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

“The glory of young men is their strength: And the beauty of old men is the gray head”

Proverbs 20:29

One way of looking at this proverb is to acknowledge that there is a time and a season for everything. There is a time to be young and limber, and a time to be old and creaky. 

But the proverb doesn’t put it that way. It does not compare this advantage to that disadvantage. Rather it compares a young man’s glory to an old man’s beauty. 

This proverb was probably in the mind of the apostle John when he wrote about children, fathers, and young men. First, the children were blessed because they were forgiven (1 John 2:12), and because they had known the Father (1 John 2:13). 

But then John gets to the same general categories addressed by our proverb, and the things he emphasizes map onto the proverb fairly well.

The young men are honored as those who have overcome the wicked one (1 John 2:13), and because the Word of God lives in them, because they are strong, and because they have overcome the wicked one (1 John 2:14). Strength is mentioned both in Proverbs and in this passage, and the fact of overcoming, which requires strength, is mentioned twice. 

John has written the fathers because they have known Him who was from the beginning (1 John 2:13, 14). The fathers were written because of their knowledge of God, because they were wise. 

Of course it is possible for a young man to use his strength in the wrong way, and it is possible for an old man to be a fool. But when young men are being what they ought to be—strong, aggressive, and not risk-averse, the Bible calls it a glory. And when an old man remembers what it was like to be strong and aggressive, and still carries the scars of not being risk averse, the symbol of that is his gray head—which Scripture calls beautiful. 

In the Lord, youth should not disparage old age, and in the Lord, old age must not disparage youth.

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

“There is gold, and a multitude of rubies: But the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel”

Proverbs 20:15

At first glance this proverb might seem to be just a simple comparison—as much as to say it is better to have this than that. Now of course there is something to that, and we can take this proverb at its face value. It is better to be knowledgable and wise than to have great riches. A man should always prefer one of them over the other, and if he does so, then he has already embarked on the path of wisdom.

But I believe that if we look closely, we can detect another layer of meaning, and that would be the distinction between riches and wealth. Riches would be having the money on hand. Wealth would be found in the knowledge of what to do with the resources that you have on hand. 

Put another way, we are not being told that riches are one thing and that knowledge is a completely different kind of thing, but a whole lot better. It would be more informative to see this as saying that knowledge is in itself “a precious jewel,” as the proverb expresses it. 

There is a difference between a redneck who won 10 million dollars in the lottery, and a diligent and hard-working person who bootstrapped himself up from his paper route as a teenager to a 10 million dollar fortune and a chain of successful retail stores. The difference between them is not to be found in the 10 million dollars. They both have that. The difference is that the second person has knowledge.

So put in a way as to make my point here, riches are riches, sure enough, but knowledge is true wealth—the very best jewel. But of course, in order for knowledge to be true wealth, it needs to be true knowledge.

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

“A king that sitteth in the throne of judgment scattereth away all evil with his eyes”

Proverbs 20:8

One of the tasks that God assigns to the magistrate is the tasking of scattering evil.

We are aware of one of the more obvious ways of doing this. Paul says that the ruler is appointed by God, and the one who does evil should be afraid—because the ruler does not bear the sword in vain (Rom. 13:4). This is a right-handed justice. When this does not happen, then public order starts to disintegrate. 

“Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Ecclesiastes 8:11). 

The second way this salutary thing can be accomplished is when a king does not tolerate wickedness in his cabinet, in his close circle of advisers. When a man assumes rule, what kind of men does he surround himself with? 

“Then said he unto me, Son of man, these are the men that devise mischief, and give wicked counsel in this city” (Ezekiel 11:2).

A ruler has a duty to listen to the counsel of good and wise men, and not wicked and mischievous ones.

But a third way of dealing with evil in a realm is by means of the bully pulpit. In our proverb here, the king scatters the wicked by means of moral authority. He causes the wicked to flee with his eyes, by means of his countenance. In Romans 13, as the deacon of God, he is charged with more than just punishing wrongdoers. He is to reward the righteous, and they are to receive this reward through the praise of the king (Rom. 13:3).

One of the best ways to discern the effete nature of our times is to look at a list of the recipients of the presidential Medal of Freedom. This is the highest award that can be given outside a military context, and so we should not be surprised that Richard Nixon gave one to Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. But other recipients have included Lucille Ball, Bill Cosby, and Mr. Rogers—not to mention previous presidents. What goes around comes around. 

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

“Also to punish the just is not good, nor to strike princes for equity”

Proverbs 17:26

“Also, to punish the righteous is not good, nor to strike princes for their uprightness”

Proverbs 17:26

Christians who want their fellow believers simply to defer to the state whenever some decree or other is handed down are quick to appeal to Romans 13. But that famous passage does not teach us that citizens are subjects who must do whatever they are told. 

No, that passage teaches us that all of us are under authority, the magistrate as well as the citizen. The magistrate is called diakonos twice in v. 4 and leitourgos in v. 6). The magistrate is a servant, a deacon, a minister. He is under orders. In that passage, he is commanded to reward the righteous and to punish the wrongdoer (vv. 3-4).

That point is reinforced in this proverb. When the magistrate rebels against his heavenly commission, and begins to punish the righteous, we have crossed over into a state of tyranny. Proverbs says that to punish the just is “not good.” In the same way, it is not good to strike at princes who are, unlike the king, standing uprightly. 

If the king has gotten out of line, the princes are lesser magistrates, and they might be in a position to do something about it. Moreover, taking all of Scripture into account, they are under an obligation before God to do so. 

When a citizen takes a righteous stand, say by protesting at an abortion clinic, and he is arrested and wickedly charged, this is a photo negative of what the magistrate—God’s deacon, remember—is charged to do. It is not the case that Christians who resist this are rejecting God’s authority. They are resisting a man who took the badge that God gave him, spit on it, and threw it away.

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

“Wisdom is before him that hath understanding; But the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth”

Proverbs 17:24

This is a proverb that encourages us to think that the wise thing for us to do is right there in front of us. Duties are rarely across the globe, but rather are to be found in the “next step.”

By the same token, the fool’s eyes are beyond the horizon. 

A moment’s reflection should reveal why this is. If our duties are right in front of us, we can see what they actually are, and we are responsible to engage them. There they are—pick them up and go. In this scenario, our duties come to us from outside. They are assigned to us. We don’t make them up as we go.

But if we are playing the fool, and our eyes are darting back and forth, thousands of miles away, we are in a position to make up our duties, to fashion all our responsibilities to our liking, and to award ourselves with as many honors and awards as we can think of. In other words, we are set free to daydream. And all this daydreaming is detached from what is actually going on in the actual world.

Put another way, daydreaming grants us a measure of felt autonomy. When we look at the path of wisdom, however, there is no felt autonomy at all. There is the diaper to change. There is the report to write. There is the class to teach. We are summoned by the providence of God to do the next thing, which is an obvious thing. Moreover, it is an obvious thing that we are not in charge of, which is the principal reason it rubs us so wrong. 

All things considered, we sometimes feel like we are lost, not knowing what we should do. But the real problem is that we do know what we should do, and we don’t really feel like it.

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