Sunday, January 11, 2026 AM

Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Dear God, we thank you so much for this day that you have made.

We thank you for the promises that you have made, kept, are keeping, and will keep all through your

Son, Jesus Christ, who is our King. And you have brought us to yourself by his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead, giving us your spirit that we might have eternal life and know you as our

Abba Father. We know that you work all things together for the good, for those who love you, who are called according to your purpose.

And we know that having given us your Son, that you freely give us all things, all that we need according to your purpose.

And that because we have you, because we have Christ, because we have your spirit, there is therefore now no condemnation for us, that we may stand with faces bright, expectant of what you have promised to come, and stand before you unflinching in the name of Christ, knowing that you love us as you love your

Son. We thank you for the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, and I pray that you would help us as we look here in your word, that you would fill us with your wisdom, that you would fill us with your wisdom, so we would bring you glory throughout all of our lives.

And we pray these things for the sake of Jesus, the one with whom you are well pleased. Amen. I invite you to open your

Bibles and turn with me to Proverbs 3. Proverbs chapter 3. We're going to read verses 25 through 35 as we continue to think about the wisdom of doing do -nots.

Wisdom is often thought as, first and foremost, practical advice, and in many relates to the wisdom literature of the

Bible as a resource for strategies and tactics of the good life.

And there are undoubtedly many advantages conveyed upon the man or woman who minds these chapters and verses for guidance and insight.

However, Solomon himself insists that wisdom is first and foremost personal.

And you can think about the way he teaches wisdom to his son. Wisdom is bequeathed from parents to a son, an inheritance never to be forsaken.

Wisdom is a lady unsurpassed in her graces to be pursued by the young prince.

We're told that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. It's personal.

Investigating the book of Proverbs for solid, time -tested principles of success misses the point that human flourishing cannot be defined outside of divine categories.

We are made in the image of God. Our lives are to be attached to who

He is, us thinking of Him first, us thinking of Him most. That's the fear of the

Lord. Wisdom is the outworking of godliness. That's why wisdom must begin personally with God, expressed personally by God -fearers, appropriated personally by faith in the

God -man Jesus Christ. And this is a passage of scripture that I think helps us to appreciate that emphasis.

There's a cascade of do -nots that Solomon gives to his son, but it all resolves in the good, true, and beautiful trust of the righteous in a faithful and righteous

God. If you are able, I invite you to stand with me as we read God's holy word,

Proverbs 3, beginning in verse 25. Do not be afraid of sudden terror, nor of trouble from the wicked when it comes.

For the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being caught. Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in the power of your hand to do so.

Do not say to your neighbor, go and come back and tomorrow I will give it when you have it with you.

Do not devise evil against your neighbor for he dwells by you for safety's sake. Do not strive with a man without cause if he has done you no harm.

Do not envy the oppressor and choose none of his ways. For the perverse person is an abomination to the

Lord, but his secret counsel is with the upright. The curse of the Lord is on the house of the wicked, but he blesses the home of the just.

Surely he scorns the scornful, but gives grace to the humble. The wise shall inherit glory, but shame shall be the legacy of fools.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. In the fourth century,

Monica and her son Augustine, or Augustine, depending on how fancy you are, Monica and her son

Augustine prepared for a visit to Rome, and they soon realized that the Christians in Rome treated

Saturday as a day of fasting, and that was not something that was practiced in their home city of Milan.

Unsure of what to do, they sought the wisdom of their bishop, Ambrose. And his counsel was something like this.

Well, when I'm here in Milan, I do not fast on Saturday, but when in Rome, when in Rome, when in Rome, I fast on Saturday.

Yeah. That's where we get it from. And that's fitting and proper wisdom for those who would visit or even join other churches, or visit or join other cities, or visit and join other nations.

When in Rome, when there, right, taking on the customs and conventions in honor of your native hosts and your native neighbors, there's wisdom there.

But that is not the same category as other famous sayings, such as fighting fire with fire, which is a bit more broad, or the more pernicious, the ends justify the means.

