FBC Morning Light – October 17, 2022

Well, a good Monday morning to you, and here we are past the halfway point in the month of October already.

I hope your weekend was a good one, that you were able to get together with God's people and enjoy a good worship service together, maybe be encouraged and challenged from God's Word.

I hope that was the case. It should be. Every time we get together and open the Word together, hopefully there was something to challenge you, also to encourage you, and maybe give you some comfort.

Whatever the need of the heart was yesterday, I trust that God in His grace used His Word and His Spirit and the preaching and teaching of His Word to be a blessing to you.

Well, today I want to focus on the one verse that is in our

Bible reading plan for today in the book of Proverbs, Proverbs 28, verse 11.

You know as well as I do, because you're at least tuned in enough to the culture to realize this is the case, that our culture tends to give credence to those who are rich and famous, don't they?

For example, it seems like the Hollywood elite think that what they think about something, their opinion about something, political or otherwise, carries some weight, as if it's really important because it's coming from them, because after all, they are a star.

They are one of the elite. You see this also among the wealthy, don't you? For example,

I mean we've seen in the last couple of years, heard the name Bill Gates an awful lot, he's made billions of dollars in selling software that is pretty aggravating half the time,

Microsoft, but anyhow, very wealthy man, and it seems that because he's a wealthy man, he thinks he should have the authority to opine on all kinds of things related to the global economy and the global crises of the world.

He's got all the answers with vaccines and so on and so forth, and I don't want to go into all that, but the point is that our society, our culture, tends to relegate wisdom to those who are rich, to those who are famous, and this isn't new.

In Proverbs 28 11, the first half of our verse says, the rich man is wise in his own eyes, and why is that?

Why is the rich man wise in his own eyes? Well, because he's got a great deal of wealth, he can use it however he wants to use it, accomplish whatever he wants to accomplish with it, and he has a whole bunch of stuff and a whole bunch of capabilities because of his wealth that us lowly people don't have, and that makes him think that he's wiser.

But the reality is what we see in the second half of the verse, that sometimes, oftentimes, those who are poor, who don't have what the wealthy have, are really, truly wise.

The rest of the verse says, but the poor who has understanding searches him out.

So a poor man has to live in the everyday world and work his fingers to the bone to make ends meet, to provide for his family, to put a roof over his head and shelter for his children and clothing and food on the table and all that kind of stuff.

He has a smarts about him. He has some insight and some understanding about life and the way life works that the rich man with his wealth just doesn't seem to have.

And many, many times, you have heard that, that being the case, where somebody who's a nobody can respond to the pontificating, wealthy, wise guy and set him straight.

And no doubt, you who are listening to my voice, I don't think there are very many who would be listening who have a great deal of wealth, but I can almost guarantee you that you, especially if you're

Christ, if you know the Lord, you fear the Lord, you have a great deal more wisdom and insight into life and its challenges and its opportunities than the wealthy man who is relying upon his wealth as the basis of his status and the basis of authority or his wisdom that he really doesn't have.

So let's not be intimidated by the rich and famous. Let's not allow the

Hollywood elite or the Fortune 500 top wealthiest people in the world to intimidate us into thinking that because of what they have and who they are and their positions of power and all the rest of that stuff, that they've got life figured out, that they really know what's best for us.

They don't. Our Lord does, and if you have him, you have his word, you have a great deal more wisdom than the wealthiest and the most famous.

Let's rejoice in that today. Our Father and our God, we thank you for the wisdom that comes from the fear of the

Lord. And it doesn't matter what our bank account size is and no matter how big our salary is, what's really important is, do we know you?

Do we fear you? Therein, we find wisdom. So Father, thank you for this truth today.

I pray that you would deliver us from a culture that seeks to intimidate by the tapping of the rich and the famous.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Well, I hope you have a great rest of your