Verse 13 some more today. And let me open us in prayer. Lord, we're thankful for the day that You've created. We're thankful for these seasons that You take us through so faithfully. And all the changes around us and the changes that You infer and imply in Your very creation and growth and death and constancy and all of the things that we understand about you from your word, from your world, in communing with you. And we are so grateful and thankful for your salvation in Christ, for your instruction in the Spirit, for your sovereign love that holds us together, that makes everything have purpose, that guides and directs our hearts and keeps us from sinking into sorrow and discouragement and gives us hope for today and for forever. We're thankful to you for the Proverbs and creating them for us and instructing us through them. And I ask that you would be with us today, that we would respond to Your Word in our hearts and that You would prepare us to worship You. We pray in Christ's name, Amen. Proverbs 13. We looked last week at verses 6 and 7. Righteousness guarding him whose way is blameless. Sin overthrowing the wicked. We talked about the one pretending to be rich when he has nothing. Another pretending to be poor. I want to remind you, the Proverbs are God's Word. God gave us this Word. He gave it to us in an unusual way, maybe different than other books. Hezekiah and Ezra compiled these books. Solomon gave some of them. Some of them are sort of unknown origin in the sense of human gathering, but they're given to us by God. He superintended the giving of these books as He did them all. They are His mind. They are His wisdom for our lives so that we may imitate and follow and know Christ. So even when they're hard to understand, And even when they take a little unraveling, let's just keep in mind, they're God's Word. They're God's thoughts. They are how your life will work by heeding them. Verse 8, the ransom of man's life is his wealth. But a poor man hears no threat. Now, I don't know about you, but that just doesn't lay out on the surface. That just doesn't pop out, good morning. There are some scriptures that just climb all over you, but this one takes a little bit of thought, so let me think about it with you. Verse seven addressed discontentedness that's rooted in financial status or standing. Verse 8 is going to consider the relative safety that's associated with wealth. So this verse is going to expand the case like this. Wealth can, in some cases, spare a man from enemies or punishments of the law. or legal troubles or other dangers, like the verse says, like ransoming the person. Wealth can offer a temporal help. Ecclesiastes 5, 11 and 12, also by Solomon, says, when goods increase, they increase who eat them. and what advantage has their owner but to see them with his eyes?" Question mark. Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich will not let him sleep. So here again, we saw this in the previous, in verse seven, wealth requires management. It can make you full. It can give you more things to have to protect. You can overdo it. You can think about it too much. Wealth can spare you. You think about, we might use a phrase in our day, more money, more problems. That's the way we might say what the verse is hinting at. But problems often do have a price for a solution. Not all, and I'm talking temporally now, because spiritual problems don't have monetary solutions. The Roman Catholic Church notwithstanding in the Middle Ages. There are usually prices for some solutions. John Gill says, this is the advantage of riches When a man is taken captive in war, or by pirates, or is in the hands of thieves or robbers, he can redeem himself by his money. Or when his life is in danger by diseases, he can procure healing medicines, we might say in our day, or experimental procedures. Or in famine, he can get food to survive. when a poor man cannot." So in that sense, a man's life can be in his wealth and it can ransom him in that way. There are various Old Testament accounts in which the past plunder of one king becomes the remedy for the future plunder avoiding attacks by a rival king or enemies. I won't read all these passages, but 1 Kings 20, 34, the king of Syria, Ben-Hadad's treasure was used as barter for his life when he was in the hands of Ahab, the king of Israel. In Jeremiah 41, Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, accepted the treasures of ten opposing soldiers. This is wheat, barley, oil, honey hidden in the fields. So he refrained and did not put them to death with their companions. In 1 Kings 18, We have an account of King Hezekiah having to appease Sennacherib, king of Assyria, with gold and silver after Sennacherib comes against Judah. So you have these examples in the Old Testament of wealth functioning as ransom. It does have that. function in life. Any other thoughts about that where wealth has a perfectly sensible and useful function in as remedy? Right remedy? Yes. I had a question. Yes. Should we be ambitious for wealth? No, I think we should be ambitious to be faithful and use our gifts to the fullest extent that God wants to bless them. And if wealth is a byproduct of that, use it well and to the fullest extent. I think if wealth is the goal, there are other virtues that are lost. I think if you just want to be in love, you're not thinking about the virtue of cultivating a lovable self. So I think you can focus on the wrong thing. Did somebody else? Yes, yes. Could Solomon be an example of that? Wealth was a byproduct of his desire for wisdom. Yes, yes. And seemingly in his early life, it all balanced well, and then it kind of got off kilter. And there's an example, Ford, the wealth and the blessing kind of loomed in his head too much. And the next thing you know, it's overtaken him like, what do they call it in smog's lair in Tolkien? They