When we look upon the successes of the unrighteous and we consider the apparent ascendancy of the wicked, we are not to then misapply when in Rome and consider the use of wicked means somehow the path of wisdom.

And that's Solomon's point to his son in this passage. First, he tells his son to not fear the terror.

Do not fear the approaching trouble of the wicked, but rather trust in the

Lord. Keep your confidence in God. And why is that so important? If his son becomes captivated by these fears, then he will be tempted to adapt his ways to what he fears.

The wicked are a threat because of their ways, but perhaps if his son should adopt some of their ways, maybe he will beat them at their own game.

Solomon surveys the possible temptations with a series of do -nots, and then he sums them all up in a general principle there in verse 31.

And then he grounds his son in the nature and ways of God. Think of God, verses 32 through 35.

So we have six do -nots. We have the one that begins the passage in verse 25, do not be afraid of sudden terror.

But then in verses 27 through 30, we have five that sound off in rapid succession.

The first four actually support the last one, which is the general idea.

So we're going to think about that first in verse 31. Do not envy the oppressor and choose none of his ways.

That's the general statement. That would be the overall title of the thought that Solomon has, and then there are four preceding do -nots that support that main idea.

This is the general idea, though. Do not envy the oppressor and choose none of his ways.

You'll notice that the particulars in verses 27 and 28 and verses 29 and 30 go together and support this idea.

Notice the previous four do -nots tell us the ways of the oppressor.

Do you see this? In verses 27 and 28, there is the idea of an intentional deprivation.

I'm going to keep something back from you that I'm supposed to give you. That's an oppressor. Also, in verses 29 and 30, the same idea is echoed with different emphasis.

Intentional dissension. I'm going to cook up something bad, and I'm going to do it against you.

After these four do -nots, we come to the last one in which we hear not so much

Solomon saying to his son about how you are going to treat your neighbor, but now he says, now

I don't want you to envy the oppressor or choose any of his ways. Together, these five verses form a profile of what an oppressor is.

Now, he says, do not envy the oppressor or choose any of his ways. What does he mean by that?

The term for envy comes from a word that means the redness of the face.

It has the idea of the redness of the face that is suffused when the zeal of jealousy takes hold.

Envy, jealousy, zeal are all said to burn. We still use those expressions.

They burn with envy, burn with jealousy, burn with zeal. Why? Because of the intensity of these feelings and how they show in the face.

And so Solomon says, don't envy the oppressor. Don't get all hot and angry and fixated about the oppressor.

Because it is enraging, isn't it? It is consuming to look upon the murderous, immoral, thieving, lying people in power and how they continue to prosper themselves by means of wickedness.

Just look how they flaunt the law and get away with their schemes. Get all red in the face.

Less distant, we can even see co -workers and employers and civic leaders and even family members acting in deceitful and wicked ways and apparently prospering because of it.

It's infuriating. It can inflame us. It can cause us even to weigh the merit of perhaps adopting some of their ways to get what we want to.

It occurs to us to use some of the same tactics, the same strategies, perhaps in a noble cause of opposing them and ending their running riot of unrighteousness.

I mean, if they're not going to be prosecuted, if they're not going to be held accountable, if they're getting away with murder,

I guess it's all fair game. Maybe it's not murder, but perhaps you see someone who is succeeding through fraud and bribery, laziness, petty theft, lying, so on.

And the question begins to crowd in on the mind, why do I refrain from doing the same, participating in this?

It almost feels like the only way for me to keep up and make the same kind of living as others do in their trade and profession is to do as they do.

When in Rome, do you see how the envy of the oppressor can lead to choosing their ways?

There's another old saying that can begin to ring tantalizingly in the mind and pull upon the heart, if you can't beat him, join him.

Do not join the oppressor. Do not envy the oppressor. Choose none of his ways.

Making much of sinners is a poor alternative to making much of our savior.

We may be greatly concerned about the power and the force of the enemy to consider the terrible implications of this being unchecked and what may happen next.

