Proverbs 10 verses 22 through 32, these are God's words. The blessing of Yahweh makes one rich, and he adds no sorrow with it. To do evil is like sport to a fool, but a man of understanding has wisdom. The fear of the wicked will come upon him, and the desire of the righteous will be granted. When the whirlwind passes by, the wicked is no more, but the righteous has an everlasting foundation. As vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the lazy man to those who send him. The fear of Yahweh prolongs days, but the years of the wicked will be shortened. The hope of the righteous will be gladness. The expectation of the wicked will perish. The way of Yahweh is strength for the upright, but destruction will come to the workers of iniquity. The righteous will never be removed, but the wicked will not inhabit the earth. The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom, but the perverse tongue will be cut out. The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, but the mouth of the wicked what is perverse." Amen. So far the reading of God's Word written for us. One of the great themes of this passage, perhaps the great theme in this passage, at least seven different comparisons of the end to which the righteous and the wise come on the one hand and the wicked and the foolish come on the other hand. so that the righteous is going to have his desires, he's going to be established, he's going to dwell in the land, and so forth. He has all these things, but what the righteous and wise man has more than anything else is God himself. This is, of course, infinitely better than to have all other things put together if it were possible to have them without God. Of course, you cannot actually have all other things without God, but there's such a distinction between the one true and living God who is blessed forever in himself, the one who is the creator, and everything else is creature. The one who is, he has being in himself. He doesn't depend on anything else. Indeed, everything else depends upon him. There is this infinite difference And we don't even have the capacity of understanding what infinite is and the greatness of that, but there is an infinite difference between the Creator and all the other creatures. It's just considering, get those emails from the reformed confessions every day, that wonderful article 10 of the Belgic and the divinity of Christ, especially proven. There are so many different declarations and demonstrations of his divinity throughout scripture, but rightly do they zero in on, the fact that Jesus is the creator. Like we saw in Proverbs chapter eight, just about a couple chapters ago now, chapter and a half ago from the middle of the passage, but we're coming to the end of chapter 10 tonight. So what does the wise man have? He does have a sure and happy ending, but this is because he has something greater. In fact, his end is not an ending. because the wise man is established forever. And what he has is Yahweh himself, the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so the Spirit, in giving us the last third or so of Proverbs chapter 10, has given us a linguistic clue about one way in which to organize the thoughts here. It's a little bit differently than we were organizing our thoughts when we when we wrote the devotional in time for the Monday devotional. And that is, and you can see just at the beginning of verse 22, the beginning of verse 27, the beginning of verse 29, this pattern. Verse 22, the blessing of Yahweh. makes rich. And then that which flows from and belongs to having Yahweh as our blessedness. And then verse 27, the fear of Yahweh, honoring Him, treating God as God. considering and meditating upon His greatness, His glory, responding to Him in that way so that we will offer Him the wonder of worship in the fear of the Lord, but also that we will receive everything as for Him and live always before His face and do everything as a service unto Him. So many components of what it means to fear Yahweh, to treat Him in a manner consistent with His greatness, the blessing of Yahweh, the fear of Yahweh, and then the way of Yahweh. That not only has He given us to have Him as our portion, our blessing, not only has He given us to know Him so that we would know His greatness and be responding rightly to the greatness and glory of who He is, but then he has also given us instruction. He's done for us as a good father to his children. He has told us the way to go, and not just told us, but he leads us in the way to go. He even carries us. and sustains us in the way to go, the way of Yahweh. So first, the blessing of Yahweh, verses 22 through 26. The blessing of Yahweh makes one rich, and He adds no sorrow with it. Now, this may at first seem like a conundrum to you if you trust in the Lord and you love Him and you desire Him, not trusting Him as much as you ought, but He is the one who has given you to trust Him at all. And he will complete that faith, he will strengthen it, measure out more and more to you the rest of your lifelong, and not loving him yet as you ought, but the love that you have for him has been given by him, and it will be perfected. The fact that you love him at all means you have been called according to his purpose. And you know then, You know then that all things work together for your good, and this solves the conundrum. And the conundrum is, if I know that I have the blessing of Yahweh, because I trust Him, and I love Him, and I want to obey Him, and even my wanting to obey Him isn't as much as it should be, but that too has come from Him. If I have the blessing of Yahweh, and