call it, when they're intoxicated with gold fever, gold fever they call it, right? Everybody kinda comes under the spell of Smaug's vast wealth. James, what were you gonna say? So we also have the proverb that says, do you see a man who excels in his craft, he will stand before kings. Yes, yes. So if you are focusing on doing your work well to the best of your ability, the rewards come with it. Yes, that's right. Naturally, and as God's approval, They'll come in the right way, and you can enjoy them in the right way if that's how you've achieved it. That's good. Somebody else? Well, Ford, I was going to recommend a book to you. It's Is Wealth Worth It by Charlie Gaffney, the Chick-fil-A owner. I have it if you want it. It's right on that topic. Was His Wealth Worth It? Is that what it's called? His Wealth is Worth It, but it matters on your ultimate motivation, not just your visible motivation. Yes. I think Truett Cathy, I'm gonna go ahead and confess my bias as a chicken eater. A very experienced chicken eater. I think Truett Cathy is a really good example, a modern example of a Christian man who builds a really remarkable brand and has really tried, even now down to his son, for it to have a really wonderful motivation behind it and a Christian purpose at work in it. I think that's a great example of a great business. Any other thoughts? Those are good thoughts. R-E-E-S-E, R-E-E-C-E, David Reese. And you know where he is? He's in Arizona. Okay. Well, that's, I'll look forward to looking that up. That sounds awesome. He's very puritanical and Sabbatarian. Okay, good. Those are good things to be. Okay, so conversely, This is interesting. The verse that we've looked at says that a lack of wealth can be a safeguard for avoiding threats altogether. So in other words, you don't need to look at lack of wealth as exposing you. It says that the poor in their impoverished state are overlooked by those that would be their enemies. If they had anything to rob them of, So they avoid the trials of wealth because they are flying under the radar of people who have those kind of designs. Charles Bridges says, a poor man hears no threat being beneath notice. The poor man with empty pockets travels with security. When the rich Jews of Israel were carried captive into Babylon, 2 Kings 25 says, the poor of the land were left. Now, the poor have their own struggles, but the verse says that poverty and living sparingly avoids its own kind of trouble. It has its own trouble, but it avoids its own kind of trouble, too. George Lawson says, whether we have much or little, we should choose paths with the fewest dangers. I think that's just a good watchword for life. Whatever your status, whatever your age, whatever you do, whatever your calling, Choose the path with the fewest dangers if you can. Now, this is a fallen world, and there are dangers at every turn, and sometimes dangerous paths don't look dangerous, so you can't walk by sight, but it is good to choose paths with fewer dangers. Well, ultimately, however, Wealth cannot safeguard the soul. Money may help avoid physical peril, but certainly not spiritual peril. Our Lord says in Matthew 16, for what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? We weren't saved by wealth. We're not ultimately saved by wealth. It is useful, as I think we've talked about correctly today. It is a byproduct of your calling and you doing what you are called to do industriously and faithfully. It's just a tool. We weren't saved by wealth. We were saved by Christ's self-sacrifice, 1 Peter 1. You were ransomed. from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. Paraphrasing George Lawson here, I'll end my thoughts here by saying riches or poverty don't render us either happy or miserable. They simply magnify the state of your soul. Okay? So, stop thinking that what you have or do not have is what's making you feel the way you do. You are just that way in your soul. And these external things are contributing to that state. Now, are you puzzled by that? I don't know the question. Sure. Do you know the parable of the talents? Yes. This got me thinking about money. Like, you can look at the passage and think, God is telling some people you are to do more with your life, whether that mean reap more monetary, you know, just get more money, or just do more with your life, but that got me thinking, does some people have the responsibility or prerogative to make more money and do more because they've been given more? And is there an ethical problem with assuming that you are one of the individuals that has been tasked to make more money and do more with your life? Well, I think if a person just sort of jumps to that conclusion, rather than like James has talked about, just be consistent and faithful in using your gifts, and whatever tally comes from that, is up to God. If your fortunes grow, then manage them well and start asking yourself, what missions could I support with this? What could I do with my time? I don't think a person has to just sort of designate themselves God's person to go attain great wealth. As a matter of fact, I think Satan loves when people go, if I could just get a million more dollars, I could do so much more. I think Satan gets you when you're thinking, I could do more if I did X. God doesn't. That's not what God is trying to induce us to think. God is wanting us to say, look, it's all from me. It's all of me. It's all for my purposes. So be contented in whatever that is. Self-investment in terms of your mind and soul. What do you mean specifically? Well that the word that I would put on that is stewardship. Self-investment is stewardship of which we are to be devoted to in every conceivable area, in relationships, in health, in mind, in soul, in stewarding our prayers, stewarding our friendships, stewarding our resources, stewarding our family