But do you know that we do not need to envy the oppressor and become fixated on the sinner in order to state the truth and do the right thing?

And in fact, we are more greatly helped to be enthralled with our savior in order to meet wickedness and injustice and oppression in our world, because he's our good shepherd.

What a tricky path to walk, what a difficult way to walk, to face down hostility and wickedness and oppression and to change things over the course of generations.

What a challenging thing to think about. Who is better than our savior to lead us on those paths?

He leads us on paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

So do not join the oppressor. Do not envy the oppressor. Choose none of his ways.

Have you noticed that the word oppressor and the word oppressed seems to show up a lot?

Folks are always being identified as the oppressor or the oppressed. This is the

Marxist hermeneutic for the world. Who's who? Isn't it wonderful that the

Bible is equipping us to define who's who? You know, this word gets used all over the place.

I'm kind of curious, what is an oppressor? I'd really like to know. The Bible actually tells us.

The word itself is also translated as a man of violence, a man of violence.

You'll know the word or think you'll know the word when you hear it pronounced this way, Hamas. Interestingly enough,

Hamas is actually an acronym of an Arabic phrase which translates to the

Islamic resistance movement, but wink wink, it also pronounces the

Arabic word which means zeal, enthusiasm, strength, and bravery.

It rhymes with the Hebrew term Hamas but doesn't mean exactly the same, but I suspect that what passes for strength and bravery in the mind of such a pernicious cult as Islam is indeed what the biblical word says, violence, wrongdoing, injustice, oppression, robbery, cruelty.

The word itself has a notable appearance in Genesis chapter 6 verse 11 where we read, the earth also was corrupt before God and the earth was filled with violence.

There it is, there's the word, filled with violence. Now when

Solomon speaks of not envying the oppressor, he says this also means practically that you choose none of the oppressor's ways.

This is helpful for us because it is by the way of the oppressor that we know who and what an oppressor is, and it may be novel thinking but by their fruit we will know them.

In other words, and this is very important, an oppressor is not known by their gender, not known by their skin color, not known by their class, not known by their education, not known by their position.

Oppressors are known by their ways. Oppressors are known by their ways and their ways may seem to bring results and they may seem attractive to many and adopted widely.

They may promise a get -rich -quick outcome or perhaps a surefire success story, but is there any real wisdom in their tactics and strategies?

Indeed, if you were to evaluate the ways of the oppressor in light of Jesus Christ who is the judge of all men, who will come to judge the quick and the dead, how attractive are these ways then?

Keeping Christ in view, leaving room for wrath, resting in the vengeance of God, we can see the ways of the oppressor and we are delivered from any attraction to them.

I find it compelling when I think of Jesus in his parables of the kingdom, how he does not despise the small and the quiet progress, how he speaks of the kingdom as a mustard seed, the smallest of all the garden seeds, and when it is planted, he says, it begins to grow and it grows into a tree.

I don't know if any of his neighbors had ever grown a mustard tree. Mustard bush was about the best they could do, but in Jesus' parable, surprise, it becomes a tree and the birds come and nest in its branches, a figure of speech about the nations coming into the kingdom.

He also says the kingdom of heaven is like a little leaven, a little yeast put into a bunch of dough, and surprisingly, again, the amount of dough in his parable is far more than any of his neighbors had ever cooked, and if she tried to cook it, it would be hard to get it out of the house.

That much yeast and that much dough spreads and expands.

Oh, how quiet, oh, how gradual, but suddenly there's the kingdom. God's ways are not man's ways, and so let's think about the definition, the definition of an oppressor by looking at these features, these ways.

We find from verses 37 through 40, four features.

The oppressor is delinquent, he is deceitful, he is devious and divisive.

Verse 27, here's the first way of the oppressor. Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in the power of your hand to do so.

The term good is fairly broad, very flexible. It can refer to any number of things such as payment or food or livestock service, so on.

It simply means that which is good and proper and right. Do not withhold that which is proper and right from those who deserve it when it's in the power of your hand to do so, to give it.

