Open your Bibles, if you would, to Proverbs chapter 22. We're almost to the end of the largest section of the book, the Proverbs of Solomon, as the title tells us in chapter 10, verse 1. Those come to an end in verse 16 of chapter 22. So that's about 12 and a half chapters of Proverbs. what we associate with the book, these one-sentence sayings. In verse 17 of chapter 22, we move into a new section, the 30 sayings of the wise, and we'll take that up in just a couple of weeks. But here at the end of this section, on the Proverbs of Solomon. Solomon dials in on wealth, and you can see that by the very last verse of the section, verse 16. He who oppresses the poor to increase his riches and he who gives to the rich will surely come to poverty. Wealth and poverty, those are the major themes with which he wraps up the section. And those themes are also very prominent here in the first nine verses of chapter 22. Hence the title, A Primer on Riches. But I would encourage you to notice that though there are lots of financial gurus out there, Christian and not, almost none of them say the things that Solomon says in this passage. It begins and ends, if you'll notice, by relativizing wealth. First verse deliberately denigrates wealth in favor of a good name, and the last verse talks about generosity and giving to the poor. And then in the middle, it doesn't even mention wealth. Instead, the middle is about the right way. And of course, one of the most famous verse in Proverbs, train up a child in the way he should go. So we're looking at three different ways, essentially, in our text tonight. The way to wealth, the way to go, and the way to blessing. Listen now to God's word. A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, loving favor rather than silver and gold. The rich and the poor meet together. The Lord is the maker of them all. A prudent man foresees evil and hides himself, but the simple pass on and are fined. By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life. Thorns and snares are in the way of the perverse. He who guards his soul will be far from them. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. He who sows iniquity will reap sorrow, and the rod of his anger will fail. He who has a bountiful eye will be blessed. for he gives of his bread to the poor. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the bountiful eye of your Son who came to this world and who gave his flesh to us as bread given for the life of the world. Father, we pray that you would help us to see him as the one who controls wealth, who controls the way to go, and who is the destination on that way to go, who is the one who has marked out for us the path of blessing and walked it himself, showing us the way. Where he went we know and the way we know. Thank you for this map, this guide to the way to wealth and the way to go and the way to blessing that you present us in this text tonight. Help us to read it and understand it and to delight in it and help us to follow the path that it marks for us. We pray that you would turn us away from all ungodliness, from all way of perversity, that we might not run into these thorns and traps. Help us to guard our way, to go down the way we should go. We pray these things, Father. asking that you would do all of this in a single sermon and more by the power of your spirit. We pray this in the name of your son. Amen. The opening verse of our text tells us wealth is not as good as reputation. The middle verse tells us wealth is not as good as the right path. The final verse tells us that generosity is the best way to handle wealth. The overall point of our passage, our primer on riches, is that riches have some value, but every facet of wisdom is better than they are. Riches have some value, but every facet of wisdom is better than they are. Solomon starts by telling us very clearly that a good name is better than riches. Wealth, in other words, is a side effect, not your final goal. You don't live to get money. Wealth comes to you in a different way when it's, well, it's a side effect. We'll see that in verse four. By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches. That is how you get rich. by fearing God, which is the definition of wisdom. But, in other words, don't start by seeking wealth. Instead, the wise son seeks a good name or a good reputation before he ever seeks wealth. A good name, we could say, generates wealth. Translated into the language of the marketing gurus of today, what's more important, your cash reserves or your brand? You use your brand to make money. That's more important than the cash you have on hand. But what the text goes on to say, reputation is better than wealth. To be loved is better than to be rich. Loving favor is better than silver and gold. And if you believe that tonight, You are the happiest people in the world. Isn't that the Christian message? Whether you're rich or not, you're loved beyond anything you can imagine. God showed you his loving favor in sending his son to die for you, and that's better than any amount of money. We could put it this way. You know what your wife wants more than a tricked out Chevy Tahoe. She wants a husband who listens to her and cares for her. We all know that loving favor is better than silver and gold. But so many of us get distracted by this pursuit of money, forgetting that reputation and love and grace are far more important to the good life than money can ever be. Jesus showed us this by leaving the riches of heaven in order to show us loving favor by dying on the cross. Well, verse 2 talks about what's prior to riches, and that's God as creator. The rich and the poor meet together. The Lord is the maker of them all. Before you can be rich, you have to be made by God. I think the broader point in the verse is to In general, stop thinking of yourself in these social categories. Rich, poor, affiliated with this political party or that political party, or these other