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Reading Proverbs 17:15-28 with a series of proverbs about developing sound and wise relationships, and the one who seeks righteousness finds life. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
Fools, who have foolish hearts, they go after foolishness, and they go after it to their own destruction. But he who is upright, who desires righteousness, goes after life, everlasting, when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.
Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. Well, being Thursday, of course, we do our Old Testament Study, and we're coming back to the book of Proverbs. I'm still in chapter 17, and I'm going to begin reading in verse 15. We'll go through verse 28.
This is out of the Legacy Standard Bible, the word of the Lord in the book of Proverbs. He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to Yahweh. Why is there a price in the hand of a fool to acquire wisdom when he has no heart of wisdom?
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. A man lacking a heart of wisdom strikes his hands in pledge and becomes guarantor in the presence of his neighbor. He who loves transgression loves quarreling.
He who makes his doorway high seeks destruction. He who has a crooked heart finds no good, and he who is perverted in his tongue falls into evil. He who begets a fool does so to his grief, and the father of a wicked fool is not glad.
A glad heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones. A wicked man receives a bribe from the bosom to thrust aside the paths of justice. Wisdom is in the presence of the one who understands, but the eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth.
A foolish son is a vexation to his father, and bitterness to her who gave birth to him. It is also not good to punish the righteous, nor to strike the noble for their uprightness. He who holds back his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of discernment.
Even an ignorant fool, when he keeps silent, is considered wise. When he closes his lips, he is considered understanding. Let's come back now to verse 15, and there is a context to this. It goes with the verse we concluded with a couple of weeks ago.
In Proverbs 17 .14 it says,. The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so abandon the dispute before it breaks out. When there's a dispute between two people, sometimes it's better to just avoid the conflict altogether.
If you see the conflict starting to develop into something that you can't control, get out of it now. Keep your mouth shut. You may be tempted to want to get in the last word, but it can be the word that causes the dam to break, and then there's strife between you and the other person you're contending with.
There are other people that get dragged into that, and so on and so forth. Even though there is wisdom in avoiding strife, there are times when conflicts are necessary. Because consider what happens when we don't engage those who are wicked.
Verse 15. He who justifies the wicked, who says to a wicked man, you're innocent, and he who condemns the righteous, who says to the righteous man, you are guilty. Both of them alike are an abomination to Yahweh, and we should not just stand by and let such proclamations be made.
That which is wicked must be called wicked. That which is righteous must be upheld and defended against those who would call the righteous thing evil. We see that going on a lot in our society today. The culture is calling those things that God calls good, the culture is calling those things wicked and evil.
And the things God calls wicked, the culture is calling those things good. Like abortion, the culture calls it good. Which is the murder of unborn children. LGBTQism, homosexuality, which God calls evil, the culture is calling that good and embracing that and shaming anybody that would call it wicked.
I could lose the podcast just for calling such a thing wicked. And so there are occasions where we must defend that which is righteous and call what is evil wicked, even though it may result in us getting involved in a quarrel.
The world may quarrel with us, but remember the words that Paul gave to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2 .26, the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil and correcting opponents with gentleness.
We go on to verse 16 here. Why is there a price in the hand of a fool to acquire wisdom when he has no heart of wisdom? In other words, he will pay for wisdom or he might charge you for wisdom, but why would you pay his price when he doesn't even have a heart of wisdom?
What's he going to give to you? Wisdom? No. You will be paying for foolishness. That's what you get from a man who has no wisdom. Several times as a pastor, I've been invited to some sort of a group in the community where they want to do something for the town.
Like we need to have some sort of conference about love or getting out of debt or having better marriages or something like that. And I will, I'll, you know, be polite and I'll accept the invitations and I'll go and I'll sit in on their brainstorms, the ideas that they have, largely what they present is a bunch of pop psychology and bad soteriology and kind of a health and wealth light.
You know, if we do this, then God will reward us with this and so on and so forth. And I'll engage in conversations about those things. But when it comes down to it, they may have a desire to do something great, but they don't have wisdom because their desire does not come from God's word and they don't, they don't build what they want to build on God's word.
It's just built on the desire to want to do something good. It's foolishness. There's a lot of people who have great intentions to do things, but it comes from a foolish heart. It does not come from wisdom.
And they'll often want to sell this thing to what we need to have this conference. So we need to charge this amount of money to kind of offset our expenses. Well, why would you pay money to go to such a thing built by fools who do not have hearts of wisdom?
There is definitely something to be said about wanting to have better marriages and wanting to have communities that desire godliness, but we see those kinds of things happen in our communities when we preach the gospel, not when we present pop psychology.
Verse 17, a friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity. I have to admit, I was kind of confused about this particular proverb, and I checked a couple of commentaries. There are some different views on what this verse is actually saying, but let me give you kind of the summary of what I found as well as my own take on this proverb as well.
