Word of prayer, and we'll spend some time in the book of Proverbs. Father, we just thank you for today. We thank you for your love, for your mercy, and your grace. We ask that we would see Christ, that you would help us see him in the text. that we would make much of him, that we would glory in him, and that we would rely upon the grace given to us by you to have a life that looks more and more like your son, Jesus Christ. Just so very thankful that we have this opportunity this morning to look into your word, to see the things that are found in your word, We just ask that you would continually help us, continually help us to see Christ, continually help us to live for your honor and glory. We thank you and love you in your son's name, amen. So it's said that you should never meet your heroes, and I suppose that's probably true. I know we all have heroes. I have heroes. And I've got chance to meet some of them. And you know what ends up happening when you meet your heroes? You realize that they're human. And who wants to have a hero that's just slightly better than you? That's not hero material, right? You normally think of heroes as these people that are so extraordinary, right? That they exemplify every single value that you value, and then you meet these people and you go, well, he's just a little bit better than me. Why do I look up to him? He's just like me. We've all meet our heroes and we all think that, but there's one hero that we have that I guarantee you when we meet him, We will not be underwhelmed. We will be completely overwhelmed when we see Christ our hero, right? So this morning, we're gonna be in Proverbs 28. We're gonna look at this passage. This passage is an interesting passage. It kind of deals with two lions, and we'll talk about this in a second. But really what we're going to see is we're going to see this this really wise person, and the value of being wise. And we can't think about wisdom without thinking about Jesus, who personifies God's wisdom. And we're gonna look at this, and I guarantee you, we're gonna look and go, Well, no, Jesus did that, Jesus did that, Jesus didn't do that, Jesus did that. So we're gonna look at Jesus, our hero, and we're gonna see three things of this text about our hero, three things that our hero has that we should want in our life, that we should exemplify in our own life, that as we yield to the spirit, he's gonna reproduce these things in us. Verse one of chapter 28 of Proverbs, we're gonna see our hero is bold. And so there's gonna be a sense of boldness. We need to have boldness. In verses two through five, we're gonna see our hero is just. Oh, he's got a greater sense of justice than you and I have. And lastly, what we're gonna see in verse six is that our hero is one of character. So, Proverbs 28, verses one through six. This passage, if we were to break it up, and look at it, and if we had far more time to discuss this text, we would see, and I think pretty clearly, that in the first 14 verses, there's this depiction of the righteous, and it's interesting how it starts off. It starts off with, the wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion, right? That lion. So, verse one has this lion, and then it describes this righteousness, in what we've already seen in Solomon's fashion, right? As he describes righteousness, he also describes folly to help us understand righteousness and understand wisdom. But then notice in verse 15, he says, like a roaring lion or a charging bear is wicked rulers over a poor people. So then really what you're gonna see from verse 15 to the end of the chapter is really this sense of the bad lion, right? So the first 14 verses deal with the good lion, right? The kind of lion we should wanna be, right? This bold, strong, ferocious, righteous lion. Then there's a bad lion, right? And that's not good. You don't wanna deal with a bad lion, you wanna deal with a good lion, right? And so what you really see is you kind of see Solomon use this lion as a metaphor. of all these quality traits. And so in verse one, notice what he says here as we think about righteousness and boldness. Righteousness and boldness, okay? And Jesus had righteousness in spades, right? And guess what else he had in spades? Boldness. There's never been anybody more bold than Jesus. Jesus was the boldest one because he was the most righteous. So notice what it says. It says, the wicked flee when no one pursues. Kind of interesting here, the wicked. We're gonna talk a lot about the wicked in this text. We've already talked a lot about them. In the book of Proverbs, in Solomon's mind, this is a person that doesn't act in wisdom, doesn't have discernment, doesn't say the right things. the right time, doesn't make the right decisions. We would say that this person is not Christ-like, that they are even probably a step further than just not being Christ-like, because even believers who place their faith in Christ don't always act like Christ. That's sin. But this is about that person who completely avoids, completely rejects, completely walks away from righteousness and from God's word, right? So the wicked, this is somebody that doesn't want to follow God's law. The wicked flee, and this word for flee is, well, it means flee, it means run away, right? They run away, but it doesn't mean just run away, it means run away because you think there's a threat, right? So it's like the idea of escaping. This is like running for your life. Our family, we have a VR headset. We do the virtual reality