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

A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband:
But she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.

Proverbs 12:4

One of the curious things that has developed in the contemporary Christian world is the phenomenon of women not sinning as women. This is more than curious, and manifestly unbiblical, and yet we act as though it has somehow come to pass.

We allow that a woman could rob a bank, and that would be a sin, but it would be the same identical sin that is committed when a male robs a bank. In the same way, a woman could cheat on her taxes, say, or covet her neighbor’s car. But we have drifted into the notion that modern Christian women don’t commit any sins that are characteristically feminine sins. If you doubt what I say, ask yourself when you last heard uniquely feminine sin admonished from the pulpit.

In this verse, we find that women, just like the other kind of human being, are divided into the two categories of wise and foolish. There is the woman who is a crown to her husband, and there is a woman who is a shame to her husband. Now this virtuous woman is a crown to her husband in a characteristically feminine way. She is crowning him in a way that could not be done by another man. And the shameful wife is a rottenness in her husband’s bones in a characteristically feminine way. She disgraces him in a way that is unique to her station. No one else is in a position to be a rottenness like that.

If someone were to say that some wives are an embarrassment to their husbands, the automatic response in these corrupt times is to accuse that person of attacking all women. The sentiment is promptly characterized as necessarily misogynistic. To say that some women are foolish is to say that all women are foolish. But this is clearly ludicrous.

One telltale sign that there might be trouble, that this might be going on, is if a woman reads these words, and then goes to ask/demand her husband to say if she makes him ashamed in any way, fully prepared to cry if he says yes. He will of course not say yes, but if that was the game that was going on, then the answer is in fact yes.

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

There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; And there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty. The liberal soul shall be made fat: And he that watereth shall be watered also himself. He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him: But blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it.

Proverbs 11:24–26

In the eleventh chapter of Proverbs, we find three proverbs that are aiming at the same target, and all three of them hit the bullseye. They all line up as the foundation for the wisdom expressed by John Bunyan—“a man there was, though some did count him mad, the more he cast away the more he had.”

In the scriptural idea of economics, money is seed. Because it is seed, there is a way of throwing it away that is simply throwing it away (into the ocean, say), and another way of throwing it away (into the soil, say) that returns to you thirty, sixty, and one hundred-fold. Money is seed.

“Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness;) Being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us thanksgiving to God” (2 Cor. 9:10–11).

In this passage of Proverbs, this same basic truth is expressed in three different ways.

In v. 24, it says that there is a man who scatters, but somehow increases his store. And there is another man who holds back more than he ought to hold back, and yet this stinginess does not preserve his wealth. It tends rather to poverty. In short, the open-handed man increases in his wealth, and the tight-fisted man comes into hard times. This is counterintuitive to the foolish.

In the next verse, the liberal soul is made fat. The one who is a source of water to others finds at the end of the day that he is well-watered himself.

And after that, the hard-driving merchant brings the curses of the people down on his head. This is what we in modern parlance would call price-gouging. But a merchant who has grain available, and makes it readily available receives the blessing of the people.

Money is seed, and needs to be treated as such.

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

The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it.

Proverbs 10:22

The Lord Jesus refused the offer of all the kingdoms of the world. But He did not refuse them because He did not want them. Rather, He refused them as a gift from the hand of the devil. Jesus intended to have those kingdoms, but He wanted to have them as a gift from His Father, after He had bound the strong man, stripped him of his armor, and taken all his possessions as spoil (Luke 11:22). The Lord Jesus is a conquering warrior, but He insisted on enjoying the fruit of His victory as a blessing from the hand of God.

So when God blesses, He really does make rich, and there is no admixture of sorrow with it.

But those who simply want the wealth, instead of desiring wealth on one condition only, which is that it come from the hand of a blessing God, will find that something else comes with the wealth that they wanted so much. 

“They soon forgat his works; They waited not for his counsel: But lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert. And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul” (Psalm 106:13–15).

When we receive what God offers, the way He offers it, on His conditions and His timetable, we can enjoy that blessing through and through. But when we are in a rush, or when we cut corners, or when we have an “at all costs” mentality, we discover that at all costs always means at all hidden costs. 

And the hidden cost is leanness of soul. This is a double affliction, because one of the features of lean souls is that they do not know that they are lean. They do not comprehend what they are missing.

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

In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin: But he that refraineth his lips is wise.

Proverbs 10:19

For those who are concerned about the content of their speech, about the quality of it, a good place to begin the discipline is with the quantity of the speech.

The more we talk, the more likely it is that we are speaking without time for prior reflection. And when we do that, we find that thoughtless speech is frequently sinful speech. When there are lots of words, you don’t have to look very long before finding something sinful in it.

A wise individual is one who recognizes that even the speech of a wise person requires a governor. Something must be done to restrain the tongue, to restrain the lips. How many times have we all said something smart and we recognized it instantly as folly from the backside as it was swiftly departing to do all the damage it was going to do? No catching up with it now.

Wise individuals are frequently smart, and smart individuals are frequently quick-witted, and so this is something that they must take special care to guard against. When a witticism occurs to you, should there not be a special holding area in your brain, in which you let the witticism sit for a bit, reflecting on what a life of godliness should look like? You don’t have to choose, but it would be better to be a dullard and kind than quick-witted and cruel.

So the place to begin is with the quantity of your words, and that is related to how fast the words come out. If you want to fill the bathtub quickly, you turn the handles all the way to the left. If you want your life to be free from the destructive flooding that thoughtless words can bring about, you don’t do that.  

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

Where there is no vision, the people perish: But he that keepeth the law, happy is he.

Proverbs 29:18

This is a proverb that is referred to frequently, but unfortunately it is often found in the mouths of assorted vision-casters for various disparate visions. Unless the people catch a vision for “our new sanctuary,” or for “our ministry team objectives,” or for “paying down our debt on the fellowship hall,” then the people will perish.

Now however worthy some of these tasks may be, such things are not what this proverb is about.

The word for vision (hazon) refers to a word of revelation. Unless the people have a Word from the living God, they are sunk. We were not created to function as autonomous beings imagining “there’s no heaven . . . above us only sky.” If we do not serve and worship the true God, then we will try to get by with makeshift gods. There has never been a consistently atheistic society. Those that have seriously attempted it have found their public square has way more over-sized icons of Chairman Mao than ancient Athens had of Zeus, and that is saying something. Athens was riddled with idols (Acts 17:16).

This understanding is reinforced by the Hebraic parallelism. We have a contrast set up here. In the first half of the verse, the people perish, and in the second half we have a man who is described as happy. This tells us that we need to contrast the two halves of the verse with regard to the condition that is given. There is the condition of having “no vision,” and this is contrasted with the one who keeps the law.

Put another way, having no vision is defined here as turning away from God’s revelation of Himself in Scripture. The man who keeps the law is happy, and one of the reasons he is happy is that he is not among those who have no vision. The vision we are supposed to have is assigned to us in Scripture.

If we want to know what it means for a people to perish because they have no such vision, all we need to do is look around. Our chaotic society has come unstuck. This is what it looks and feels like when the center no longer holds. How can the center hold when there is no center? This is why Jesus instructed us to disciple the nations, baptizing them, and teaching them the vision.

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