WWUTT 1419 Righteousness is the Way to Life (Proverbs 10:6-11)

Throughout the Proverbs we have contrasts between the righteous and the wicked, and it is so, we would desire to go the way of righteousness knowing that it leads to life.

The way of the wicked leads to destruction, 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. We come back to our study of the book of Proverbs, and we're going to pick up where we left off last week.

This is Proverbs chapter 10, starting in verse 6, and I'll just read through a few Proverbs here.

Once again, I'm reading from the Legacy Standard Bible, starting in verse 6. Blessings are on the head of the righteous, but the mouth of the wicked covers up violence.

The remembrance of the righteous is blessed, but the name of the wicked will rot.

The wise of heart will receive commandments, but an ignorant fool of loose lips will be ruined.

He who walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.

He who winks the eye causes pain, and an arrogant fool of loose lips will be ruined.

The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked covers up violence.

Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all transgressions.

On the lips of the one who has understanding, wisdom is found, but a rod is for the back of him who lacks a heart of wisdom.

Wise men store up knowledge, but the mouth of the ignorant fool draws ruin near.

The rich man's wealth is his strong city. The ruin of the poor is their poverty.

The wages of the righteous is life. The income of the wicked, punishment.

And we'll stop there for now. So coming back here to verse 6, blessings are on the head of the righteous, but the mouth of the wicked covers up violence.

So this is kind of like understanding that we are to let our righteous works be seen before others.

You think of Jesus' instruction in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5. He says, let your light shine before men so that they may see your good works and give glory to your

Father who is in heaven. Think also of the spiritual armor of God that the

Apostle Paul talks about in Ephesians chapter 6. He talks about it with the Thessalonians. It comes also from Isaiah.

But most commonly we draw it from Ephesians 6. So the spiritual armor of God, what is the breastplate called?

Do you remember that from VBS when he went through the armor of God? The breastplate is the breastplate of righteousness.

And not only is that something of a protection, Peter talks about how our righteous deeds will put to silence the talk of ignorant men.

So there's a certain sense in which our righteous deeds are a protection for us, protects our center mass right there, the middle part of the body, covers up the heart even.

But righteousness is also seen when it's worn right there on the chest.

So others again may see our good works, that what we do has been carried out in God.

And it's not to heap praise upon ourselves, but to give glory to our Father who is in heaven.

So again, here we have in Proverbs 10 .6, blessings are on the head of the righteous.

They're seen, they're right there. They cover the person from head to toe, that it may be recognized this person does what they do in the fear of God.

Not according to what the world says or not to please men, but they do so to please God. But it says the mouth of the wicked covers up violence.

So the righteous are not ashamed of what they do. They do the things that they do, that it may be seen by all the good works that are carried out by the righteous.

The wicked man, however, conceals what it is that he does, or he even conceals his intentions.

As you have righteousness described as being on his head, blessings on the head of the righteous.

There is good word that is said about a righteous man. We also consider the word blessing as having earned favor or being one who is approved.

So you think about like when you, or the old tradition of a man asking a woman's father if he can marry his daughter, right?

So a man goes to the father and says, Hey, I'd like your daughter's hand in marriage. Do I have your blessing?

Can I receive your blessing? Right? So the father approves of that young man taking his daughter's hand in marriage.

So blessing is also considered an approval. So this righteous man is approved blessings on the head of the one who does righteous, but the wicked man conceals his intentions.

He does not make his intentions known. He does one thing, but he means to do something else.

He's going to say something that may get the approval of others, but what, but the approval that he receives is not for the thing that he actually ends up doing.

So the mouth of the wicked covers up violence, covers up his intentions, that which would actually mean to harm other people rather than be for the benefit of others.

There's your contrast there between the righteous and the wicked. So may our very intentions be right according to what

God says is right. Verse seven goes right along with that. We have parallels between verses six, seven, and eight parallelisms is what they are called the form of poetry that's being used here in these three particular

Proverbs. So in verse seven, the remembrance of the righteous is blessed.

There we have blessings given to the righteous. Again, there is an approval of those who have done righteously, but the name of the wicked will rot.

They will not be remembered their actions, their deeds, what they did in their life will not be upheld in the memory of those who will live on after them.

Verse eight, the wise of heart will receive commandments. So if you tell the wise to do something, they will do it.

This is the way we all are to be as Christians. For as Jesus said of his very disciples, you will show me that you love me when you obey my commandments.

That's John 14, 15. And then John echoed this again in his first epistle.

In first John two, three, he says, by this, we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments.

How do you know that you know God? Do you keep the commandments of God? Verse four, whoever says

I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him.

But whoever keeps his word in him, truly the love of God is perfected.

By this, we may know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in which

I'm sorry, ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. So this is to be the wise of heart.

They receive the commandments of God. They delight in them and desire to do them.

The wise of heart will receive commandments. That also means correction, right? Don't go this way.