games. When I first got it, I did a documentary on sharks. So I'm in this virtual reality world. There's fish swimming around. It's awesome. And I hear the narrator go, and here comes the great white. And I'm looking around. I don't see that stupid great white. And I'm thinking, this narrator is lying. And here I am, floating in an imaginary ocean, watching imaginary fish swim underneath me, rile around me, and I turn, and I see a shark right here. I run for my life. Actually, I started to punch, and I accidentally punched the couch. But that feeling That feeling of, here is danger, I need to get out as fast as I possibly can. That's the idea, right? I'm scared for my life. So the wicked, they flee. But notice the ironic thing here. It's when no one's pursuing them. And you go, why would somebody run when nobody's chasing them? That seems strange, doesn't it? It seems strange for all of a sudden somebody to just get up and run away, scared for their life. And you go, why are you afraid? Afraid of what? Now, many commentators, and I think they're correct, say that this fleeing is a result of their wickedness, right? This is what happens when you have a guilty conscience. You flee, you run, you escape to something, right? There's like this escapism, I escape to this, I run to this, why? Because my conscience says that something, I done something wrong. Ultimately, I think all of us would say, Yeah, the wicked flee when no one's chasing, and we get that sense, Chuck kind of talked about it this morning, that you ever gone over speed limit by the fort, and then you see a cop go by, and all of a sudden, all you think is, he's gonna pull me over. He doesn't even know you were speeding, right? But there's that, I was guilty, right? I was guilty, I did something wrong. So my conscience says, and so all of a sudden you start going into gangster mode of like, okay, if he chases me, how am I going to get away? flee when no one's chasing. But I think this goes deeper than just that. I think this goes deeper from you flee from God. You want to escape from God. Romans 1 describes this, right? On righteous people, suppressing the truth on unrighteousness. John chapter three discusses this, right? Men love darkness rather than light. Because if they come to the light, what happens? Their darkness is exposed. So what do you do? You run into the darkness because you don't want the darkness to be exposed. So you run deeper into it. They flee, no one's chasing them because they realize that they violated God's righteous law. Right? That's the idea. It's a guilty conscience. And this is what a guilty conscience does. Causes them to shrink back. Causes them to run. Another example is think of Adam and Eve. They're in the garden. They eat from the tree and what ends up happening? They hide themselves. That's the first thing they do is they hide themselves, they cover themselves up. God comes walking, and what do they do? They go hide themselves. Why are you hiding? Why are you hiding? This is that principle, right? The wicked flee when no one pursues. Now, before we go on to this next part, I think it's really important for us to also remember this. The righteous do this too, right? Any time that I sin and I leave that sin unconfessed, That affects me. That affects you. And there are times where I will be reading God's Word and I will have that guilty conscience from something, right? Got a little bit too angry with the kids or did that or did this. I'm reading a text and the text immediately doesn't even speak to what I'm dealing with but I'm convicted by the righteousness of God and I'm left with two and I would love to say that my solution has always been I get to my knees and I repent and I say I'm sorry and I confess my sins. But sometimes my solution is, not today, and I close the book, right? This happens to the righteous. We do this too. Don't think that the wicked just run. No, this happens whenever we have a guilty conscience. We don't want to be confronted with that. We don't want to think about that. So what do we do? We run, and nobody's chasing us because of the violation of our conscience, right? Because of the violation of God's holy law. But notice what the righteous do, and it's kind of an interesting thing here. It says, but the righteous are bold. So the question is, why are they bold, right? Well, I guess we should start back. Why are they righteous, right? What makes somebody righteous? Not to re-preach the whole book of Galatians, but we went through the book of Galatians. Remember that you are righteous because of faith and you are declared righteous. That's been a principle from the very beginning. Genesis, all the way back in Genesis, what Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness. So you're righteous on the basis of faith. You're righteous because God graciously imputes that to you. From that imputation of righteousness, we as believers then have the indwelling Holy Spirit who then helps us live righteously. So even with Solomon talking, when he says the righteous, this would be those who, it has to mean those who start off by faith, placing their faith in the promises of God in the Old Testament of the coming Messiah. And because they believed God's word, there was this imputation of righteousness, right? It's credited to them as righteousness. For us, it's far better because we have Christ, right? We're imputed with Christ's righteousness. So the righteous, though we may do things that are wrong, We don't shrink back, right? There's