Open your Bibles, if you would, to Proverbs chapter 22. Tonight we finish part two of the seven parts of Proverbs. But this part and the first part are the two longest parts, and so we only have eight chapters left. There are, well, let's just read chapter 22, one through 16. A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, loving favor rather than silver and gold. The rich and the poor have this in common. The Lord is the maker of them all. A prudent man foresees evil and hides himself, but the simple pass on and are punished. 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. Cast out the scoffer and contention will leave. Yes, strife and reproach will cease. He who loves purity of heart and has grace on his lips, the king will be his friend. The eyes of the Lord preserve knowledge, but he overthrows the words of the faithless. The slothful man says, there is a lion outside. I shall be slain in the streets. The mouth of a strange woman is a deep pit. He who is abhorred of the Lord will fall there. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him. He who oppresses the poor to increase his riches and he who gives to the rich will surely come to poverty. Then we'll just read the next heading so we know that we're in a new section. Incline your ear and hear the words of the wise and apply your heart to my knowledge. For it is a pleasant thing if you keep them within you. Let them all be fixed upon your lips so that your trust may be in the Lord. Have I not written for you today? Even you, have I not written to you 30 sayings of counsels and knowledge that I may make you know the certainty of words of truth, that you may answer words of truth to those who sin to you So, the grass withers, the flower fades, the Word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, please confront us tonight with the question of what we've learned. Whether we look more like Jesus Christ, the wise Son whose portrait has been drawn for us in almost 80 sermons, in 22 chapters, Father, help us to see him again and to learn from him the danger of foolish speech, the danger of evil purposes with wealth. Help us to be like him as we see him as he is. Free us from distraction. Open our hearts to understand. We pray that the seed of your word would take root and grow 30, 60, a hundredfold in our lives. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Well, part one of Proverbs is chapters one through nine. Introduction or the prologue, whatever you want to call it. Part two begins at chapter 10, verse one. The Proverbs of Solomon, a wise son makes a glad father, but the foolish son is a heaviness to his mother. And that section ends at verse 16 of chapter 22. And then the new section begins, the 30 sayings of the wise, that runs through chapter 23 and 24. And then there's 10 verses in chapter 24 that are the fourth section of Proverbs, the further sayings of the wise. And then the fifth section starts at chapter 25. These are the Proverbs of Solomon that the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out. And then the last two chapters are each a section in their own right. So that's seven sections of Proverbs, seven pillars of wisdom that are referenced in chapter nine. But the largest section is this one that we're finishing tonight. It's over 12 chapters in length. And it's what you think of when you think of Proverbs. One sentence sayings about fools and wise people and sluggards and hard workers and righteous hearts and good speech and bad speech. All the things that we've been looking at for the last six or eight months deal with or are contained in this second and longest and largest section of Proverbs. So if we look at this section, we see that it matches perfectly with the beginning of section two. The end of it matches with the beginning. And we'll see that especially how the last two verses of the section deal with the same topics as the first two verses of the section, and they do it in the same order. But before we get there, we have this four-verse section on evil speech. Bad words and what happens to them. So essentially what we'll see in this last piece of section two of Proverbs is a reminder of the main themes we've seen, and really then the question, what have you learned? Are you wiser? How's your speech? How's your sexual faithfulness? How's your use of money? Are you the wise son? that we've been talking about. Do you look like him? So let's look first at these four verses on evil speech. The first verse tells us that the scoffer is driven out. Verse 10, cast out the scoffer and contention will leave. Yes, strife and reproach will cease. Most of you have heard this, or maybe you've said it yourself, there's always someone, there's always one, there's one person in this organization, there's one person in this meeting, there's one person here who prevents us from doing what we want to do. Solomon says, yes, at times that's true. Sometimes there's a scoffer in the midst, and if you can just give him the boot, everything will improve instantly. There won't be any more dissension, you'll all get along suddenly. In my own family, though I would more readily be identified as the scoffer, my next brother had the ability to set everyone at odds with each other. He could come into a room where seven of his siblings were sitting peacefully and have them all up in arms at each other's throats in no time. He just had that skill. Solomon says, that's not a skill you want to have. Don't keep that around. I just read this week, somebody said his 80-something-year-old father, they asked him, what'd you learn in life? What would you have done differently? And the guy said, I wish there were, there are a few people that I should have fired a lot sooner. Well, that's the wisdom that Solomon gives us. Bad words. If you have the ability to speak and say things that make people mad at each other, you're going to be cast out. And if you're a wise leader of an organization, you'll cast out anybody who has that skill. But then secondly, the flip side of that, the king befriends the pure speaker. He who loves purity of heart and has grace on his lips, the king will be his friend. Once again, we see the connection between the heart and the lips. Almost every time Proverbs mentions speech, it