He adds no sorrow with it, why is it that I have so many sorrows? Why are there sorrowful things in my life? And there's two answers to that. One, he is working even the sorrows together for our good. So that a few chapters earlier in the book of Romans, you remember, we learned to rejoice in our tribulations because we have peace with God. through faith in Jesus Christ, and if he's working even our sorrows together for our good, then yes, the sorrows are sorrowful. Jesus weeps. Jesus is grieved. It's not wrong. It's not an incorrect response to grievous things in our lives, to sorrow over them. but the sorrows are useful in being overruled and employed by God for good so that there is his goodness even in the midst of the sorrow and the sorrow cannot take away your wealth. If the blessing of Yahweh makes rich, if Yahweh himself is your blessedness and your riches, what can take that away from you? Nothing can take that away from you. Even if all of your earthly riches is taken away from you. Even if your health is taken away from you. Even if all your ability is taken away from you. Even if all those whom you love in this world were to be taken away from you. Even if you suffered all the way to the extent of Job. You would still have him. You would still be wealthy. Not only does he overrule all our sorrow, but those sorrows' days are numbered, aren't they? The righteous, the wise, are forever. Their sorrows are not. They are light and momentary. by comparison to the eternal weight of the glory that is to be revealed both in them, Romans chapter 8, and to them as the same apostle writes to the Corinthians. And so if you have Him, your blessedness overrules all sorrow and will eventually eliminate all sorrow. How could you not desire to have true Bible wisdom, to have the fear of the Lord and the knowledge of the Holy One, when this is the blessing, this is the riches that he gives you in himself? Isn't this what you want more than anything else? To have the Lord himself as your blessedness. And this will keep you then from foolish sport. To do evil is like sport to a fool. Here's a rule of thumb as to the right sort of sport to have. Any sport in which you can be enjoying God himself So, obviously, not one that would violate the Lord's Day, but certainly—or violate any of God's law—but certainly not to do evil. To do evil is like sport to a fool. And each of us, I think, have some fool in us yet, don't we? Where there is something that is mischievous, maybe Maybe it pokes fun at someone else who is made in God's image or takes advantage of them or humiliates them. Maybe it's connected with violating one of the commandments. I have sometimes heard even men who I would otherwise have esteemed in spiritual maturity every once in a while smirk about something connected to maybe the violation of the Seventh Commandment or the Sixth Commandment in terms even of speaking of execution or just killing in a light or frivolous way. Sometimes being uncareful with how they joke about things, making jokes about the Bible or even about the Lord himself. Great violation of the third commandment. And these things I know and we all know as temptations of our heart. You find yourself laughing or smirking or the witty idea of what to say in one of those situations comes into your mind and you realize, there's some fool left in me. to do evil is like sport to a fool. Well, how do we battle against that folly, that foolishness, that mischievousness that enjoys the sort of joking that maybe it's not downright filthy or coarse or offensive in polite company, but we know that it's contradictory to the word of God. How can we fight against it? Well, the second half of the verse A man of understanding has wisdom, which is to say he has the fear of the Lord and the knowledge of the Holy One, and the Lord is his blessing. There are many things that offer pleasure as the flesh lusts against, strives against the Spirit. But Galatians 5, as it tells us about the Spirit striving against the flesh, it tells us some of the fruit of the Spirit, doesn't it? The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy. The one who has joy and delight in God himself, the more you have that delight in him, the less room there is for the silly, snickering pleasures of mischievousness. To do evil is like sport to a fool. Oh, the blessing of Yahweh squeezes out the room for that. The man of understanding doesn't need foolish sport, doesn't need evil sport, because he has a greater joy. Indeed, he has what he desires. The fear of the wicked will come upon him, but the desire of the righteous will be granted. Oh, there are so many in the world who wish that they could have whatever they desire. And dear congregation, you may have whatever you desire just so soon as your heart is rightly shaped. It's in Psalm 37 verse four, so sweet. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. How terrible that our hearts have a list of things that we desire, and we say, how can I get the desires of my heart? Oh, delight myself in the Lord. Well, as soon as I've accomplished that, then I can have all these things on my list. That's not it at all, is it? Because by the time you've completed the first half of the verse, delight yourself in the Lord, you've got a whole different list. It's just got two things on it. The Lord, number one, everything else that comes with the Lord, number two, just so long as I can have him. It's really a one item list. But bless God, the desire of the righteous will be granted because he's had desire transplant and he's having desire therapy that is conforming him to the image of the son. Don't you want, not just to get what you desire like Jesus gets what he desires, but don't you want, first of all, to desire the way Jesus does and then to get what you desire? That is what God is offering us in his wisdom. The wicked, however, the wicked fears. It's impossible for him not to. He knows in himself that he has a death sentence. He's working hard to push down on the truth about God in his unrighteousness. He knows the righteous judgment of God that those who do such things, those who break God's law deserve death. He knows the law written in his heart. Not only does he do the things that the law forbids, but he approves those who do those things. Of course he has fears. Now, they appear in his heart and his mind as fears of many different things that could happen to him, or many different things that he might experience, or many different things that he might lose. But ultimately, his fear is that God is against him. And he's right. because he has sinned against his creator, first in his first father, Adam, and then his whole life long, and he's made an enemy out of God. If he does not come to the God who has offered himself in the Lord Jesus, if you are one of those wicked who have not come to the Lord, Abandoning being in yourself or belonging to yourself, knowing that you've made an enemy of God and there's nothing you could ever do to make it up to him because everything that you do apart from Christ would only make it worse. And if you have not realized that and fled instead to who Jesus is and what Jesus has done, His perfect obedience, which is offered to be counted as yours, if only you have Him, if only you become His, His sacrifice, having taken all the guilt upon Him and all the wrath that the guilt deserves. If you have done that, then you will have your desire because your desires will be made like Christ's. You will desire the Lord and you will have the Lord. The blessing of Yahweh will be your riches. But if not, then everything that you fear, which is really a small part participating in a symptom of fearing God's enmity. It will come upon you. Oh, do not remain your own. Do not remain in yourself. Do not remain guilty. Come and belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. Put all your trust in him. Put all your hope in him. Give up your whole self, your whole life. and be his. Then, when the whirlwind passes by, And here, of course, the whirlwind is a small reminder of the wrath of God. There are no natural disasters in the original creation. All the things that we see in the creation being bound to corruption and decay and its groaning are not the result of climate change. There was one great climate change And it was when man sinned and the earth was cursed on account of him. The whole climate change idea, the idea that by keeping some new law that man has invented, we can reverse the effects of the curse. It hides from us, doesn't it? It conceals the reason that there are these things in the world, and it conceals the solution which is only the righteousness and sacrifice and victory of Christ who has come to destroy the works of the devil and who indeed has earned and won for himself and for those who are his to inherit the new heavens and the new earth. Well, Not only is this the case with actual whirlwinds, but the whirlwind is representative of the wrath of God itself. And the wicked shall be destroyed, but the righteous has an everlasting foundation. He is the one whose house is built upon the rock. Not only does he have the Lord himself, but because he has the Lord himself, he hears the words of the Lord Jesus Christ and he does them. Do you remember the difference between the one whose house is built upon the rock and the one whose house is built upon the sand? Do you remember that both of them heard the word of the Lord? And one didn't do them and one did. And why did the one do them? because he has the Lord himself, whose word it is. And because the spirit is working in his heart now to conform him to Christ. Not only does the blessing of Yahweh give you that blessedness, but it keeps you from being a curse to others. In the last place, verse 26, as vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, So is the lazy man to those who send him. I didn't think people tasted vinegar or experienced what vinegar to the teeth is very much. And then in the middle of my preparation for this, I had a visit with a family and their six-year-old who's about to turn seven was eating a lemon as his afternoon snack. And my teeth, watching him eat that lemon, I could feel in my teeth what that felt like. and perhaps a little closer or a little more prominent in the memory and experience of Hopewell kids is the smoke to the eyes. It's like being at the camp out and you're kind of cold and you want to be close to the fire or you want to cook something on the fire, but it always seems, doesn't it, that the smoke follows you no matter which side of the fire you go to. You end up getting that smoke in your eyes and if you get a good dose of it, you can hardly see at all and you're unable to do what you were trying to do. This brings back the lazy person from verses four and five in this chapter and reminds us that the lazy person doesn't just hinder himself, but if somebody's depending on him, he makes the person who is depending on him unable to do their own function. He's like smoke to the eyes or vinegar to the teeth. Oh, the blessing of Yahweh is not just blessing for us, but it makes us a blessing to others. Don't you want to be a blessing to others? Don't you want to be a child of your Heavenly Father? Don't