When he says, notice, from those to whom it is due, it's an awfully long

English translation for a very short Hebrew word, which will also be familiar to you, ba 'al.

You see, ba 'al, Baal, as sometimes we read it in the

Old Testament, is a perfectly serviceable word. It's not just the title of a

Canaanite fertility storm god. It's actually a very serviceable word to refer to those who have authority and thus are due certain fealty and loyalty.

They are owed something because of their status, their role. And so Solomon is saying, if you withhold from those who deserve it an owner, a lord, sometimes translated as an owner or a lord, if you withhold something from them that you owe them, that is the way of an oppressor.

Isn't that odd now? Isn't that odd? The Bible would say, if you sign a contract to rent a house, and you're renting that house, and someone says, hey, you don't have to pay that rent, and you don't give them the rent, you're the oppressor.

Isn't that odd now? Now, of course, the oppressor is the one who has the ability, the capacity, the means to render what is proper and right, but withholds it, meaning that the oppressor is intentionally, intentionally delinquent, stealing by omission.

Now, in our day, we are told that generosity is justice itself, that mercy is mandated, that certain people, by the merits of their intersectionals, are all due the good in the possession of others, simply because they're other, they should be given.

But here, with clarity, we are told that one of the ways of the oppressor is to be delinquent, to fail to make payments to a baal, to an owner, to a lord, and likewise, the owner and the lord could also be an oppressor.

They could adopt these ways and act in wickedness and not deliver on what was promised. They could be an oppressor as well, but notice they are not oppressors by virtue of simply possessing authority, simply possessing authority, simply having possessions, simply being in an agreement with someone else does not make you an oppressor.

So being delinquent is being an oppressor, and it's good to remember that what we render, when we render what is owed, it is ultimately unto the, how is he named?

The lord of lords. The lord of lords. He is our master.

We do it in his name. Now, of course, as Solomon is saying this to his son in this context of Israel, it could be of some concern to the person who owes something to a lord, something to an owner.

I mean, what if your fig tree does not blossom nor fruit be on your vines? What if the labor of the olive fails and your fields yield no fruit?

What if the flock is cut off from the fold and there's no herd in the stalls? What are you to do? It wasn't in your power of your hand to give it, was it?

And do you know that in the life of Israel, there were duties then upon those who had plenty to treat their neighbors faithfully?

And you can read about that in Exodus 23 and Deuteronomy 24. There's all manner of things that says, no matter who you are and what condition you're at, you need to render what is good and proper and right to one another.

And then God says what that is. God says what that is.

Also, along with delinquency, there is deceit. Verse 28, do not say to your neighbor, go and come back, and tomorrow

I will give it when you have it with you. There's another way of an oppressor. To their delinquency, they add deceit, and of course, these things go together very easily.

Imagine again the situation there on the ground in Jerusalem or in the fields or in the cities in Israel.

Solomon points out how easy it is to pick up the ways of an oppressor. When your neighbor comes for his payment, when you had hired him to work in your fields, when he comes to ask for his cloak so he can sleep that night, when you had promised to lend him your yoke of oxen so he could plow some ground, do not send him away acting like you don't have what he asks for, even though you have it, pretending like you're going to give it tomorrow, but who knows because you just lied to him.

Don't take on the ways of the oppressor. There's all of these opportunities to try to gain an advantage over somebody else by lying to them.

How common is that in our day? Extremely common. How often do people in their vocation, in their work, in their business, in their family, in their relationships, lie and lie and lie to try to get some sort of advantage over somebody else?

This is the way of the oppressor. It goes against the ethics of the old covenant which are summed up as love

God supremely and love others rightly because the sum of Sinai's social ethics is simply this, love your neighbor as yourself.

It basically comes down to do no harm to your neighbor.

Do no harm. God being who he is and having made you all as one people,

Moses would say, because you're all neighbors, treat one another as you would like to be treated, you wouldn't deprive yourself of some necessary good nor delay in doing the right thing for yourself, so why would you deprive or delay in regard of your neighbor?