social categories, prior to wealth and its alleged independence, is the deepest dependence of all. You are a creature. And the rich is every bit as much a creature of God as the poor. Don't define yourself as, I'm rich, or I'm a such and such. Define yourself as, I'm a man, I'm a woman. Those are creational categories. Those are words that capture all of what you are because God made you to be that. It's a creational category, not a social category. A good name is better than riches. God as creator is prior to riches. Before you can be rich, you have to be. And what depletes riches? Being naive. A prudent man foresees evil and hides himself, but the simple pass on and are punished, say every English translation, I don't know why, because the Hebrew word doesn't say punished, it says fined. They're assessed a monetary penalty that we call a fine. It's the way to deplete wealth, in other words. Ignore the circumstances, don't pay attention to what's going on around you, live without prudence, and your money will vanish. Simple pass on and pay the penalty. We could talk about a lot of different instances of this, but the point, again, wisdom is better than wealth. Lack of wisdom destroys wealth. Possession of wisdom preserves wealth. Money can't make you wise, but wisdom can help you retain your money. Well, finally, So in this section, the way to wealth, verse four is forthright. I think this is the best summary of the theology of Proverbs in the whole book. It's not nearly as well known as verse six, but verse four tells us in a nutshell what Proverbs is all about. By humility, which is the fear of the Lord, are riches and honor and life. Anything you might desire, which we can boil down to wealth or honor. I either want money so I can have nice experiences or I want people to look up to me. Most of us want both. Ultimately, in order to appreciate that, I need to be alive. Well, the source of life, the source of wealth, the source of honor is the humility which is the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and wisdom places you on the path of life. I think we have, I'm pretty sure we have a whole sermon on this verse next week, so I won't talk about it that long tonight. But essentially, the spiritual practice of fearing God results in overwhelming blessing, and this blessing is not just spiritual, but quite physical, too. That, brothers and sisters, is the message of the book of Proverbs. My favorite commentator on the book has an article, Does Proverbs Promise Too Much? And we've talked about that at length at various times in this series. The answer is no. When we understand that Proverbs is looking beyond this life to heaven itself, when we compare the words of Jesus that everyone who has left houses, fathers, mothers, children, lands, will receive in this life, fathers, mothers, children, houses and lands, With persecution and in the age to come, eternal life, we can see that Jesus makes these same promises. That by humility, which is the fear of the Lord, come riches, honor, and life. So what's the best thing you can do for your financial profile? Find a guru and take his baby steps. No, the way to wealth is not following particular monetary practices, the way to wealth is to start with humility, blessed are the poor in spirit, the humility that leads to repentance and faith, the humility that Solomon talks about under the title of the fear of God. To fear God is to make your decisions based on an overwhelming sense of his glory, and power and dynamic activity. That's the fear of God. And that's the same thing as humility. Because humility is an accurate estimate of yourself relative to your Creator. Without humility in the relationship with God that's termed the fear of the Lord, you will not be saved. You will not be resurrected from spiritual death. Better, you have not been resurrected from spiritual death. When you hear riches, honor, and life, think of those things turned up to maximum. If you want to put on a scale, at one end is the dollar store toy, and at the other end is a mansion in Jackson Hole. And of course, the mansion in Jackson Hole, in terms of earthly riches, on the heavenly scale is worth just as much as the dollar store toy is on the earthly scale. When you hear riches, honor, and life, don't confine yourself to, well, that's a nice large house in a nice large suburb, and being esteemed by the city fathers. No, this is a whole different order of magnitude. This is greater honor than anything Caesar Augustus or George Washington have experienced. And life, again, we're talking about the indestructible power that raised Jesus from the dead. That's what's promised to the one who walks in humility and the fear of the Lord. So what's the way to wealth? The way to wealth is to walk humbly with your God. The middle two verses talk about the way to go. And the way to go is, first of all, not the thorny way. Thorns and snares are in the way of the perverse. Thorns and traps. You can't find life by following the path of death. I teach English to ninth graders. And one of the works we read in that course every year is Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. famous, of course, for ending with a double teen suicide. And everyone wants to know, why are we reading this tremendously edifying work that ends with teen suicide? And the answer is because Shakespeare is showing us this exact thing, that thorns and snares are in the way of the perverse. Romeo and Juliet start by dishonoring their father and mother. That's step one. And in taking that step, they get on this path of death. When you get on the path of death and follow it, where do you go? You go to death. And that's why attempts to reinvent the story and put a happy ending on it are ultimately not convincing. You can't follow the path of death to life. Romeo and Juliet got on the path of death. They felt the thorns. They eventually fell into the trap and died. In fact, in the play, it