connects it directly back to the heart. Who has gracious lips? The person with a pure heart. And how does God respond to that? How does King Jesus respond to that? He befriends that person. Christ loves the pure-hearted person. Again, we have to ask, if your speech is wrong, what does that tell us? There's something wrong with your heart. You can't fix your speech by just trying to change how you talk. You have to change what's in the heart. If you've got an engine whose exhaust gas temperature is too high, you can't fix that by mounting an air conditioner on the tailpipe. The problem can't be solved in that way. The mouth repeats what the heart has lying around within it. What comes out is what's inside. So if your heart is pure, your speech will be gracious. Go to Jesus, the wise Son, for purification. Only He can cleanse your heart. Only He can give you grace on your lips. Are your words coated in grace? Or do they singe everyone around you like the words of the mocker we just spoke about? That's the question Solomon asks us. Verse 12, the eyes of the Lord preserve knowledge but he overthrows the words of the faithless. What does God do to faithless words? He topples them. He exposes them for what they are. Faithless. They're words that don't last and can't last. The positive side of that is that no knowledge is ultimately lost. God sees it all. He knows it all. He keeps it all. Even if human beings forget it, God remembers it because he loves what's right but he hates what's false and so he overthrows the words of the faithless. You see how this escalates from just advice to get rid of the scoffer to saying God himself acts against the faithless speaker. I mentioned this before in relation to our politicians. They may have nothing to fear from the voters. But if their speech is this, if it's faithless, they have everything to fear from the Lord of hosts. And that's not true only of politicians, it's equally true of us. Well, finally we have a warning about the speech of the sluggard. The slothful man says there's a lion outside. I shall be slain in the streets. Uh-huh. Yeah, that's a great reason not to go to work. I am afraid of being attacked by lions. Now, there were lions in the ancient Near East, sure. David himself, of course, killed a few on the job. He talks about that. But were lion attacks a feature of everyday life? The answer is no. Rather, this proverb is showing us some words of the faithless. that if you're a slacker, if you're truly lazy, if you don't want to work, any excuse, no matter how preposterous, is a good reason not to go to work. I don't feel like it. I want to catch up on season two of the Gilmore Girls. I have a sock drawer to organize. I have this to do, I have that to do. Anything, no matter how absurd and ridiculous, that will keep me from work is something I'll embrace. Those are faithless words, those are wretched words, those are unrighteous words that the Lord condemns. And also, this same theme was sounded at the very beginning of this collection. Proverbs 10, verse three, the Lord will not allow the righteous to hunger, but he will thrust aside the craving of the wicked. Verse four, poor is he who works with a negligent hand, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. Verse five, he who gathers in summer is a son who acts wisely, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who acts shamefully. So the beginning of this part two of Proverbs had three verses on laziness. We have just one here, but it's repeating those same themes. The faithless, the wicked, the negligent, the one who sleeps in harvest, what do they all have in common? Their cravings won't be satisfied. They shame their father. Their life is ruined. They stay poor. And we can say the same, of course, about the sluggard who can't do anything because of this hypothetical imaginary lion. That may not be your excuse of choice or my excuse of choice, but any ridiculous, far-fetched excuse that we use to keep us from doing what we ought to do in the moment is this wicked and this offensive to God. Well, I can't talk seriously to my child who needs me right now. I have to read this book. I have to finish my show. I can't pray right now because I just, well, it's imperative that I read this political news because that's much more important than prayer. And on and on it goes. We all make the same ridiculous excuse, not necessarily mentioning a lion, saying other things that are equally absurd and impossible in order to justify our laziness. But the wise son works hard. The Lord Jesus doesn't make these excuses. He does what he ought to do. So that's the fate of bad words. They're overthrown. They fail, they fall to the ground, they get cast out. The fate of bad men is similar. Verse 14, the mouth of a strange woman is a deep pit. He who is abhorred of the Lord will fall there. Now we've asked this question before, what's so strange about the strange woman? And the answer is she does not belong to you. A strange woman is any woman who's not your wife. She's strange to you in the sense of any kind of sexual activity, knowledge, talk, anything along those lines. That's what the strange woman is, and she's warned about, of course, mostly in the first collection. But here Solomon warns us again, and says, God judges, God takes sexuality, a good thing, and he uses it to destroy the one he hates. The man God hates, he hands over to the whores. And again, it's not, Well, the immoral woman, the strange woman, is almost never described as physically alluring. Maybe only one time, and maybe not even then. Rather, she's consistently described as a powerful speaker. The mouth of the strange woman is a deep pit. The things she says, the way she flatters your ego, is what makes her so alluring. And God will hand you over, If you choose sexual sin, or if you choose other things that make God abhor you, this is one potential punishment. God often punishes sin with sin. And he'll hand you over to your sin. So the fate of bad words and the fate of bad men, same fate. Falling away, being lost and destroyed. The fool speaks ill, and the fool listens to ill speech. The fate of bad words and the fate of bad men are equally appalling. Well, the last two verses here take us back to the beginning and bring us full circle in this section of Proverbs. Turn back to chapter 10 quickly, and let's just look at those first two Proverbs in this section. We have the heading, the Proverbs of Solomon, telling us that this starts a new section in the book. And then we have the first two proverbs of the collection. A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is the grief of his mother. Treasures of wickedness profit nothing, but righteousness delivers from death. So what are our two themes, the wise son the right use of money. Back to back as the first and second Proverbs in this collection. Now what do we see as the last two Proverbs? Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him, thus making him into a wise son. So we have this exact same theme of the wise son versus the foolish son in the first verse and the next to last verse of the collection. And then the last verse, he who oppresses the poor to increase his riches and he who gives to the rich will surely come to poverty. And what's the second verse of our collection? Treasures of wickedness profit nothing, but righteousness delivers from death. So we have the same themes, sounded in the same order at the beginning and at the end, bringing the collection full circle. The theme of the wise son and discipline sounded first, and then secondly, following that up immediately, is the theme of bad wealth, the treasures of wickedness that profit nothing. Now, what did we say about the first verse of the collection? A wise son makes a glad father. Well, this is the motive of the entire collection. This is the whole reason why you should care. Why you should want to be wise is to please your father. And what did we say? If you don't want to please your father, you're not a Christian. If there's nothing in your heart that says, I want to be the wise son who pleases my heavenly father, then you don't know God. But on the contrary, if your heart does say, yes, I want to make my father glad, then you'll care what's in this collection because you'll say, OK, this is what a wise son does. This is what a wise son says. This is what a wise son looks like. And this is what the father wants to see. So everything we've learned and everything that was just summarized here at the end of the collection is telling us firstly about Jesus the wise son and then secondly about what we will look like as we are conformed to the image of the son. Jesus pleased his father. You are my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. And we have the same calling to be wise like Jesus and please our Father. Now, how does that happen? Solomon addresses that here at the end. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. What is the default position of the human being when born? He doesn't say, your kid is born wise, don't screw him up. If you can just leave your child in the default position of wisdom, everything will be okay. No, your child is born with a problem. He's born with foolishness in his heart. Your son will not be a wise son who wants to please his father without this, the rod of discipline that will drive it far from him. Of course, this is true of us as adults. How does our Heavenly Father deal with us? He disciplines us. He corrects us. Every branch that does not bear fruit, He prunes. He cuts off every branch that does bear fruit. He prunes that it might bear more fruit. And if somebody says this is just an Old Testament theme, Proverbs statement on discipline from chapter 3 is quoted again in Hebrews 12. If you are not a partaker of discipline, which all have to endure, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. So this is a warning to parents. Parents, you must discipline your child. It's a reminder to all of us that it's wisdom, this discipline that makes us wise. So in that sense, we're going back not to the beginning of this second collection in Proverbs, but to the very beginning of the book. Because how does that begin? Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, to know the discipline of wisdom, to understand the words of understanding, to receive the discipline of wisdom. A wise son makes a glad father. How does a son become a wise son? He becomes a wise son through the application of discipline. Verbal discipline and physical discipline. Solomon is telling us, give your children discipline. Don't hate them. Don't kill them. Don't let their folly destroy them. And he's telling us as adults, if you don't want discipline, if you don't want God to deal with the foolishness in your heart, then you will not please Him. You won't be a wise son. And ultimately your life will be miserable and short because folly kills. The path of life winds upward from the wise and he may depart from hell beneath. But we've seen over and over that the path of foolishness is the path of death. Treasures of wickedness, similarly, you can be foolish not only in how you talk, but also in how you spend, or in how you look at money in general. So remember back in chapter 10, we saw the treasures of wickedness profit nothing, but righteousness delivers from debt. In other words, why is money ultimately of no value? Because money can't keep you alive. You can buy food, you can buy water, you can buy a better life, but money can't deliver you in the day of judgment. Only righteousness will do that. And that same theme appears here at the end. He who oppresses the poor to increase his riches and he who gives to the rich will surely come to poverty. Two different kinds of treasures of wickedness. The first is the oppression of the poor. Now, how might we be guilty of that? Most of us would say, I don't know any poor people. I don't run a rent-a-center or anything like that, or a pawn shop. or a cash advance place that preys on the poor. I don't sell drugs. I don't run an abortion clinic. I'm not guilty of oppressing the poor, and I hope that that's true. But it could even be possible to oppress the poor by not giving time off to people who work for you, by voting for policies and candidates that will harm the poor, by saving money on the backs of your wife and children. All of these are ways that we can oppress the poor, whether in our own families or in people who work for us in some way, shape, or form. Whether the politicians who work