Proverbs 10

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Okay, so we're gonna look at the whole 10 chapter tonight and because it's a rather long chapter, we'll cover a couple of things, but certainly not going to deal with every verse in any real detail in order to get through it.
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We're trying to maintain covering a whole chapter in each section.
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So let's open up with a word of prayer.
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I'm gonna read the whole chapter and then we'll go back and just make some comments.
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So Proverbs chapter 10, and again, I'm reading out of the New King James.
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The Proverbs of Solomon, a wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a grief to his mother.
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Treasures of wickedness profit nothing, but righteousness delivers from death.
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The Lord will not allow the righteous to famish, but he casts away the desire of the wicked.
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He who deals with a slack hand becomes poor, but the hands of the diligent makes one rich.
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He who gathers in summer is a wise son, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who causes shame.
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Blessings are upon the head of the righteous, but violence covers the mouth of the wicked.
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The memory of the righteous is blessed, but the name of the wicked will rot.
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The wise in heart will receive commands, but a prodding fool will fall.
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He who walks with integrity walks securely, but he who perverts his ways will become known.
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He who winks with the eye causes trouble, but a prodding fool will fall.
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The mouth of the righteous is a well of life, but violence covers the mouth of the wicked.
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Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins.
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Wisdom is found on the lips of him who has understanding, but a rod is to the back of him who is devoid of understanding.
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Excuse me.
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Wise people store up knowledge, but the mouth of the foolish is near destruction.
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The rich man's wealth is his strong city, and the destruction of the poor is their poverty.
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The labor of the righteous leads to life, the wages of the wicked to sin.
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He who keeps instruction is in the way of life, but he who refuses reproof goes astray.
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Whoever hides hatred has lying lips, and whoever speaks slander, whoever spreads slander is a fool.
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In the multitude of words, sin is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is wise.
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The tongue of the righteous is choice silver, the heart of the wicked is worth little.
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The lips of the righteous feed many, but fools die for lack of wisdom.
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The blessing of the Lord makes one rich, and he adds no sorrow with it.
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To do evil is like a sport to a fool, but a man of understanding has wisdom.
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The fear of the wicked will come upon him, and the desire of the righteous will be granted, and when the wicked passes by, the wicked is no more, but the righteous has an everlasting foundation.
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As vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to those who send him.
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The fear of the Lord prolongs days, but the years of the wicked will be shortened.
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The hope of the righteous will be gladness, but the expectation of the wicked will perish.
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The way of the Lord is strength for the upright, but destruction will come to the workers of iniquity.
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The righteous will never be removed, but the wicked will not inhabit the earth.
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The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom, but the perverse tongue will be cut out.
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The lips of the righteous know what is coming, but the mouth of the wicked what is perverse.
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So let's just take a moment, come before our God in prayer, and ask him to bless us, and to certainly bless both the reading and the understanding of his word.
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So let's pray.
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Our Father and our God, again, we come to you in Jesus' name, knowing that it's because of him, and because of what he has done for us on Calvary's cross, and that he died for our sins as a substitute, as a payment for what we could never pay you.
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We come in his name, and we come, we pray in the power of your spirit, Holy Spirit, that you would open our hearts and our minds to your words, to your truth, and that it would be effectual in our lives.
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Lord, that we would not just be those who have head knowledge, but we would be those who have a heart reality, and that what we know to be true would be evidenced in our life, that all would see, that even as that great saying goes, Lord, we might not be what we ought to be.
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You might not be what we wanna be, but we thank you, Lord, that we're not what we used to be.
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That by your grace, you have saved us, given us new hearts, new minds, new purpose, a new future, Lord, future with you.
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We thank you, Lord, that we can gather freely tonight.
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We pray for those who are not with us for many reasons, Lord, sickness, providence, other situations.
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We pray, Lord, that even a few minutes in your word would be beneficial to us, that we would never look at your word as if it's just another book, but that we would look at it as it is in truth, the word of the living God.
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So be with us tonight, Lord.
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Open our hearts, open our minds, and may you be pleased, please, Lord, in all that we say and do.
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We not only ask it in Jesus' name, but we ask it for his glory and for our own eternal good.
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Amen.
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Okay, so if you were here last week, Brother Keith went through chapter nine.
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And if you remember what Brother Keith brought up was in many ways a summary, if you will, of the first nine chapters.
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And I thought he did such a good job in summarizing, if you will, the first nine chapters of the book of Proverbs because the first nine chapters, as we've been saying, really is this continual crying of Solomon that we would not only hear the cry of wisdom, but that we would follow the cry of wisdom.
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And if you remember what Brother Keith brought up, he did that contrast, which I thought was excellent, about the woman of wisdom and then the foolish woman, or what do you call it, the woman of femme.
