Proverbs 3:10 The Work of the Righteous

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Don Filcek, The Rest of the Week; Proverbs 3:10 Proverbs 3:10 The Work of the Righteous

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You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. Pastor Don Filsak is preaching through a sermon series called
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The Rest of the Week, Loving God from Monday to Saturday. Let's listen in.
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Well, good morning. Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm glad that you're here on this beautiful summer morning.
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How many of you woke up and were grateful for the weather this morning? Most of us?
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Some of us? Okay. It's very beautiful out there. I'm very grateful for the weather.
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I'm glad that you're here, though, and if it's your first time with us, I encourage you to please fill out a connection card.
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You received that when you walked in, and you can turn those in in the black box that's out on the table out here, the
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Welcome Center. There's all different kinds of information that's in there, but if you share your email address with us, we don't want anybody to be surprised, but it's the primary way we communicate is by sending out a weekly email called the eCast, and that's got links to different activities and things that are going on, and so if you want to be in the know, and you want to be informed about what's going on, you can unsubscribe yourself from that at any time, but just know that if you share your email address with us, then you're going to be getting some contact information and some stuff from us about the different activities and things that are going on throughout the week.
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You are also provided an offering envelope. If anybody chooses to give this morning, we don't pass an offering plate. We don't want anybody to give because they feel that kind of like, oh, here's a plate.
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I have to put something in it, but there's a black box out there, envelopes provided if you choose to give. That's great.
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If not, you can recycle that envelope out there, and we can reuse it again next week, so that just helps us on printing costs and things like that, so if you're not going to use that envelope this week, then you can just turn it in at the table back there, too, and we can reuse them, and then remember that anything that's marked
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Expansion Fund goes towards our eventual goal of building a building on the property that we purchased. We currently own, free and clear, 12 acres, just beyond the railroad tracks on East McGillan as you're heading out of town, and so just on the right -hand side by the horse farm there, and so our goal is to eventually build a building there, and just be in prayer as, obviously, this facility has served us well, and we're grateful for the opportunity to meet in here, and at the same time recognizing that this is not always ideal, and so just be in prayer for God's guidance and direction in our eventual desire to build a building there.
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I would like to let all of you know that the vote for new elders resulted in a confirmation of both
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Bruce French and Mark Downing being added to the Eldership of Recast Church, so we're rejoicing in that, and ask that you would rejoice with us, and also
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I'd encourage all of you to get to know these men as they seek to guide and direct the church with wisdom and with the spirit, and so encourage you to get to know
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Mark and Bruce over the course of time as you get an opportunity to interact with them, have them over, interact with them during the connection time and after the service and things like that, so.
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This morning's gonna be a bit of a different kind of sermon than I'm used to offering, than I'm used to preaching.
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Normally, I take a pretty large chunk, a paragraph or so, maybe sometimes even a whole chapter of scripture, and walk through it, but this morning we're gonna be looking at one of the
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Proverbs, and I don't know if you've noticed this, if you read through the Bible in a year, have any of you ever just sat down and read an entire chapter in the book of Proverbs?
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That's a lot of thoughts in there, right? You read one chapter, it's like, whoa, what am I supposed to be thinking about here?
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They're not necessarily arranged thematically, now some sections, some paragraphs actually do have themes running through them, but by and large, you might have one that's talking about economic life, right next to being a father, right next to avoiding adultery, so you have all of these things, all of a sudden, boom, it's all packed into one section, so it's not very easy to preach chapter by chapter and section by section through the
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Proverbs. It doesn't have that thematic order, but instead, what the Proverbs do is they weave themes together, so throughout the book is a theme of what we're gonna be looking at this morning, the righteous, a theme of the righteous, this group of people that are called the righteous and you can look up different verses in the book of Proverbs that talk about the righteous and get a good feel for what it means to be righteous, and so that's kind of the way that we use the book, and the entire book is a woven tapestry of different subjects all mashed up together, but when you take a step back and you look at the wisdom that's provided for us in that book, you see this beautiful tapestry of real life that God has woven for us, and on the subject of work, there is one particular proverb that has been brought to my attention that I think is worth our focus this morning in thinking about this subject of our
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Monday through Saturday work. That's the series that we're in. We're in the fourth of five, just talking about the rest of the week.
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We gather together on Sunday mornings, and often, in our minds, we might have a tendency to think that this is what you do spiritually.
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This is your calling. This is when you're really close to God is when you're in church, but what about Monday morning?
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What about Tuesday afternoon? What about Wednesday evening? What about all week long?
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What about the very things that you do for your employer or in your vocation? Are those things that you're doing for the honor and glory of God?
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In other words, is worship a Sunday morning thing, or is worship a life?
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Is worship, can you work for an employer and have that, at the same time, be worship to God?
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Now, I want to point out up front that much of what I'm going to share this morning has been dramatically influenced by one particular author named
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Amy Sherman. I heard Amy speak at a conference up in Grand Rapids a few months ago, and her book
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Kingdom Calling and her lecture at that conference that I was at helped me significantly in my own understanding of the way we think of our vocations and our work in light of the cause of the kingdom of God.
