Sermon: Foolish Commitments & God's Guarantee

Wisdom from Above in Proverbs 6

If you want to open your Bibles to the Word of God, Book of Proverbs, Chapter 6. Proverbs, Chapter 6, we're in our series right now.

At Apologia Church,.

Called Wisdom from Above. Verse by verse, through the Book of Proverbs, God's divine wisdom, how to live in a way that glorifies God and be blessed and be on the path of peace and righteousness and light.

And so, Proverbs 6, starting in verse 1, hear now the word of the living and the true God. My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor, have given your pledge for a stranger, if you are snared in the words of your mouth, caught in the words of your mouth, then do this, my son, and save yourself, for you have come into the hand of your neighbor.

Go, hasten and plead urgently with your neighbor. Give your eyes no sleep and your eyelids no slumber. Save yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the hand of the fowler.

Thus far is the reading of God's holy and inspired Word.

Let's pray.

The Law of God, Love of Neighbor, and the Problem of Foolish Commitments

God, we come to You, Lord, humble before Your Word. These are the words of God. These are the words that You've given. You've revealed Yourself to us. You speak to us, God, in Your Word about Your nature, about Your character, about Your loving kindness, Lord, about the fact that You don't change.

You cannot lie. And Lord, we pray that You'd teach us today, Lord, from Your wisdom, how to be like You, how to be wise, how to be honest and truthful, how to keep our word. We pray, God, for the message today that You'd get the messenger out of the way, that You would speak by Your Spirit today through Your Word to Your church.

We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So Proverbs, isn't it amazing? So many of you said that last week's message was an amazing kick in the teeth. I love to hear that. And I feel it too, because before the Word is ever preached to the body, it's preached first to the pastor, right?

Every single time. And so God's Word transforms us, it renews us. When we're under the hearing of the Word, in a moment like this, it is light from God. It's the creator of the universe, the creator of the cosmos, condescending to speak, to reveal Himself to us so that we don't walk in darkness, that we're not living a life of chaos and disorder, but God condescends and He loves His people and He speaks to them.

He speaks to them about His own character, about His love, about His law. He protects them. And that's what a moment like this is in the book of Proverbs. This is wisdom from above. God, we talked about the difference when we started this series, the difference between knowledge, like God imparting knowledge, the fact that Christians can even know something, actually have true and justified belief.

God actually tells us things so that we can know because He's the original knower, but God also gives us wisdom. This is the skill in applying that knowledge. Here's the truth and here's how you apply it.

We have that right now before us. God's telling us how to live in a way that is prosperous, that is blessed, that is protected, that is a place of peace. God speaks to us. And so in a moment like this, when you come to a text like this, let's be honest, oftentimes you come to a text like this and you're like, I don't know what that means.

And I'm not sure that I'm being tangled in too much of that. I'm not sure why that's very important to know, but actually there's so much here that is connected actually to the law word of God and how we're to love our neighbors properly.

And let me just say this at the start. We live in a time where so many evangelicals have disconnected themselves from the law of God. How do we treat the law in our day, right? Because of a misinterpretation of the gospel itself and the benefits of the gospel, we treat the law today, the law of God, as that old archaic mean thing, right?

That comes from that really mean God.

He just is all about law.

He's all about that order and law. And so thank God we're relieved of all of that. And now we have now Jesus, the nice and happy God, who we have in the New Testament that he's all about grace and love.

So we have sort of like two gods, the real meany God of law of the Old Testament, who's all about wrath and judgment. And then we have like this New Testament situation where it's all about grace and love and mercy.

And God's not concerned with his law anymore. That is a distortion of the Christian message. Nothing could be further from the truth. And you don't see that message. You see actually the opposite of it in the New Testament record, where when the apostle Paul, for example, teaches on the gospel and how we are not saved by works and the law can only condemn us.

So you can't go the route of works and law for God to declare you righteous because you're not righteous, you're not good. Nobody seeks for God. In that very section of Romans chapters three and four, the apostle Paul actually says, identifying how a person is justified through faith, Romans 3 .28, apart from the works of the law, he then summarizes in that chapter, do we then make void the law through faith, right?

It's all faith.

It is apart from works.