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That's how he set it up.
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And that there is this, if you will, as we go forward now in the book of Proverbs, for almost the remainder of the book, we begin to drill, Solomon begins to drill down into some of the realities of what he's been saying in the first nine chapters where he's been saying that wisdom basically stands at the highest hill and cries out and calls out to the children of man and desires that they would come and that they would listen and they would hear and listen and that they would live in accordance to that wisdom, which again, he has for the first nine chapters been constantly going over.
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And so as we come to now chapter 10, and as you read it with me, it begins to, if you will, move a little bit more than the first nine chapters in that it talks about this and it talks about that and it says this and it says that.
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And so because of that, again, we won't be able to cover every single verse, but here's the thing to remember as we go through the remainder of the book of Proverbs as long as it takes us, is that many of the things that we will read in going forward will repeat themselves over and over again.
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In other words, when Solomon talks about, as we spent a good amount of time on the adulterous, the hollid or a man who follows after adultery, that that subject will, has not only come up many, many times, right? In chapter two, chapter five, chapter seven, came up in chapter nine, but it will come up again during the book as you go through it.
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Maybe not in such a large portion, but the same truths will come back over and over again through the book of Proverbs.
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And I wanted to start out with that thought, although I will say if I had to title this chapter, I might title it something like the tale of two stories.
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And I'll explain why I would do that in a little bit, but I do wanna first ask you to think about this whole idea of how the major themes of the book will constantly repeat themselves.
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And there's a very specific reason.
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And I think one of them certainly is we need to hear about truth over and over again, because we are in many ways, although we might hear with our ear, we struggle very often with hearing with our hearts.
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Many times it just kind of enters into our head.
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We might even know the facts of it, but until it really sinks down in our heart, and I think certainly within the book of Proverbs, that's one of the reasons that we would realize that we need, it sounds just not trying to fill pages.
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Right? If we believe in the inspired word of God, that it is inerrant, that it's God breed, that it's infallible, that it's the rule of life, then we should take heed to that fact that when God continually teaches us about a particular subject or a particular truth or a particular principle, that we would pay attention to it every time we come to it.
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In other words, we just can't come to it and say to ourselves, well, I read that somewhere long ago.
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I don't really need to think about it now.
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Let's move on to something different.
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Because again, I think one of the issues is, and one of the weapons, if you will, or the tools and the toolkit of the evil one is to deceive us into thinking that very thing, that we got this, and let's just move on to something else, when in fact we need constant reminders of the same truth.
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And certainly as we go through the Old Testament and all those narratives that we've been going through and judges and Joshua, and as we go forward, why are they there? But they're there to do what? To serve as examples for us.
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Why? So we don't fall into the same ditches that they fell in.
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So again, I think that's something that we need to consider as we go through.
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I'm gonna make that point a little bit more as we go through some of the verses in the chapter, but there's also another thought, and that'll be the second thought for tonight.
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And that's why I call it the tale of two stories.
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It's a really a chapter of great contrast.
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Now I did my best to emphasize something as we were reading tonight.
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And what I tried to do was emphasize the word, but.
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Not B-U-T-T, B-U-T.
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Because if you read this chapter, you will find that there's 32 verses.
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In 24 of those verses, that word, but, is brought into view.
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In other words, the reason why I call it the tale of two stories is because it's really a chapter that talks about the contrast of those that are righteous, not self-righteous, but righteous in the sense of being godly.
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And not only what that means in their lives, but the results of their lives in contrast.
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And that's where the but comes in.
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And you'll see it as we go through it again, even as it says in treasures of wickedness in verse two, or in verse one, a wise son makes a glad father, but, here's the contrast, a foolish son is the grief of his mother.
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And as you go through this chapter, you'll see it over and over again.
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He takes, if you will, he paints the two sides of the story.
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And that's why, again, you and I need to know what it is that God would have us to know and how we ought to live, so that we don't find ourselves on the wrong side of but.
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Because again, as I've been saying, and I will continually say, one of the great themes in the book of Proverbs is that there really is only two kinds of people, the wise man, woman, child, whatever way you wanna break it out, and the fool.
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There are those who hear, believe, obey, and there are those who refuse, reject, and disobey.
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And then ultimately, no matter how this world tries to complicate it by talking about all kinds of cultures and groups, and I'm not disowning cultures and civilizations and times and different things like that, but how this world tries to put everybody into some sort of subgroup and make such a big deal out of some of those things, that the Bible, in that sense, is very simple.
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There really is those who will yield to the wisdom of God, ultimately means to yield to Christ, to submit to Him as Lord and master, and that those are the blessed, and that those are the ones who will lead a certain kind of life, and then there's the other group.