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So there's this book. I'm going to show you a few resources that I've used. I'd encourage you to have good resources, have good things that you're reading.
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You know, I mean, some of you are fiction readers, but every once in a while, grab something that's nonfiction and pour over it, and I think you'll grow as a result.
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Kingdom Calling by Amy Sherman. I've read this book over the last few weeks, just getting a feel for this subject that we're talking about.
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Work the Meaning of Your Life, a Christian Perspective by Lester DeCoster. An excellent resource.
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Very short. If you're not a reader, you can still grab a hold of this, and it's devotional in nature, helping guide you into understanding the way that your everyday, quote unquote,
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I hate the word, secular work, ties in with your kingdom calling by God.
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And so really seeing your work, and actually this book was produced as a result of him doing Bible studies with factory workers and union guys, and this was the byproduct of that study.
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It's great. Work Matters by Tom Nelson. I own all these books.
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You can borrow them if you come up to me at the end of the service this morning and you want to borrow one of these, I'll sign it out to you, but, you know, you can get them on Amazon.
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Flourishing Faith by Chad Brand. And the last one that I just want to point out has impacted me.
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You may not necessarily, the title might misguide you into thinking it wouldn't be beneficial for you, but it would.
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It's The Pastor's Guide to Fruitful Work and Economic Wisdom, Understanding What Your People Do All Day.
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And that's been extremely helpful to me, and I think you'd still gain from it even though you're probably not a pastor, but it's still been beneficial.
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So those are the resources that are informing me as I'm kind of going through these studies each week on this particular topic of work.
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Now Amy, Amy Sherman in her book gives a powerful and beneficial illustration that she took from another pastor named
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Jeff White. He was a pastor in Harlem, and it's simply this thing right here. He was using this thing as an illustration.
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Does anybody know what this is? Can you see it? What is that? What is it?
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A taste tester for ice cream. It's a pink spoon. Does anybody know what company this comes from?
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Baskin -Robbins. Anybody get excited when you see one of these? You get excited a little bit? Because this means you get to try the ice cream.
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It's a pre -taste, a foretaste of the ice cream that is to come, if you will.
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So you get to try the different samples, and then you get to try it before you completely immerse yourself completely in the double scoop waffle cone.
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It's kind of like before you get that full on commitment, this is where I'm going with this thing, you get a taste of it in advance.
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It's a preview spoon. Baskin -Robbins, 31 flavors.
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Some of you aren't good at making choices. You end up with vanilla every time. All these flavors available, and it's like,
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I'm going there. But you get a chance to try them in advance. Baskin -Robbins, you and I, in our work, in our lives, we are supposed to be like this, offering tastes of the kingdom to others.
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Now, one day Jesus is going to come back and he's going to bring this with him, the big spoon, okay?
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And he's going to give us the entire kingdom. He's going to bring it all to bear. And any of you like ice cream?
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Is this resonating with any of you? You're probably ready for ice cream already and it's not even noon, right? You know, it's like,
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I can eat ice cream any time. It's like a nightly ritual in my family. But yeah, so that Christ is coming back and he's going to bring the kingdom.
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But what we have in our work, what we have in our workplaces, what we have in our vocations, what we have in, when
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I say work, don't just strictly think employment. Some of you don't go and punch a clock for an employer, but you are working.
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Some of you are staying at home with children. That's work. That's a vocation. That's a calling. Some of you are, have already retired and you're beyond punching a clock, but you're still working.
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You're volunteering. You're using the time and energy that God has given to you, the gifts, skills, and experience to continue to invest in others.
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You're working. And how are you working? Are you working with a vision that you, by the very nature of the way you work, by your human interactions with others, that you're serving
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God, serving others, and that you are offering tastes of the kingdom? Now, a little bit creepy to think of yourself as feeding people, right?
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Like that's, that's a little bit weird. But you are like the pink spoon that is, has the power and the opportunity to offer a foretaste of the kingdom of God.
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If we work right, if we live right, if we love right, if we honor
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God right, our society will benefit from our work, from our labor.
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And so far in this series, we've looked at the good of work. We have considered the reality that God has called each one of us by a specific form, a specific set of skills, a vocation.
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He's given us talents and experiences. Last week we saw that Jesus gave us ample motivation for quality service to others, even identifying that our, the final judgment is going to be based on in, certainly that we have worshiped the king, that we have served him.
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But the only way that that's measured is by our service towards others, by helping and assisting those in need.
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And that includes our employee, our employers, our employees, our clients, everybody that we interact with.
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Not just Sunday morning, Sunday morning isn't the time when we're storing up treasures in heaven. I would suggest to you that more so,
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Monday through Saturday, you are storing up treasures in heaven. Today we're going to look at the social outcome of our work.
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By jumping around the Proverbs just a bit, but the one proverb I want us to turn to that is going to provide the framework for our learning this morning is
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Proverbs 1110. You can turn over there, if you're not there already, Proverbs 1110. It's just one short verse that we'll find has the power by God's spirit to show us one of the most powerful outcomes of our daily
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Monday through our weekly and day in and day out Monday through Saturday vocations.