The law will just condemn you. So do we now void the law, the modern evangelical says what? Yes, precisely.

That's exactly what we do, Paul.

Paul says, no, actually, because it's through faith in Christ alone, apart from the works of the law, we establish the law. Which law was he talking about? The same law that can't save you. The same law that condemns you.

We actually, through faith, establish the law. And it's amazing because you'll remember fairly recently, I had the opportunity to be on the radio show, do a radio debate on the unbelievable radio program with Andy Stanley, large mega church in Georgia, Andy Stanley, the son of Charles Stanley that many of you guys have listened to probably growing up for many years.

And the debate that we had is related to the thing that he's been teaching and preaching for some time now. And that's that we need to detach or unhitch Christianity from the Old Testament. We need to sort of divorce Christianity from the Old Testament.

That stuff doesn't apply anymore. Those laws aren't relevant anymore. Really, we have a different way of approaching this now. And what we've seen now, even in recent weeks with Andy Stanley's obvious acceptance of homosexuality and his looseness with it and saying that we have gay and lesbian people who serve God better than normal Christians, the average Christian, things like that, we see that actually his perspective on the law of God shows that he was really divorcing himself or unhitching himself from Christianity.

That's the truth. When we abandon God's law word, we abandon God's knowledge and his impartation of knowledge to us.

About A, how to love God,.

And B, how to love our neighbors. I mean, just think about it. Jesus says explicitly in Matthew 5, verses 17 through 19 in the Sermon on the Mount, he says, do not even begin to think. Me namasete, do not think.

He didn't say, stop thinking. Don't even let it start in your mind that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to what? Fulfill them. That's what Jesus does.

And when Jesus is asked an important question, Jesus says that the two greatest commandments are one, to love who? God, and two, to love who? And what does he quote to make that point?

The Torah. He quotes the Torah.

Actually, loving your neighbor as you love yourself is from Leviticus. It's from the law of God. And Jesus says, who is God incarnate, he says in his ministry, all of the law and the prophets are built upon love for God and love for neighbor.

All of the law and the prophets are built upon love for God and love for neighbor. So we can challenge the modern evangelical when we come to wisdom literature like this that is based on the law word of God.

We can say in the new covenant era, where we're clearly at now, we agree on that, there's common ground there, are we required as God's people to love God and love neighbor? What's the answer gonna be from the evangelical here today?

What is it? Yes, yes.

Those are really our only two commandments. Love God and love neighbor and that's it.

Well, guess what?

You just gave me the entire law and prophets. Appreciate that.

Because Jesus says what?

All the law and the prophets are built upon love for God and love for neighbor. And so in a moment like this, we have wisdom from above. God's telling us, here's how you live. Here's how you keep yourself safe.

Here's how you protect yourself from calamity. So much in the book of Proverbs is exactly that. How do you guard your life from calamity and from destruction? Even last week's message about the sluggards, so much about the lazy person, the sluggard, the idle person in the book of Proverbs, so much of it isn't just condemnation.

It's not just saying to you, you're wrong. It's God speaking to you like what?

A son.

It's in the text. It starts like that. My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor, and it does it again, verse three, then do this, my son. This comes as instruction from a father to a child.

You want your best for your children. You don't want them to get ensnared. You don't want them to be destroyed. So much of our lives as parents is precisely that, is trying to convince our children, no, you don't understand, I'm not trying to be oppressive to you.

I'm not trying to rob you of happiness. I'm not trying to rob you of joy. Like my saying no and my being a shield here in the way is because of my devotion to you. It's because of my love and my care and concern for you.

That's why I'm saying this, and this is exactly in that vein. It's exactly what's going on here. God is speaking to His people, son, child, listen to me. I don't want you to be destroyed, and so guard yourself from the immoral woman.

Guard yourself from being a sluggard. Guard yourself from the gangs and the ones who love to do violence. Protect yourself from them. It only goes one way, and here God is warning His children against surety and security, co-signing for somebody, right?

Getting yourself involved, and I said it here at the front because I think that's the summary, in foolish commitments. It's a stranger. You don't know. You haven't been thoughtful. You haven't actually planned ahead.

You're just making a foolish commitment, and you're putting up security for your neighbor, somebody you don't really even know, and it's going to come back.