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And even as Brother Keith brought up, there are those, and he termed it right as he brought up the word simple, and that many times in Proverbs, you'll see the simple are people that are kind of neither nor, but you can't be neither nor for long.
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You just can't, there is, there's no neutrality when it comes to God's word.
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Either you are for Him or you are against Him, right? Now, that doesn't mean there aren't people somewhere in between as far as understanding and acknowledgement, however, ultimately in that day, when Christ returns, there's only two groups, right? What are they? Who's on the left hand? Who's on the right hand? Come on, sheep, goats.
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That's it, right? There's no third group.
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Either you are His or you aren't His.
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So as we go through this chapter, I wanna try to draw that out and show you this contrast.
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And again, when the same word is used over and over again, brothers and sisters, pay attention to it.
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We really should because it's there for a reason.
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It's not just, again, it's not just to fill up space.
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So with that in mind, let's just walk through some of the verses and I'll make a couple of comments along the way and that should carry us through our time tonight.
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So let me say this also, sin and righteousness or sin and godliness, I'm gonna contrast and use that term, okay? Godliness and godlessness, either side of it, it is something that has a far reaching effect.
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In other words, I guess what I'm trying to think about and ask you to think about is ultimately all sin is against who? God, right? He's the judge, he's the lawgiver, he's the king, he's the creator, he's the sustainer.
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So ultimately all sin is against God, right? However, there is a reality that both godly living and godless living affects others.
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Remember that is that great reality of relationship, right? There's the vertical relationship and that's between us individually and God, right? And then there's the horizontal relationship and that would be, doesn't exclude God, but it talks about our relationships with each other, right? Man with man was basically we're all from dust and from dust we came, from dust we shall return.
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So in that reality, both godliness and godlessness have a far reaching effect on others, even those who are not immediately involved in either godliness or godlessness.
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I hope you're getting where I'm trying to get us to think.
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What I'm trying to say is there is in many ways, what we do, how we live has a trickling effect on other people, realized or not, it does.
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And I'm gonna try to show you that both from this chapter, but also with some other thoughts that in reality, our lives will either be a savor or a means or a sweet smelling aroma to give others life or, but godlessness, will be a savor of death, will be odious, will be offensive.
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And again, it has many, many roots and they spread out wide.
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And so again, what one man does in a certain situation could have a rippling effect on many others.
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Wouldn't you agree? And I'm gonna show you that not only from the chapter, but from some other thoughts.
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And so it's important for us to understand that, that as we read these contrasts, it's more than just, okay, I got it.
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This is how God wants me to live.
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But there's a reason for it, not only to please God and glorify him, but that we might be truly the light of the world and the salt of the earth versus being that which destroys and that which tears down.
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So basically a godly life will build or be aid in building other godly lives and godlessness or ungodly living will be something that will usually tear down.
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Let me try to give you a couple of examples.
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You remember in John's epistles, one of John's epistles where he opens his epistle and he says that he has no greater joy than to hear that his children walk in truth.
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Let's just think about that for a minute.
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What they did by walking in truth, gladdened, made happy, brought joy to the apostle John.
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So again, an effect took place.
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The way they lived had a direct impact on John's state in himself, right? Again, one thing affects another thing or let's take it from the other side.
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Do you remember how Paul, when he wrote to the church at Corinth, how the actions of the church at Corinth with some of the sinful things that took place and certainly with the man sleeping with his father's wife and the schisms and the divisions and not tarrying at the Lord's supper.
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You remember how it saddened the heart of Paul.
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It says he grieved him.
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So you see where I'm trying to get us to think that as we look at these Proverbs, if you wanna call them that way, as it says the Proverbs of Solomon, that we realize they're not just pithy sayings.
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They're not just things that we should spend a few minutes on and then move on.
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These are the things that lead to life.
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Versus leading to death and that it affects others.
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Again, maybe the best way for me to do that to drive that point home is just to look at some of the verses.
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So even look at verse one, it says this, it says a wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is the grief to his mother.
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To me, there it is right there, right in the beginning of it.
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In other words, the actions of the son have what? An effect on the father.
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Godliness has an effect on the father.
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And then it says a foolish son is what? A grief to his mother.
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Again, doesn't necessarily mean that we're the ones that are committing that action, but there is definitely a result.
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How many of us would say we have very intimate experience with this, where the actions, whether they be good or bad, of our children or our relatives or our close friends or our coworkers or just strangers in the street, they either make us glad or sad.
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It does have an impact.
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And I say it often because I know it to be true.
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Little kids, little problems, big kids, big problems.
