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

“Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his soul from troubles”

Proverbs 21:23

Whoever guards his mouth and tongue keeps his soul from troubles

Proverbs 21:23, NKJV

The fact that Scripture teaches us to guard the tongue is widely known, but Christians generally locate the requirement in the famous passage in the book of James. The tongue is a fire, set ablaze by the fire of hell, and it is capable of burning the whole course of nature down (Jas. 3:6). This is true enough, of course, but it needs to be more widely recognized that this emphasis is something we find throughout all of Scripture.

Solomon gives us really good counsel here. An excellent way of staying free from troubles is to make a point of not getting into that trouble in the first place. The best way to get out is not to get in. And the very best way to avoid getting into to trouble is to set a guard on your mouth and tongue. 

This protects you from the consequences of what you said, but more than this, it protects you from the consequences of what people thought you might have said. When there are a lot of words, sin is not very far away (Prov. 10:19). Sin just waits at the door, listening for the opportunity that promises to come along shortly. 

If Solomon were alive today, he would quite possibly add our thumbs to his list. Guard your mouth, and tongue, and thumbs. The advent of the smart phone has given many Christians the opportunity to multiply words—and sin is not far away—and in a new area of human communication where we do not yet have cultural guardrails firmly established. 

Many Christians—via Instagram, TikTok, SnapChat, or Facebook—type things with their thumbs that they wouldn’t dream of saying to anyone’s face. And because mass communication is new to them also, they don’t know how to read the feedback signals. In many cases, there are no feedback signals. But the fact that they can’t recognize the ways they are wrecking havoc does not mean that they are not wrecking havoc. I know of Christians who in person are very concerned about demeanor and tone, but who, once online, turn into obnoxicons.

There is a better way. Guard your thumbs.

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

“Say not thou, I will recompense evil; But wait on the Lord, and he shall save thee”

Proverbs 20:22

The Scriptures do not teach us that vengeance is sinful and wrong, but they do teach that vengeance belongs to the Lord . . . and to those the Lord has plainly deputized as His agents of vengeance.

When someone does the believer an evil turn, the carnal impulse is to strike back, to get even, or—as these things usually go—to get ahead. This proverb is very clear that this impulse must be mortified, put to death. Do not say that you will make things level. Rather, step aside. Wait on the Lord, and He will undertake for you. 

This is precisely the pattern that Paul follows in Romans 12 and 13. He quotes Deuteronomy 32:41—“vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.” But he does this right after he has told the Roman Christians not to take vengeance into their own hands. This is precisely the pattern urged by our proverb. Don’t take it up yourself, but step aside and let God do it. 

But the apostle adds one more layer to this. His exhortation to the Romans is that they “give place unto wrath,” but then, just a few verses down, in Romans 13, he teaches us that the civil magistrate is God’s appointed deputy. He is a deacon of wrath, a deacon of God, assigned to execute vengeance on the one who does evil.

And so this is what we are to do when we are declining to settle things ourselves. We do not go home to get our gun into order to go make things even. Rather, we step aside, and let God do it. But this is not inconsistent with calling the cops. In fact, it is exactly what we are instructed to do.

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

“Every purpose is established by counsel: And with good advice make war”

Proverbs 20:18

There is a common assumption about that spontaneity represents that which is genuine and sincere, while planning something out beforehand is somehow artificial and contrived. This comes out frequently in discussions about devotion or worship, where a planned liturgy is assumed to be something that will quench the Spirit. 

In contrast to this, our proverb says that good counsel is the foundation upon which every purpose is to be established. And the proverb goes on to emphasize the same thing again if the enterprise is one of great important . . . like a war. You should not find yourself in a war because one of your high-ranking officials lost his temper. Neither should you find yourself in a war ill-prepared because of some impetuous action by the enemy. Planning, foresight, preparation, and thoughtfulness are all to be commended.

A 19th century Prussian general once observed that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. From this, some might conclude that plans are worthless. Why plan and prepare if all of that goes up the chute as soon as you begin to execute it?