And it's going to destroy you.

God's telling you as His people here, be protective of your future. Guard yourself, and if you give your word, you will be required to fulfill it.

Why?

Because that's what God is like. He always keeps His promises. Always keeps His promises. And so in verse 1, here we go. In verse 1, my son, if you have put up security for your neighbor, have given your pledge for a stranger.

Some of your older translations will say surety. Some of the modern ones will say security. It's security deposit. It's really a surety or a guarantee, a promise to pay, and what's amazing is that you think about people like,.

That's just that archaic book. It's just that old book.

It has no relevance to the modern era. It has all the relevance to everything, but we still do this today, right? Security deposits, right? Everyone's familiar with security deposits. Different things.

You can have security deposits for renting a car on Toro. You can have security deposits for a house. Security deposits for renting a boat. When we were on a trip somewhere fairly recently, last year or two,.

There was a beach.

We were resting and relaxing as a family, and so I'm kind of terrified, you guys all know this, of the ocean itself. I go far, but not real far because it's dangerous, and my worst fear in the world is if someone threw me in the middle of the ocean and drove off or sped off in a boat, that would be like, I would just start going under and sucking water.

It's just, it's over now for me, right? But we saw the people,.

What are they called,.

Where it's like the,.

Is it a paddle bike, where it's like two-seater situation. It's a little bike that goes out in the ocean.

You sort of paddle,.

Look like idiots paddling away in the ocean, and we decided, well, we're gonna do that, and so when I went to get it, they required that I actually leave my driver's license. Right, that was the security deposit is my driver's license, and the interesting thing about the security deposit is it's not like collateral.

That's where you're giving something that's actually valuable. It's the same value as the thing that you're getting. A security deposit can be a small amount of money. A security deposit could be something that you own that you don't wanna lose,.

Or in this case,.

The security deposit was a driver's license so that my life would be very uncomfortable if for some reason I decided to take that little bicycle back to Arizona, right, if I didn't bring it back, and by the way, my family is evil because I think it was my daughter,.

Yes, it was Saylor,.

That told me like, hey, jump off and see what it's like and then come back in, and so I did. I jumped off, and what did she do? She sped off, and I was like, no, I need my driver's license, right, and but you get the point, so a security deposit can be some money.

It's a small amount of money. It's kind of like a promise to pay, a security deposit. It's not of the same value as the thing, but it's just something to make you uncomfortable. It's something that's a pledge, a promise.

That is surety. That's a security deposit, and that's ultimately what it is. Again, it's not like collateral where say, for example, you're going to get a loan for something from the bank, and the bank says, okay, so you want $10 ,000.

Do you have collateral for it so we, if you default, can collect on it, and you say, actually, yeah, I have like, in a bank deposit box, I've got like $10 ,000 worth of silver pieces, or I've got $10 ,000 worth of gold, and so the bank says, okay, great.

We'll give you the $10 ,000 loan, and we're gonna have your silver and gold as collateral, so if you default, we can actually take all that, and we'll be paid back in full, so there's a difference between security or surety and collateral.

There's the difference. Now, when you look at a text like this, this is Proverbs. We're talking about wisdom from above, Solomon, but this is in the context of God's dealing with his people in history, so the book of Proverbs is written after Moses.

Moses has already given us the law of God. God's spoken, condescended. He's told us how to love God and love neighbor, and now we have Proverbs. It's actually the application of ultimately God's standards, God's truth, and the law of God in many respects, and so God's law actually speaks quite a bit about this issue of security or surety, so let's go to our Bibles to learn.

I'm not gonna be able to do this comprehensively in a single message, but here is some to consider. Go to Deuteronomy, the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 24, and so how many books did Moses write?

Five.

Five, so the Pentateuch, the first five books are Moses' writing. We know that from the teaching of Jesus when he quotes from the Pentateuch, the law of God, Moses gave that. In Deuteronomy, chapter 24, we're gonna start in verse five.

24, verse five. When a man is newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be liable for any other public duty. He shall be free at home one year to be happy with his wife whom he has taken. We mock God's word in our day, and you think about the abusive way that our military treats our soldiers, right?

They don't have these same blessings. They don't have these same gifts. We treat our modern-day military and our soldiers like they're cannon fodder, essentially, like they're living in poverty. They're not cared for.