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And again, a wise son, a godly son, a son who listens, he'll make his father's heart glad.
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And then there's the contest.
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But, and that's the way it says, right? But a foolish son is the grief to his mother.
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Again, impact of one, the actions of one impact another.
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Look at verse 11 and 12.
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And again, what I'm trying to do is bring this point to light a little bit more.
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Look what it says in verse 11.
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The mouth of the righteous is a well of life, but violence covers the mouth of the wicked.
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The mouth of the righteous is a well of life.
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How many of us would say that sometimes the words of a godly person is like something that brings relief? What's that proverb that says? Words fitly spoken are like apples of gold and pitches of silver.
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Words fitly spoken are like apples of gold and pitches of silver.
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And that, just think about it.
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Brothers and sisters, friends, what we say many times can be a well of life, or it could be a well of death.
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How many of us would say that sometimes somebody will say something with no thought at all, or maybe with a lot of thought, but it has an impact on us.
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And then once it has an impact on us, many times it has an impact on someone else.
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So again, as I say, it like ripples on a pond, just keeps going out and out and out and out.
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The actions of one will result in the state to some degree of another.
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Look at verse 21, just, and again, just a couple of verses to emphasize this.
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Look what it says.
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The lips of the righteous feed many, but fools die for lack of wisdom.
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The lips of the righteous feed many.
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Even verse 20, the tongue of the righteous is choice silver.
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The heart of the wicked is worth little.
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But just think about that again.
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Do I weigh out the words that I speak in such a way that I'm seeking to be a well of life to someone else? Or is it just like, that's the way I feel, so I'm gonna say it the way I feel.
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Because that's what many people will say.
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I got just me, I'm a straight shooter and I tell it like it is.
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Well, what we do for you, but where's the consideration about your words being either a saver of life or a saver of death, of spreading light versus causing darkness.
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Again, sin has effects on much more than just the individual who either commits the sin or lives godly.
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Again, the responsibility is to do what? To live godly, right? To obey God for his glory, for his praise, for our own eternal good.
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But certainly we must consider that in our lives because again, God has created us to be social creatures in that way.
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And again, just think about how much harm has been caused as we've talked before on the internet.
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With all these people spilling out words and sayings and opinions and editorials and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and how harmful it is in so many ways.
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And then again, the godly contrast, sometimes someone will actually say something and it has a good effect, an effect of light versus darkness, especially in the day that we live in.
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Because nowadays it's very hard to say anything unless you're like me and you're not on Facebook, Twitter, Gitter or whatever else there is, Snapchat, whatever.
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I don't even know what they are, nor do I want to.
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But how many people, how many of us do we weigh out what we say? And do we weigh it out because we wanna be a source of life rather than a source of death? Again, John was glad, Paul was sad.
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Look at verse 26.
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And we looked at this when we're talking about the lazy person, but I just wanted to look at it again.
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As vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the slugger to those who send them.
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Well, that's one that really has an effect on someone else, right? Again, which one of us would wanna hire an employee or depend on someone who we know is a slugger? If you read what it says, I mean, it's like vinegar in the teeth.
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I've never drank a cup of vinegar, but I know what smoking your eyes feels like.
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It's terrible, right? It's a source of darkness, it's a source of ugliness, it's a source of pain, it's a source of discomfort.
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Our words and our lives, and that's why I think we have all these proverbs is again, so that we could consider ourselves, consider our walk before God and consider our walk before one another.
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Don't be deceived into thinking that you can do one without doing the other, because you can't.
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Not in God's world.
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If God wanted us only to speak with him, he'd take us to heaven, right? He has left us here for now in our situations in that way, in one reason to be a saver of life versus a saver of death.
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And so again, as I pointed out, as we consider this and as we read about this 24 times, he draws out this great contrast between the righteous and again, not self-righteous, the godly and the ungodly.
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Not only how they live, not only how they affect others, but he also will go on and we'll look at that, the results of all that.
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Because, and I guess I've been thinking about this lately for a number of different reasons.
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There are many people who think that their sin will never be found out.
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There are many people who think that God neither sees their sins, their thoughts, their hearts, or if he sees them, he can't do anything about them.
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And those two things are lies from the pit of hell.
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God sees, God knows, God will judge all the earth.
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God will set things right.
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So it's important for us, brothers and sisters, again, and that goes for every area of relationship.
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I would say that in the church, when we gather together, well, let me ask you just to think about this.
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And maybe it's not true for you.
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Maybe it's just one of the sins I have to work on.
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How many of us would say when we gather together in a group setting like this, that we are not a little bit more mindful about what we will say or what we won't say? Versus in other situations.
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Now, I'm not saying that we should not have different thoughts.