relationships, church relationships. I think self-investment in the form of stewardship is sort of an essential call to the Christian. Yes? parable of the talents those men given the money were stewards of the money yes theirs yes they didn't they were just given it yes the master expected a return that's right that's right good stewards of it the lesson in every case is do something with it because that's what your master does. And he's teaching them how to do something with it like the master does. And remember, that's just an analogy of witnessing and spreading the kingdom. Yes, there is a money component to it, but what's really being said there is, tell people about Christ, enlarge the word given as your master does. Yes, yes sir. In the vein of stewardship, everything we do, like what you said, nothing belongs to us. Everything's temporal, our bodies, our minds, our thoughts, our deeds, they all have to be pointed towards something else. If they're pointed towards ourselves, then they're immediately corrupted. But if you go through life thinking about what you can do with everything that you have, you know, from an external perspective, then you're not really gonna go wrong. That's exactly right, amen. And that's what I'm saying by Poverty and wealth and the different fevers of, you know, heart and mind that accompany them, those are internal. Those are starting first and foremost with our appetite and our cravings. And the material things are simply exaggerating or amplifying them. And so you can be absolutely wealthy and miserable. As a matter of fact, the cautionary tale in life is many, many, many wealthy people are miserable. You can be poor and completely happy. You can be poor and still greedy and covetous. So it's the state of the heart, and it's almost irrespective what the material standing is. The heart is where the issues are. All good stuff rinds, Do I need to be set straight on anything? Need to drop any A-list juice on that? All right, well let's look at verse nine. I love talking to y'all so much. Man, I'd sit up all night talking with y'all. Y'all be like, I gotta go to bed. No, no, no, no. Just let me get some more chicken. Verse nine. The light of the righteous rejoices, but the lamp of the wicked will be put out. Light is analogous here to righteousness, illumination, sight, all making the heart glad. Proverbs 4.18 says, the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. That's what I'm always trying to encourage you as someone who's just 20 or 30 years down the path from you. It's not that it's easy. It's not that there aren't discouragements, but the light shines brighter and brighter until full day. and the reality of full day enlarges as you walk with God. You know, the reality of heaven, the reality of being loved by him and advocated for and protected, it grows. And all Older Christians just want younger Christians to know that. And so, you know, all of our chiding about don't do this, don't do that. It's really just we're trying to help you move the clutter that would obscure this light that's multiplying. Well, the verse also says that darkness is associated with rebellion, a lack of sight, judgment of God, something that he's going to put out The Christian should be happy in his or her own soul because of the righteousness of Christ. We have the light of God within us, hope and possibility in all our daily pursuits. We have increasing joy. We have the illumination of the Spirit. We have the strength of Christ contending for us. We have the sovereign God superintending all things for our good and His will. The path of the righteous is the light of dawn and it shines brighter and brighter until full day. The cumulative effect of the church shining with all its illuminated members is intended by God to be a sign to the world of the way of salvation. That's what we're supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be giving people confirmable, recurring examples of what this life looks like and does. So that when somebody says, how are you successful? Because of Jesus. How are you patient? Because of the Lord. How are you content? Because God's goodness to me. He's never failed me. I'm not going to betray Him now. as our dear Polycarp said, dying in the arena. Like stars in a constellation, some may have more intensity, but they all together comprise the wonderful array that is the testimony to the work of the hand of God. 1 John 1, the great passage about light, in the light, and Christ says, this is the message that we have heard from Him and proclaimed to you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. That's how your lamp is put out, by saying you don't have sin and trying to carry on in our own strength. The wicked will have their lives, their light snuffed out. This language shows up in numerous passages in Scripture, Job 18. Indeed, the light of the wicked is put out and the flame of his fire does not shine. The light is dark in his tent and his lamp above him is put out. Proverbs 20, if one curses his father or mother, his lamp will be put out in utter darkness. Proverbs 24, for the evil man has no future. The lamp of the wicked will be put out. The light of the wicked gives no guidance. It doesn't open the way. It obscures and dims. It does the opposite of what is needed. It makes the path more treacherous. And if that isn't bad enough, it leads to judgment. It's going to be snuffed out in judgment. In Revelation 16, seven angels pour out God's what are called bowls of wrath. Satan and those who follow him are to be thrown into darkness. And we read in Revelation 16, the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast and its kingdom was plunged into darkness. People gnawed their tongues in anguish and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores. They did not repent of their deeds. That's what God's snuffing light out will be like. It will be a judgment in which all will be thrown into darkness. As if God is saying, oh, you want to live in darkness or you want to live by the light of your own torch? Okay. Let's see what kind of light your torch has. Those who rely on their own light will fail. The scripture tells us this over and over. Listen to Isaiah 50, 10 and 11. Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. Now listen to this. Behold all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches. Walk by the light of your fire and by the torches that you have kindled. This you have from my hand. You shall lie down in torment. Now that's one of the things I wanted to talk with you about today as I was working through these verses. This verse in Isaiah says those who kindle their own fires, who try equipping themselves, God says we'll find his torment. Do you see or sense examples of that in our day? People trying to kindle their own fire, their own power, their own resources, They're already experiencing it, but they're rushing towards a larger torment that they don't reckon. What do you say about that? Do you sense that going on around you? Examples of that? Is that too conceptual? What is someone trying to live by their own light, generating their own light, rather than submitting to God's light? It's the whole My Truth movement. Yes. I mean, every direction, someone is saying, yeah, I've heard what your little book says, and you're Sky God, but everyone knows this is the way it is, and they proceed to tell you what love really is, or the way it really ought to look, or this is what the family really is. Yes. we're sort of protected from it, you know, as Presbyterians we believe in, you know, predestination, but, you know, people who get caught up in free will and thinking that, you know, okay, God put me here, maybe, and, you know, I believe in God, but I have to do everything, and I have to, you know, achieve, and I have to fight for things without thinking back to what my actual divine purpose is. You know, I have a friend who was, before he started college, he actually took a year off because he got really, really sick and like almost died from this illness. I thought he was a Christian, and he's like, well, I did all that without God. I survived without God, so. And he still, you know, is totally turned off to faith because he thinks God abandoned him. I was like, well, you're alive. Like, you have an amazing family. You have all of these opportunities, and yet you don't take advantage of any one of them because you don't have any, you know, inner motivation. You don't have a motivation towards something higher than yourself. You think it's all, you know, as a result of your indwelling you know, capability. That was really good counsel to your friend. And what you just said looms in my notes really large because I personally believe that the concepts of free will that are bandied around in the church and in philosophical circles are a primary example of people trying to live by their own light and assert their own torches on things that anger God. One time I was talking with a friend, it was actually a Bob Jones friend that I grew up with, and we were going back and forth about... the will and God's sovereignty. And he said to me, why are you so exercised about this? Why is it so important for you, for me to understand this magnitude of God's sovereignty? And I said to him, similar to what you're saying, you do not know what to ascribe to God's power and what to ascribe to yourself. You're not even sure what in your life is owed to his goodness and what is your craftiness and your intellect. You're not even sure how this works. And I said to him, I don't know that this is the greatest apologetic of all time, but I said, when you pray, I said, first of all, I said to him, in this coming to the Lord, give me percentages. How much are you saying was God and how much is you? And he thought about it and he said, 70-30. And I said, all right, so when you pray, is 70% to God and 30% is to, like, do you just say, and to myself, I'd like to just take this time. That 30% was really important, you know, and God, have you seen, and again, that's not a real sophisticated, but I was just trying to get across to him. Knowing that your life and your purpose and your being and your soul and everything is a gift of God, is the patience and the love and the sacrifice of Christ, is everything. And thinking that it's something else, that the scripture doesn't even say you have, we're fallen, you're not free in the sense that everyone bandies that word around. I think that is one of the biggest examples of somebody trying to live by the light of a torch that is false and that angers God. So I just affirm that in the strongest, I could just ramble for the rest of the morning. Other thoughts about that? I just, yes, yes, yes, yes. Misunderstanding the freedom of the will. trying to live by a light that angers God. We have all this self-conception stuff in society. As a society we fail to recognize that we are creators created by God. We control very little even about our programmed into your genetics by God. Yes. And you can't do anything about it. Yes. And we rebel against all of that from little things like hair dyes to big things like the transgender movement where you say God me yes yes yes you made a mistake with me I'm you know I have this problem that I've got to solve and to be sure James we are volitional creatures we make decisions we are volitional We cannot forgive ourselves of sin. We cannot satisfy God's wrath in and of ourselves. And anyone that thinks they can just hasn't read anything. You just haven't read anything, let alone scripture. If you think your volition extends to your eternal well-being, I just don't know what to say to you. You can't even get home with your McDonald's order