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So if you don't have a Bible, you can go ahead and raise your hand and somebody will bring you a copy of the word of God. We want everybody to have a copy on their lap so that you can kind of read and see.
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And even though it's a very short passage, it's good to have it open there. And again, we're going to jump around just briefly, not too far from our main text here, but Proverbs 1110.
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And we're going to read this, give you one more second, because it'll be over before you get there if I don't give you a second to get there.
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Proverbs 1110. But recast, this is God's word for us. It's not a big chunk of scripture, be easy to memorize, easy to think through.
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And at the same time, it's no less God's word than huge chunks talking about the life of Joseph. So Proverbs 1110.
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Listen, when it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices, and when the wicked perish, there are shouts of gladness.
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When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices, and when the wicked perish, there are shouts of gladness.
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Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning. Father, we praise you for the opportunity that we have to gather together in your presence.
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I recognize that many of us have arrived here hungry, hungry to hear from you, hungry to know more about you, a hunger that goes beyond our appetite for donuts and coffee.
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So Father, I pray that you would speak through your word to exactly where we're at in our lives. Father, that you would impress on us this concept, this theme of righteousness.
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Would you cause us to be the righteous in our community? That there would be rejoicing and gladness.
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Father, I pray that you'd be honored and glorified in our presence, and as we have an opportunity to worship you, I pray that you would work through the band and the instruments that they are playing,
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Father, just allow them as I know it's their desire to step to the background and fade, that we'd be able to worship you in truth this morning, in Jesus' name, amen.
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Thanks a lot for Dave's flexibility there, I'm just grateful that he was able to just roll with that. Thank you for your patience with the technical difficulties as well,
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I'm grateful for that. Get as comfortable as you can, I recognize that those are not the most comfortable seats, so if you need to get up and stretch out in the back or whatever it takes to kind of keep your focus on God's word, there's more coffee juice, cold water up here, if you need anything from up there, don't hesitate to get up in the middle of the message and grab what you need.
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Restrooms are out in the hallway to the end, men's upstairs, women's downstairs if you need to use that at any time.
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Keep your Bibles open, this is a really short verse, Proverbs 1110, that's kind of our home base this morning, even though we're going to look at just a couple of other verses, but they're all in that same general vicinity, and so you can open there.
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And a quick word, as we're diving into Proverbs, I think there's a very common misunderstanding that needs to be squared up first before we dive into talking about one of the
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Proverbs, and that is this big difference between Proverbs and promises. They both start with P -R -O, but they diverge after that, and there's a big difference between Proverbs and promises.
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Proverbs are, if you've taken notes you could write this down and it might help you throughout your life as you're reading the
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Bible, Proverbs are divinely sanctioned human wisdom. Divinely sanctioned human wisdom.
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In a broken and fallen world, we recognize patterns of life that more or less prove to be true and are actually beneficial to us.
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We all operate throughout our lives on the basis of some presumptions, some assumptions, some things that you think are going to be the way that they are, and here we have codified for us some of the things that God says generally are true on even a fallen planet in a broken world.
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And even if they're not always true, they are beneficial in helping us to navigate daily life.
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One of the commentaries that I read this week made the comment, just in thinking about common everyday Proverbs and the way that these things work, is this comment,
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Barking dogs never bite, most of the time, right? Those of you that are runners, or work in the delivery business, or are around other people's homes, or are in sales where you go to people's homes, you recognize that there are sometimes dogs barking at you.
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And as a person, personally, who's particularly wary of dogs, that Proverbs helps me, right? It's the idea that just every time
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I'm out for a run and a dog is barking doesn't mean it's going to come up and bite me, right? You know that that's helpful.
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But if we begin to think of Proverbs as promises, we get into trouble, right? If we approach them on the flip side, if we expect them to always be true, or we approach them scientifically looking for loopholes, if we approach them with technical analysis and case studies to the contrary for everyone, well,
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I know a friend who was bit by a dog. I know someone, so dogs always, well no, they don't always bite, but they do sometimes, and if you take the exception to the general statement, then you're losing the flavor and the flair and the purpose and the point of the
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Proverb. And we live in a culture of extremes, that often has an extreme example to dismiss every single general statement.
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You got somebody who works like that in your office? Someone in your family at family reunions who just always has the disagreement with whatever it is that you say, and somebody who's always able to pick things apart and go, well, it's not always that way.
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Not always. I know this person. And they grew a hand right out of the back of their head. It was right there.
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I mean, it happens sometimes, you know? Whatever the stupid thing is that you're discussing, you know, they've always got the exception.
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So we can proceed with this discussion of Proverbs 11 .10 if we can all agree to listen to the general truth without focusing in on the exceptions.
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Our text this morning is going to put forward a general statement for us, divinely sanctioned human wisdom.
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When it goes well with this group called the righteous, the righteous, the city rejoices.
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We are being asked to believe this morning from this text that this is basically true.