Don't continue in the wrong way, but continue in the right way. Go in this way instead of the righteous will receive that.

As we've seen already, the wise will receive instruction and correction. But the foolish man hates reproof.

That's a theme that comes up continually in Proverbs also. So we go on in verse eight, but an ignorant fool of loose lips will be ruined.

You have the wise man being one who is teachable, but the foolish man always talking, always doling out his own proverbial wisdom.

You could put it that or what he thinks to be as wise. He's always talking, but he won't ever receive.

You have to listen to him, but he doesn't have to listen to you. This is the fool of loose lips.

He will be ruined because he follows no instruction, no one's command, but his own heart.

And there you have the conclusion of these three Proverbs that all kind of go together. So let me read again from verse six, blessings are on the head of the righteous, but the mouth of the wicked covers up violence.

The remembrance of the righteous is blessed, but the name of the wicked will rot. The wise of heart will receive commandments, but an ignorant fool of loose lips will be ruined.

Let's go on now to verse nine. He who walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.

So the man of integrity is a man who says that he's going to do something and then he does it.

What he says he does, his words and his actions match. They go together.

So he will walk securely. He's not going to be found out as being a fraud. He's not going to be found out as somebody who says one thing and then does something else.

And we're not even talking about somebody who's a blatant liar. When we talk about a person who lacks integrity, we're not talking about somebody who deceptively and intentionally lies.

Like he tells people what they want to hear so that they enjoy it. But then in his heart, he doesn't mean to follow through with it anyway.

We're talking about a person who just, they just are not even mindful enough to live honestly and upright lives that they consider what it is that they're saying and committing themselves to before they say it and therefore able to follow along with it.

They're just very careless in their words. So it doesn't have to be a deliberate deception.

It's still a deception because they said one thing and then did not do it. But just not, it may not be deliberately so.

This is a person who lacks integrity. So the person of integrity, he walks securely.

He's not concerned or afraid that he's ever going to be found out as a fraud. What he says he does. But he who makes his ways crooked will be found out.

The one who does not do what he says that he is going to do is eventually going to be exposed as somebody who is untrustworthy, somebody who lacks integrity.

But understand whether a person deliberately lies or they accidentally lie, right?

It's still a lie. They are still a dishonest person. An honest person is intentionally honest.

They desire to do what they say they are going to do. They desire to follow through with what it is they say.

They truly believe what it is that they say. They don't speak lies. They don't say things to try to please other people.

They want to speak the truth, the right answer. So this is a person who is honest, who is full of integrity.

They are intentionally so. A person who lacks integrity, it may be incidental.

They may not be deliberately deceptive, but there is still a deception there. When you cannot trust the words that they say.

And the Lord is not going to give any credit to a person who lied but did not do so intentionally.

All right? It's not like God is standing there going, well, you lied, but okay, you didn't mean to. So it's okay.

Now, that's still a person who follows after lies, though they might not intentionally deceive.

You're still talking about a person who is a liar. To love the truth and walk in it is an intentional act.

It is a desire of the heart that somebody would be after that and would want to live in that uprightness.

So we must be mindful of that. Our heart must yearn for it and desire to uphold it.

And that comes from a transformation of the Holy Spirit of God. This is a spiritual work.

It is a fruit of the Spirit or among the fruit of the Spirit that we should demonstrate peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness, showing that we have the

Spirit of God in our hearts. But the one who is crooked will not walk in this straight way. He will be found out.

Eventually, his words or his actions will give him up that they do not match his words.

Let's go on into verse 10 here. He who winks the eye causes pain and an ignorant fool of loose lips will be ruined.

Here we have a reference to loose lips again, but also notice that we don't have that contrast between the righteous and the fool.

We're just talking here in verse 10 about a man who is foolish. He who winks the eye causes pain.

What is winking the eye? What is that supposed to mean? Well, whenever you wink at somebody, there's always like a, it's a suggestion of a kind of a hidden message.

I'm not saying it with my words, but I'm hoping you pick it up kind of in my body language. We just kind of have some sort of silent thing going on here, right?

And he can mean any number of things. I think in our culture, a winking often is something flirtatious.

It's like a man winks at a woman because he finds her attractive or fascinating or cute or something like that.

But you can also wink at somebody when it's like you're joking or it's, it's your tongue and cheek reference without putting your tongue in your cheek.

You're winking the eye. Yeah, I'm just kidding with you or something like that. But this, this, uh, is derived from a man who will kind of signal with his body language that he's not being honest.

Again, we're talking about a person here who is not on the level. They're saying one thing, but they're doing something else.

In this particular case, we're even talking about a deliberate deceiver. So not even a person who, well, they lie accidentally, you know, they say they're going to do something.

They just try to appease people with the words that they say, but then they don't ever follow through with it. Well, the person who winks the eye is being deliberately deceptive and he may be, there could be two explanations for this.