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In other words, many things that I would say to my wife, I wouldn't say to you, right? But I'm talking about how many of us are careful that our words and our life comes off at least as a saver of life.
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And then at other times, in other situations, we might not be as concerned, right? Again, maybe it's just me, but I don't think I'm that much different than you.
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I don't think you're that much different than me and that we all have to wrestle through this.
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And so again, some of these truths are not only to be lived out in public, but in secret, because you never know.
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Again, light is always going to spread light.
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Darkness will always spread darkness.
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It's just the principle that's as true as the sun rising and the sun setting.
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So, and you can read through this chapter again.
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Again, I wanna try to get through the whole thing tonight, but read through it again and you'll see how, if you will, well, think about it this way.
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Think about how Paul talks about it, right? Doesn't Paul talk about that under the imagery of the body? How the health even of a human body in one part drastically affects the health of the body in the other part, right? We were talking about before, right? We talked about eyeballs and the doctors in the house.
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So you can check with him back there if you have questions concerning eyeballs, but how one part of the body really impacts the other.
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Which one of us can say when we have a toothache, it's only my tooth that hurts, right? It's not, it ripples through, right? And at times it could paralyze your whole body, right? You just can't.
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Again, we've been made that way and God wants us to be conscious of it, aware of it.
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And to consider it even in simple, small ways.
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As a parent, we need to be very careful how we act and not allow emotions, feelings, this, that, and the other thing to affect us how we treat our children, right? When you said it, I certainly saw an area that we have to be careful.
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And I don't care whether you got little kids, middle kids, big kids, that we don't, in that sense, just spread our sin to our kids.
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You know, Paul talks about not provoking your kids to wrath.
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Well, what's the reason why we provoke them to wrath? Sometimes an angry father will do what? He just gets angry with his kids, even if the kids don't deserve to be, for him to be angry at him.
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Same thing with a mother.
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Same thing in all our relationships, brothers and sisters, friends, relatives, strangers.
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One of the things I always think about is road rage, how people just, they are just barreling down that road and the only interest that they have is themselves on the road and they don't care how it affects.
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And you know, many times, they're the ones that don't get into the accident, they just cause the accident, right? Because again, they have no concern for anybody else.
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They're just gonna live their life, drive the way they wanna drive.
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And if you can't get along with them, oh well, so sorry, so sad.
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God wants us to be complete in everything that we do and everything that we say.
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And so certainly, as you read through this chapter and you read through these many Proverbs that are laid out here, they are to be considered individually and they're also to be considered as a whole.
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Again, we wanna be not only holy before God, we wanna be whole before men, right? At least that's, I hope, what our desire is.
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I hope our desire is that I want others to see me as God wants to see me and that I should seek to learn how to manage my life, manage my soul, manage my thoughts to have an impact of light versus an impact of darkness.
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So that was the first point I wanted to make.
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And another point is this, and we've already mentioned it, but I wanna spend the remainder of time just walking through these verses really quick because again, there's this great reality through these verses, through this chapter.
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And again, Bible wasn't written in chapter and verses, so we just do that to help us.
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But as Solomon writes these words, that there is this great contrast of life and that you and I should examine ourselves and see which life we really desire to live.
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And then which life we are really pursuing and where we are in that pursuit.
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In other words, basically it's the difference between the good tree that does what? Remember what Jesus said? A good tree does what? It bears good fruit.
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And a bad tree does what? Bad fruit.
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And then he says, a bad tree can't do something.
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What can a bad tree do? Bear good fruit, right? Because the tree's known by its fruit.
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So when you think about that and you think about what he's saying here and you think about the contrast, we have to ask ourselves, I'm gonna say continually, constantly, am I number one, a good tree? That is an issue of faith in Christ, right? To be in right relationship with God.
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But am I a good tree? And is my fruit evidenced in my life that people recognize me as a good tree? I remember when we lived up north, fall time, we used to go out to the end of Long Island because we lived on Long Island for a long time with the kids.
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And we'd go to the apple orchards.
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And we'd go, because that's when they were blooming out there on the end of Long Island.
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And we would go to the apple orchards and we'd pick baskets of apples.
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And of course we made apple pies and apple this and apple that.
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Apples until they came out our nose kind of thing.
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But, and we'd go pumpkin picking.
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I don't know why it made me think about that.
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But at that time, it was, at one point it was for a dollar, all the pumpkins that daddy can carry, you could take.
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And of course the kids would say, go little father, dad, come on, come on.
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And they'd make me wear overalls.
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And I was a hippie, so I had overalls anyway.
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And they'd be stuffing pumpkins in every possible thing.
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And the thought was what? Get the good pumpkins.
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Don't go near the bad pumpkins.
