Open your Bibles, if you would, to Proverbs 22. Proverbs 22. We began looking last week at the 30 sayings of the wise. And this week, we'll look at the first 10 of those sayings, or sayings 2 through 11, if you count the introduction as the first saying. These sayings deal, in large part, with money. The 10 commandments of wealth management. Not all 10 of the sayings are about wealth management. But, in general, that's their theme. What they show us is that greed is disgusting, but God provides. Listen to God's word. Proverbs 22, starting at verse 17. 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, I have instructed 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 the words of truth, that you may answer words of truth to those who send you? Do not rob the poor because he is poor, nor oppress the afflicted at the gate, for the Lord will plead their cause and plunder the soul of those who plunder them. Make no friendship with an angry man, And with a furious man do not go, lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul. Do not be one of those who shakes hands in a pledge, one of those who is surety for debts. If you have nothing with which to pay, why should he take away your bed from under you? Do not remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set. Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings. He will not stand before unknown men. When you sit down to eat with a ruler, consider carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are a man given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. Do not labor to be rich. Because of your own understanding, cease. Will you set your eyes on that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings. They fly away like an eagle toward heaven. Do not eat the bread of a miser, nor desire his delicacies. For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. Eat and drink, he says to you, but his heart is not with you. The morsel you have eaten you will vomit up, and waste your pleasant words. Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words. Do not remove the ancient landmark, nor enter the fields of the fatherless. For their Redeemer is mighty. He will plead their cause against you. The grass withers, the flower fades, the Word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you that you are the Redeemer of the poor and that you are mighty. Help us not to make friends with fools who will discourage us from keeping your words in the casket of our belly and having them ready on our lips. Help us instead, Father, we pray, to make friends with you, to seek your provision, to seek your favor. Lord, we ask that you would deliver us from distraction, that you would focus our hearts, that you would calm our minds, that we could apply ourselves to hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Thank you for your son, the wise son who became surety for us. He delivered us from the debt we could not pay. Help us to see Him in this text and to hear His wisdom. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. There's a whole industry of wealth management advisors out there who are happy to help you manage your wealth for a portion of said wealth. But none of them, I dare say, is going to give you the advice that the wise give us in this section of Proverbs. The core of this advice is six different scenes that picture greed and show us how repulsive it is. But notice the frame. It starts and ends with the same topics, which are not greed, but rather folly, and the Lord is advocate for the poor. So look at that. What we'll see, both in the core scenes and in the frame around him, is that greed is disgusting. Greed is disgusting, but it's God who provides. Notice that the first of these sayings of the wise starts in verse 22, right after the introduction. Do not rob the poor because he is poor. The last saying of the previous section, back in verse 16, says, he who oppresses the poor. The last saying of collection two tells us not to oppress the poor. The first saying of collection three tells us not to oppress the poor. So this is one way in which the two sections are sewn together. The previous section ends with a warning against exploiting the poor. This section begins with a warning against exploiting the poor. You think that this is a crucial part of wisdom. Don't harm the poor. But secondly, notice that our unit of 10 sayings ends in verse 10 and 11 of chapter 23 with another warning against oppressing the poor. Don't enter the fields of the fatherless, for their Redeemer is mighty. Don't steal property from those who can't defend themselves. God protects the poor. So the section we're looking at tonight is framed by statements of the Lord's advocacy for the poor. But after this statement of the Lord's advocacy for the poor comes verse 24 and 25 of chapter 22, telling us, stay away from fools. Make no friendship with an angry man. With a furious man, do not go. And that same topic comes up just before the end of this section, chapter 23, Verse nine, do not speak in the hearing of a fool for he will despise the wisdom of your words. So we have this frame with the topics, God's advocacy for the poor and then avoiding a fool. And then those same two things occur in reverse order on the other end of the statements about greed. Why is that? God is advocate for the poor, avoid fools. And then at the end of the section, avoid fools, God