No concern is made for things like this when you're married, having this kind of time to be with your wife, but there's more. Verse six, it says, no one shall take a mill or an upper millstone in pledge.

That's surety.

That's security. Same word. For that would be taking a life in pledge. And the next verse, I just want you to see it. If a man is found stealing one of his brothers of the people of Israel, and if he treats him as a slave or sells him, then that thief shall die.

So you shall purge the evil from your midst. So just a couple comments, just briefly on these two points, I wanted to say this, is I made the first comment in verse five about how we treat our military, the concern for family that the government should have, the concern for marriage that the government should have, and in verse seven there, you hear us often talking about it, that the issue of slavery in the Bible, you're gonna get this as a challenge from atheists who were ignorant of the Bible.

They'll say the Bible teaches slavery, promotes slavery, and what they'll try to do is they'll compare that to something that happens in the 19th century in Georgia or something like that. Actually, the abolitionists, the Christian abolitionists in the North and the South, there were actually far more abolitionist societies in the South before the Civil War than there were in the North.

Christian abolitionists were working in the same vein as what happened in England for the abolition of the slave trade, but guess what? One of the main verses those Christian abolitionists were using against the plantation owners,.

Guess what they were using?

This verse, from the law of God. God's law forbids man stealing and enslaving, and it actually says that it is so serious that the person who engages in it deserves to have their life taken. So any kind of suggestion that the Bible actually condones or accepts anything like that is coming right against what the text itself says, capital punishment, and the abolitionists were actually arguing very forcefully that we needed to abolish slavery immediately because it was an abomination before God.

We are all of the same blood. This is my brother. This is my brother in Christ, and they were arguing it needed to be abolished immediately, and they were arguing that it needed to be seen as such a crime to engage in what they were engaging in that anybody doing it deserved to have their life taken from them, and that is straight from the word of God.

Now, that text that we need to point to consistently in terms of what should we do with modern-day slavery, sex trafficking, all the rest, what should the penalty be for man stealing and enslaving? What should it be according to God's word?

What?

Capital punishment. It is such a violation to kidnap and enslave somebody. God says, your life is relinquished. You've given it up. Do not pity the person who does it. Don't feel sad for them. Establish justice and feel for the victim.

Feel for the victim. That's how God says deal with it, but right between there, he says, no one shall take a mill or an upper millstone in pledge, for that will be taking a life in pledge, and this has to do with how people actually would make bread, how they would, all my Christian moms here that do their daily making of bread.

It's like a big thing in our church. You guys are delicious bread makers. They survived on that. That's how they made their daily bread, right? If you couldn't do it, you would starve, and so the issue here is that if somebody is impoverished, if you have a brother in Israel who is impoverished, who is poor, you couldn't take as a security deposit something that they needed for their livelihood.

You couldn't engage in what we would call today loan shark practices. You couldn't abuse another human being, an image bearer of God, and in this case, particularly a brother, you couldn't abuse somebody in the people of God by charging them interest, first of all.

You needed to do it graciously, but when you took security deposit from them, a surety from them, you couldn't take something from them that they actually needed for their own production.

Or for their life.

You couldn't do that. You had to respect their honor, their dignity, their worth, and you had to do it graciously. You can't take away something that was the actual means of production. You know, for example, today, if it was a construction worker or something who needed a loan, who just fell into some calamity, they needed a loan, you couldn't say, okay, but what I want as a security deposit is I want all of your tools, I want your trailer, and everything you use for your trade, right?

Well, how are they, you're telling them basically I'll give you money so you can eat for a couple of days and then die because you can't provide for yourself. So you could not give a loan in an abusive fashion.

You can't take something that was needed for their own production and caring for themselves. So the law of God says, love God, love your neighbor. And one of the ways you love your neighbor who is in a struggle, who is in poverty, is you don't try to make money on them.

If you're gonna give them a loan, you do it graciously, and you don't do it in such a way as that you are a loan shark. You are abusing their life. You are taking advantage of the poor. God forbids taking advantage of the poor.

And so you can't be abusive. You can't take away the debtor's means of production and surviving. Again, this would solve the problem of loan sharks these days and abusive loans that people engage in. Loans to the poor or the impoverished had to be gracious, respectful.