a sense of Christ has already dealt with that. Christ has already dealt with my sin. He's already dealt with that. There's now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. So when I'm confronted with my sin as a believer, it is a little bit different, because I go, yeah, that's already dealt with, and I know that there's forgiveness, and there's a desire to be right with the Lord. So in one sense, The wicked have a guilty conscience and they flee. I, as a righteous person, yielding to the power of the Spirit is doing what? Hopefully I'm doing righteous things. And as I'm doing righteous things, guess what? I don't have a guilty conscience. I can stand. I can stand firm. There's no shrinking back. Why? Because I have a clean conscience. I've been doing what God asked me to do. I'm leading a life that's Christ-like. And even when I'm confronted with my sins, which we all sin, there's a sense in which I forgive or ask for forgiveness of my sins. And what does 1 John say? If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Stand firm, right? I'm courageous. I don't shrink back at sin. I take sin head on, right? When situations come up, I don't run away because I'm going, well, if I stand firm here, they might find out about some of the stuff that I did in the past. Uh-oh. You know, bad things will happen. There's this sense of boldness that comes with righteousness. I think, and then it's interesting that he uses the image of a lion, right? This ferocious animal that, at least when I think of a lion and when they thought of the lion back in the day, it was this king, right? It was this animal that ain't scared of anybody, right? A lion isn't scared of anybody. And that's the sense. And I think of Christ. Christ was bold. He stood up for what was right. Regardless, regardless, right? I mean, he loves goodness and righteousness more than anyone else that I've ever seen, any other human. Now, we know that Jesus is fully God and fully man, but there's never been anyone like Jesus that loves goodness and righteousness as much as he has. So he stands bold, he's the most righteous person, and he stands boldly. Think about some of the things that Jesus boldly says to those who oppress him, those who are trying to come against him. He stands boldly against them, right? He doesn't shrink back from doing God's will. You and I, there might be some tentativeness for us. Not our hero Christ. Christ was bold, he was righteous. Now, don't confuse boldness with belligerence, right? Because that's something completely different that's sinful, right? This type of boldness looks at God's word, says this is what God's word says, this is what righteousness is, and I ain't moving. This is it. This is it. I'm standing firm. Belligerence says I'm right. And I'm willing to tell you every way that I'm right. Boldness is not that, right? Confidence in God is not that. Faith in God, fidelity in God is not that. Boldness is courage to stand up for what is right. Courage to stand up for the Lord. This morning we talked a little bit about suffering. We have brothers and sisters in India who are suffering great persecution, right? Not only from the people that we know from Behit, but there are fellow IFCA churches right now, like us, same doctrine, on the other side of the country, which are losing their homes and their houses. And guess what? When you talk to them, They ain't moving. Talk to Behit. Behit's like, I'm going back to where they just beat me up to share the gospel. That's the boldness that Christianity gives us. Now, we would go, well, I would never do that. I think we're all believers, and I think we would stand in the face of persecution. I think we do stand for what is right, and willing to stand for what is right. I know you. It might be hard at first, but I know. I know your character, and I know that by the power of the Spirit, we become bold, standing up for what's right, just like our hero. Now, just notice this next one, verse two through five. Our hero has just noticed this. By the way, this one's gonna be really hard to talk about in today's current political climate, so pray for me, brothers and sisters, that we talk about Christ and not about anybody else. Here we go. When a land transgresses, it has many rulers. Lot could be said. A lot could be said about that, right? When a land transgresses, guess what? Guess what one of the results of sin is? You get a lot of rulers. The government expands, right? I think here, when we talk about this transgression, We gotta be very careful. We gotta be biblical on all things, right? It would be very easy for me to stand up and talk about all of the things that everyone has ever done in government that's been wrong. I don't think that's necessarily what Solomon's talking about. What I think that he's talking about is he's talking about this reality that you find in Romans chapter one. So let's go to Romans chapter one. Here's this reality of what happens. This is what happens in societies. We have seen this throughout many societies. You can go back and look at Romans chapter one, and many societies that have fallen, you could just, you just go, well that's the explanation of Romans chapter one. So here it is. Verse 18, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. The idea here for suppress is the idea of pushing it down. Think of somebody trying to drown something. That's the sense, right? Drown it, push it down. So here you have God's wrath is revealed. So what do ungodly men do? They try to suppress