he might go in for comedy.

He might do this by following stand-up comedians, or he might go one better and become a stand-up comedian. The reason we have cliches like “the tears of a clown” is because of the truth that this proverb points to. Some of the funniest people in the world can be pretty cynical or mordant on a personal level.

The heart is weighed down with sorrow, and the joke is really funny, and you laugh. But that laughter is like your breath on a cold day. It is there, really there, but only for a moment. And when it is gone, the sorrow is not gone. The second half of the proverb hints at the possibility that the temporary excursion into mirth just made a hard situation worse.

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

“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: But when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12).

When we are looking forward to something that is highly desired, the anticipation is part of the pleasure. It is not just the banquet, but also the time spent looking forward to the banquet. It is not just the wedding, but also the engagement. The hope fulfilled is the anticipation in fruition.

And of course, there is no disappointment like the disappointment of an expected blessing not materializing. This proverb is not speaking of utter disaster—hopes dashed—but rather of hopes deferred. It is not the condition of a military wife who receives news that her husband was killed in battle—that would be hopes dashed. Rather, this is talking about her looking forward to her husband returning from deployment, counting the days, and then she discovers that his deployment has been extended for a month. That is hope deferred, and the result of this is that it makes the heart sick. The disappointment saps the heart’s resilience. Vitality starts to evaporate, and the result is a cascade of unclear and muddy thinking. The sickness here is not the kind caused by a virus, but it can feel that way. Hope deferred leaves the person tired, exhausted, enervated and weak.

But it goes the other way also, and the proverb speaks of it in superlative terms. When the long-desired blessing arrives, it is a “tree of life” (Gen. 2:9) This is a striking metaphor. The tree of life was one of the two great trees in the Garden of Eden. At the other end of the Bible it is a way of describing the gospel itself (Rev. 22:14). That is what it is like when the good news finally lands.

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

“A righteous man hateth lying: But a wicked man is loathsome, and cometh to shame” (Proverbs 13:5).

This is a proverb where the first half of the proverb informs us about what the second half is talking about. The first part is very straightforward. A righteous man hates lying. He is a man of the truth. He hates lies, and this means that he loves the truth.

The truth is what can be said rightfully about the way things actually are. Philosophers call this the correspondence view of truth. This means that a declarative statement is true to the extent that it corresponds to the facts out there in the world. If a man says that “the book is on the desk,” that statement is true if there is a desk there, and the book is on it, and if they are the book and desk that the speaker was referring to. This is the correspondence view of truth.

The alternative goes by the label coherence view. The statement is considered to be true to the extent that it is consistent with and coheres with a larger system of values. It does not need to anchored in the realities of the outside world. And this matters because if the coherence view of truth is the way it is, then we are all of us lost and still in our sins.

Paul put it plainly. If Christ were not raised (actually raised), then we are all still in our sins. The proposition Christ was raised is insufficient. The proposition Christ was raised has to correspond to what actually happened on that first Resurrection Sunday. And thus, if I cannot truthfully say the book is on the table . . . we are all still in our sins.

Now the second half of our proverb is that a wicked man is a loathsome man. We also learn that he comes crashing down—he “cometh to shame.” If we pair this up with the first half of the proverb, we learn the nature of this man’s wickedness. He does not hate lying. And a man who refuses to hate lying, shading, prevaricating, or spinning . . . such is a loathsome man, and the shame is that he will be revealed as such.

So the upshot is this: love the truth.

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

“As righteousness tendeth to life: So he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death” (Proverbs 11:19).

The great Puritan minister Thomas Watson once said that certain rebels were the kind who “sinned until they were out of breath.” He did this, citing Jer. 9:5—“And they will deceive every one his neighbour, and will not speak the truth: They have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity.”

These sentiments blend very nicely with what this proverb states. Righteousness has a tendency toward life. This seems more like a steady pace, something much more regular than what the wicked do. The wicked are more impetuous, and they chase evil down. They are zealous for the evil thing and so they chase it down, running after their own death.

Picture a day at an airport, and it is a day in which a certain airplane is going to crash and burn, killing everyone on board. Now imagine a man trying to catch that plane, but he is running late. He runs through the airport, dodging others, colliding with suitcases, tripping several times, and swearing under his breath. He is doing everything he can to make it to the gate on time, and if he makes it, he will have obtained his own death. He runs after his own death until he is out of breath.

Righteous, by contrast, is not in the same kind of hurry. We are of course to be zealous in our love for the Lord, but it is to be a zeal tempered by steadiness. The old Latin saying comes to mind—festina lente, make haste slowly. Being zealous is not the same thing as being frantic.

Lust, however, demands what it wants, and has to have it now. But it is not possible to chase after sin like this without also chasing after the wages of sin like this. And the paycheck of sin is death. More than a few sinners do more than earn that paycheck. They run after their pay. They demand it now.

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

“Riches profit not in the day of wrath: But righteousness delivereth from death” (Prov. 11:4).

We have a very common knowledge of one application of this proverb. When we die, as all of us will, we go to meet our Maker. And when we take that long journey, as our proverb goes, “you can’t take it with you.” Or, put another way, there are no U-Haul trailers behind the hearse.

For the unbeliever, the day he dies . . . it is over. “When a wicked man dieth, his expectation shall perish: And the hope of unjust men perisheth” (Prov. 11:7). So when an evil man dies, his hope dies with him. “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). So the obvious application of this proverb has to do with the day we die. A man’s riches, particularly if they are ill-gotten riches, will provide no comfort of advantage where he is going. The one who is delivered from death is the one who has a righteousness that can so deliver. And as every believer knows, the only righteousness that can do that for us is the righteousness of another, the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

But there is another application of the proverb that we can make. The proverb is true in this life as well. In times of famine, you can’t eat your gold. In times of war, your wealth as often as not will make you a target of marauders. In a flood, your riches will just sink you to the bottom faster.

In times of crisis, it is better to go into that crisis righteous and naked than morally stupid and well-clothed. The righteous man will still have his wits about him. He can think clearly. The indolent and wealthy man has been lulled to sleep by all he possesses, and a sense of entitlement is really not a good preparation for an unexpected tsunami of troubles. Although such a man could hire the help he needs, it is often the case that his understanding of such practical matters has been dulled by all the surfeiting.

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