Open your Bibles, if you would, to Proverbs 28. Proverbs 28. Our sermon tonight is on the weakness of evil. Evil self-destructs, and instruction, or listening, the foundation of wisdom, similarly destroys evil. Listen now to God's word. The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion. Because of the transgression of a land, many are its princes. But by a man of understanding and knowledge, right will be prolonged. A poor man who oppresses the poor is like a driving rain which leaves no food. Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but such as keep the law contend with them. Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand everything. Better is the poor who walks in his integrity than one perverse in his ways, though he be rich. Whoever keeps the law is a discerning son, but a companion of gluttons shames his father. One who increases his possessions by usury and extortion gathers it for him who will pity the poor. One who turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be an abomination. Whoever causes the upright to go astray in an evil way, he himself will fall into his own pit, but the blameless will inherit good. The rich man is wise in his own eyes, but the poor who has understanding searches him out. The grass withers, the flower fades, the Word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Father, give us the strength we need to focus on your Word. We thank you for speaking to us. We pray now that you would put your law in our heart and write it on our mind. Let us be good soil that receives the seed of your Word and produces fruit a hundredfold. Father, help me to speak worthily of You, of Your Son, of Your wisdom, and of Your commitment to stand against evil, and of how Your people need a similar commitment that comes from listening to Your instruction. Help us to do that now, we pray, in the name of our risen Lord Jesus, the Messiah. Amen. We all know that evil is bad. But our text highlights not only that it is bad, but that it is unstable. And it's flawed that it has no staying power. Evil will fall apart. It can last longer than a human lifetime. Think of the USSR, the abortion laws in the United States. But evil cannot outlast good. So we'll see from our text tonight that wisdom destroys evil. But evil already, even before the advent of wisdom, evil had incurable flaws. Wisdom destroys evil, but evil had incurable flaws. Evil self-destructs, our text tells us. A wise son should not think of evil as overwhelmingly powerful. He shouldn't think of evil as full of longevity and enduring through time. Evil is like a dead fish on the docks in Singapore. Under the tropical sun, how long will that dead fish be there? That's how long evil can last. In the radiance of God's glory, evil will liquefy right away. How do we know this? Our text presents it under three points. First, the wicked lack staying power. The wicked don't hang on. Now, those of you who are involved in various organizations know that the liberals, those who advocate for moral libertinism, seem to be very tenacious. They're always coming back, every time, every meeting, with another proposal on how we should back off, how we should allow this new evil, or how we should encourage an existing evil. Why? Well, if evil is so weak, why do evildoers seem so tenacious? The answer is, part of that is an illusion. Evil controls the propaganda machines, evildoers have no qualms about lying, and Evil seems strong because it appeals to you. Evil is weak in itself, but powerful over evil human beings. Somebody with an unregenerate heart has no ability to say no to wickedness, not in an ultimate sense. If you're fallen, you have the choice to sin or to sin. You can say no to a particular sin, but you can't say no to sin in general. You might drive out lust by means of pride. Or you might drive out violence by means of greed. But at the end of the day, you're indulging some sin or other unless Jesus has control of your heart. So wickedness seems powerful because it controls the propaganda machine and because it controls, it has a foothold in the human heart. So of course we think, wow, evil is very powerful. Evil looks like it's ahead. As the American poet said, truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. Evil is winning. So it would seem, but the text tells us that evil will lose. It's a tiny reality that casts a vast shadow. Why will evil lose? Well, first of all, because the wicked have no guts. The wicked flee when no one pursues. The reason the wicked are so tenacious in pushing their wickedness is because their conscience is screaming. They have to do something to mollify their conscience, and they know that either they have to back off, stop doing the evil thing they're doing that's making their conscience scream, or they have to double down and do it more and try to get other people to do it with them. That's why the wicked flee when no one pursues their conscience, has them terrified. They live in fear of certain concepts, certain questions, certain people, certain places. The righteous have nothing to fear from their enemies. That's why they're as bold as a lion. The righteous know they have nothing ultimate to lose. But the wicked flee when no one pursues. I've told you before about what happened to me and