is advocate for the poor. How do these things relate to greed? Well, obviously greed relates to robbing the poor. There's no doubt about the connection there. And as for the other thing of avoiding fools, what's a fool gonna do? He's going to try to talk you out of any wisdom you have. You'll say, I don't think it's right to rob the poor, and what is the fool going to say? Well, how else will you get anything? Of course it's right to rob the poor. They can't fight back. But it starts, verse 22, these sayings of the wise start with this, do not rob the poor because he is poor. So don't do it, and here's a reason not to do it. What is it to rob the poor? Well, there's the obvious, right? You see somebody who looks like he doesn't have enough money, you pull out a gun and you say, give me all your money. Take his money and go away with it. Classic case of armed robbery. Now, I don't think anyone here is very liable to do that. So, does that mean that this verse doesn't apply to us beyond that? I don't think so. How else might we harm the poor? Or we could run an easy cash place or one of those rent-to-own places that charges poor people three times the value of an item in order to run. You can buy this television and 24 monthly payments of $60 a piece. Or you could buy the TV for $150 at Walmart. I don't think we're liable to do that either. Now it seems to me that probably of all the ways we could hurt the poor, were most likely to do it by withholding charitable giving from them. I started just asking my Christian friends and family members, how do you give to the poor? And the answers are illuminating, and they, so far, have revolved around the theme of we're working on that. It's not something that apparently, at least the Christians I know, regard as an important part of their Christian life. But if God says you owe it to him, you need to be giving to the poor in some fashion that you find acceptable, then you're robbing that from them if you don't give it. The same is not paying your bills. You're not walking into the convenience store and taking money out of the safe. Instead, you're taking gas out of the gas pipeline without paying for it. And at the end of the day, it's the same thing. Don't rob the poor. That is, in addition to all the obvious ways of taking money from poor people, voting for politicians who are in favor of taking money from poor people, and so on, the wise are warning us Don't withhold good from those to whom it is due, as in fact Proverbs has said, when it is in the power of your hand to do it. Or Jesus, give to the one who asks you, and the one who would borrow from you, do not turn away. Brothers and sisters, it's our responsibility to figure out how to give charitably to the poor in an acceptable and godly and helpful fashion. Throwing money out your window in bad neighborhoods is not a good way to give to the poor. But there are good ways to give, and not only are they good ways, but they are required ways. The wise say, don't rob the poor, and here's why you shouldn't rob the poor. Because he is poor. Now you can take that statement two ways. One way would be, don't rob the poor because the poor can't afford it. If you take Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man with $110 billion in the bank, one Bentley more or less is not going to make much of a difference to him. But if you take a poor single mother who's trying to feed her family, a purse with $50 in it can make the difference between eating for a week and not eating for a week. Don't rob the poor because they're poor, because they can't afford to lose anything. Or the sentence could be taken this way. Don't rob the poor because you can get away with it. Don't rob the poor because they're easy targets. They're poor. They can't afford representation. They can't afford to take time off of work to help the cops and to help the legal system prosecute the case. They can't afford to do anything against you, especially if you're relatively better off than they are. Either way, right, whether it's because the poor can't afford it or because you can get away with it, neither of those is a good reason to rob the poor. They're both a good reason not to rob the poor. Applying it to what I just mentioned, we could say, don't fail in your charitable giving because poor people can't afford that. They need that. And we could say, don't fail in your charitable giving just because It's easy. Well, Slick Nonprofit A and Slick Nonprofit B and Slick Nonprofit C all sent me Slick things in the mail that explained to me why I should give to them. And then they just automatically deduct it out of my bank account once a month and I set it up and I haven't had to touch it in five years. It's easy to give to Slick Nonprofits A, B, and C. But the poor, well, they don't put slick mailings in my mailbox. They won't deduct out of my bank account every month. I have to actively take steps to help them with my donations. Don't rob the poor of what you owe them. Just because it's easy to ignore, easy to get away with not doing it. Why not? because the Lord will plead their cause. Who is the lawyer for the poor? Who is the advocate who will stand up in court defending them and tearing you down? We can think of these legal superstars who charge $1,600 an hour to their fancy pants clients God is a better attorney than any of them. And he'll plead their cause. In fact, he'll plunder