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By and large, this is the way that life works. More often than not, when a person from this specific category, subset of people called the righteous, we're going to talk a lot about them.
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What is the righteous? Who are they? But this subset of people, when it goes well, when one of the righteous are blessed, everyone celebrates.
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Their community celebrates, their society, their culture celebrates. When one of these types of people, when somebody in the subset of the righteous is blessed, when it goes well for them, their community is excited about it.
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But on the flip side, you see that at the end of verse 10, but when the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy.
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Similarly, same result occurs when someone from the other category called the wicked perishes.
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The second half is not going to be the focus of my text, but I want to just explain it real quick. Not that I'm trying to ignore it or push it off to the side, but it's just a very given in our culture.
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It can be illustrated by the ending of every action movie you've ever seen. Any of you ever watch an action film? A lot of it, even the kids' cartoons, you know, have this kind of action component to it.
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And at the end, what happens to the wicked guy? I mean, the closing scene is his demise, right?
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It's always, how does he get dispatched? How does he get his just desserts?
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You know, Sauron's eye is snuffed out. The emperor is thrown down the reactor core shaft.
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A few of you got that. You knew what I was talking about. The rest of you are like, I don't know. Watch Star Wars, you'll get it.
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Ultron is defeated, whatever. You can add your own bad guy. You can add your own bad guy and his celebrated demise in here, and you've got the basic gist of this, the notion that there's celebration.
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Any of you ever been to this weird scenario where you're at a movie theater and people actually like audibly like either applaud or are excited when the person gets theirs?
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Have you been there? It's kind of weird. Or people clap at the end of films. They know that the production crew isn't there.
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They're not present. They're not there to receive your accolades. You get this kind of interaction that's going on in our culture.
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You get it, right? You get what this is saying. You see that as generally true. That when those who are genuinely wicked come into their demise, people celebrate that.
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As cruel as the end of verse 10 looks at face value, our society has laced within it a
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God -given sense of justice and a desire for the demise of those who are genuinely wicked.
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It's part and parcel of the understanding of justice in a broken world. But for our understanding of work,
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I'm going to hang this message on the front half of verse 10. When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices.
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And I want to break this short text down into three components that help me to understand the role of our labor and our work.
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That is, remember, our vocation, our calling, not just our employment, but the things that God has given you to accomplish and be useful to your culture, your society, to others,
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Monday through Saturday. Some of you right now, you're at a stage where your usefulness to culture and society is to study and study hard.
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You're a student. Some of you in this room aren't even out of elementary school yet. And so your goal, your responsibility is to be a student, and that's what you're called to do in life.
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Some of you stay at home with kids. That is your calling. That is your vocation. That is serious work. You know, that's serious work.
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There's a lot going on there. But so there's these three components that I want to focus in on, and this is going to be kind of the structure, the skeleton that we're going to hang this message on.
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I want to focus on the righteous. Who are they? There's a subset of the city, the mass of people called the righteous, and this text tells us that when they are doing well, everybody likes it.
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How many of you might want to have an understanding of who the righteous are? How many of you would like to be in that number, that others are excited and blessed and happy when you succeed and when things go well?
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I think all of us kind of. So it'd be good to know what makes up that subset of people.
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The second thing I want to focus in on is the prosperity. What is the prosperity component? What does it mean that it goes well with these people called the righteous?
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What is that about? Prosperity is a direct translation. You can translate it. It goes well with them or they prosper.
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It's a fair translation of that phrase in Hebrew. And so that notion of prosperity, which is something that gets batted around in Christian circles quite a bit.
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We need to understand that. We need to know what does that mean. And lastly, we need an understanding of what is meant by the celebration of the city.
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What are they celebrating? Why are they celebrating? The community and the society rejoices at the success of this subset of people called the righteous.
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They rejoice. Who is they? Who is the city that is rejoicing? And why this exuberant exaltation and rejoicing?
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So let's start off by identifying the righteous. That's where we need to begin. That's point one. We're going to identify the righteous.
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Who are they and understanding them. And there's actually three sub points to this that we'll get to here in a second.
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So in the Old Testament, the Hebrew term here, and I try not to bat out a whole lot of foreign language to you, but the word for righteous is tzaddik.
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T -S -A -D -D -I -Q, tzaddik. And it's used over 200 times in the
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Old Testament. A very common phrase, a very common word that is used in plural, tzaddikim.
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And it's a group of people that are referenced enough times to be able to really form a good picture of who this group of people are.
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Throughout the Proverbs alone, the tzaddik, the righteous, are mentioned 66 times. How many chapters are there?
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31. In 31 chapters, there are 66 mentions of this group of people.
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It's a pretty substantial set of people and they are called the righteous. Now we certainly don't have time this morning to go over every single occurrence of the word, but Amy Sherman in her book really focuses in on this and walks through a biblical understanding using all the verses and all the different things.
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It's kind of a little bit technical, but it's really good and beneficial. And she walks through all the different uses of the word tzaddik, or righteous.