my friend Bill in a Trader Joe's in Greenville, South Carolina, but this is just such an incredible example of the wicked fleeing when no one pursues. He and I were shopping produce and he went off to the bathroom and then A few minutes later, we're in another part of the store and this lady comes up behind him and she's like, that apple you saw me eating in the hallway outside the bathroom, that was my own apple, I brought it from home. And he turns around and he looks at her and he's like, hi, I didn't see anything. She's like, well, that was my apple, I brought it from home, I just wanted you to know. And we were like, okay, okay sure it was and she walked off and the wicked flee when no one pursues somebody had a guilty conscience about stealing fruit from Trader Joe's and that guilty conscience came out in this need this overwhelming need to justify herself to a total stranger despite of course the obvious reality that lying about it is far more incriminating than standing there eating an apple in the back hall. The wicked flee when no one pursues. That's why the wicked are so tenacious in seizing control of the institutional machinery. They're afraid of what will happen to them if they don't. They're obsessed with the question of how to justify themselves and they figure that if they can control whatever it is, then they can decide whether they're right and whether their actions are okay. Well, this is a good test to look at for yourself. Are you as bold as a lion? And we're not talking personality here. It's not about aggressive personality, timid personality. It's about this. Do you believe that you have something major to lose? Oh, they could take from me something that I would be totally unwilling to give up. That's where the wicked are at. The wicked have something to lose and that's why they flee when no one pursues. The righteous are bald as a lion because the things they value can't be taken from them. The love of God, the forgiveness of God, the embrace of the body of Christ, At lunch today, a friend told me, Beth Brenner's father, who's at our home for lunch, he told me about something he saw in a newspaper 35 years ago. He said it was a picture of a beautiful home in flames. And a woman in the foreground, just her face completely ashen, yelling, and the caption says, oh my God, everything we've worked for all these years. The wicked have something to lose. The thing they had lived for, going up in flames. But the righteous are as bold as a lion because of their confidence in the protection and provision of the living God. The righteous have nothing to fear because their treasure is not of such a kind that it can be lost. Solomon doesn't mean that only type A personalities believe in Jesus. He means that, objectively speaking, the righteous know that they have nothing to fear. That's what Jesus reminded Pilate of. You can't do anything to me. Well don't you know I have power to crucify you and power to release you? Jesus essentially said no you don't or you would have no power at all unless it was given to you from above. That's why the righteous are bold as a lion. Similarly the wicked not only lack staying power because they have no guts but they have No endurance, they don't last. Because of the transgression of a land, many are its princes. We saw the beginning of that in Northern Israel. Northern Israel had nine dynasties of rulers, nine different political systems in 200 years. Judah had one dynasty in 350 years. That's a lot of revolutions. Nine dynasties across 200 years. By the transgression of a land, many are its princes. And the more wicked a land is, the less stable its system of government. We can add, of course, a nation as wicked as ours deserves many rulers writing many rules. Ever-expanding codes of rules are not a symptom of growing righteousness. Quite the reverse. Whereas, by contrast, by a man of understanding and knowledge, the land is prolonged. We can think certainly of the sober, knowledgeable, and discerning actions of George Washington, the father of his country. What he built has now lasted almost 250 years. If we can make it six more, we'll be at our semi-quincentennial, 250th anniversary of the founding of our republic. But the transgression of our land is such that I believe there's reason to doubt whether we'll get there. The transgression of a land brings about many princes. We need to be people of understanding and knowledge. We need to be people who fear God and who have wisdom, people who get it. The wicked also lack savvy. They don't understand justice, says verse 5. But those who seek the Lord understand everything. The wicked don't understand justice. Of course, they talk about justice. They invoke justice. They claim to be doing justice. They might even offer degrees in criminal justice. But they don't understand it. They don't know what it is. It's easy to see that a state built on injustice can't endure. The consciences of those under its unjust rule scream about its illegitimacy. People subject to unjust rule don't believe that they have a moral duty to obey their rulers. And so as soon as whatever other tool the rulers use to cow them collapses, the people throw off that state. The wicked have no savvy. They don't understand how to do justice. They think that the injustice