the life of those who plunder them. If you're giving, your lack of giving is costing someone his life. If you're taking something, whether through faulty political views, active robbery, oppression, harming your tenants, your employees, your children, who's gonna do something about that? God is. And if your mis-donation, or your wrong political views that create disaster for the poor, or if your mistreatment of your children, employees, tenants, etc., cause somebody to lose their life, what does it say God will do? He'll take your life. He'll plunder your soul, remove your life. Does God take this seriously? The Hebrews had a word for fining, imposing a monetary penalty. We talked about it earlier in this chapter. It's in verse three. A prudent man foresees the evil and hides himself. The simple pass on and pay a fine. But it doesn't say that God charges a monetary penalty to those who fail to give to the poor. It's talking about capital punishment. God takes away the life of those who fail to give to the poor. And of course, the verse at the end of our section says the same thing. Verses 10 and 11 of chapter 23, do not remove the ancient landmark, nor enter the fields of the fatherless. Why? Their Redeemer is mighty. He will plead their cause against you. God calls Himself the Redeemer of the fatherless, the protector of the poor and widows, and He will stand up against you if you become the oppressor of the poor and the widow. Why does everybody in our society want to be a victim? Well, there's a number of reasons, but the main, the biggest one, the reason that it has any moral purchase at all, is simply that God Almighty is a victim advocate. That's what he says here. I am firmly on the side of the victim. I'm firmly on the side of the poor, the oppressed, the stolen from, the fatherless. And so we have all kinds of people trying to lay claim to that status, whether they actually have it or not. Because God cares for the poor. So is the message of this section then be poor? No, the message is not be poor, the message is have God on your side. Make friends with God now. Have God pleading your cause now. And the way to do that, one way that you show that you've done that is by caring for the poor. Through charitable donations and many, many other appropriate ways. So have God on your side. And if you do, then you'll want to do this, you'll want to avoid the raging fool. Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man do not go, lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul. Don't spend time with the angry. Don't even speak to a fool, says the corresponding verse at the end of the section, verse 9 of chapter 23. Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words. So whether the fool is angry or whether the fool is just a regular fool, stay away from him. Don't talk to him. Why? Because he'll try to talk you out of wisdom. He discourages you from hanging on to what you have. He attempts to explain to you that what you think is stupid and that the stupid thing he thinks is actually correct. So if your favorite people on the silver screen or the television screen are a bunch of fools, well, where are you headed? Lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul. Wisdom demands that we treat the poor rightly and not even associate with those who mistreat them or with those who would talk us out of caring for them. And the angry man and the fool steal from and crush their neighbors, right? Who crushes the afflicted at the gate? Verse 22, the angry man. Somebody who's got a grudge, somebody who's got a bone to pick. Somebody who feels that the universe has dealt him a bad hand. He's the one who's out there crushing the afflicted at the gate. Right, that's using the machinery of the state, the court of law, to hurt people who are already down. That's what it means to crush the afflicted at the gate. The gate is where the rulers of the city met in order to decide what was going to happen. That was where legal things were concluded. That's the equivalent of the courthouse today. God says, stay away from these people, the angry people who harm the poor, the fools who will attempt to tell you that your wisdom is despicable and ridiculous and talk you out of it. And he doesn't just mean in real life, he means on the television, on the radio, in books as well. Stay away from the raging fool and the scornful fool. Well, we come to the core of our section, the six scenes that show greed and its consequences. The first of these is a scene in which you're sleeping on the floor, or perhaps even on the sidewalk. Do not be one of those who shakes hands in a pledge, one of those who is surety for debts. If you have nothing with which to pay, why should he take away your bed from under you? Right, your house, the furniture is gone, it's been repossessed because you co-signed on a loan and now your property is fair game for the creditor. God built into his law protections for debtors. They couldn't have their property, some of their property foreclosed on, like their cloak, the thing they slept under at night. But if you were a co-signer, there were no protections like that for you. The creditor could take anything and everything of yours in an attempt to repay the debt. So here's where greed gets you. Your bed is missing. You've got nowhere to sleep because you're an enabler. You co-signed for somebody that you should not have co-signed