The paradox was highlighted by Dwight Eisenhower, who once said that “plans were useless, but planning is indispensable.” The person who plans, provided he does so in wisdom, is more likely to be adaptable than the person who didn’t think about anything beforehand and was caught flatfooted. This means when that first contact with the enemy occurs, one of the features of the wise planning would include the necessity of adapting to the new circumstances. 

If a man is wise and has a sincere heart, there is no downside if he thinks through what he is going to do beforehand. While it remains true that man proposes and God disposes, the man who proposes wisely is aware of this. His plans have budgeted for that possibility. He does not say that he is going to go this town or that one and make a pile of money. He rather says. “If the Lord wills . . .” (Jas. 4:15). 

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

“Cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causeth to err from the words of knowledge”

Proverbs 19:27

Scripture teaches us by implication that there are two distinct kinds of ignorance. One is the obvious sort of ignorance that is the result of not learning. This is borne out of laziness, or circumstances, or native inabilities. The person concerned simply does not know the truth. This ignorance consists largely of the absence of knowledge. 

But the second kind of ignorance is what we see cautioned against in this proverb. There is a sort of ignorance that is the result of assiduous studying, note taking, lecture attending, and book reading. A person who is doing this is growing in his ignorance, layering lies on top of folly, and follies on top of lies. The person in this situation is told to cease listening to that kind of instruction. If you are enrolled in a school that actively promulgates ignorance, then you need to make a point of dropping out.

This kind of ignorance is largely the result of the presence of error. Those errors can be extensively footnoted, and there can be a broad array of widely recognized authorities who blurbed the book. The entire academic world might be all in when it comes to whatever the particular error might be—whether it is socialism, or Darwinism, or climate change studies, or computer modeling of pandemics. 

Smart people, meaning people whose intellectual engine can hit a lot of rpms quickly—they can make the tachometer bounce—can make the most egregious mistakes. And when they are bent on making those mistakes, and they seek to browbeat regular folks with their expertise, it is important for regular folks to simply stay away. 

This will be called anti-intellectualism, but that is not what it is at all. Going back to our first point, there are two ways to be anti-intellectual. One is to avoid the life of the mind, to not care about the truth at all. But the other way is anti-intellectual also, and that is to bury the truth under a rock pile of footnotes.

“I have more understanding than all my teachers: For thy testimonies are my meditation” (Psalm 119:99).

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

“He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; But his neighbour cometh and searcheth him”

Proverbs 18:17

“The first one to plead his cause seems right, until his neighbor comes and examines him”

Proverbs 18:17

This caution, this admonition, is in the book of Proverbs for a reason. The frail human tendency to jump to conclusions is an ancient one. We hear some gaudy report that puts somebody in a bad light, and we then head off to tell somebody else about it. But the wisdom of Scripture says wait. You don’t know the whole story yet. 

The proverb is not telling us that we may not share a bit of news, such as the fact that Cindy just had her baby this morning. There is no accusation in that, there is no charge. Even if the person giving the report were mistaken, and people came to believe something false, the only conclusion they would eventually come to, when they had gotten the truth, would be that Cindy was not yet a mother. But if the statement were something scandalous, such as saying that Cindy had been let go from her job because she had been caught embezzling money, the situation is different. This is the kind of statement—we should all know—that Cindy really might want to dispute. And the principle given here is that there must be an opportunity to dispute it. And why?

The first person to speak into the microphone can make a very plausible case. The facts seem damning. But I have seen many situations where everything seemed to be really clear and really obvious, and when I heard the other side, the whole thing flipped. 

And this is why all conscientious Christians must be adamantly opposed to what we might call “trial by Internet.” As mentioned at the beginning, this temptation to be unjust to the person who is first accused by someone, before a defense has been offered, is an ancient temptation. We have always found it easy to be unjust. But what the modern digital era has done is this. We now have the capacity to be unjust at a high rate of speed.

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