This is the background of the law expressed as wisdom here in Proverbs and it reflects on the reality of how

God made us in his image. Now he made us to love God supremely and love each other rightly. Do not take on the way of the oppressor by being delinquent or being deceitful or being devious.

Verse 29, do not devise evil against your neighbor for he dwells by you for safety's sake.

For safety's sake. How common was it for one neighbor perhaps to bear false witness against another, hoping to use the city elders or some version of the courts to ruin your neighbor and then take from him what he could no longer maintain and possess?

Common enough that God spoke through Moses and the prophets many times about that kind of sin and how to stop it.

We remember how easy it was in the case of Naboth and his vineyard, how Jezebel and Ahab devised evil against their neighbor.

Murder, property theft, abuse of the justice system, all in a night's work.

When folks stay up all night planning how to defraud as many of their neighbors as they can and prepare themselves for violence if there's some complaint against them, that's not the work of a neighbor, that's the work of an enemy.

And this is the point that Solomon says, do not devise evil against your neighbor. Notice, he dwells by you for safety's sake.

Why would you be treating him as an enemy when he's dwelling near you for the sake of safety?

What kind of a person devises evil against their neighbor? Certainly a fool does.

And it might be that such Machiavellian tactics would work well for a while, but Solomon's caution is laid carefully in this counsel.

He dwells by you for safety's sake. And then, of course, the oppressor is also divisive.

Verse 30, do not strive with a man without cause. If he has done you no harm. The oppressor is divisive.

He's striving with those who have not harmed him. He brings complaint against those who perhaps don't even know who this man is.

They find ways to start fights and conduct campaigns of opposition, such as the oppressor.

He seeks to harm those who have not harmed him, and he may do so in the name of a cause. He may claim harm even though he has not been harmed.

This term, strive, can mean a physical struggle, but very often refers to a legal complaint or bringing a suit against someone.

Notice in the text that seeking justice for actual harm is not forbidden here. I mean, who would actually argue against appealing to those who bear the sword, appealing to the state to punish evildoers and maintain justice?

Who would be against that? Probably an oppressor would. They would be against that.

Solomon specifically states that the oppressor who is inclined to devise evil against his neighbor is the kind that, even though he has not been harmed, brings case against another, and they have no cause.

I mean, who knows what kind of loot they may be able to plunder by ruining another man's life? And so we see the sketch of the oppressor is completed, a survey of the oppressor's ways.

He is delinquent, he is deceitful, he is devious, he is divisive.

These ways define the oppressor because they show how he oppresses his neighbors seeking to gain for himself by wicked means, and this litany of injustices is forbidden by Solomon.

This is folly. He desires his son to pursue wisdom. These whys do not reflect the

Mosaic Law, but the Mosaic Law reflects the reality of man being made in God's image and reminds us that all men are accountable to God for how we treat one another.

All men are accountable before the face of God for how we treat one another. So we find the oppressor in many places, behind many faces, but the fruits of their oppression are not to be our fears.

Their ways are not to be on the table for us, and we are not to fear the oppressor or envy the oppressor or be jealous of the oppressor.

The oppressor ought not to make our faces red. Do not envy the oppressor and choose none of his ways.

Well, if we take that do not seriously, we see there's a great deal to do in order to succeed in this do not.

Because first of all, we have to recognize what God calls an oppressor. We often call the boogeyman.

We identify some bad actor, say, that's the boogeyman. They're the one running all of the evil that affects me, and I'm very mad at that person.

We know that we identify bad actors. We notice the institutionalizing of wickedness, don't we? And we can get red in the face and jealous and zealous and all stirred up by the oppressor who becomes even larger in our eyes the more we think on them.

The more captivating of our thoughts the more we think on them. But we are not to fear men and what trouble comes from the wicked, because what we fear we worship, and what we worship we become like.

And if we are so impressed that we're obsessed with the oppressor, we'll choose some of his ways.