for. Proverbs has warned us over and over not to be surety for debts, not to be a financial enabler or any other kind of enabler who allows somebody to not experience the consequences of their own folly. If you are such an enabler, what will happen? Debt will be missing. Your stuff will be gone, repossessed by the bank. So don't be an enabler. You have to allow people to experience the consequences of their folly. Yes, Jesus gave his bed. He had a nice bed in heaven. He left it behind and gave his life for us. Don't get the Messiah complex where you say, well, I'll do that too. If I have to give up everything so that so-and-so doesn't have to feel anything, I will. No, that's what Jesus did. You're not the Messiah. Yes, it's appropriate at times to self-sacrifice. What's not appropriate is to be an enabler. Well, there's a second scene of greed. Moving the boundary stone, verse 28. Don't remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set. What's a landmark? Well, it's a little thing that says, here's where the property line is. In those days, They didn't keep accurate plats and maps of every lot in the county down in the courthouse where they couldn't be messed with. Instead, they just marked it right on the surface of the land. Here's a rock that marks the boundary line between your property and mine. Well, you go move that thing one inch every three months. At the end of 25 years, you've amassed a pretty sizable chunk of land. especially in lots the size of our little suburban lots of five or 6,000 square feet. Even at one in four inches a year, in five years, you can take a nice chunk of somebody's backyard. Don't do that. That's greed, that's attempting to get something for nothing. It's greed and it's disgusting. You're lying, you're stealing land by moving this boundary stone. Well, here's the only positive one of the six scenes. A scene not of greed, but a scene that shows us how you actually can be provided for. It's by hard work. Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings. He will not stand before unknown men. The way to wealth is by doing a good job at work. Do your work and do it well, and you'll prosper to the point where you're not working, for ordinary people, you're getting called in to do royal contracts, doing jobs for the king, for the president. Now obviously, not everyone can work for the king, but this is the tendency. The better your work, the better kinds of clients you'll attract. So that, my friends, is how you're provided for. Not by being greedy, not by stealing land, not by stealing from the poor, not by hanging out with the angry, but by doing a good job in the work that God has given you. The fourth scene is this, a table loaded with deceitful foods. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. Now what's going on here? The wise say, you're sitting down with a ruler, an official of some kind. If you're thinking, wow, this official's food looks pretty good. I want to eat as much as I can because I don't eat food this good most of the time. Stop thinking that way. They're deceptive foods. Well, in what sense? Well, perhaps the food is a test. We've all heard of those executives who say, anytime I think about hiring someone, I take them to lunch. I see what he orders, and if he salts the food before he tastes it, he's fired. I'm never going to hire that guy. Because he doesn't do his homework. He doesn't research whether the food is good. He just throws salt at it, whether it needs it or not. That's not who I want working for him. So maybe it's a test. Maybe it's a formality. The official doesn't want to be there, and he'd rather you weren't there either. Or maybe It's an opportunity to poison you or poison your reputation. Regardless, Solomon says, if you're here with this official of any kind, don't think of it as a time to load up. That's greed. That's disgusting. Don't be greedy. Be cautious. Put a knife to your throat. Right? Hold yourself at knife point to say, you will not eat too much here. You are not going to be driven by greed in the presence of this official. And of course, if you sow to that all the time, if you're driven by greed at every meal, then you're going to be driven by greed at this meal. Greed is disgusting. Don't be greedy. That's the message of these scenes. Greed harms the poor. Greed is offensive to God. Greed is the opposite of wisdom. The next scene, as you know, I have never put an emoji in a sermon outline, but I have one in the outline tonight, because this Bible verse is so vivid that it's even made it into the emoji keyboard of our electronic devices. Will you set your eyes on that which is not riches, certainly make themselves wings, they fly away like an eagle toward heaven. Money flies off. And so, what do the wives say? Don't labor to be rich. I love the new King James changing it to do not overwork to be rich. It doesn't say don't overwork to be rich. It says don't work to be rich. Now what do they mean? Don't work at all? No, obviously not. But your life is not for money. Money is for your life. You don't live to eat, you eat to live. You don't live for money, you have money so you can live. If you're spending life for the sake of money, your priorities are backwards. Don't spend your life for something less valuable than life, the sages say. Now, do we need money? Of course. Do we need to work? Of course. The wise son works hard. We've seen