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Pick the good apples.
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We can't do anything with the bad apples because the bad apples are rotten.
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And the only thing that you could do with a rotten apple is what? Get rid of it.
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So when you think about that and we, as we just walk real quickly now through these verses, think about that and ask yourself, am I not only a good tree before God in my relationship through faith in Christ, but does my life really show forth good fruit or bad fruit? Which side of the butt am I on as we walk through this? And it's interesting how he lays it out.
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So again, just gonna quickly read the verses again, make a comment or two, and that's it.
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But look what he says.
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So the Proverbs of Solomon, as we said, a wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is the grief to his mother.
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We'll get verse two.
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Treasures of wickedness profit nothing, but righteousness delivers from death.
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What a contrast.
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What a contrast there is that treasures of wickedness, the thing that so many people are pursuing, treasures, worldly treasures, temporary treasures, and the reality is what? It profits nothing.
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Again, you can't take it with you, but righteousness delivers from death.
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Which one more characterizes us? That we are seeking after righteousness to be delivered from death or that we are just caught up in treasures of wickedness would ultimately profit nothing.
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Then look at the next verse three.
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The Lord will not allow the righteous soul to famish, but he casts away the desire of the wicked.
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These are glorious truths, aren't they? That God not only delivers the righteous from death, both death in a sense in this life and eternally, but the Lord will not allow the righteous soul to famish, but he casts away the desire of the wicked.
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You and I have this glorious promise given to us that we might not have what we want, but I believe this is God's word to us saying, we will have what we need.
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And he will not leave us in a state where we are not supplied for.
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Isn't that great? Versus he cast away the desire of the wicked.
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How many people there are in this world that chase something and they never find it? Whether it's this, that, or the other thing, whether it's riches, powers, pleasure, seclusion, and there's just a whole gamut of things.
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There are people who chase something and all they ever do, like Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, it's like grasping for the wind.
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You ever grab a handful of wind? You just can't do it, folks.
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It profits nothing.
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It's a waste of time.
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So you and I have to think about that.
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He who deals, verse four, he who deals with a slack hand becomes poor.
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But there's the contrast.
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The hands of the diligent make one rich.
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And he who gathers in the summer is a wise son, but he who sleeps in the harvest is a son who causes shame.
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We gotta be careful about what we think true riches are.
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If you think true riches are the things of this life, you're gonna have a different perspective than someone who thinks the true riches come from knowing God, from being in a right relationship with him, from having an eternal future, a mansion prepared for us, and to be in the presence of God.
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And again, such a contrast.
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And it's a great dichotomy, isn't it? And this world is basically a dichotomy of two different people.
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Those that are seeking this and those that are seeking that.
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And those that are seeking God will find him.
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And those that are seeking another God will find another God.
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But ultimately they'll come before the true God, right? It's just, it's one of those things that is absolutely true.
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Blessings, verse six, are on the head of the righteous.
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Violence covers the mouth of the wicked.
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Great contrast.
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The memory of the righteous is blessed, verse seven.
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The name of the wicked will rot.
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The memory of the righteous is blessed.
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The name of the wicked will rot.
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I thought about this verse a little bit.
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I thought, what do I want people to remember me for? And I guess after I thought about it for a few minutes, I guess I just wanna be what was said about Enoch.
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Remember what was said about Enoch? He walked with God and was no more for God took him, right? That's all I really wanna be remembered for.
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I know I'll be remembered for a lot of other things and things that I don't particularly savor in my mind, but I would be so thankful if I was remembered that I walked with God and that God took me.
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It says the name of the wicked will rot.
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I thought about that.
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I thought about Judas's name.
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That's an ugly name.
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I mean, I'm not trying to say you should never name your kid Judas.
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Don't get me wrong.
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But that word, that name is associated with ugliness.
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Isn't it? Just the same way, Jezebel, that's another one.
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You can go through and you could, and sometimes the name of those who had great power and great authority is, it just rots away.
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Remember no more versus those who have sought to live godly lives.
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And you know, the Bible's full of those kinds of people.
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Remember the woman who anointed Jesus before his burial? Remember what Jesus said? He said, wherever this gospel is preached, what she did will be remembered as a memorial to her.
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You think she sat there and said, I'm gonna do this so that people will remember it? No, but again, the memory of the righteous is blessed.
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The name of the wicked will rot.
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Verse eight, the wise in heart will receive commands.
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But priding fool for he who walks with integrity, walks securely, but he who perverts his own, his ways will be known.
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Thought about that.
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I thought about how the way we conduct our lives is in many ways connected to how God keeps us secure.
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That you and I, those that walk in integrity will in many ways walk securely.