We'll choose some of his ways, and we are to choose none of his ways. It's not wrong to call a spade a spade and to speak truth amidst lies and commit ourselves biblically to an unremitting clarity.

We have no need to cower before oppressors, and we certainly should not be so captivated with them either.

And rather than making much of sin and making much of sinners, the saints have been released in the liberty of Christ to make much of our

Savior. He's an everyday, every way Savior. Proverbs 23 verses 17 and 18 says this,

Do not let your heart envy sinners. Do you hear that? Do not let your heart envy sinners, but be zealous for the fear of the

Lord all the day. If you're gonna get excited, get excited about that. For surely, here's the reasoning why, for surely there is a hereafter.

Oh, where's the hope? Surely there is a hereafter, and your hope shall not be cut off.

There is a now, and there is a not yet, and both are full of Christ.

He is the center, and he is the sum, and he is the circumference. We are never left without an appeal to our great

King. We are never left without praise for his reign, never left without hope for his return.

We cannot forget the Lord, his preeminence, and his promises. Christ is all our horizon.

And so in verses 32 through 35, we are told, Do not forget the Lord. Do not forget the

Lord. The whole reasoning for all of these do -nots that Solomon presses upon his son comes down to this.

He explains why this is wise. Verses 32 through 35. Why all the do -nots?

Why do not fear? Why do not envy? Why? Verse 32. For, because, here's the reason why.

For the perverse person is an abomination to the Lord, but his secret counsel is with the upright.

The curse of the Lord is on the house of the wicked, but he blesses the home of the just. Surely he scorns the scornful, but gives grace to the humble.

The wise shall inherit glory, but shame shall be the legacy of fools.

Do you hear these four verses, these four pairings of thoughts, these thoughts that are in opposition to each other, contrasting but communicating the same message each time?

If we would reflect upon the Lord, if we're not going to fear terror and the trouble of the wicked, if we're not going to be captivated by the oppressor and all of his ways, if we're not going to be thinking on those things, then what are we going to be thinking on?

We're going to be thinking on the Lord. Remember, remember there is a hereafter and our hope is not cut off.

Do not forget the Lord. Consider this, the perverse person is an abomination to the Lord, but his secret counsel is with the upright.

Now, King James would have the forward person. We don't use that word anymore because it's almost impossible to say, but perverse wraps it all up.

Perverse means twisted, devious, someone who has long departed and is lost.

And this expresses the mentality of the one who embraces all of the ways of the oppressor.

And we read that the perverse person, who we're not to envy or be captivated by, they are an abomination to the

Lord. And a great translation of the word abomination is just this, disgusting. The perverse person is disgusting to the

Lord. Now, I've noticed something. I've noticed that we do not tend to meditate long about disgusting things.

We change the subject, we leave the room, we close our eyes, we hold our nose, we exit the building if we have to, and isn't godliness and wisdom and thinking most of the

Lord, thinking first of him before all things, isn't godliness an imitation of the

Lord? Is it not loving what he loves, delighting in what he delights, and abhorring what he abhors, and finding disgusting that which he finds disgusting?

Isn't that godliness, godlikeness? The perverse is disgusting to the

Lord. So what future is there for the oppressor, for the perverse?

Notice, in contrast to that, but his secret counsel is with the upright. The secret counsel is, his secret counsel is with the upright.

What does that mean? It means that whereas God puts the perverse at arm's length, disgusting, he brings in close the upright.

That those who are in the straight and proper, the upright, the godly, are brought into the inner circle.

Into the inner circle. Do you see how that works? There is a distancing from the perverse but a bringing near of the upright.

For the upright, of course, love the word of the Lord and meditate on his law day and night, and hold fast to his promises, and are privy to the very counsel of God.

As an amen to that, we find verse 33. The curse of the

Lord is on the house of the wicked, but he blesses the home of the just. Another contrast.

And this, again, is remember the Lord. Do not forget the Lord. Why would we not fear terror?

Why would we not fear the trouble from the wicked? Why would we not envy the oppressor and choose his ways?