for us, employees who work for us, Solomon is telling us, evaluate your life, check on this, make sure you're not oppressing the poor to increase your riches. But similarly, he tells us this, the one who gives to the rich also comes to poverty. Now this, I dare say, is something few of us think about. To give, excuse me, to give to the rich is a treasure of wickedness that profits nothing. Now, who would do that, you might say? Well, maybe the most egregious offenders in our day are the gigantic donations to universities. Last year, Michael Bloomberg gave 1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins. Many other such gifts are on the record. From the 750 million the Resnick's gave to Caltech in 2019, to the 350 million the Morningside Foundation gave to Harvard in 2014. All right, no one can call these universities poor. They have hedge funds with multiple billions of dollars in them. Every last cent of operating revenue they need comes right out of the cream on the stock market. And yet people give to them. Sometimes very large big ticket items. I remember being on the campus of Stanford University and somebody pointing out the stadium and saying, well that was so and so from the class of 1969. He gave that. That's giving to the rich. An open and shut case of it. But do we do that? I trust no one in here is liable to give 1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins. But what are some other ways of giving to the rich? Well, I think the primary one here would be lazy charitable giving. Well, I heard from this cause, this place, they sent me a letter, they told me how much they need my money, and so I decided they sound worthy and I gave to them. Maybe I've been giving to them for years. But maybe they're not a poor organization. In fact, maybe there's no way to describe them but a rich organization that takes donation money and uses it to make themselves richer. How long did you spend last year deciding what charitable causes to give to? The answer is 20 minutes. Shame on you. The one who gives to the rich will come to poverty. There are no riches in store for the lazy who give where it's easy. Proverbs tells us over and over to be generous. That God is generous. That God loves those who give to the poor. That to give to the poor is to lend to the Lord and to have Him repay you. to just give because somebody said, I need money, may very well not be giving to the poor. So don't indulge in the treasures of wickedness that profit nothing. Don't look to money to save you. And that means don't oppress the poor to get money. That is, don't rip people off, whether you're employees or other people you do business with, or your own family, or the politicians who work for you. Don't let them rip people off. But then secondly, don't give to the rich. Give to the poor. The Bible's all about that. The rich? No. The rich are denounced in James chapter 5, and of course we know that the rich are us. We all have plenty and far beyond anything we could ever need in this world. Does that mean it's wrong for us to give to each other? No, that's not what Solomon is saying. I don't think he wrote this verse to say, hey, somebody who sent me a peacock, you're in trouble now. I'm a rich man and you're going to come to poverty because you sent me a present. Rather, he's talking about ongoing giving that you regard as charitable. If you're giving charity to the rich, you're in trouble. Poverty is coming your way. So that's collection two. Be a wise son. Don't indulge in the treasures of wickedness. Don't pursue money. Pursue righteousness, and the way you have righteousness is to take care of the poor, not to attempt to take care of the rich. So really this part of Proverbs, this second collection, leaves us with these half dozen questions. Are you any wiser now that you've come through it? And that's diagnosed by this. Do you scoff or speak purely? When's the last time you mocked something? When's the last time someone of noble character and position reached out to you to be his friend? Do you scoff or speak purely? Are your words faithful? Are you glad or sorry about how you spoke to your children this past week? Do you have any white lies on your conscience or black lies if it comes to that? Are your words faithful? Do you verbally defend your laziness like this sluggard? Oh, there's a lion. Oh, there's a news article. Oh, there's a specific video. Oh, there's this entertaining thing. Oh, there's this project that's more important than you, person. Do you verbally defend your laziness? Do you keep yourself to your own woman? Or go after others? Do you worship money? If I talk to you, will I hear only financial information? with nothing spiritual in sight. And finally, are you a wise son? And we have to say at some level, I don't measure up on any of these. But Jesus does. And the way to begin to measure up is not to say, well, I'll just try harder. It's to say, I need to know I need to walk with Jesus, and as I walk with Him, I'll become more and more what I ought to be on each of these. I'll be someone who speaks purely, faithfully, who doesn't defend his laziness, who doesn't let his eyes wander, who doesn't worship money, but who lives to please his Father. That's who we worship. That's the Lord Jesus. And as we worship Him, as we get to know Him, That's what we will start to look like, too. This is the wise son's life. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that You would help us. Please, show us Your Son in His glory that we might see Him as He is and become like Him. Father, we're tired of scoffing. We're tired of our own lies and shadings of the truth We're tired of defending our laziness, looking at other women, of worshiping money, of failing to be the wise sons that you call us to be, in the perfection to which you call us. Thank you that you call us to perfection. And thank you that you show us perfection in your Son and that you promise it to us in your Spirit who is transforming us into the image of your Son. Make us wise. Help us to see Jesus, the hero of the book of Proverbs, and to want to be like him. Thank you for your forgiveness for our folly and for the way in which you are making us wise like Jesus. We pray these things in his name, begging your help. Amen.