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I thought of that Proverbs, I think it's Proverbs 16.
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When a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.
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Isn't that great? That's a cool thought.
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When a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.
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And he who walks in integrity will walk securely.
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But the priding fool, I used to tell my kids as they were growing up and as they got their driver's license and got their own cars and you know, I used to tell both the boys and the girls, although the girls got married early and all that.
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I just told them, there's nothing good that happens at three o'clock in the morning, guys.
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You could tell me you're just gonna do this, you're just gonna do that.
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Very little is good on a Saturday morning at two o'clock in the morning.
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You don't, you need to walk with some integrity and don't get caught with all the fools out there because there's a lot of stuff that takes place that you'll be sorry for the next morning.
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Verse 10, he who winks with the eye causes trouble and a priding, but a priding fool will fall.
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Winks with the eye and it causes trouble.
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And then verse 11, the mouth, as I said, the mouth of the righteous, a well of life, violence covers the mouth of the wicked.
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And think about all those people that say such vile things in our day.
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And guess what? It'll come, it'll come down on them.
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God does not forget.
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God does not ignore.
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God might be long suffering, God is patient.
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Remember what Paul says? Behold, both the goodness and the severity of God.
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And he says, I will what? I will repay, says the Lord.
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You and I would think about that.
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Verse 12, hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins.
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Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins.
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That's a lot to work through right there.
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Do I consider what I do, what I say, what I don't do, what I won't say, that I might be one who helps to cover sin versus to be one of those who seeks to promote sin? I hope you don't think this is just, I'm just trying to fill time, I'm not.
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This is really important for us if we're really serious about living godly lives.
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I'm not just talking about living religious lives because isn't that interesting? And I've seen it, you've seen it.
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I've been involved with churches a whole long time.
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And I've seen people who will do the lip service thing.
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I always, and I told many of you, I was brought up in the Catholic church and it always amazed me how they would stop and during the service and they'd say, okay, turn to your neighbor, shake their hands.
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And then as soon as that, whatever it was that they were doing in the service that they called a mass, I don't really want to think about that, but by the time they got out into the parking lot, they're cursing each other for not being able to get out of the parking lot before everybody else.
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Again, there was no real love.
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There was no real care.
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It was rotten fruit, not good fruit.
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Wisdom is found in verse 13, on the lips of him who has understanding, but look at the contrast there.
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The rod is for the back of him who's devoid of understanding.
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How many people have committed something only to come back at a later point and say, you know what? If only I didn't do that.
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If only I had followed God's word.
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If only I had heeded wise counsel.
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If only I would have sought to live godly in that situation.
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If only, because many times, many people, all they get is the rod.
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It's just a truth that continually goes on.
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Verse 14, wise people store up knowledge.
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The mouth of the foolish is near destruction.
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Verse 15, the rich man's wealth is a strong city.
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Destruction of the poor is their poverty.
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Verse 16, the labor of the righteous leads to life.
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The labor of the righteous leads to life.
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The wages of the wicked to sin.
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You know how we sing that hymn, right? Let us labor for the master from what? The dauntless setting sun is all.
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Let us talk of all his wondrous love and care.
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Then what? When all this life is over and our work on earth is done, when the rose call up yonder, I'll be there, right? Again, all these things, brothers and sisters, they ought to be on our minds more than they are.
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That we don't labor merely for self gain.
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We labor to be rich in the truth and in the knowledge of God because it leads to life.
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Life versus death.
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Verse 17, he who keeps instruction is in the way of life, but he who refuses reproof goes astray.
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Well, there's a great contrast.
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How many times do we find ourselves going astray? And the reason why we go astray is because we didn't follow the truth.
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I don't know about you, but I don't necessarily enjoy going the wrong way.
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How many of us would be really happy if we got in our cars, this before GPS, navigation, Siri, Alexa, everybody else, get in your car, start it, and right from the get-go, you're going astray, you're going the wrong way.
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How many of us would be so thrilled about doing that versus going the right way, going in a way that leads to life, going in a way that leads to where we wanna go? Again, another way of thinking about it, but still, the reality is still there.
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How many people there are that go astray? Whoever hides hatred, whoever hides hatred has lying lips, and whoever spreads slander, there again, the effects of sin on others, whoever spreads slander is a fool.
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In the multitude of words, sin is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is wise.
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Again, there's a great contrast.
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The tongue of the righteous is choice silver.
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Look at this one.
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The heart of the wicked is worth little.
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Now, there are many people in this world who think many people who speak very ungodly things are worth a lot.
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God says they're worth little.
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Because at the end of it, it doesn't matter what men think about other men.
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It matters how men are viewed before God.