the truth. Suppress the truth of what? Remember? The wicked flee when nobody's pursuing them. They're trying to drown out the truth. Same thing. And it says, for what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power, his divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world, and the things that have been made, so they're without excuse. Meaning that they're able to look at creation, they're able to deduce that there is a being with great power, has this divine nature, clearly has this retribution, you transgress against his law, and there's a wrath that comes for you, They can understand this and these things are clearly seen. And then it says in verse 20, for although they knew God, this doesn't mean that they know God in a salvific way, in a way to save them, that they know of the existence of a God, right? They know that there's this God and that they should be right with this God, right? When you find out that God's angry, the solution should be how do I make amends, right? What do I do to fix that? That's the right response. And Paul's gonna point out that you can only do that through Christ. That's a proper response. Any other response is the incorrect response. So I know people that are theists. They know about God, the existence of God. They may even read the Bible and may be able to have some really good thoughts about God that you go, you know what, yeah, no, I kind of see that. But they don't know God through Christ. So even though they know things about God, notice what they do. They don't honor him or give thanks to him, which is the real crime. This is where societies fall. This is it. You want to know why societies fall? Because they don't honor God and they don't give thanks to God. That's it. Lot of other stuff result from that. Now, let's be careful here. What nation has ever existed that has not had sin? None. Every nation, every people have sinned. Every nation fails. That's why Jesus came. You see, it all goes back to Jesus is the answer and the solution, even for these nations, right? So what ends up happening when you don't honor God, and you don't give thanks, well then all of a sudden you start thinking weird, right? Because they're suppressing the truth, so they become futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts are darkened. But they claim to be wise, they claim to be smart, and they may even sound smart. They may even be smart, and make really smart claims that are really foolish. Because what they do is they take the exchange, the glory of God, and they give it to the creature, to the creation. Then what happens? Then God gives them over. So when we talk about transgressions of land, of the land or of a people, let's be very careful what we start filling in there about transgressions. You do realize that in Romans 1, the great transgressions were not honoring God and not being thankful to God. Those are the big sins. There's a lot of other sins. But one of the results that Solomon points out is that here in Proverbs 28.2 is when there's a lot of sin, there necessarily has to be this growth of rulers. The sense isn't because it's a necessity. It's not like the whole society as a whole goes, oh, there's a lot more things going on that are really bad. Maybe if we get more qualified people in office, that will fix the solution. That's not what's happening here. What's happening here is the society is so corrupt that everybody says, well, now I'm gonna take it over. This is a result of rebellion. This is a result of sin. So then notice the next part, it says, but with a man of understanding and knowledge, its stability will be long continued. Once again, we gotta be careful what it doesn't mean. This doesn't mean, by the way, that big government is always the problem, but the real solution is found in the people. Do not be foolish, that is not what's being compared here. Remember when it says the land before? Do we think that Solomon is so naive that he goes, when the ground starts sinning, that's when we start getting? No, he's talking about the people, the nation state. So when the nation state sins, there's this rebellion and power grab, right? There's no stability. And then when it says a man, literally, when the people of the land have understanding and knowledge, its stability will continue, meaning that when society generally has biblical discernment and knows God, there's stability. Once again, how many nations that have existed had biblical discernment and universal knowledge of God? That's why none of them have lasted. None of them have. But what this points out is something very important. What's the most important thing for a society? Biblical discernment and knowledge of God. That's it. That's it. But what about the leaders? What about the leaders? What does that matter? God can make leaders out of rocks. What's the most important thing is biblical discernment. The most important thing is knowledge of God. So why do we play these politic games? Is it important to be concerned about some politics? I suppose, yeah, as a good citizen, we wanna be good citizens. We wanna vote our conscience. We have that right as Americans to vote our conscience. And you should vote a biblical conscience when you get into the voting booth. Whatever that looks like, that's between you and God. But what I'm telling you is, a society that has more believers is better because the real power that changes people's hearts and minds is the power of God and the gospel. That's it. What changes our community when