Proverbs 22:1-8

Hey, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. Hey, I normally don't ask you this, but I'm going to go ahead and do it this morning. Could you give me a thumbs up if you're on Facebook or YouTube? If this is valuable content to you, this can get buried. It's just helpful for the algorithms. If you hit like or subscribe or share it with other people, it'd be a huge help to me. Well, good morning.
Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This is where every day we get together, we get into God's word and we grow in our love for the Lord together. And this morning, we're at Proverbs chapter 22, verses one through eight. Let's have some coffee. Let's go before the Lord in prayer. Father, we do come before your throne of grace boldly only in the name and hope of Jesus Christ. Father, we admit to you that as we read your word, We cannot understand it in and of ourselves. So, Father, we pray that you would teach us. Let our eyes see. Let our ears hear. Let our minds understand. In Jesus's name, amen. All right, Proverbs chapter 22, verses 1 through 8. Let's go ahead and turn in our Bibles there.
A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, loving favor rather than silver and gold. It's better to have a good name, pardon me, it's better to have a good name than to have a huge bank account. It's better for you to have a good reputation and a good standing in the community because you are a person of integrity and righteousness than it is for you to have great riches. It's better for people to trust you than it is to have gold.
Verse two. The rich and the poor have this in common. The Lord is the maker of them all. This is why in the New Testament there was this admonishment by James, right? What did he say? that when the rich came in and they had their fine arraignment, when they had all their fancy clothes on, they were not allowed to get the best seats in the house. They were not allowed to say, hey, hey, I'm going to sit at the best. I'm going to sit at the high seats. You sit down in the dirt, in the mud. You sit here at my footstool.
No, no, no, no. In the house of God, you And I, the rich and the poor, the slave holder and the slave, the man and the woman, the child and the father, are one. The Lord made us all. The Lord redeemed us. Verse three. A prudent man foresees evil and hides himself. The simple press on and are punished. All right, hold on, right. It's better to put on the brakes, slow down the velocity, chill out a little bit when you see trouble on the horizon than just to plunge into it. No, buddy.
This is one of the things I absolutely love about being in a church that's elder-led is that I'm one in the plurality of equals. And so there are two other elders in our congregation. and I love sometimes I want to press forward with something and John and Jim are able to say, you know, they hold me back a little bit and they go, no, no, no, no, there's trouble on the horizon there. We need to be careful in how we walk.
Verse four, by humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life. Do you want riches? Do you want honor? Do you want life? Humility and the fear of the Lord. That's where it starts. Humbling yourself. It was Jesus Christ who Philippians chapter two shows us is the model of humility. Jesus himself said he came not to be served but to serve. Humility and the fear of the Lord. Jesus revered His Father. Jesus loved His Father. Jesus came to do the will of His Father. And do you know what Jesus Christ has as a result of His humiliation of His becoming man? He got the universe. He got a king. He got a crown that never fades. He got a name that will never be diminished. He has a kingdom that will never end.
Do you want riches? Do you want life? Humble yourself and fear God. Verse five, thorns and snares are in the way of the perverse. He who guards his soul will be far from them. You need to guard your heart. You need to protect your soul. You need to guard the ways in which you walk because as we walk in our lives, there are painful things. I'm... how do I say this nicely?
I'm amazed sometimes when I counsel people and they've gone in ways of grievous sins and I'll talk to them and they'll talk and they'll be like, well I just fell into this and as we talk about it I realize, no you didn't. There were 17 other mistakes leading up to your adultery. There were a plethora of ways in which you sinned before you fell into this grievous sin. There were thorns and briars and bristles and you just kept walking through even the barbed wire until you were consumed. Thorns and snares are in the way of the perverse. He who guards his soul will be far from them.
Verse six, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. There's some controversy over how this verse is applied and translated and things like that. I'm not going to get into the depths of the exegesis here, but let me just say that the gospel is for us and for our children. that there is a hope. And these are principles, not promises. But is it not our heart's prayer that our children would walk in the ways of the Lord? But if we do not train up our children in the way in which they should go, they will depart from that way.
Verse seven, the rich rules over the poor and the borrower is a servant to the lender. This is just the reality of life. Let me just encourage you, the best way to find freedom in your life, especially financial freedom in your life, is pay off as much debt as you possibly can, run away from the debt, drive an old car, live more humbly, get away from being a slave to the lender, the rich, rule over the poor. But as we are more and more content with the things we have, we're able to gain more and more freedom. There's a reality of economic slavery.
Verse eight, he who sows iniquity will reap sorrow and the rod of his anger will fail. If you are going out in the garden of your life, in the field of your life, and you reach into your bag and you are spreading out, throwing out sin, throwing out iniquity, what do you think is going to come up in the spring? When the summertime grows up, what is the plants in your life going to look like? Sorrow. That's what you're going to reap.
Sin is always over promising pleasure and always over delivers on guilt. Sin always makes it seem like this is going to be fun and pleasurable and it may even be that in the moment but at the end of the day it reigns with sorrow. The affair looks enticing until your wife is wailing at home. Stealing that wallet looks fun, looks like an easy way to enjoy a little bit of free money until you find yourself in court. That's what sin does. When we sow iniquity, we reap sorrow. The rod of his anger will fail. God will punish.
Let's pray. Father we thank you so much for this day and we pray that we would follow after you and walk in your ways. God we pray that we would seek true joy. We pray that we would go after your paths. Please protect us from the evil one, protect us from the temptations even in our own hearts. In Jesus' name, amen. May the Lord bless you today. May you revere the Lord. May you love Him. May you humble yourself under the hand of the mighty God and find joy in serving Jesus Christ and in loving your neighbor as yourself. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye.
Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.