They were meant to preserve the life of the impoverished or poor person, and they had to uphold that person's dignity and their honor. Next verse, go to Exodus now. Exodus 22. Exodus 22, starting at verse 25.

Exodus 22, verse 25. Loving your neighbor. If you lend money to any of my people.

With you who is poor,.

You shall not be like a money lender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him. So this is caring for people who are God's people within the body. They're in need. If you're gonna loan money, you don't do it to make money off of them.

You don't exact interest from them. If ever you take your neighbor's cloak in pledge or surety, there's that surety that you see in Proverbs. If ever you take your neighbor's cloak in surety, pledge, you shall return it to him, mark this, before the sun goes down, for that is his only covering, and it is his cloak for his body.

In what else shall he sleep? And if he cries to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate. You see, the heart of God for the person who is poor, the person who is hurting. Don't exact interest on them, and if they're giving you their cloak, like it's a promise to pay, I will repay this.

They're saying, I'll give you my cloak itself. He says, you gotta take the cloak and you gotta return it every night because that is a surety, is a guarantee. However, that person needs that to keep themselves warm.

They need that to protect themselves from the cold. They need that to survive. And so you can't be a loan shark. You can't abuse a person. You care for them. You try to get them out of the pit that they're in.

That's the whole reason behind it is you're trying to pull them up and to love your neighbor as what? You love yourself. And so they're giving the security deposit. Here's my cloak. And it's gotta come back at the end of the day so that they're cared for that night.

Now mark it down. It's got to come back. Next, Deuteronomy 24. Back to Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 24, starting in verse 10. By the way, I was thinking this week as you guys get there, I think that I'm fully committed to, because I think some people are like, well, it takes too much time.

You're taking time away from the message so everyone can go through their Bibles. And we can just put it up on a screen behind us sort of a thing. I don't think I'm ever gonna do that. And the reason why is in these little moments where you're forced to open your Bible and get to know it and search it is part of actually training you to know your Bible, right?

I think a lot of us don't know our Bibles today in many ways like where something is because we haven't spent time traversing it, actually moving through it. And I think this is the place that instructs you to do that.

So if it bothers you that we're doing this, that we actually go to the text and we take time and we hear the pages, then my response is, I don't care.

Just kidding.

I care, but not really. In Deuteronomy 24, starting at verse 10, another example from the law of God. So here, and if you didn't know this, Deuteronomy, what's that mean? It's actually two words, essentially.

Deuteronomos, it's the second law, the second law. So it's the second giving of the law. So you've got like Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is like the second giving. It's more explanation.

So you've already seen some of this stuff before in the past in Moses, and now this is more explication. It's more example, more case law examples to make sure that you are preserving love God, love neighbor in every way.

Now, this I love, this I love. In verse 10, the text says, when you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not go into his house to collect his pledge. You shall stand outside, and the man to whom you make the loan shall bring the pledge out to you.

And if he's a poor man, you shall not sleep in his pledge. You shall restore to him the pledge as the sun sets, that he may sleep in his cloak and bless you. And it shall be righteousness for you before the Lord your God.

So you have examples given here that gives you a principle, and that principle is gonna cross geography, geographical locations, it's gonna cross time. The principle in here is how you actually love your neighbor when they're destitute, when they're hurting, and you're supposed to care for them.

You're not supposed to abuse them as you try to lift them up. And I love this because it is in the word of God so very much, and I gotta say, we have lost our way today on this particular point. And that is the sanctity of somebody's own personal property.

You see that so much in God's law. Give an example, okay? 10 commandments, the Decalogue, the 10 words, the 10 commandments. What is one of those commandments? It is you shall not steal, right? So the law against theft, taking from your neighbor something that doesn't belong to them, it doesn't belong to you.

What does it presuppose? That law of you shall not steal presupposes what? Is that somebody has something that belongs to them. It is not yours, it is theirs. It is delivered to them by God. In God's providence, they own it.

God's word has this very heightened sensitivity towards theft and encroaching on somebody's private property. God says, that's yours, it belongs to you. It does not belong to anybody else. To the degree that God also has in the 10 commandments a word against covetousness.