Because, remember, the Lord. Because everything comes down to the Lord, how he sees things, what he values, and what is the outcome that he has determined.

And he doesn't want to have anything to do with the perverse person, but his secret counsel is with the upright and his curse is upon the house of the wicked, but he blesses the home of the just.

Now, when we hear about cursing and blessing, for Solomon to share this with his son in their context is simply to hearken back to Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26.

To recall that God says to those who would keep covenant with him that he will greatly bless them, and that those who would break covenant with him, he would greatly curse them.

But either way, God would show himself strong and faithful. And what is this but a reflection of what was true from the very beginning,

Adam and Eve. How blessed were they when they were in fellowship with the

Lord. How blessed were they when they walked according to his ways, but then when they decided to choose for themselves what good and right would be.

When they became perverse, choosing their own way in defiance of God.

What did he give but a curse? And so we are to think of the

Lord and what is important to him. The perverse person is an abomination to the

Lord, but his secret counsel is with the upright. The curse of the Lord is on the house of the wicked, but he blesses the home of the just. I am so glad that the upright and just son of God, Jesus Christ, who is building a house, names me as his brother, names us as his brothers and sisters, and is building the house of the

Lord, that all the blessing of God is upon him, and that we are brought close even into the secret counsel of God in Christ, and we can approach even the throne of God in time of need, and find their mercy and grace in the name of Jesus Christ.

Do not forget the Lord. Do not leave him out of the equation when we're regarding the state of the world and the issues that seem to consume the news cycle.

Additionally, remember that God scorns the scornful, but gives grace to the humble.

He scorns the scornful. He mocks the scoffers. And when we began the book of Proverbs, we talked about various types of people to whom

Proverbs is addressed. There, of course, is the naive, the one who needs to learn, the one who needs to grow up and become more mature in the ways of wisdom, in the ways of the

Lord. There is someone who needs to be taught, because if they're not taught, and if they're not helped, and if they don't accept the teaching and instruction, then they will become wise in their own eyes, and they will begin to mock other authority figures besides themselves.

And so they will say, this doesn't make sense to me, I will mock it, I will scoff it, and I will test to see if it holds up to my mockery and my scoffing.

It's the step between naivety and a fool is being the scoffer. But what do we find?

God mocks the scoffer. God laughs at those who would conspire against his son, who would try to shake off the chains, who would try to go the other way.

Psalm 2, God laughs at those who would rise up against his Christ, against his own son.

But notice he gives grace to the humble. He favors the humble. The humble are in opposition to the scornful, notice, because the humble want to say the same thing that God says.

I am a sheep. I am a child in need of instruction. I am a sinner in need of a savior.

I am in need of this instruction in this word. I am dependent upon the very breath of God for my next breath.

I am dependent upon the Lord. I don't have all the answers. I don't have it all figured out, right?

God gives grace to the humble, but he mocks the scornful.

Remember the Lord, how he sees us, what matters to him, and ultimately, verse 35, the wise shall inherit glory, but shame shall be the legacy of fools.

So, we see the, not only the present, but also the future.

What is in store? What is in store? Surely there is a hereafter, and your hope will not be cut off.

The fool who is the mocker, who is the wicked, who is the perverse man, who is the oppressor, this one who goes out and rebels against God and does whatever they want and then mocks everybody else for not being as smart and as powerful as they are, the kind of person that we often get read in the face about, their legacy is shame.

Their legacy is shame. But the wise, those who fear the

Lord, those who rely upon the Lord and wait upon the Lord, think of him first and think of him most.

The wise who submit to the King, Jesus Christ, the wise shall inherit glory, shall inherit glory.

So, do not let your heart envy sinners, but be zealous for the fear of the Lord all the day, for surely there is a hereafter, and your hope will not be cut off.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for the time you've given us in your word. I thank you for these do -nots that put things in perspective for us, how easy it is for us to become captivated by the wrongdoing and the wrongdoers.

And Lord, we know that we are to speak the truth and to stand for the right, but thank you that we can do so with our hope firmly grounded in you.