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And she's got this fabulous overview, so I'm going to use her structure to help describe this term. The righteous are people who honor
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God upwardly. These are our three points for the righteous. They honor God upwardly, they honor
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God inwardly, and they honor God outwardly. Up, in, and out is the structure to an understanding of what it means to be in the category, the righteous.
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If we have any sense of the true calling of God on our life to be a blessing, and I hope that you do,
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I hope you have a sense that God has called you to be blessed, that he's skilled you, he's equipped you, he's given you experiences in life and positions and a place and a vocation where you can have a positive influence on others and be a blessing in a genuine sense to, not just strictly your employer, certainly to your employer if you're employed, but to those that you are working with, to those that you are working for.
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And I hope you see that. If you have that sense of calling, then we ought to pay close attention to this word, the righteous, and consider that the righteous here are given credit for causing rejoicing in their community.
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The truly righteous, the one who is getting this. And if we're honest, we probably think of righteousness.
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If you just think what comes to your mind first, I'm guessing that there's some kind of an internal aspect of your life that comes to mind when you think of righteousness.
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It might even be really hard to describe or hard to define some kind of like goodness or doing things right or thinking things right or just kind of having like some kind of general like okay,
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I'm okay with God kind of concept or something. You know, you might be thinking, well, hold on a second, righteousness, ugh,
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I'm not sure if I prayed enough this week, I'm not sure if I read my Bible enough, did I think about God enough this week?
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And part of the problem is that we're such a dysfunctionally individualistic society that we think that our relationship with God is primarily a private thing that has to do with us in here and that's it.
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But this concept of righteousness expands beyond that and the first aspect of righteousness is that it is upwardly, that the righteous are upwardly motivated, upwardly motivated.
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To be righteous requires a connection to God on His terms, connected with Him upwardly.
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In practical ways, the righteous see themselves as created by God, called by God, and commissioned by God.
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When this upward righteousness is applied to our Monday through Saturday vocations, it means that we recognize our work is indeed for Him, it's for His honor and for His glory.
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He is our true master. Our skills and our abilities come from Him and then in turn are offered back to Him as worship and praise.
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That if you have manual skill, if you're gifted at building with your hands, then you build for the glory of God and in the producing of something with your hands, that there is honor and glory given to God.
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Not just strictly because you're able to have a gospel conversation with the guy standing next to you while you're planting the wood.
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But in the planting of the wood, in the fashioning of the object, you can turn your physical activity into worship and praise to God by mentally understanding these are your gifts,
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God, these are things that you've given to me to be able to use these for your honor and glory. And we're talking about a mental shift here.
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But they are upwardly motivated, recognizing that all of life, everything that we do, the way we drive, ooh, could be worship, probably isn't so much, huh?
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But it should be. Whoa, talk about causing others to rejoice.
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When's the last time the way that you drove caused others to rejoice? Oh, conviction. That wasn't in my notes.
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Let's get to the more comfortable ground here for a second. I don't know that I've caused much rejoicing in my driving even just this week.
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But you can. Whew, lost myself here for just a second.
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In this sense, though, thinking about the upward righteousness of God, that upward righteousness must be present for these other two things.
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It's this inward thing of recognizing that he is our master, we're working for him, we're driving for him, we're raising our kids for him, we're being a spouse for his honor and for his glory.
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Whatever that calling is on your life, we're studying for his honor and glory, not just to get the
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A, not just to be the best of whatever we do, but ultimately for his glory and for his honor.
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And so, nobody has an inward righteousness, genuinely. Nobody has an outward righteousness without first having an upward righteousness.
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And the way we enter the gate of that upward righteousness, the way we become eligible for this title,
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Sadiq, Righteous One, is through Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for us on the cross.
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That sacrifice has given us forgiveness and reconciliation upward with the Father. It has healed this relationship with God.
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And those who are in good standing with God the Father, through Jesus Christ the Son, are now empowered by the
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Spirit to go out and manifest the next two aspects of righteousness. And that leads to the second aspect, and that is the inward righteousness.
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It doesn't need a whole lot of description because it's probably what most of us think of when we think of righteousness anyways.
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That is a pure heart, an integrity internally in our soul, that kind of righteousness that helps us to take captive every thought, that helps us to walk by the
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Spirit, that helps us to live by faith. The Apostle Paul makes this explicit when he talks about the righteous, and he states directly that the righteous will live by faith.
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The Sadiq will live by faith. What does it mean to live by faith? Well, how many of you know what it means to live by sight?
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We've all been in that spot where the things that we see are the primary influencers on our lives.
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We go, well, we couldn't ever do this, or this could never get accomplished because, hey, practicals said this, this, and this.
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But to live by faith is to recognize that we serve an awesome and powerful and great God who does indeed do awesome and powerful and mighty things.
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So to live by faith says, I bet that person could come to faith in Christ, even though the odds seem slim in our minds.
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So the righteous lives by faith. The upward declared righteousness of God gives us the peace and internal hope that is necessary to help us arrange our internal thoughts towards trust in God.