So a friend loves at all times. We all need friends. We all have friends. They'll love us no matter what, through thick and thin, you know, a good genuine friend is going to be with you always. Somebody who abandons you in the midst of something, well, then they weren't really a true friend, right?
Or if they stab you in the back, they betray you somehow. They just are affiliated with you because it benefits them. Well, then they're not really a true friend. So this proverb in speaking of a friend is speaking of someone who is truly a friend, a friend loves at all times, not a friend with conditions, but a friend who loves you always and a brother.
So this is not but a brother, but and a brother is born for adversity. So both of these persons are closely related. A friend is somebody that you're not related to by blood, a brother. Of course, you are.
You share parents or you have one parent between you who is the same parent, right? So that would be a brother or a sister, someone who is a sibling. You share the same blood, a close knitness in DNA.
So a friend loves at all times. And a brother is born for adversity. One who is truly a brother is going to be with you even in those hard times, even when adversity comes or when you go through tough things together, it even bonds you closer than you were before.
So you have a friend that loves at all times. If you go through adversity together, well, then it's like your brothers and sisters. Then there's really a closeness there that cannot be compared to anything else.
And spiritually, we know we do have the same father. So we are born again by faith in Jesus Christ. We are adopted into the family of God and we call upon the same father, our father who is in heaven.
Consider what Paul said to the Ephesians in Ephesians 4, 4. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. Verse six, one God and father of all who is over all and through all and in all.
And when we as Christians, brothers and sisters in the Lord, we go through difficult things together, we fight through adversity together, then that bond that we have as brothers and sisters in the faith grows all the more closely.
We're friends and even more so brothers and sisters in the Lord through Christ, whose sufferings we share. Does that make sense? See, do you get more of an idea of Proverbs 17, 17 there now? Great. Underline that one.
That's a good one to remember. Be that friend that loves at all times and even more so a brother or a sister in the Lord that sticks close in a time of adversity. Verse 18, a man lacking a heart of wisdom strikes his hands in pledge and becomes guarantor in the presence of his neighbor.
I believe that I had explained a proverb like this a little earlier on, but basically what's being said here is that you would take up somebody else's debt and that would be foolish for you to do that, to take up someone else's debt.
So think of verse 17 again, where we just talked about friendship. We just talked about a close brotherhood, but a person who has accumulated a lot of debt and has done so foolishly, you should not take that debt upon yourself or you're going to enter into that foolishness.
So so even a limit upon this kind of friendship that we might have with other people, don't don't be such friends with somebody that you would be willing to share in their foolishness. Rather teach a fool to have a heart of wisdom.
Verse 19, he who loves transgression, loves quarreling. He who makes his doorway high, seeks destruction. To make a door high, another way this is put is exalteth the gate. So you kind of adorn your doorway, you make it a tall doorway, you make it big, you make it large, and you dress it up and make it look real fancy.
It's very prideful to do such a thing. You say my doorway to enter in my way is the best way that's to make a door high or to exalt the gate. And the person who does so is seeking destruction, maybe not actively saying of himself, boy, I would really like to be destroyed today.
But a person who is full of himself, who is full of pride, who makes his door high, well, you don't go through that door to a better way. You go through that door to destruction. He who loves transgression, loves quarreling.
He loves the wicked way. He loves strife. Remember, going back to verse 14, the beginning of strife is like letting out water. So abandon the dispute before it breaks out. These are kind of the bookends on this particular section.
You have verses 14 and verses 19 and in between giving wisdom on having good relationships with one another, relationships that are built on wisdom and not foolishness. We go on to verse 20. He who has a crooked heart finds no good.
And he who is perverted in his tongue falls into evil. The person with a crooked heart does not go after those things that are good. It seems like they're continually going after evil things. You know, every once in a while I'll see those articles that that we'll talk about how we'll get into our cliques, you know, the people that think most like us.
And we don't even really know anybody that's outside that particular kind of circle. Well, you have those who seek after evil things are only going to associate themselves with people who do evil. That's going to be the kind of company that they keep.
So in their crooked heart, they don't go after good. They don't surround themselves with people who are righteous. You know, people who are unrighteous don't typically have friends that go to church. They have other friends that are not believers and don't go to church.
They find no good. He who is perverted in his tongue, who has lips that speak lies, who has invested himself in things that are ungodly, he falls into evil. He does not seek good. He falls into evil and his ways are wicked continually.
A good reminder to us to keep good company, that we not fall into wicked ways, but we have good accountability around us to help to keep us on the path of righteousness. Verse 21, he who begets a fool, a father who has a fool for a son, does so to his grief.
The father of a wicked fool is not glad. There's no delight in his heart over a son who is wicked. There's just continually grief that my son has gone a wicked way or my daughter lives in unrighteousness.
Fathers, train up your children in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord. As it says in Ephesians 6, you not only save your child from future transgression and even ultimately their destruction in the judgment of God, but you also save yourself the grief of having to watch your children go in a wicked way.