You shall not covet. Coveting is not seeing somebody and admiring what they have and saying, man, that inspires me. Like, you know, little kids in here love baseball, right? Like they get all giddy and googly around like Dennis, right?

Like, woohoo! Cause they see him as like a hero. He's amazing at what he does. It's incredible what he does. And they want to be like him. That's not coveting, right? I want to be like that guy. That's not coveting.

Coveting is saying, I want what belongs to him. I want his stuff. Scripture forbids us to live in such a way as we see somebody blessed, we see their stuff, and we want their stuff. What's that sound like today?

Our society, right? I mean, you have people today, leaders, bragging about like their ideology that like, hey, these people are the haves. We need to give the have-nots the haves stuff. I saw a whole speech from President Biden where he was talking about how we got to tax these successful people and these rich people.

Cause like, he's like, you know, they have so much. Don't you want some of their stuff? Isn't it wrong that they have so much stuff? And the idea was, yeah, I want their stuff. Can you take from them and give it to me?

That's coveting. It's encroaching on somebody's private property. And look at even in this law, you have that super high value and respect of a person's property and you should not steal. That it even comes into like giving a person a loan that when you come to get the surety or security deposits, you don't get to make the choice yourself and come into their property and start seizing stuff.

You can't do that.

What?

You have to respect their honor, their dignity, their property. Here's what I'm saying. Brothers and sisters, you see the principles that are involved here when you unpack it. There is this heightened commitment in God's law to neighbor in saying, I must respect their boundaries and their things.

And even when I'm in a relationship where I'm blessing them and helping them, I do not get to use that to abuse them. I can't say, I'm helping you. I'm giving you this loan. And so you're going to do what I say.

You treat them like a brother. You love them. You treat them equal, eye to eye. You don't get to come barging into their house, taking their stuff, and starting to take ownership of that person's belongings.

That person gets to decide. You don't even cross their boundary line. You don't come into their house and take their stuff, which is, by the way, you're welcome, a gift from the Christian worldview in this country also.

What do we have? We have a Bill of Rights, right? And we have laws that are on the books that are supposed to be laws from who? From our creator. These are laws not that the government grants. These are laws from the creator himself.

And one of those laws is the law against self-incrimination. You can't make me testify against myself. Where's that come from? Directly from the law, word of God. And one of those laws also is against warrantless searches and what?

Seizures. Against warrantless searches and seizures. We don't even respect that anymore, right? I mean, you have police officers, unfortunately, who completely abuse other citizens by doing things to encroach on their property or into their vehicles without a warrant.

And it's a violation of this principle in scripture. And that is that you honor a person's private property. You protect it. You honor the boundary. And you can't just come in willy nilly to someone's house, seizing property, or crossing the boundary.

That is something that is highlighted in God's word. And you can see it, the principle of it, right here. That does not belong to me. That belongs to them. I shouldn't want to take their stuff. I need to respect their honor and their dignity, value them in that way.

And so today we don't do that. We have, unfortunately, law enforcement that will go into someone's vehicle or find excuses to go into someone's vehicle or encroach the boundaries of their own home without a warrant, without a purpose, without evidence, without any of those things.

And scripture would give to us a foundation, and actually did, that protects our neighbors against that kind of violation. This past week there was news on somebody who was called the pro-life Spider-Man.

Now I don't want to take down this man's dignity, but you probably saw the story, pro-life Spider-Man. You think, oh yeah, that's the guy that's on our team. He's pro-life. He's doing this for babies.

He climbs a building that didn't belong to him, climbed it in a risky way. And ultimately, first responders were there and people were there hoping for his safety. Thankfully, he was safe. But they arrested him, right?

And many people were like, well, why would you arrest him? He was just trying to stand up for babies. We can't stand up for babies while we're violating the law.

Because guess what?

What if pro-life Spider-Man came and was sort of climbing on your house? Would you want someone just random coming to your house, climbing on your home, doing little parrots and dances on top of your roof?

You would say, that's wrong. Would you do it to a private citizen? Would you climb their house in that way? The answer is no.

Why?

Because it doesn't belong to you. That's called trespassing. You're kind of doing a breaking and entering situation here. You can't violate another person's property and you can't violate a business's property.