correct, and you're gonna tell me that you're the steward of your eternal being. It's just, it's a narrow understanding that isn't even curious, in my opinion, but I digress. Any thoughts, smarter people than me? I was just gonna say one thing about the lamp imagery It's kind of interesting to think about ancient lamps. I don't know for sure, but here it would seem to be maybe something driven by oil, right? It's interesting because the verse is describing something that happens, like the light of the righteous gets stronger, essentially, and the lamp of the wicked goes out. So it suggests that the resource, like the fuel, is not inexhaustible for the wicked, but it is for the righteous. I think you could also connect this to imagery in the New Testament, like the Holy Spirit as a fire. Yes. Which is an inexhaustible resource. Yes. So, I think that goes along with what you were saying about examples of when do people use other kinds of resources. Yes, yes. That are going to run out, basically. Yes. You can sometimes get a really good fire, from something that's a really poor ongoing fuel. But then it runs out. And there's a lot of modern philosophies that give off a really raging fire for an afternoon or for a fad season. And that's why they beguile, because they look really blazing. There's a lot going on in the social justice world that, boy, that looks really looming and intimidating. Yeah, it'll be gone if the wind changes. One practical connection that I make when I read these verses is that when we lead a righteous life, our actions are lower risk. So we're more likely than not to have a longer life than if we lead a life of wickedness, which, I mean, we know that the wages of sin is death, but it's more than just kind of theological understanding. Practically, when we engage in things like drunkenness and licentiousness and so on, Yes. And certainly while we're living in wickedness, our light isn't shining. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. If I may add to those, if you're basing your joy, your life on God in an exhaustible fuel, in hard times, whereas the wicked who are trying to base themselves off of sin and temptation, all of that, they're going to go out. But in the times of hardness, not only will you still be lit, but you will actually grow all the more. Because when you stop trying to fuel yourself, it leaves more room for that cup that overflows from the Lord. Yes. And Nate, what I would say This is something that in God's time you will all come to understand in your own way. In hard times, in difficulties, the loss of a child, the loss of someone you love, great calamity. Your physical self is sort of closed down in protection. and all that remains is the inexhaustible fire of God in you. And I think there's something about affliction and trial when someone sees that you are in a crucible of pain, but your fire and your essential soul self is still there. You're still thanking and praising God. When your human strength is spent and your human understanding is sort of rattled. What is that in a person if they are otherwise spent? You know, it's exactly what you're all talking about. It's something beyond us. It was given to us. We didn't earn it. We didn't conjure it. We do not keep it burning. God's loving, patient kindness keeps it burning in us and that's why tough. He wants to show himself to us in those moments, precisely to show you do not live by what you eat and what you think and where you go. You live by what I have given you, what I supply you. So that's why we shouldn't despise affliction. Yes, ma'am? I think C.S. Lewis said that don't put your enjoyment on something that you may lose. And I think it's easy to put our trust in friendships or relationships or other things that are not the Lord, and it's easy to say, okay, well, I have to be in control of this situation. I have to be in control of this friendship in order for it to go well, but then we forget that it's not gonna go well if we're in charge of it. It's only gonna go well if we trust that God's will is best for us. That's exactly right. And isn't that indicative of the sin nature that's still left in us? We really think the only way we can be happy is if we are seizing control. And remember, we talked last week about the counter-intuitiveness of the Christian life. No, it's actually seeding control, which is where you will find this bandied freedom and this fullness. But the nature says that can't be right. You know, that's the way Satan does. Well, let me close. In heaven, all will be illuminated by the light of God, this light that's kept us throughout all our lives and it will see us all the way through. And so in Revelation 21, John tells us, and I saw no temple in the city for its temple is the Lord God, the almighty and the lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it. For the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. And its gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there." The light that these Proverbs are talking about is with us now. it will be forever illuminating us. And let's walk in it. Would you close us in prayer? Heavenly Father, we do thank you for the word that we have heard today. Wealth and light, and we recognize that you grant us wealth. And all that we have is the wealth that you've given us. Whether it be gifts or whatever, but we always recognize that. and use it to your glory as you have instructed us to do. And we're thankful that for those who receive and rest upon you have the path that is lit and is light to us. And we can see clearly some of it, we may not understand at a particular time, but we can see the path and we trust it because we know who put us on that path. And we thank you for that. Be with everyone in here as you guide and direct them, and may they be used to further your kingdom in everything they do.