takes about five or six days for that to happen. Solomon is telling us, get off the way of the perverse. Get off the path that leads to death. And what is that path? Well, that's the path that refuses to humbly fear God. That's the path of pride. That's the path of scoffing God and to get on that path is to be headed towards death And that's the way That the wise son is called to go is the guarded way he who guards his soul he who guards his life Will be far from them What is this guarded life, what is this guarded way? Well, you've all seen a regular box van and And you can compare that, if you would, with a Brinks armored car. Now, what's the difference between the box van and the armored car? They both have a similar footprint, a similar body profile. But one has thin little walls, and the other is, well, guarded, protected. Which one should the Christian life resemble more? One who guards his soul will be far from that path of death. A Christian life is not supposed to be an unguarded, I have a presumption in favor of doing anything the world might be doing, kind of life. It has to be the opposite. It has to be a guarded way. You have to invest in some kind of armor to guard your way. And that's a little bit vague. And of course, Solomon is being vague. He's simply saying, stay off the path of death. Guard your soul. And in the next verse, he tells us a little more about how you do that. Here it is, train up a child in the way he should go. And when he is old, he will not depart from it. All of you, I'm sure, can recite that verse word for word. It is certainly tied with trusting the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding for most famous verse in Proverbs. But what does it mean? Well, to understand it, we have to understand it in context with the previous verse about the path of death and the guarded path. This is telling us Ultimately, put your child on the path of life. And if he's really on the path of life, then what will he attain? He will attain to life. The translation train up is terrible. The word does not mean train up. It's not a word that refers to an extended process. It's a word that refers to a single event. Dedicate your child or start off your child in the right way if you have the NIV you'll see that it's translated start children off in that version But of course the objections to this are Overwhelming All of us know parents who say well, I raised Robert and I raised Sarah exactly the same way One of them is walking with Jesus The other one hates God Tell me, preacher, how can it be true, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it? There are several considerations we can think of. One is the obvious, no parent starts children off right. We all have failings, and no one is more aware of them than we are, except perhaps our mother's in-law. No one starts children off right, but Secondly, another approach is to say, this verse is generally true. It's a proverb, not a promise. If you expect a proverb to be true all the time, then you're barking up the wrong tree. Again, there may be something in that, but at the end of the day, what does that say? It can be true or not, however you please. And then maybe a third approach This verse does not tell the whole truth, nor does it intend to. It only tells part of the truth. Thus, for example, the classic words at the beginning of the book of Isaiah, Hear ye heavens and give ear, O earth, says God. Children I have reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. What does God say? I am a parent, and obviously God is the perfect father, who reared and brought up his children in exactly the right way, started them off on the way they should go, and they departed from it. They rebelled against him, and Isaiah spends the rest of that first chapter denouncing the people of God as rebels who have gone far from the path of life. And so, All of these considerations have a certain amount of truth in them. But the only one, I believe, that makes sense of the verse entirely is to say that, yes, it's perfectly accurate, and it's referring the way he should go, or the way that's according to the standard of God's mouth, that's what the Hebrew literally says, the way according to the mouth. Well, whose mouth? God's mouth, the way God says he ought to go. What way is that? Well, it's the path of life that we have read about over and over in this book. The path of life winds upward for the wise that he may turn away from hell beneath. If you start your child on that path, he will stay on it. In other words, what does this come down to? Put another way, how can you be certain your child is saved? What's the answer? You can't. If he's started down the right path, if he is on that path of life, when he's old, he won't depart from it. But if he's not on the path of life, if ultimately he's on the way of the perverse that's laden with thorns and traps, then he's on the path of death and he will perish. And what is Solomon telling us? The way of the perverse, the way of death, leads to death. The way of life leads to life. Those who are on the path of life will find it. And those who are on the path of death will equally find it. So yes, parents, it's our call to start our children off and do our very best to help them find that path of life. And if they're on it, they'll stay on it. Make every effort to start your children off rightly and pray like heaven that God would keep them on that path of life. But though there are guarantees, right, by humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor in life, Those guarantees are not the kind of thing that we can say, I know I will have a comfortable, problem-free life here and now. I was just talking about this with one of you this morning. God doesn't promise to make us comfortable in this world. My grandfather always used to talk about the old revivalist hymn, I've got smooth sailing. Yes, he promises to smooth our path. Yes, he promises to lead us