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

Without counsel purposes are disappointed: But in the multitude of counsellors they are established.

Proverbs 15:22

The first thing to do with this proverb is to gather the wisdom that lies on the surface of it. We may then go on to discuss how the principle involved might be misapplied.

If a man has a head full of plans, and he doesn’t check with anybody about anything, he is probably going to encounter a number of rude surprises. “Without counsel purposes are disappointed.” In other words, if he had only checked with someone who had done this before, he might have found out about this important task, or that important prerequisite. The proverb is aimed at the industrious fellow who doesn’t believe that he needs to budget for the possibility that he might be wrong about something.

Over against this, we learn that a “multitude of counselors” is a good thing. The man with plans in this scenario sees that his plans are “established.” Two heads are better than one, and ten heads are better than two.

How might this principle be misapplied? A man with a watch knows what time it is, while a man with three watches is never sure. In other words, in order for the words of this multitude of counselors to do any good, it is necessary for their words to be weighed, or sifted, or evaluated, or compared. When you seek counsel from ten different men, it is highly unlikely that they will all say exactly the same thing. And that means, for example, that if you seek counsel from ten men, you will probably not do what eight of them suggest.

That does not make the seeking out of counselors an exercise in vanity. It is worthwhile to weigh what everyone says, and to consider their objections and concerns. There is wisdom to be found in all ten, and not just in the counsel of the two you heeded. 

And in any case, it is far better to be talking with others about where you might be mistaken than to be trapped inside your own head, that place of continuous applause.

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

The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing: But the soul of the diligent shall be made fat.

Proverbs 13:4

A lazy man can want the fruit of having labored without having a willingness to do the actual work itself. In other words, for our sinful nature there is a certain allure in the words of the Big Rock Candy Mountain—that place where there are plenty of cigarette trees and the hens lay soft-boiled eggs.

This proverb teaches us that aversion to work is not a damper to feelings of ambition. There is ambition, all right, but it is disconnected from an apt understanding of cause and effect. This means that ambition, unrestricted by any contact with reality, swells up to an enormous size. The lazy man wants and wants, and he desires some more, but in the gracious providence of God, it comes up short. He “hath nothing.” The ESV and the NASB both render “desireth” here as craves. There is an inverse relationship between how much he wants and how much he gets. He wants it all, and he gets none of it. 

But flip this around. The soul of the diligent, it says, shall be made fat. The plain implication is Solomon’s praise of deferred gratification. The soul of the diligent is made fat precisely because it is willing for lean times now. If you tighten the belt now, you can let the belt out later. If you grab for everything you can get in the present, you will be forced into belt-tightening measures later. 

Both the lazy man and the diligent man have desires. The diligent man postpones gratification of those desires, which is why those desires are eventually gratified. The man who does not postpone gratification, the man who wants it all now, is thwarted in his desire. He winds up with nothing. If you embrace nothing now, you get something later. If you embrace something now, you get nothing later.

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

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice:
But when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.

Proverbs 29:2

Being the Word of God, this proverb is always true in any case, but depending on the nature of the wickedness, the people who mourn may not know the cause of their sorrow. There are two kinds of ungodly rulers—the brutal and the manipulators—well represented by two famous dystopic novels, 1984 and Brave New World. In the former the motive force is fear while in the latter the motive force is drugged seduction. In our day, the wicked who would rule over us alternate between the two, first threatening and then cajoling. But the bottom line in all government is force, and so that should be remembered. 

The end result is sorrow either way. But when the righteous are in authority, the end result is joy in the populace. I said a moment ago that the bottom line in all government is coercion, and that is just as true of righteous government as it is of wicked government. The difference between the governments has to do with what sorts of activities coercion is applied to. 

A righteous government is going to crack down on rapists and thieves and forgers, and the end result is greater peace and security for all, and the people rejoice. When judgment is not speedily executed upon the criminal, there the heart of man is filled to do evil (Ecc. 8:11), and that has a direct impact on those who are trying to live quiet and peaceable lives. It enables them to do so. In addition, Scripture says that one of the roles of government is to reward and honor the righteous (Rom. 13:3; 1 Pet. 2:14).

By way of contrast, a wicked government is one that will discipline the righteous.  Discipline is inescapable. If the government is not disciplining the wicked, then the government is wicked, and it will just be a matter of time before they are persecuting the godly. Neutrality is a pipe dream. In a world where both good and evil exist, governments must take sides. And when they take the wrong side, the people mourn.

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

Divers weights are an abomination unto the Lord; And a false balance is not good.

Proverbs 20:23

The first thing to note about this proverb is that is has an obvious and immediate application. This is talking about a butcher with his thumb on the scale, with the result that he can sell a pound and a half of hamburger as though it were two pounds. This is simply cheating and fraud in business. A rigged scale is no good (false balance). A different set of weights in the bag allows a merchant to cheat with one set and do honest business with another, which means that the whole bag is rejected by God. 

The second thing to notice is how much God hates this kind of thing. It is described here as an abomination. That means that such a cheating approach is loathsome to God. God hates every form of dishonesty, particularly those forms of dishonesty which harm or rob the victim of it. It is no trifle, and cannot be dismissed as “shrewd business practices,” or “cutting corners.” God does not praise it as business savvy, but rather sees it as detestable, execrable, revolting, odious, hideous, disgusting, and abhorrent. He despises it. That is what abomination means.

And third, divers weights should be taken by us in our application as a metaphor for every kind of rigged system. Parents who treat one child as a favorite. School administrators who allow a board member’s kid to get away with things that somebody else’s child cannot. Courts that favor the rich over the poor. Courts that favor the poor over the rich. Referees in a basketball game who show favoritism. Teachers who grade papers with an eye on who needs to qualify to start in the football game this weekend. In short, all of us are called, every day we are called, to use equal weights and measures in all our dealings with everyone else.

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

An inheritance may be gotten hastily at the beginning; But the end thereof shall not be blessed.

Proverbs 20:21

Envy and discontent love to whisper various lies to us, and one of those lies is the one about how we would handle riches better than those who currently possess them. The chances are actually pretty good that we would not. 

This can certainly creep up on us, but the truth of the principle can best be seen when people come into wealth suddenly. We may call this the “redneck winning the lottery” problem. Coming into a sudden possession of wealth, without the gradual acquisition of those habits that are necessary to manage it, results in someone going up like a model rocket and coming down like a stick. The arc may be described as Doublewide > McMansion > Doublewide.

But the heart of man loves the idea of getting rich quickly. In other words, we love the idea of gaining wealth in precisely the way that God’s Word says is not good for us. It turns out that God’s “secret” for gaining wealth that does not corrupt is a secret that can be hidden in plain sight, out there on the table. It can be hidden there because nobody wants to look straight at it. His secret is that we should work hard, say for forty years or so, we should be generous to others, we should honor God with the first fruits by tithing, and so on. But this is not the way we prefer. We would rather learn how to make millions in three weeks in real estate, which is to say, that we would like to live in a world that is very different than the one we actually live in.

The proverb does acknowledge that some do come into a sudden inheritance. That part does happen. But when it happens, it is not the blessing that we all assumed it would be. 

As we run spiritual diagnostic tests on ourselves, we should present the question to ourselves this way. Do we want this additional wealth because we want the weight of our responsibilities to go away? Or do we want them because we want the weight of our responsibilities to increase? If it is the former, then we are simply wanting to indulge our sloth. If the latter, then there is hope for us yet.

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