that over and over. in the book of Proverbs. So what does it mean by don't labor to be rich? Well, just what it says. It doesn't say don't labor. It says don't labor in order to get rich. If your goal in going to work is to get rich, stop it. Just stop it. Work is not a vehicle for getting rich. Work is a vehicle for having what you need, right? Give us this day our daily bread, a competent portion of the good things of this life and God's blessing with them. The sages are telling us greed is disgusting. Working in order to get rich is a problem. It's something that no child of God should do. If God should give you riches, that's great. But if your goal in life is to be rich, your priorities are messed up. Riches might as well not exist. Now you have them, now you don't. They make themselves wings, they fly away. And we all have experienced that. However much money you've had, it seems to vanish pretty quickly. There's a reason every American bank affirms that your deposit is insured up to $250,000 by FDR's Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which he started in 1933. Your money's going to fly away, but it's safe here thanks to the American taxpayer. That's the idea anyway. But even the American taxpayer can't prevent your money from flying away. So don't live for money. That's the definition of greed. And the final scene, you're at table with a man of evil eye. Do not eat the bread of a man of evil eye, nor desire his delicacies. Eat and drink, he says to you, but his heart is not with you. Now why is his heart not with you? Well, it's not clear. The NIV guesses that he's the kind of man who's always thinking about the cost. Maybe, maybe not. It appears that this guy wants to seem generous, and you want to seem grateful. And the whole scenario ends up being so disgusting, you just want to throw up. He doesn't mean it. I don't mean it. We're here lying to each other, eating this meal together, even though we can't stand each other. And I'm not grateful, and he's not generous, and we all know this. But for whatever reason, here we are. Greed is disgusting. Don't give yourself to greed, especially in the presence of an official or a man of evil eye. Don't give yourself to greed, period. That's what our text tells us. Greed is repulsive. It makes you want to throw up what you've eaten. It makes you lose favor in the sight of the official that you're dining with. It is the wasting of something precious, your life, for the sake of something less precious. Money. It's robbing the poor, the helpless, consorting with the angry and the fool. Greed is repulsive. And it doesn't work. You can be greedy, but that doesn't make you rich. You can engage in every foolish practice here, trying to get something for nothing, and at the end of your life you will not have gotten something for nothing. Why? Because God will plead the cause of those whom you've ripped off. God will plunder the life of those who plunder the poor. Greed is deadly. Why? Because God kills the greedy. So the wise are warning us, don't be greedy. Don't baptize it and call it rational self-interest. Just admit that it's greed and that it's heinous. And finally, recognize the important thing. What you need more than money is friendship with God. How can you know that you'll be taken care of? Why is it that you don't need to try to get something for nothing? Why is it that you don't need to live for wealth? Because the Redeemer of the poor is mighty. because God has promised to take care of you. That's how the wise son lives. That's where his confidence is. God will provide for me. I don't have to live for wealth because I have something better. I have God. As we said this morning, you have something better than earthly riches. You have heavenly happiness. The Lord hears the poor and does not despise his prisoners. The beginning and ending of the Ten Commandments of Wealth Management is stop being greedy and start trusting God. He provides for the poor. He will provide for you. Now remember, these words of the wise were written to strengthen your faith. Verse 18, or verse 19, so that your trust may be in the Lord. I have instructed you today, even you. How do these sayings teach us faith? They show us that the thing most people trust in, money, is of no value. Treasures of wickedness profit nothing, but righteousness delivers from death. It is of no value compared to friendship with God. What we need, more than we need an extra hundred dollar bill in the bank account, is a greater degree of confidence that God will take care of us. That's what we call faith. So these ten sayings strengthen our faith. by reminding us that faith for your eternal future is meaningless if you don't have faith for this month's bills. That faith is not that something will turn up. That faith is in the God who provides. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, give us the faith of the wise Son who looks to you and trusts your provision. Please forgive us for our greed, Father. Please forgive us for failing to give to the poor. Help us to do that, we ask. Help us not to rob the poor because they are poor, not to crush the afflicted in the gate, but to make friends with You as the advocate of the poor and learn to be like You in generosity. Help us to hate greed and find it disgusting, and to trust You because you provide. We pray these things in the name of your beloved Son, our Messiah. Amen.