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There are many people who speak some of the most ungodly things, and there are other people who just sit back and applaud, but God doesn't.
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God applauds.
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God is pleased.
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God is content with the tongue of the righteous because it's like choice silver.
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The lips of the righteous, verse 21, feed many, but fools die for lack of wisdom.
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Verse 22, the blessing of the Lord makes one rich and he adds no sorrow to it.
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Verse 23, to do evil is like sport to a fool, but a man of understanding has wisdom.
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To do evil is like sport to a fool.
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Lot to be thought of in that.
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Verse 24, the fear of the wicked will come upon him and the desire of the righteous will be granted.
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The fear of the wicked will come upon him.
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The desire of the righteous will be granted.
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You put that into context to some of the other great words given to us by God about the fears that come upon ungodly people.
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And even to the point where it says that Jesus came to deliver us from what? Fear of death.
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Why? Because men apart from Christ are always in fear of death.
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Might not even be fully conscious of it, might not admit it, but God says there is no peace unto the wicked, says my God.
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They are like the troubled sea which cannot rest.
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And then as we read, his vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so as a slug in him was sent him.
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Just to finish the chapter, the fear of the Lord prolongs days, but the years of the wicked will be short.
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Now that's not an absolute, because many times many of the most ungodly people live long lives, but here's the reality.
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The longer they live, the more wrath they heap up.
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Paul talks about that, right? Talks about heaping up treasures of wrath.
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So that has to be taken with an understanding, but still there is a reality of that.
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Living godly is always profitable.
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Isn't it? Anybody wanna disagree with me on that? Please don't, because you'd be wrong.
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Living godly is always right.
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Living godly is always prosperous.
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Living godly is always beneficial.
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Living godly is always what God wants from us.
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The problem many times is what we want.
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And many times what we want is not what God wants of us.
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I find myself more and more praying, Lord, help me to think the way I ought to think, not the way I think.
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Help me to speak the way you want me to speak, not the way I think I should speak.
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Because there's that perspective, right? That God is always right.
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God is always good.
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God is always true.
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God is perfect.
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We are not, right? Something to think about.
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The hope of the righteous will be glad as the expectation of the wicked will be just.
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The way of the Lord is strength for the upright, but destruction will come upon the workers of iniquity.
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The righteous will never be removed.
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The wicked will not inherit the earth.
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There's that great truth of being founded on the rock versus being founded on the sand, right? The tree will be shaken, the house will be moved, but we will remain.
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Why? Because we're founded on the rock and our lives demonstrate it.
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That saying is as true today as when it was first penned, some by the fire, some by the flood, some through great trial.
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Anybody know the end of it? But all through the blood, that's right.
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And though the storms come and the winds blow and the wind howls and our house is shaken and though we suffer this and we suffer that and though we might be set backwards, no matter what, because of Christ, because of Him, there will be strength given to us and we will make it to the desired shore.
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And that shore would be to be with Him.
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But the destruction of wicked will come suddenly.
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And the righteous will never be removed.
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The wicked will not inherit the earth.
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The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom, but the perverse tongue will be cut out.
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The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, but the mouth of the wicked, what is perverse.
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And so again, as we summarize and close, just as you read through the Proverbs, think of it both as personal instruction to you, personal instruction to me, how I am to live before God, but also how I am to demonstrate that in my life before others.
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And that what I do truly has an impact on another.
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Now, understand what God says.
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Every man shall die for his own sin.
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I am not trying to say that we're gonna be able to come up to God.
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No man will be able to come up to God and do the Flip Wilson thing, right? The devil made me do it, or it was their fault.
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There's no such thing as that.
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But there is a reality, brothers and sisters, that we ought to be mindful that we shall give an account in that day.
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Not for salvation, if we were in Christ, because that's for sure, right? It's finished.
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We will give an account for what we have done with what we have been given.
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And I do believe we're going to have to hear the righteousness of God in many ways of what we did that had either a good effect, godly effect on someone else, or detrimental, godless effect on someone else.
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So, okay, that's all I really have to say for this evening.
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Let's just close with a word of prayer.
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Before we do that, any comments? I'm sorry, any comments? Anybody wants to add to that? Okay, let's pray.
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Father, thank you for our time tonight, Lord.
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Your word is so simple, yet, Lord, it is so complex, because we find it so hard so many times to do exactly what you tell us to do.
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Help us to realize, Lord, that you are not only always right, but you're always good.
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And that your way is not only the only way, your way is the right way.
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And that our lives would demonstrate to the grace of God that men may see us in a way that they might see us as a light and a salt rather than darkness and that which destroys.
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So bless us tonight.
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Keep us safe as we travel home.
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Until we meet again, in Jesus' name, amen.