to life. But that path is usually going to look like the path he took his wise son down. Through humiliation, through suffering, through rejection, through death itself, and only then out on the other side into life. And that, we can truly say, is an insight that Solomon had not yet had, that the path of life would first pass through death. That Christ's path back to the Father's right hand would involve three days and nights in the tomb. So what's the way to go? Not the thorny way, but the guarded way, the way that starts off right, and leads to life. We've left riches far behind. Of course, they come back in the next verse, verse seven, but what's at the center? Money is not at the center. Bank balances are not at the center. The path of life is infinitely more important than money. The way according to God's mouth, that's the way to get on and stay on. That's the way that leads to life. And those on that path will stay on it. Fools will not stumble in it, says Hosea 14. The path of life is just what the New Testament refers to as being saved. Solomon is telling us to seek the salvation that's in Jesus through humility and the fear of the Lord, and that means getting on the path of life and staying there. He winds up with three verses on the way to blessing. The first deals with the power of money. The rich rules over the poor. The borrower is servant to the lender. This is an observation that the sage makes about the world. He's not saying this is the way it ought to be. In fact, he already explicitly said in verse two that God as creator stands before and behind any social category of wealth or poverty. But that said, money talks, all of you have seen the statistics about how many of our elected representatives are millionaires and so on. Far, far more than the population at large. It's obvious, and it has been in every culture. The rich rule over the poor. The borrower is servant to the lender. I work a generous portion of the month to pay Wells Fargo for my mortgage. Many of you do the same. Why is that? The borrower slaves for the lender. But though wealth is powerful, Wealth is not the final word. In fact, verse eight highlights the weakness of evil in general. He who sows iniquity will reap sorrow, and the rod of his anger will fail. Even the rich person who does evil with his wealth, that person is weak. The rod he wields in tremendous anger will come to nothing. The image that comes to my mind is Adolf Hitler sitting at the controls of the imposing Nazi war machine, shooting himself in the head in a bunker in Berlin. The rod of his anger will fail. He who sows iniquity will reap sorrow. You could call it the second mightiest army the world had ever seen. As evil appeared, very imposing. But at the end it died with a whimper. So yes, money is powerful. And money is often turned to the service of evil, but evil is ultimately impotent. It's a tricky contrast. Again, thorns and snares are in the way of the perverse. But often, the righteous run into thorns and snares. For example, when the rich rule over and oppress them, or when the borrower enslaves the lender. Solomon is saying, I'm well aware of that, but I want you to know that at the end of the day, evil can't and won't prevail. Evil is weak. The final verse leaves us with the blessing of generosity. He who has a bountiful eye will be blessed for he gives of his bread to the poor. What's better than money? Giving it away. He shares his food with the poor. Who will do more for you? The IRS that demands your money even when you're broke? or the friend who takes you in and gives you a couch to sleep on when you're broke. Who will you do more for? Who do you care about more? The power of generosity. Jesus left heaven's riches to share his body with us as bread. The final word in this section on wealth is to say, give it away. Find a poor person and donate. It shouldn't be hard to find. If you're not giving to the poor, then you're not the Christian that's described in both the Old and New Testaments. Somebody who sees poverty and shares. Obviously, you gotta do that in the best way, the way that helps and so on and on and on. But behind and before all of those things about, well, I don't know how to do it well, is the word of God saying, I don't care whether you know how to do it well, do it. Figure it out. Jesus gave himself to the poor. He gives of his bread to the poor. And he expects us to do the same. Christ came to the poor and gave them his wealth. He is blessed all over the world every Sunday by hundreds of millions of people gathering to sing his praises. You want to talk riches, honor, and life? Christ has them. And in him, you and I have them too. Let's pray. Father, we praise you that wisdom is better than wealth, that your wise son has all wealth, and that he tells us to follow the way to wealth, to walk on the way of life, and to practice the way to blessing. Father, make us generous people. Make us people who relativize riches in our lives. Don't let us be all about money. Help us instead to walk in the humility, which is the fear of the Lord, which produces riches, honor, and life. Help us to walk on that dedicated way, that guarded way, which is the path of life, which leads to life. Forgive us, Father, for our completely stupid and ridiculous pride in our wealth, for looking down on others as having less, for forgetting this creational truth that the rich and the poor meet together and the Lord is the maker of them all. Father, help us to abandon these social categories as best we can. Think of ourselves in the creational categories according to your gift of our life, of our manhood, our womanhood, our righteousness, knowledge, and holiness, and our wisdom. We praise you for your Son, who shared of his bread with the poor, and whose praise endures forever. Help us to be like him, because we see him as he is. We pray these things in the glorious name of Jesus, your beloved, only begotten, generous Son. Amen.