If you're somebody who's listening to me say this and maybe you're grieved because you did not discipline your children or you did not raise them on the word the way that you should have. Well, repent over that before God and go to your children and ask for their forgiveness and attempt to to witness to them with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
God can still transform and change hearts, pray for their souls that he would transform them before the day of judgment. Verse 22, a glad heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.
I mentioned earlier this week to read from Psalm 32. I would encourage you to do that. I'm not going to read through the whole thing because we don't quite have the time. But it mentions there that the grief that I had experienced, even the the weight I felt in my own body was because I had sinned that I had not confessed before God.
But I took my transgressions before the Lord. He forgave me and lifted me up. So a glad heart is good medicine. If you have unrepentant sin, it is heavy on your even your body. You feel it in your body when you have guilt and conviction like that.
So take it before God and seek the forgiveness of Christ. Verse 23, a wicked man receives a bribe from the bosom to thrust aside the paths of justice, receives a bribe from the bosom. He holds it dear to him.
He loves bribes. He's going to try to sell what he has to receive something from somebody thrusting aside the paths of justice. If you're going after a bribe, you're going after getting rich, you're greedy, then you don't care anything about justice.
You care about whatever word is going to get you the reward that you want. Verse 24, wisdom is in the presence of the one who understands. But the eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth. It basically means that he's chasing after an unattainable goal.
So the the wisdom, the person who has wisdom, he understands and he pursues wisdom. Fools go after what they cannot actually attain. Like you just take the health and wealth gospel, for example, the person who goes after the health and wealth gospel, the promise of health and prosperity.
If I just believe in Jesus, you will never actually get those things. The person who benefits from the health and wealth gospel is the health and wealth preacher. So the foolish person that goes after what he's selling sets his eyes on something that cannot even be attainable.
But wisdom is in the presence of one who understands. And he's completely content with the wisdom that God has given to him, according to his word. Verse 25, we come back to some of those parenting things that we've been reading through this particular section.
A foolish son is a vexation to his father and bitterness to her who gave birth to him. I was talking to a mother one time who was grieved over watching her children walk in a wicked way. And she said to me in her grief, it would have been better for me never to have brought them into the world than if they should go to their destruction and stand before God in judgment.
That's a pretty heavy thing. And so my wife and I pray diligently that our children would come to know the Lord Jesus Christ by the grace of God, that it would not be bitterness to us in our old age to see our children go in a way that is not godly.
Verse 26, it is also not good to punish the righteous nor to strike the noble for their uprightness. Consider again what we read in verse 15, he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them are an abomination to Yahweh.
So it's not good to punish the righteous, for they've done nothing deserving of punishment nor to strike the noble for their uprightness. But we should celebrate those who do righteously and set them before others as examples to follow.
Even pastors, elders in a church are to be examples to the rest of the body of mature Christians that others may imitate them and grow in in this walk of faith that we are in. After our Savior, who is our greatest example, Jesus Christ, verse 27, he who holds back his words has knowledge and he who has a cool spirit is a man of discernment.
He doesn't speak into matters that he he knows. I'm not going to gain anything by speaking into this. That's a little hard to practice on social media where you feel like you have to share your opinion on every single popular trending topic, but you don't need to.
There are several things I've seen going on lately that I'm not going to speak into. I certainly have opinions about them, but it's not going to gain anything by speaking into it. Cool spirits will not prevail.
It's just going to stir up strife. Now, consider that verse 27 with what we read here in verse 28. Even an ignorant fool, when he keeps silent, is considered wise when he closes his lips. He is considered understanding.
Have you ever known anybody like that before? Well, that guy just seems really wise, doesn't speak a whole lot, keeps his tongue. But then he speaks into some situation. He opens his mouth and talks. And then you're like, whoa, I had no idea he was actually that ignorant.
There are some there are some fools that can surprise us that way. They seem wise because they don't say anything. But then once they speak, it demonstrates that their heart is full of foolishness and not wisdom, because, again, as Jesus said in Matthew chapter 12, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.
So may we have hearts that seek and desire the wisdom of God so that what we speak is honoring to God and gives grace to all who hear. As Paul also says in Ephesians 429, let's finish up with prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for this wisdom that you have given to us.
And may these wisdom principles guide us to walk in a way that is pleasing unto the Lord. May we set our minds and our hearts on things that are of God, not on things that are of this world, not on things that are going to lead us to foolishness and depravity.
But we desire righteousness and uprightness, and we help our brothers and sisters in the Lord know the way that is right and walk according to these things. Thank you for Jesus Christ and his righteousness, which has purified us in the presence of God.
And may we walk in holiness all the rest of our days. It's in Jesus name we pray.
Amen. This has been When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes. For all of our podcasts, episodes, videos, books, and more, visit our website at www .utt .com. If you'd like to submit a question to this broadcast or just send us a comment, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com and let your friends know about our ministry.
Join us again tomorrow as we grow together in the study of God's word when we understand the text.