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This inward righteousness grows as we take on the precious and wonderful Word of God. We study it, we believe it, we believe that it's true.
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And as we study God's Word, we grow in our faith, we grow in this internal stability of our lives in peace and joy and all the fruit of the
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Spirit that's available to us. Those fruits are, in a sense, the internal righteousness that we're talking about.
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Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control. Those things are internal categories that, do those have an impact on the way you live?
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Absolutely, but it starts in here. Love begins in your heart. Love doesn't just begin with your hands, right?
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Love begins in your heart first. Patience is here before it ever manifests itself in your driving, right?
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It's in here. And this inward righteousness, as it grows, more and more looks like compassion and love in our hearts towards others.
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This inward righteousness has a powerful effect in our work in that it's the behind -the -scenes engine, it's the internal engine that drives this next aspect of righteousness.
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Without a peaceful, joyful, Spirit -filled heart, it becomes difficult to work, day in and day out, expressing a taste of the
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Kingdom to others. If you're not connected to the Kingdom, if you're not connected to the
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King upwardly and then being transformed in your thoughts and in your heart and in your desires, then what do you have to offer out of yourself, right?
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And so that leads us, well, have you ever experienced a day like that, where your tank is empty before you ever got to work?
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And then you show up, and what do you have to feed people? Your heart isn't full to overflowing with love and joy, and we're all gonna have days like that.
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I'm not talking, what I'm not talking about here is just kind of fake it till you make it or just kind of act like, but it's a matter of taking in God's Word and praying on your way to work and taking back those times to be able to get your energy filled through the
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Spirit by what God offers to you. How many of you know that He's offered you many different tools and resources to grow your faith?
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First and foremost is the Word of God. He's given you fellowship, He's given you others. I mean, what, have you ever thought, and man,
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I confess that I haven't thought this very often, but have you ever thought on your way to work in a tough morning to text somebody from your small group and say, pray for me,
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I'm having a rough morning? Has that crossed your mind? Has that thought occurred to you that maybe you need someone else praying for you right now?
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Maybe you just need, you know, and what kind of community are we developing where, I want a community where we can be interacting with each other at that level and say, man,
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I didn't sleep well last night, I'm just having a rough day, and I can tell already I'm on edge, patience isn't gonna be easy for me today, could you just pray for me throughout the day, maybe even check in with me this afternoon and see how
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I'm doing? We need that kind of accountability, don't we? Am I the only one? Do we need that? We need those kinds of checks and balances in our lives.
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Sometimes we recognize the heart isn't there, and I still have a day of work ahead of me. The heart's not there, and so what do we do in those times, man?
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We need some time to pray, and we need others surrounding us, and we need to, let those days be a reminder.
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Sometimes it's beyond redemption in the sense that you're showing up and you just don't have anything. You fall asleep and you've already had your second cup of coffee.
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And so on those days, you just, I mean, learn those lessons. Learn that we need to keep feeding, we need to keep energized, we need to keep digging into God's word for the energy that we need.
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This inward righteousness. We need inward health in order to express the third form of righteousness, and that in our text is addressing this outward righteousness.
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Outward righteousness is probably the one most neglected in our understanding of our work and faith.
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It's this. It's this right here. That in our work, we have the opportunity to show others a taste of the glorious kingdom that God is bringing to this place.
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Throughout the Proverbs, righteousness is a consistently relational word.
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It is not possible to express righteousness in its entirety, in all that it's meant to be.
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It's not possible to be labeled the righteous outside of relationship and community with others.
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I mentioned that in the Middle Ages, maybe it was last week or two weeks ago, I mentioned that in the Middle Ages, people thought of righteousness and vocation and the right calling was to just go off in the desert and live all by yourselves so that, you know, then you could be really righteous.
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Because how many of you recognize that the moment that somebody else pushes you past your limit, that's when unrighteousness shows up.
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So they thought, hey, it's not me, it's these other people that are the problem. You have a day like that? Have you ever feel like that?
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I would be totally righteous if it wasn't for all these other people in my life, right? But it's these other people that keep dragging me down.
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So they literally thought this way. Like they were like, back in the Middle Ages, the monks, no talking, right? Because talking, how many of you ever sinned with your mouth?
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So oh, we're not going to talk, we're not going to do this, we're not going to even love each other, we're just going to be isolated and in our isolation, boy, we will just love
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God and God will love us. And that's getting upward and inward, what's left out?
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An outward expression of righteousness that is essential, is necessary.
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Don't think of these things, by the way, you could think wrongly. Upward inward and outward is three different ways to express righteousness.
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No, they are three essential components to being the righteous. You leave any one of them out and you're missing it, you're missing the boat.
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Even if you have the second two, but you don't have the first, so you have some kind of inward inclination, like maybe your parents just raised you really good and you're really just generally passive and patient individual.
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Some of you are that way, like it just comes pretty natural to you, like I don't know what the hang up is, I mean it's just kind of like just going with the flow and chilling and it's easy, it's easier for you to love people or whatever and that's just kind of the way you roll and then not only that, but you kind of express that in the workplace.