they're doing is right and that it will command the ascent of the human conscience. But those who seek the Lord understand everything. What is Solomon saying? He's not talking about understanding everything in actuality, but rather in potentiality. The seekers of the Lord have a framework in which every fact can fit. We can understand any truth we come across because we already have a comprehensive framework, a worldview in which to put that fact. Those who don't know God don't understand the world. They might think they do, but they've left out the most important part. Who made it? Who governs it? If you don't know that, you're missing something very important. Those who seek the Lord especially understand how to give justice to their fellow citizens. Again, that's how a land endures. We can also lack not just knowledge, but paternal pride. Whoever keeps the law, verse 7, is a discerning son, but a companion of gluttons, shames, his father. Evil can't endure because those who commit evil are ashamed to their parents. And if you're ashamed to your parents, they're probably going to tell you so. Boy, I'm sorry I brought you into this world. If you hear that enough times, that will likely give you pause about whether you should have any children. Boy, my parents had children and they've regretted it now for years. Maybe I shouldn't have any because I'll probably regret it too. Yet another instance of evil's expiration date that's built in. It can't, in one sense, reproduce itself. Because parents of evil children are ashamed of what they've done. Meanwhile, of course, the one who keeps the law is the discerning son that makes his father glad. Finally, the wicked don't have safety. They have no staying power because they fall. Verse 10, whoever causes the upright to go astray in an evil way, he himself will fall into his own pit. But the blameless will inherit good things. The wicked act to tempt the upright and to lead them down the wrong path they will get their comeuppance. Now, like the other statements of Proverbs, this is a statement of faith, not necessarily a statement of observation. People seemingly corrupt the innocent all the time and get away with it. But they will fall in God's good time. Maybe not until the next life, but they will certainly fall. The blameless, by contrast, inherit good while these corruptors inherit evil. The wicked lacks staying power. Financial oppression, similarly, lacks staying power. It can't last. It hurts, though. A poor man who oppresses the poor, verse 3, is like a driving rain which leaves no food. You can think of a terrible storm that destroys the crops while they're standing in the field and there's nothing left to eat. That's what it's like when a poor man oppresses the poor. But, again, that oppression can't last. One who increases his possessions by usury and extortion, that's by charging ever-increasing interest and by squeezing people to pay something, that's what extortion is, gathers it for him who will pity the poor. The wicked who pile up fortunes at the expense of the poor are going to lose them. How? Well, God is going to confiscate them at some point. Maybe through death. Maybe through a stock market crash. Maybe through a bank crash. There's all kinds of ways that God can take away these fortunes. And they will fall into the hands of those who give to the poor. So do you want to be financially successful? Give to the poor. You want to lose everything? Well, oppress the poor. How do we do that? Well, if you offer services, you can overcharge for your services or perform services that people don't actually need. That's one way to oppress the poor. You can certainly vote for candidates and for policies that harm the poor. That's another way in which you and I can be guilty of oppressing the poor. We can ignore the poor. I don't know any poor people. They must not exist. Well, just because you don't know them doesn't mean they don't exist. To ignore the poor, to fail to give to the poor, is just as bad in one sense as saying, oh, this person looks poor, I am able to perform a service that they really need and so I'll go ahead and just charge them a little more because they're not rich enough to know that there's an alternative. They can't go somewhere else because I've got them over a barrel. Well, that's bad. We know that that's bad, but it's also bad to say, poor, not my problem. They'll care for themselves. And finally, charging interest. as it's defined here, this usury, where you say, I'll charge you a certain percentage of the money every day. And every day you don't pay, the amount you owe gets larger and larger and larger. God says the person who does that is getting wealth that will eventually go into the hands of the poor. Financial oppression can't last. God will see to that. But, while it is, while it lasts, it hurts. We can talk about how much misery poverty causes, how many lives it blights, how enlightened self-interest dictates that you give to the poor and care for them. We all know that stuff. Solomon wasn't talking about the social science aspects. He's talking about the moral aspects, which boil down to this. Be kind to the poor. Those who aren't kind to the poor won't last. Their evil will self-destruct. Finally, financial poverty, as bad as poverty is, it's