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

It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house

Proverbs 21:9

We again see a typical approach to scriptural wisdom, an approach that is repeated a number of times in Proverbs. If you have two variables, x and y, in this case a pleasant wife and a big house, we are told that it would be better to have x without y than to have y without x.

A clever fellow might say that he would prefer to have both x and y. Yes, but because we are being taught how to prioritize, the path of wisdom makes you decide which of them you should prefer. And Scripture tells us which is “better.” You should prefer life in a little cubby hole in the attic, hiding behind some boxes, than to have your run of a sprawling mansion presided over by a quarrelsome wife.

The ESV renders the word brawling as quarrelsome, and NASB and NKJV as contentious. If we compare Scripture with Scripture, we can see what is likely happening here. “Every wise woman buildeth her house: But the foolish plucketh it down with her hands” (Prov. 14:1). Since this is almost certainly a metaphor (very few women dismantle their physical homes with their actual hands), we can see that the destruction accomplished by the foolish woman is largely done with the tongue. The wise woman builds her house with wisdom and kindness. “She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness” (Prov. 31:26).

If a woman is wise enough, she can build an expansive home with her kindness. If she is foolish enough, she can make a great house an intolerable place to be.

“Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars” (Prov. 9:1).

Scripture does not hesitate to confront men with their sins, or women with theirs. And in this case, it is not likely that the quarrelsome wife would recognize herself in this description. That is why she is foolish. She doesn’t think she is being contentious; she just wants to make her point. Again.

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

Judgments are prepared for scorners,
and stripes for the back of fools.

Proverbs 19:29

Scripture does not just teach us particular things, but also what might be called a general outlook. If we pay attention to what the Word says as we read it, we will start to notice certain common patterns or themes. There is a biblical worldview that is shared by all the authors of Scripture, and they share that outlook regardless of what particular issue they may be addressing. Over time, that background set of assumptions starts to settle in the minds of those who are in the Word regularly and who are being “transformed” by the renewal of their minds (Rom. 12:1-2).

For example, we are told in the passage cited above that scorners are having judgments prepared for them, and that fools are having stripes stored up for them. And the great Solomon says this as though it were a good thing. He doesn’t seem to mind it. It seems fitting to him somehow.

But a modern progressive would object to this strongly, because one of the tenets of the progressive faith is that dialog and talk should be able to solve all our problems. Progressive parents try to reason with an obstreperous two-year-old boy. Progressive law enforcement wants to spend a lot of time talking about the root causes of crime. Progressive diplomats want to negotiate with terrorist states. And they all want to do these things because, according to their deeply held vision, violence solves nothing. Force solves nothing.

This collides with what Solomon tells us here. Fools and scorners cannot be reasoned with. They could not follow the argument, and wouldn’t want to even if they could do it. But they can respond to judgments and stripes. That is something they are capable of figuring out. Put another way, according to Scripture, deterrence works. “Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil” (Eccl. 8:11, ESV). And flipped around the other way, the absence of deterrence also has an impact on society.

And this means, in its turn, that all those in authority (parents, teachers, magistrates, cops, and so on) need to be prepared for the times when they insist, and enforce that insistence, even though the person who is being forced to behave doesn’t agree. Not only do they not agree, but they don’t believe you have sought strongly enough to persuade them. Like the peasant in Monty Python’s Holy Grail, they think you are oppressing them.

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

Most men will proclaim every one his own
goodness: But a faithful man who can find?

Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love,
but a faithful man who can find? (ESV)

Proverbs 20:6

Scripture teaches us that one of the consequences of living in a sinful world is that the citizens of that world grow acclimated to it. The abnormal has become normal. The twisted calculus of selfishness bends everything into the wrong shape, and as a result a straight line can look positively legalistic.

Now a handful of people will embrace wickedness as such. They get a kick out of embracing the perverse precisely because it is perverse. They have come to the place where Milton’s devil came—“evil, be thou my good.”

But most sinful people, while admitting to faults here and there, have a positive view of their own relative virtue. This is why persecutors feel persecuted. This is why bullies believe themselves to have been greatly wronged. This is why the person in the classroom or office or family who is the greatest affliction to all the others is a person who consistently feels greatly put upon.

Man is a creature who was designed by God to live in a narratival way. And so it happens that most men appoint themselves the role of protagonist in their own story. We are all like ten-year-old boys playing football in an empty lot—we all want to be the quarterback. With the advent of Bluetooth technology, all of us can now walk down a street accompanied by a soaring soundtrack, occasionally glancing at the reflections in the shop windows to see how our movie is going. We are the lead actor and the director andthe producer.

This proverb lets us know that our perception is grossly distorted. Judging from how we all proclaim how good we are, the world should be filled with that goodness. But the Word tells us that such goodness is really pretty rare.

Right after Paul tells us not to be conformed to the world’s pattern of thinking (Rom. 12:1-2), he moves immediately to make this point. “For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith” (Rom. 12:3). This caution is obviously necessary because the world, the flesh, and the devil are the three great flatterers.

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