Proverbs

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

“A righteous man hateth lying: But a wicked man is loathsome, and cometh to shame” (Proverbs 13:5).

This is a proverb where the first half of the proverb informs us about what the second half is talking about. The first part is very straightforward. A righteous man hates lying. He is a man of the truth. He hates lies, and this means that he loves the truth.

The truth is what can be said rightfully about the way things actually are. Philosophers call this the correspondence view of truth. This means that a declarative statement is true to the extent that it corresponds to the facts out there in the world. If a man says that “the book is on the desk,” that statement is true if there is a desk there, and the book is on it, and if they are the book and desk that the speaker was referring to. This is the correspondence view of truth.

The alternative goes by the label coherence view. The statement is considered to be true to the extent that it is consistent with and coheres with a larger system of values. It does not need to anchored in the realities of the outside world. And this matters because if the coherence view of truth is the way it is, then we are all of us lost and still in our sins.

Paul put it plainly. If Christ were not raised (actually raised), then we are all still in our sins. The proposition Christ was raised is insufficient. The proposition Christ was raised has to correspond to what actually happened on that first Resurrection Sunday. And thus, if I cannot truthfully say the book is on the table . . . we are all still in our sins.

Now the second half of our proverb is that a wicked man is a loathsome man. We also learn that he comes crashing down—he “cometh to shame.” If we pair this up with the first half of the proverb, we learn the nature of this man’s wickedness. He does not hate lying. And a man who refuses to hate lying, shading, prevaricating, or spinning . . . such is a loathsome man, and the shame is that he will be revealed as such.

So the upshot is this: love the truth.

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

“As righteousness tendeth to life: So he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death” (Proverbs 11:19).

The great Puritan minister Thomas Watson once said that certain rebels were the kind who “sinned until they were out of breath.” He did this, citing Jer. 9:5—“And they will deceive every one his neighbour, and will not speak the truth: They have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity.”

These sentiments blend very nicely with what this proverb states. Righteousness has a tendency toward life. This seems more like a steady pace, something much more regular than what the wicked do. The wicked are more impetuous, and they chase evil down. They are zealous for the evil thing and so they chase it down, running after their own death.

Picture a day at an airport, and it is a day in which a certain airplane is going to crash and burn, killing everyone on board. Now imagine a man trying to catch that plane, but he is running late. He runs through the airport, dodging others, colliding with suitcases, tripping several times, and swearing under his breath. He is doing everything he can to make it to the gate on time, and if he makes it, he will have obtained his own death. He runs after his own death until he is out of breath.

Righteous, by contrast, is not in the same kind of hurry. We are of course to be zealous in our love for the Lord, but it is to be a zeal tempered by steadiness. The old Latin saying comes to mind—festina lente, make haste slowly. Being zealous is not the same thing as being frantic.

Lust, however, demands what it wants, and has to have it now. But it is not possible to chase after sin like this without also chasing after the wages of sin like this. And the paycheck of sin is death. More than a few sinners do more than earn that paycheck. They run after their pay. They demand it now.

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

“Riches profit not in the day of wrath: But righteousness delivereth from death” (Prov. 11:4).

We have a very common knowledge of one application of this proverb. When we die, as all of us will, we go to meet our Maker. And when we take that long journey, as our proverb goes, “you can’t take it with you.” Or, put another way, there are no U-Haul trailers behind the hearse.

For the unbeliever, the day he dies . . . it is over. “When a wicked man dieth, his expectation shall perish: And the hope of unjust men perisheth” (Prov. 11:7). So when an evil man dies, his hope dies with him. “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). So the obvious application of this proverb has to do with the day we die. A man’s riches, particularly if they are ill-gotten riches, will provide no comfort of advantage where he is going. The one who is delivered from death is the one who has a righteousness that can so deliver. And as every believer knows, the only righteousness that can do that for us is the righteousness of another, the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

But there is another application of the proverb that we can make. The proverb is true in this life as well. In times of famine, you can’t eat your gold. In times of war, your wealth as often as not will make you a target of marauders. In a flood, your riches will just sink you to the bottom faster.

In times of crisis, it is better to go into that crisis righteous and naked than morally stupid and well-clothed. The righteous man will still have his wits about him. He can think clearly. The indolent and wealthy man has been lulled to sleep by all he possesses, and a sense of entitlement is really not a good preparation for an unexpected tsunami of troubles. Although such a man could hire the help he needs, it is often the case that his understanding of such practical matters has been dulled by all the surfeiting.

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

“He that walketh uprightly walketh surely: But he that perverteth his ways shall be known” (Proverbs 10:9).

A proverb tells us how it usually goes. It is generally the case that when the ungodly take the kind of short cuts that they want to take, their approach usually comes back to bite them. And when the godly decide out of principle to walk in the way God instructed us to walk, their path is secure.

This proverb tells us that to walk upright is to walk confidently, with no risk of taking a tumble. The other half of the proverb tells us, by implication, that the perverted man reveals his perversion by taking that tumble. God is not mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Driving recklessly is a good way to hurry toward the wreck. You cannot plant Canadian thistle and go out at harvest time to bring in the barley.

The person who is trying to persuade himself that it is sensible to pervert the way will perhaps tell himself that an entrepreneurial spirit is one that “takes risks.” This is certainly true, and there is a wise way to take risks. In the parable of the talents, the slaves who received five talents and two talents went out and risked what they had received. They risked what the worthless slave did not want to risk, which is why he buried his. But realize that this means that the parable could have had quite a different ending. The slave with five talents could have lost everything, as well as the slave with two talents, and the wicked slave could have been the only one who returned any of the money to the master. That would not have changed anything.

So taking risks really is a good thing. But to take the risk of bending or breaking the laws of God is not, according to this parable, taking a risking at all. It is running headlong toward that tumble.

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

“Labour not to be rich: Cease from thine own wisdom. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings; They fly away as an eagle toward heaven” (Proverbs 23:4–5).

We have a short pithy proverb in English that says “money talks.” To which a wit might reply, “Yes, my money talks. But it always says good bye.”

Solomon here gives a qualified instruction, an exhortation with regard to getting rich. He says bluntly, do not labor in order to get rich. Doing so would be to rely on your own wisdom, which in this case is clearly faulty. In this case, you would be working hard in order to shoot the moon. You would be setting your eyes on something that was extremely unlikely. Why? Because riches are a winged creature. Riches have the wings of eagles, and when they fly away all you can see are the tail feathers, and they are getting smaller and smaller.

But note that all through the book of Proverbs, young men are urged, again and again, to work hard, to be industrious, to be skilled in their craft, to stay out of poverty, and so on. Urging men to labor hard is actually one of the main themes of the book. That said, here he says, “Do not labor to get rich.” What is going on?

It is a matter of setting realistic goals. Your business plan ought not to be built on the foundation of mounded up cotton candy, mixed together speculative daydreams. The thing you have set your hope on will (almost always) fly away like an eagle. These are proverbs, meaning that they are generally true, overwhelmingly true. It is not like saying “all triangles have three sides,” a statement that is always and everywhere the case. It is more like saying “the early bird catches the worm,” which is occasionally false. A little sleep, and little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and sometimes a lazy man will win Powerball.

Occasionally a man will work hard, and will strike it rich. And while this happens more often in our day than it did in Solomon’s, it is still a rarity. In most cases, a man should work with realistic goals.

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