better than poor character. Verse six, better is the poor who walks in his integrity than one perverse in his ways, though he be rich. And verse 11, the rich man is wise in his own eyes, but the poor who has understanding sees through him. The poor can be wicked too, no doubt. Like verse three says, a poor man can oppress the poor. But character is what counts. You may think you can trade character for money. I don't need this character. I don't need this integrity as much as I need that extra $500. And so I will trade my character for money. I'll do something wrong in order to enhance my balance sheet. What does that look like? Well, there's all kinds of financial crimes. We could spend the rest of the evening talking about them. You know what they are. What's the point? You can't trade character for money and profit by the deal. It's like selling your soul to the devil. Well, devil, I'll give you my character if you'll give me money. Well, guess what? Without character, you can't enjoy God's world. Certainly not over the long haul. You can't trade character for anything. For profit, as we just said, but also for pleasure, for fun, for power. If you try to trade character for those things, you'll lose every time. The moral order is stronger than the evildoer who would attempt to violate it, and the moral order will crush that evildoer. When? Well, the text doesn't say. Sometimes it seems to take God forever to bring down the evildoers. But we know that He will. Eventually, right, death will take them all. So evil self-destructs, but we don't just have to sit and say, well, it's got claws. It won't run forever. Give it another 100,000 miles and it'll break down. We can add that evil is destroyed by listening to instruction. Those who forsake the law, and this is the Hebrew word Torah, those who forsake the Torah, praise the wicked, but such as keep the Torah, contend with them. Commentators believe that this is not referring specifically to the five books of Moses that are called the Torah today, but that it's referring more generally to instruction of every kind, and certainly the instruction here in the book of Proverbs. Those who listen to instruction, and we could add God's instruction, those who listen to God's instructions, those who are taught God's teachings, they contend with the wicked. So again, this is a great test of whether you've actually listened to the word of God. Have I ever fought with the wicked? Is there ever a time when I've stood up to something evil? and said, no, not on my watch. And if you can't think of a time when you've ever said no to evil, whether an evil you wanted to do or an evil that somebody around you wanted to do, then it's pretty likely that you have not listened to God's word at all. Those who forsake the law praise the wicked. If you won't listen to God's instruction, you'll actually say that the wicked are doing things right. But if you keep the law, you will automatically contend with them. If you're a law keeper, you don't have to go find the wicked and attack them. The Lord will send you opportunities where you stand against wickedness in your own heart and in the people around you. So, have you ever opposed wickedness in your home, in your workplace, in your church? God-fearers will die on certain hills. Jesus did. Law-hearers, though, not only stand against evil, they also offer welcome prayers. One who turns away his ear from hearing the law, verse 9, his prayer shall be an abomination. What does that even tell us? That God loves to hear our prayers. That that is a very unprecedented situation when prayer is abominable. But if you won't listen to God's instructions, God doesn't want to hear it when you talk to Him. We know that that's true on the human level. I told you how to do it. You completely blew me off. So I'm really not interested in hearing your explanation of why you blew me off. Even your prayer is an abomination. Brothers and sisters, in a world where evil is weak, we don't sit back and say, well it's weak, it'll fall apart. We stand against it by listening to God's instruction, and by praying against evil. We listen to the law and then our prayer is welcomed. And we prove that we're listening to the law by standing against evil, first of all in our own hearts and then in the world around us. So are you bold? Bold as a lion? In standing against wickedness? Or are you too afraid of what you might lose? The difference comes down to whether you listen to God. Do you listen to His instructions and follow His instructions? Or do you have this problem where you know better? Listen to God. Strive against sin. And you'll see that wisdom destroys evil. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would help us to stand against wickedness. Give us the grace to listen to your instruction, to pay attention to it, to order our lives by it. Father, we thank you that evil will fall apart, that evil cannot endure, however alluring it seems, because it's weak, it's flawed, and that you, Father, endure. You laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. The heavens will perish, but You will remain. Teach us then, Father, not to fear evil, but to face it in the knowledge that it will collapse, that Your Son has already conquered it. We pray these things in Jesus' name, Amen.