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

“A man’s pride shall bring him low: But honour shall uphold the humble in spirit.”

Proverbs 29:23

Scripture teaches us in numerous places that a proud man’s pride is going to bring him down, and the Word also gives us the other side of the coin, which is that the humble will be exalted. But there is an important truth residing in that phrase in numerous places.

When Jesus taught us that humility was the way, and that the first will be last and the last first, this was not some new-fangled new covenant thing. The ethic of Scripture is consistent throughout all Scripture. It is not as though God blessed the proud in the Old Testament, but by the time of the Sermon on the Mount it was time to introduce humility. 

Pride really does go before destruction. “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). Not only does the Old Testament teach us this in such passages, but it also gives us certain prime examples to consider—remember Pharaoh, remember Haman, remember Sennacherib, and a number of others. 

Not only so, but we have numerous examples of the humble being exalted—whether it be childless women like Sarah, or Hannah, or Ruth, or men who were hounded and pursued by wicked men who were the means of their promotion. These would be men like David, and Mordecai, and Daniel. God gives grace to the humble.

Failure to understand God’s willingness and eagerness to promote us in due time is what was behind our first parents’ sin in the Garden. God was going to grow them up to a point of maturity where they could rule in the “knowledge of good and evil,” but they grasped for that honor prematurely. And so it was that they, and the entire human race, were brought low. 

And when we enroll in Christ’s school of humility, we are agreeing to learn wisdom the old-fashioned way, slowly, and thereby we are learning to rule. In fact the Hebrew verb that means “to speak a proverb” can also be translated as “to rule.” But there are no short cuts.

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

“He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: But a companion of fools shall be destroyed.”

Proverbs 13:20

In the biblical framework, both wisdom and folly are contagious. This proverb concerns the bystanders, the companions, the associates. 

A true proverb could say that the wise will remain wise, and that fools will be destroyed, and that would be true enough. But this proverb is not directly about the wise themselves, or about the fools themselves. It is about those who hang out with them.

The proverb says that those who associate with wise people will themselves become wise. And it says that companions of fools will at some point share the destination of all fools, which is destruction. The implication is that the companion of fools will become a fool, and then what happens to all fools will obviously happen to him. 

We learn by imitation. This is why we have regional accents, and it is also why some adults have an absolute knack for wise child-rearing, even though they never read a book on it, and certainly couldn’t write a book on it. If they had wise parents, they saw, up close and personal, how they were taught, corrected, and so forth. If they were privileged to have brothers and sisters, they had a front row seat there as well. They walked with the wise and became wise.

Homes that are in a constant state of foolish disarray are homes that instruct the inhabitants how to live in foolish disarray. The end is unhappy disaster.

My father was converted while at the Naval Academy, and at some point he realized that he had no examples to look up to, and yet Scripture taught that we learn important lessons through imitation. This is when he decided that he would start reading missionary biographies. The authority of a good example need not be limited to someone who is still alive. 

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

“Answer not a fool according to his folly, Lest thou also be like unto him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.”

Proverbs 26:4–5

Because we as Christians know that the Bible is a perfect book, we sometimes make the mistake of imposing on the Scriptures our own misguided views of what perfection must look like. It is like imagining that the Garden of Eden was shaped out of colored plastics, so that no leaves would ever rot on the forest floor. Or made out of stainless steel, so that we wouldn’t be distracted with all those different colors. It is like assuming that Adam would not have been able to shuffle a prelapsarian deck of cards, because every hand dealt would contain four aces or a royal flush.

In the same way, we sometimes confuse perfection, which is an attribute of Scripture, with fastidious perfectionism, which is not. For example, we are not to convict anyone of a crime unless there are two or three witnesses. So which is it? Two? Or three? A wise judge, learned in the Scriptures, will sometimes require two witnesses. Other times he will say that three are necessary. He is after independent confirmation, and if two of the witnesses 

These two proverbs, back to back, obviously contradict each other. But they are only a contradiction if we apply them woodenly. Say that a fool has said something. There are certain times when it is necessary to not give him the dignity of a reply. If you reply, you are in danger of starting to play his game, which you should not want. But there are other times . . . say that the fool has got a microphone, and thousands are following him. Say that you have an opportunity to shut him down? You should do so because to let him go on would be to let him marinate in his own conceits. The decision must be made on the basis of the circumstances. 

Take a modern example. I am frequently attacked online by trolls, and one of the first things I do is click on the profile picture. If the person has three followers (mom and two sisters), I don’t answer. Why should I give my microphone to a fool? That would make his day. But suppose he has 100,000 followers, but is every bit as foolish. Now he just gave me the microphone. 

But the main thing to avoid is becoming a fool in fighting folly, and the second main thing to avoid is allowing a fool to rampage on, unimpeded. It all depends.  

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

“Good understanding giveth favour: But the way of transgressors is hard” (KJV).

“Good understanding gains favor, But the way of the unfaithful is hard” (NKJV).

Proverbs 13:15

We have a proverb in English that at least rhymes with this one. Life is hard. It’s harder if you’re stupid.

When someone understands how God designed the world to run, and considers the interplay between the characters that we know, the end result is that such a person “gains favor.” He took time to think it through, and this has the result of smoothing his path for him. The favor that he gains would start with the favor or grace that he enjoys in the goodness of God, but it would also extend to the favor he receives from his fellow creatures. 

A young man who listens to what his father is teaching him in this book of Proverbs is going to find that two-fold blessing. “So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God andman” (Prov. 3:4).

It is not surprising that this is how Jesus is described for us. “And Jesus increased in wisdom andstature, and in favour with God and man” (Luke 2:52).

The transgressor on the other hand, the unfaithful man, is someone who feels compelled to stuff rocks in his own bed. Life is challenging enough without veering off into territory that is going to make it doubly or triply difficult. That territory would be any place that disregards the law/word of God. God designed us, and His Word describes for us the kind of treatment His creation should receive.

There are many short cuts and hacks and jury-rigged options that we believe make us sophisticated and knowing. But it would have been better to just follow the owner’s manual, the one that came from the manufacturer. 

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

The king by judgment establisheth the land: But he that receiveth gifts overthroweth it” (KJV).

“The king establishes the land by justice, But he who receives bribes overthrows it.” (NKJV).

Proverbs 29:4

The Western legal tradition understood the first part of this parable very well, and has been overthrown by our neglect of the second part of it.

Justice should be the first concern of the magistrate. And by justice, we do not mean acceding to the demands of a complaining envy—as though it were somehow “unjust” for one man to have more privileges than another. No, by justice we have to mean two things. 

The first is that the definition of justice must be settled by sober exegesis of the law/word of God. The painting of Justice at Lausanne illustrates this well, when it shows Lady Justice, eyes open, pointing down at an open Bible with her sword. That means that justice must not be blind when it comes to the teaching of the Word of God. But this leads to the second crucial thing, which is that Justice must be blind when it comes to certain details of particular cases that come before her. It must be a matter of complete indifference whether the accused is male, or black, or poor, or white, or rich. It must not matter. What matters is the truth, and not whether the defendant is a member of a victimized class. 

One of the central reasons for our legal apostasy from this understanding of true justice is that men in authority began taking bribes secretly. Now that we have come to the point of the land being overthrown completely by their corruption, we have gotten to the point where they take the bribes openly. What once was a beautiful crystal lake has become a brown cesspool. 

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