He may be signaling to somebody else, Hey, I'm just saying to this person this, but I'm still with you.

Okay. So we're still together on this. We're going to do something different, but I'm going to say this to this person to just kind of appease them or make them think that we're on the up and up here.

So that's one reason for it. But it could also be the winking or the signaling with certain body language could be that they know they're being dishonest and they're kind of afraid or they're shifty, you know, there's like this timidness that they're going to be exposed or found out.

And that's demonstrated in their body language, even like a little twitch of the eye or a wink or something like that.

This was mentioned back in Proverbs six, it says in verse 12, a vile person, a wicked man is the one who walks with a perverse mouth, a fool of loose lips again, there who winks with his eyes, who signals with his feet, who points with his fingers, who with perversity in his heart, continually devises evil, who spreads contentions.

Therefore his disaster will come suddenly, instantly he will be broken and there will be no healing.

So there you have that reference to winking with his eyes, signaling with his feet, who points with his fingers.

Again, this could be a man who knows that he's not being completely honest and he just can't control himself.

There are certain twitches like body language that gives him away the shiftiness with his feet can't seem to stand still, can't seem to make eye contact with you.

There was one time I caught a coworker of mine having said something deceptive about me.

This was years ago. I wasn't even a pastor at the time, but I caught this coworker. He said something about me to another coworker and that coworker came to me and said,

Hey, did you know that, you know, Bill is saying this stuff about you. So I went and confronted Bill about it.

I said, um, so yeah, Glenn told me that you've been saying these things about me.

And at that point, Bill gets, he gets real shifty. His eyes are kind of darting all over the place. He's just dancing around.

He's like, well, yeah, but when I said that I meant this, I mean, I even called him out on it.

I'm like, Bill, look, you can't even look me in the eye, man. He never really apologized to me for that either.

But he was caught. He was, he was caught, you know, red handed or loose lipped that he had been saying things about me behind my back.

And when caught, couldn't stand still, could not even look me in the eye. His eyes are shifty. His body language is completely giving him up.

And he's trying to come up with a story. There are our cops, detectives, police officers who know certain things about a person's body language whenever they're not being honest.

Now, it's not always an immediate give. It's not instantly telling of a person that they're being dishonest just because they looked up into the left or something like that doesn't mean that, hey, now we know they're lying.

But there are certain things physiologically that can give us up when we're being dishonest.

It's almost as if God has equipped us with a conscience. Now, not everybody does this, but a lot of people do.

There are certain kinds of physical changes in a person that you can catch to see whether they're being honest or not.

It's how lie detection works. A person being hooked up to a lie detector, that lie detector is looking for physiological changes in a person's body.

That's how the the detector that that machine works. And so it's being said here, even of a dishonest person, he winks with his eyes, he signals with his feet, he points with his fingers.

You know, maybe it's not an instant tell. It's not a foolproof giveaway in the sense that you can you can fully rely on that person's body language to tell you whether they're lying or not.

You really just have to test the lie to find out whether they're lying or not. But there's still something to a man who's just constantly shifty.

There's a reason to be distrustful of a person like that. So he who winks the eye causes pain.

He's a person, again, who's not fully honest. And even with his own body, he's giving up that he's not committed to the words that he says.

He winks the eye, causes pain. A person who lies is always afflicting something on somebody else.

Folks, we don't sin as an island. Sin has consequences upon you and upon other people, too.

It affects other people. Everybody is affected by lies. And so the guy who winks with the eye causes pain and an ignorant fool of loose lips will be ruined.

And the ruin that he receives comes upon himself. He has brought it upon himself.

He has no one to blame but himself. Verse 11, the mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life.

What comes from a righteous man, you may consider to be always gracious. In fact, as it says in Ephesians chapter 5, let your speech be seasoned with salt, always gracious so that it may give grace to the one who hears.

Actually, I was combining a passage from Colossians 4 with Ephesians 5, but you get the point that we're always supposed to have words that are pleasing to God.

And when we desire with even the words that we say to one another, we desire even in our interactions with each other to please

God with our words, then they're going to be pleasing to one another as well. The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life.

But the mouth of the wicked, again, covers up violence. We've had that said before about the wicked man.

Verse 12, hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all transgressions.

I guess that's a bonus because I didn't read that one earlier, did I? All right, we'll pick up there next time. Proverbs 10, 12, hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all transgressions.

Let's finish with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for these good words that you have given to us, practical wisdom that we may live by them.

And even in these Proverbs, we have promises of life, that doing righteousness leads to life, but doing what is contrary to righteousness, which is wickedness, that which goes against what you have said in your word will lead to a person's destruction.

So may we be convicted by this and walk in paths of righteousness, as it said in Psalms 23, lead us in paths of righteousness for your name's sake, that we may give praise to God in all that we say and do, and then also be a blessing to one another.

It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. This has been When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes.

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