you want to be conformed to the image of Christ, our God, who is such great blessing to us, our Savior, who is such great blessing to us? And don't you want to image Him? that others who know you to be a blessing might know, might see that it's just your being a blessing to them is just a symptom, it's just a hint of how great a blessing your God and your Savior is to you. Well, that's the blessing of Yahweh in verses 22 through 26. We also hear in this passage about the fear of Yahweh. The fear of Yahweh which, We first begin to learn in life, especially by honoring our parents And we see that in verse 27 you say where do we see that in verse 27? The fear of Yahweh prolongs days, but the years of the wicked will be shortened Do you remember the fifth commandment? If I say what is the fifth commandment? Are you going to say the fifth commandment is honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land, which Yahweh your God gives you. It's the same promise, isn't it? And so, whereas verse 26 took us back to verses four and five, verse 27 does take us back somewhat to verse five because of wanting to be the wise son and not be the son who causes the shame, but especially back to verse one. The wise son makes a glad father, the foolish son being the grief of his mother, wanting to honor our parents. See the fear of Yahweh is something that you children should be learning and we want our children to learn from their early days and the place that God gives them especially to do so in those early years of life is in honoring their father and their mother. This is why it's so important to remember what we're what we were talking about way back in verse one, to place that motivation underneath and inside and belonging to the desire for God's glory, the desire to fear Him and to know Him. And so we want always to be teaching our children, not just to honor us because we are their father or their mother, but to honor us because God is their God, and Christ is their Savior, and He has put His name upon them, and He has taken them into His church, and He is the one who has given us to them to honor. And it is that fear of the Lord especially that prolongs the days. It's not merely that God and his providence has made it so that honoring parents is generally speaking healthy and generally speaking good order for households and societies. Those things are true. but that honoring father and mother is part of fearing the Lord. And this is not merely a prolonging of days saying you might live to be 80. 70 by 70 or by strength 80 or that you might live to be 120 like Moses and roughly the oldest that people have been able to get these days. It's not even saying that you might get to be 920 like an Adam or a Noah or 969 like a Methuselah. squeezing out just a few more years than the ones who fell in Reitmat? No. This is prolonging your days forever and ever. The fear of Yahweh prolongs days, but the years of the wicked will be shortened. Fearing Yahweh then begins with honoring parents and carries, of course, then the same promise, verse 27. And once again, fearing Him means hoping for Him. If you are treating God as infinitely greater and better than everything else put together, then you will hope for God rather than for those things that are infinitely inferior. The blessing of Yahweh makes rich. Verse 22, the fear of Yahweh prolongs days and secures our hope, makes our hope gladness. The two sections go together. The hope of the righteous will be gladness, but the expectation of the wicked, whatever it is they're hoping for will perish because we know how the wicked end. they end receiving destruction and fury from the presence of God, from the presence of Christ and his glory forever. 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. And nobody hopes for that. Even if they think they do, they do not know what it is. And so whatever they hope or desire or expect, indeed it must perish. Well, the blessing of Yahweh, verses 22-26, the fear of Yahweh, verses 27-28, and then the way of Yahweh, verses 29-32. Notice that the way of Yahweh doesn't just give us the direction, tell us what to do. But as we receive instruction about that way from him, and as we go in that way according to his instruction, from where does the instruction come? Who teaches us the way of the Lord? Well, Jesus is our prophet, and that's a good start. We know from 1 Peter 1 that it's the Spirit of Christ by whom all of the prophets had prophesied before. And now that Jesus has come as the son of David, as the mediator, he is our prophet in these last days. God has spoken to us by his son, but Jesus speaks to us especially by his spirit. It is his spirit by whom he's given us his word. Every word of scripture is breathed out. And the word for breath there, or breathe, is the same as the word for spirit. God takes the Spirit by the Apostle Paul, takes there the word for breath or spirit with the Word for God, and all Scripture is spirited out by God, breathed out by God. And so, it's not His Spirit is the one who tells us what the way is, and His Spirit is the one who gives us to receive His Word. And so by the time you have recognized that the Word of God is the Word of God, and by the time you have resolved to follow the Word of God, His Holy Spirit has been working for you and working in you, working upon you. Do you think it's going to stop there? Of course not. He who has instructed us in the way, he who has convinced us to take the way will enable us to take that way. The way of Yahweh is strength for the upright. You know, there are times in your Christian life where you probably