we start making biblical decisions, right? So you see this, right? Understanding, we've talked about this understanding. This is discernment. This is that determining between what is right and what is wrong, and picking what is right. That's what's needed. That's what wisdom is, and that can only happen when we're walking by the power of the Spirit. And then this knowledge, As we've discussed before, I see this knowledge as being this holistic knowledge that begins with us knowing God. That begins with us knowing God through Christ. This one who's come and died on the cross for our sins, who was buried and rose again on the third day. And that when we place our faith solely in the person and work of Jesus Christ, what happens? Then we know God. We enter into this relationship and we're indwelt by the Holy Spirit. That's the solution. Let's do one more proverb, I didn't even get close. I was telling Greg this morning, you know, last night, I was gonna go all the way down to verse 14. That was a joke. I realized this morning, we ain't getting to 14. I thought we might get to verse six, but we're not. Let's get to verse three, and then we'll celebrate the Lord's table. Because I think this next one's important as well. It says a poor man who oppresses the poor is a beating rain that leaves no food. Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law strive against them. I just want to make this comment. We'll probably talk more about it next week as we continue talking about Christ our hero and this one of virtue and justice, right? True justice can only be understood by knowing God and knowing his word, right? We've already seen that stability that comes from biblical discernment and knowing God. That brings stability, right? That's a good sense of justice. But in our society, things have always been wonky, but they're very wonky right now. And I think some of the reason that things are very wonky is because there are people who don't know Jesus. I know that's probably very simplistic, but that's the way we need to think. And when you don't know Jesus and you refuse to listen to God's word, right, as said here in verse four, those who forsake God's word, guess what ends up happening? You start getting this weird view of justice. Right? You start getting this weird understanding of justice. And in our society, a lot of when we talk about justice, we talk about those who have oppressed those who do not have. Right? And that's just everywhere. You hear that almost all the time. And here, you gotta love the Bible. The Bible goes, Nope. You realize that anyone at any time can oppress another person at any time. Whether you have something or not, whether you have power or not, sinners do sinful things. Oppression is not as black and white as powerful people that have money always go after people who don't. No. The Bible calls out all sin equally saying anyone who oppresses another one is bad. And here in verse three it's even worse because think about this, somebody who has nothing goes to oppress someone who doesn't have anything to get what they have. So you have this vicious cycle of people just hurting people for nothing. And so that's the image of this hard rain that destroys all the crops. But it comes from this, verse four. But those who forsake the law praise the wicked. Why? They've already rejected God's word. Everything they think about is like Romans one, where they celebrate all those things that go against God's law. So anytime somebody does something that's not according to God's law, it would make sense that they would celebrate that. And then notice this. Gotta love this. Those who keep the law strive against them. Strive against that injustice, strive against the forsaking of the law, right? Strive against the celebration of that wickedness. Couldn't help but think of our savior. Jesus did not succumb to temptation, though there were many temptations. He stood as bold as a lion, right? Bold as a lion. He stood up against the oppression of people in a way that no one else in history has ever done. He stood up against a religious system that wanted to soak everything out of people, and Jesus stood up and said no. But he just didn't say no, he just wasn't a fighter. What did he do? He came to instruct them on true righteousness. Not only that, did he not only just instruct on true righteousness, but then what did he do? He then was obedient to the death, obedient to the point of death on the cross. His fight against unrighteousness cost him his life, and then there's then that imputation of righteousness which comes. So when I think about this bold, strong, just hero, It's Jesus. Jesus is the hero, right? He's better than any superhero that I can think of. He's better than any hero that you have. He's the best. He's the only one I know that the closer I get to him, the more I'm enamored with him because of how immense he is and how much better he is than I am, right? And the closer I get to Christ, the more I want to be like Christ. The more I want to echo those thoughts that Paul says, it's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Here's our hero, the one who died on the cross for our sins. Here's our hero, the one who was bold. Here's our hero, the one who stands for justice, the true sense of justice, and the one who actually can do something about injustice, the one that can do something about our wickedness. So this morning we have this incredible opportunity to think about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.