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People like you, you're just a likable person, anybody even know somebody who maybe isn't even a Christian, they're just a likable person?
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You know someone like that? That's not righteousness, because it's missing this upward connection with God.
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If anything, it's more often than not self -serving, it's getting them ahead, it's kind of helping them along and it makes people like them more or whatever, but there's all different kinds of motivations for that, but you need all three sides of this to make the triangle.
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With any, with one of these sides missing, you don't have righteousness, you're missing the shape.
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And this outward expression of righteousness deals with the application of being righteous out in society and despite what so many in our world think, the primary, many people in our world think that the primary expression of righteousness to a culture and society is judgment.
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Isn't that what our world thinks? Oh, those righteous holy rollers, they are just going to be judgmental.
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They are going to judge me. That's what it means to be righteous to a lot of people.
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The primary expression of righteousness to a culture and society is not to be judgment, but love, justice, compassion, mercy, grace, and ultimately blessing.
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The truly righteous one, the one who is a Sadiq, will cause rejoicing in their city.
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People will be glad when they prosper because they know that when a Sadiq gets blessings, everyone gets blessings.
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Because the righteous know that blessings are never intended to stop with us. They are never intended for you and me to be a repository of these things.
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We are conduits of the blessings of God. That the blessings might flow to you and through you.
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Some of it lodges here, but the majority of it passes right on through to others. A blessing to our community, to our culture, to our society, to our workspace, to our families, to your vocation.
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Whatever it is that you are called to be useful to others, they receive it as blessing from God through you.
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That is the calling. The righteous see themselves as a conduit rather than a storage tank where the blessings of God would be hoarded for ourselves.
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Passing on those blessings that God has given to us. So the righteous have an upward relationship with God that rearranges their inward priorities and values that then in turn overflows outward towards the blessing of their cities, the blessing of their community, the blessings of their society.
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My second point is to mine deeper into this concept of prosperity, the prosperity of the righteous.
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Sometimes it goes well, according to this text, with the righteous. Absent from this text is any promise of health, any promise of wealth, any promise of prosperity.
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And yet the text indicates that at times it will go well with the righteous.
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Flip over to Proverbs 10, 6 and 7. You might not have to turn the page, but it states there,
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Proverbs 10, 6 and 7, Blessings are on the head of the righteous, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.
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The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot. There is a proverbial reality to the general blessings of those who have an upward and inward and outward righteousness that will not be the same for the wicked.
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Generally speaking, even in this life, proverbially speaking, even in this life, there are better returns in quality of life for good living as opposed to evil living.
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Do you agree with that? Generally speaking, it will go better for you to be righteous.
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Some in our evangelical anti -prosperity gospel culture, of which I've kind of been a part, have a martyr complex that assumes that wealth is evil.
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And when it goes well with someone, they must have been doing something wrong. Any of you relate to that or understand what
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I'm talking about? That some people think, okay, well, if it's going well, then...
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Many don't just expect persecution, but end up manufacturing it for themselves by hostility, animosity, or even just too many political
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Facebook posts or memes. And without getting too political here,
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I don't want to get political here, but there is an increasing divide in America between our two main parties. I don't know if you guys have noticed that or not, but there's an increasing divide going on.
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Some would blame the wealthy and suggest that those who are blessed are doing well because they have abused others.
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Now, is that sometimes the case? Are there wealthy people who have arrived at wealth because they've abused others?
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But does that mean that all wealth is produced by abuse? Not at all.
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No, not at all. And this text indicates that. That there are times in life where the righteous find themselves doing well.
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Blessings are sometimes by God placed on the heads of His righteous. And it will at times go well for them.
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And in Proverbs 10, 16, we find this. That the wage of the righteous leads to life.
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The gain of the wicked to sin. I want you to turn and look at that one with me for a second. If you didn't already or if it's right on the same page, look at it again.
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The wage of the righteous leads to what? Life. The wage of the righteous leads to life.
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The gain of the wicked to what? Sin. To sin.
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When the righteous come into money, this is important for us to grasp. When the righteous come into money, it leads to good things.
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When the wicked come into money, it leads to sin.
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So is it the wealth that makes one wicked or righteous? Is it the wealth that makes a person wicked?
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That's what you already were to begin with. And when a righteous person comes into wealth, it brings life to their community.
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And when a wicked person comes into wealth, it brings sin. Leads them into sin.
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Not that they weren't already. There's a category of people that when they are blessed, their society, their community, their neighborhood, their civic institutions in their community rejoice and are glad.
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And that leads to my final point. We have seen the righteous. We have seen the prosperity. And now let's wrap up by looking at the rejoicing.
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The word applied here is an enthusiastic dancing in the street kind of celebration. There's multiple words that could be used here.
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And this is the most extravagant one of them in Hebrew. This is the one where people are literally doing a jig in the streets.
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They are exulting. There are shouts of joy. Shouts of gladness. The city is partying.
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Artistic hipsters and single moms and blue -collar workers, college students and small business owners.