feel like you can't go on. Well, don't trust your feelings. They're liars. and don't trust yourself either. Whether or not you can go on depends, according to Proverbs 10, 29, about which way you are in. Perhaps you are not in the way that you should be, and if that is the case, praise God, stop going on. But when you walk in the way of the Lord, It is by the Spirit of the Lord, and you will have strength from the Lord. His grace will uphold you in it. So even if you're living, you're working out your own salvation, is with fear and with trembling, yet it will be God who works in you, both to will and to work, according to his good pleasure. so that we may be confident of this very thing, not that he who has begun the good work in us has given us such a start that we might be able to make it to completion, but that he who has begun the good work in us is the one who brings it to completion and will do so in the day of Christ Jesus. Well, just as success, arrival, Endurance is guaranteed to the believer, guaranteed to the one who is biblically wise. So also destruction and failure is guaranteed to the one who does not have God in Christ by his spirit, who does not have the fear of the Lord or the knowledge of the Holy One. Destruction will come to the workers of iniquity. It is not just a, the way of Yahweh is not just direction for us, but power. And it's a way that achieves its destination. The righteous will never be removed. He takes a path from which he cannot be dislodged. But the wicked will not inhabit the earth. You see, it's the meek that inherit the earth. Because they are lowly, they depend not upon themselves, but upon the Lord. And again, just as we saw with the blessedness in verses 22 through 26, and it means not only that we have blessing, but that we are a blessing to others. So also the one who walks in the way of Yahweh is a blessing and a help to others to walk in the way of Yahweh. And so the one walking in the way, verses 29 through 30, tells others of this wisdom. The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom, first half of verse 31. The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, first half of verse 32. There's a sort of speech that goes along with walking in the way of the Lord. And that's to speak the truth of the Lord. We see these two things connected, don't we, in Ephesians chapter four. where one of the reasons why God has given us not only his word, apostles, prophets, and evangelists, but the ministry of his word, shepherds, teachers, is so that we will not be dislodged from the way, we won't be tossed to and fro by every wind and wave of doctrine, we'll be established, but what do those who establish do? Well, one of the things they do is they speak the truth in love to one another. so that you put believers together. Not only are they established by the Spirit's work individually in themselves, but then they are used in one another's lives to further establish and strengthen one another. And you get this body that Ephesians 4 is talking about, where every joint is supplying what it's designed to supply. It's strong and healthy. There aren't dislocated and weak joints that make the body buckle. and every joint supplying something, every member of the body is doing its share, and the whole body grows up into the head who is the Lord Jesus Christ. And you have the same dynamic here. not only those who are made by wisdom to walk in the right way, from which they will not be dislodged or removed, verses 29 and 30, but also enabled to speak the wisdom of God, to speak the truth in love to one another. How different the effect of the ungodly and the fool on those around him. the mouth of the wicked, what does it know?" End of verse 32. What is perverse? And so whether verse 31b, the second half of verse 31, is talking about the judgment that comes from God or whether, as is more likely in the dynamic of verses 31 and 32, this is the response, not necessarily literally, although perhaps in some brutal society it would be even literally. You think of the Muslim form of meeting out justice. The perverse tongue will be cut out. It's unreliable. It says these things that sound like they might be right, but there's a crookedness in them. There's an unreliability in them. because they're not bringing forth wisdom and speaking what is acceptable from God's word. And so much of what passes for wisdom, what sounds wise, contains within it utter folly like trust yourself, be yourself. Self, self, self. We need to trust the Lord and be what he has made us and commanded us to be, not what we were in ourselves, but to be what we are in Christ. Well, the crookedness, the unreliability of that tongue ends up in it being cut out, end of verse 31. And so having the Lord gives us not just blessedness, the blessing of Yahweh, not just greatness and dignity and purpose, knowing the glory of God and living our whole life as a response to Him, and not just the way of the Lord and direction and strength but it enables us to be used of Him in giving this to others whom He is adopting as His children, has adopted as His children in the Lord Jesus. And so the question for you from this passage is, do you have the Lord? Do you have this blessedness? Do you have this reward? Do you have certainty of this end that is yours in Him and with Him forever? And does it therefore show up in your diligence and your speech and in the particulars of life like we will continue hearing about for several chapters yet in this book? Oh, have him and have godliness in these areas from him and for him and have everything else together with him. Amen.