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

When the wicked rise, men hide themselves: But when they perish, the righteous increase.

Proverbs 28:28

The wicked and the righteous cannot occupy the same space. They are incompossible. One of the first things that God did after the Fall was to establish this as the foundational antithesis—the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent were not going to be able to “just get along” (Gen. 3:15). The history of the world is bound up with the history of this long war.

In this proverb, we see that when the wicked are in the ascendancy, other men need to take shelter. This is a natural consequence of the wicked exhibiting either their cruelty or their vainglory. When they are being cruel, they destroy the lives of others on purpose (Ps. 71:4). The impulses of malice provide their own justification. But when they want to be known as “benefactors” (Luke 22:25), they do all their damage by means of blundering and incompetence. In either case, reasonable men must take measures to protect themselves. Gideon has to thresh wheat in the wine vat (Judg. 6:11), hiding from the Midianite IRS.

The alternative is not found when the righteous and unrighteous work out a deal. The alternative is found when the wicked perish. And when the wicked perish, often done in by their very own bad ideas, the righteous are able to flourish and increase.

And this is what our basic prayer should be, that God give His people room to grow. But this is not going to happen apart from the wicked being removed—either by removal, or by conversion.

“I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:1–4).

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

He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread: But he that followeth after vain persons shall have poverty enough.

Proverbs 28:19

There are some things we shouldn’t have to be told, but because we are a sinful race, we do have to be told them, and repeatedly. Notice the upshot of this particular proverb. If you work hard and intelligently in the field, you will have plenty of food. But if, instead of this, you chase after the fellow promising rainbows for everybody, you are going to have plenty of something else, and that something else is poverty. Some people are grain farmers and other people are poverty farmers. In either case, you will always get plenty of whatever you are growing.

There are two applications of this that we should make. The first is to remember that we are dealing with proverbs about real life, not axioms in geometry. “All hard workers have plenty of bread” is certainly true, but it is not true the same way that “all triangle have three sides” is true. There are exceptions, but there are not so many exceptions that it should in any way alter the way you live. Working hard is the right thing to do, period, and it usually pays off. But even when it does not “pay off,” it was still the right thing. Hard work and diligence are valued by all of God’s true disciples, as they are found in every nation.

But the second application is that in our day there are certain liars (the same kind of vain persons that our proverb mentions) who are maintaining that things like industry, hard work, showing up on time, diligence, and so on, are “white” values, and that to live in this way is to perpetuate white supremacy. If you are struggling to understand how anybody could argue for anything so stupid, that probably means that you were educated in white supremacist categories, and are still trapped in them.

But God’s Word is always sure, even if Solomon was white, and people who pursue vanities like this are pursuing poverty. They will find it, and if they don’t repent, their only consolation in that poverty will be that they successfully stuck it to the Man. Showed him.

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

As a roaring lion, and a ranging bear; so is a wicked ruler over the poor people. The prince that wanteth understanding is also a great oppressor: But he that hateth covetousness shall prolong his days.

Proverbs 28:15–16

Simple people get worked over in two distinct ways. The first is when their rulers are cruel and wicked. Those who have this kind of rule are like a lion, roaring for its prey, or a hungry bear, ranging here and there, looking for a meal. The poor are like a vulnerable gazelle or deer. Those who rule in this way are arrogant, cruel, vindictive, and driven by their insolence. When this is the case, things are bad, but at least we all know where we are.

But Solomon goes on. The poor people are also greatly oppressed by ignorant rulers. This is the curse of our day. In days gone by, there were rulers like Tamerlane who exulted in his cruelty, ordering towers to be fashioned out of the skulls of his enemies. That kind of thing is generally frowned on these days. 

But progressive leftist politics is still a great destroyer. It is a destroyer in the hands of a Stalin, who had the heart of a Tamerlane, and it is a destroyer in the hands of an Eleanor Roosevelt, who had a heart of a goop. It doesn’t matter how syrupy the intentions are, the poor are still wiped out by the grand intentions of the social engineers.

Notice the antidote to both cruelty and incompetence is hatred of covetousness. When a man is qualified under God to bear rule, one of his principle qualifications is his hatred of covetousness. “Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens” (Exodus 18:21). This qualification is so important that it is applied all the way down to “rulers of tens.”

Men who hate covetousness will obviously refrain from the smash and grab approach to wealth that the cruel love to employ. But they will also reject all the schemes of uplift and social betterment that some think will be rendered effective simply because they were inspired by good intentions. But cruelty hath slain its thousands; good intentions its tens of thousands.  

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

They that forsake the law praise the wicked: But such as keep the law contend with them.

Proverbs 28:4

One of the reasons we sometimes find ourselves in shooting wars, where all the questions about pacifism naturally arise, is because we have previously acquiesced in another more subtle form of pacifism. That is the kind of pacifism that does not want to dispute, or challenge, or debate. We in our complacency want to think that “debates settle nothing,” which is not true at all. We sometimes think we are being peacemakers when we are only being lazy.

Notice what this proverb says. There is a group of people that forsakes the law of God, and as a result of this forsaking, they praise the wicked. This sets the stage for a conflict, which happens because those who keep the law contend with them. It is likely that the righteous contend with both groups—those who forsake the law and consequently praise the wicked, and also the wicked. The verb contend means to oppose, to strive against, to challenge in court, or even to wage war.

There are many manifestations of wickedness on display in our generation, and it appears to many Christians that these manifestations have grown to the point where opposition would be fruitless. But David could have said that about Goliath, but in faith he did not. He could have reacted to Goliath the same way the rest of the Israelite army did—but he refused. So the first point to make is that just because the wickedness has grown to a great size is no reason for refusing to face it.

But a lesson should be drawn from all of this. Most of the rampant evils we are looking at today would have been much easier to defeat had we just contended with them as soon as the law was initially forsaken. Small weeds are easier to uproot than large ones. So we don’t want to be like that fellow who only drinks when he is alone, or with somebody. We don’t want to be those Christians who refuse to engage because the wickedness is “too small,” and then later refuse to engage because it has grown “too big.”  

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

Where no oxen are, the crib is clean: But much increase is by the strength of the ox.

Proverbs 14:14

Another way to state this is to say that profit is messy. Profit is of necessity messy. A good way to keep your workshop clean is by never going in there. A good way to keep your desk in great shape is by never sitting down at it.

Returning to the proverb, do you want a clean barn or a productive barn? If you want a productive barn, then you want one that will be routinely and regularly and constantly in need of a cleaning.

Work is hard. Work is heavy. Work leaves bits of things on the floor that need to be swept up at the end of the day. An elegant table requires a messy kitchen.

Now of course, as sinners, we have a propensity to quote the wrong proverb to ourselves. As C.S. Lewis once put it, when confronted with a flood we break out the fire extinguishers. We crowd to the side of the boat that is about to go under. What this means is that the lazy farmer who needs to shovel out his barn a lot more frequently than he does, is the farmer who is likely to know about this particular proverb. A cross-stitch sampler of it may even be hanging over his mantle. But he still needs to clean out the barn.

There are disorderly places that are not the sign of productivity, and have descended to nothing more than being a fire hazard. To the proprietors of all such, the exhortation would be to remember that there is a ditch on bothsides of the road. If the fastidious need to learn how productive the right kind of messiness can be, then theyneed to learn how productive the right kind regular maintenance can be.

So you should clean up your workspace regularly. But you should do this because you mess it up regularly.

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