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Real people are the city. And the city celebrates when the righteous prosper. We shouldn't be, by the way, thinking strictly in terms of a modern city.
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When we use this term, we should think more of society or community or village. Ultimately, we ought to be thinking about the people in those places.
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That's who's rejoicing. It's not that the city skyscrapers have a mouth and are rejoicing.
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But the people in those cities are excited and enthusiastic. And what leads this society to rejoice?
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The righteous have been blessed. Why does the city rejoice that the righteous have been blessed?
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Because the wages of the righteous lead to life, the
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Proverbs tell us. When this certain subset of society is blessed, it in turn blesses everyone else.
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When a Sadiq comes into wealth, everyone benefits. So what does this have to do with us?
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Well, first and foremost, we must consider whether or not we are among the Sadiq. Are we among the righteous?
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Have you had an upward encounter with God that has granted you an inward righteousness that is now being expressed outwardly toward others by compassionate service?
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Are you like the pink spoon, offering a foretaste of the kingdom that God is bringing?
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If so, consider your city. Consider where God has planted you.
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And consider your prosperity. And how are you using that to the benefit and the blessing of others?
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From your vocation, what can you do to be a blessing to prosper others? Have you connected your vocation yet to the reality that you are meant to be causing rejoicing to others?
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By this, I don't merely mean giving a tithe to your church or working at the Kalamazoo Gospel Mission. Those are great things.
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But I'm talking here about your vocation, your Monday through Saturday calling. And are you causing rejoicing through the work that you do?
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At your workplace, are you working like a pink spoon? Are you offering foretaste of the kingdom that is coming?
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As the righteous work in labor, we do so with the motivation to love
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God by loving and serving others with our hearts in gladness.
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And I believe that we have been blessed with significant resources. Most of us in this room have been. And so Proverbs 11, 28 seems like a great caution before we close.
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Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf.
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There's our word, the righteous. The righteous will flourish like a green leaf, but whoever trusts in his riches will fall. And as we think about the resources that we've been given and the resources we've been granted, there's that concept again about hoarding it.
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There's that concept about being a receiver of the blessings without being a conduit. Whoever trusts in their riches and hoards for themselves will fall, but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf.
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We are made to be a conduit for the blessings of God to flow. Is he flowing through you and your work?
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When the righteous are blessed, the city rejoices. So let's get out there and live an upward, an upward, an inward, and an outward righteousness that causes blessings and rejoicing in our community and in our society and our workplace.
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I mentioned earlier that Paul clearly told us that the righteous will live by faith. And as we come to communion, this is a time for those who have faith in Jesus Christ to remember his sacrifice for our sins.
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Without his death on the cross, we would be left in our sins with a broken relationship with God. No upward righteousness.
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Without his resurrection, we would have no hope beyond this broken life that we live. So when you come to one of the tables in the four corners of the room, you are saying,
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I need Jesus. That's what it means to step to that table. I need Jesus. My righteousness is not something
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I have manufactured. It is something he purchased for me on that cross, and it's something that's being worked out in the day in and day out, but it has been granted to me upwardly.
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I have been healed and made right with God through that act on the cross. If you've not asked
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Jesus to save you, then I'd encourage you to please sit back and consider the love and forgiveness that is available to anyone through the love of Jesus Christ.
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If you've asked Jesus to save you and to give you his righteousness, then please come to one of the tables and remember in humility his sacrifice for you.
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As the band comes to play this next song, my hope is that Matawan has a growing crescendo of rejoicing over the next few years as Recast continues to bless this community where God has planted us.
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If we indeed are the righteous, then our blessings will overflow into the rejoicing of our city.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this opportunity we've had to look into your word, and I pray that maybe some of us have actually had our thinking altered and changed in accordance with your word as a result of this text.
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But, Father, the proof is in the pudding. It really comes Monday through Saturday as we go out from this place and recognize that it is not just the songs that we sing, it is not the radio station that our dial is turned to, or just a little prayer before we eat, but,
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Father, that all that we have ought to be offered up to you as a work of righteousness, as an expression of that outward, that inward righteousness that's been granted by a correct relationship with you through Jesus Christ.
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Father, I pray that this message would impact the way we drive, the way we parent, the way we work, the way we volunteer our time, the way we give.
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Father, that all aspects of our lives would be wrapped up into this concept of worshiping you, and that this is all to your honor and to your glory, that you are worth our lives.
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Father, that you are worth a change in our driving habits. You are worth a change in our work habits.
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You are worth a change in our attitude towards a foul relationship in our workplace, be that our boss or an employee or a co -worker or whatever.
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Father, that you are worth a change in our lives because you have granted us a righteousness that should be changing our hearts and therefore changing our behavior.
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Father, we recognize that all of this change is made possible through the cross. We thank you for Jesus Christ and the opportunity we have to take the bread.
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And remember his body that was broken, where our bodies deserve to be crushed and broken, he took that for us.
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Where our blood deserved to be shed and we deserved punishment, he took that punishment for us. So we rejoice in Jesus.
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We need him. We love him. We desire to honor him with our lives. And it's in his name that we pray.