Proverbs 22 - The Little Things

We are gonna be in Proverbs 22 this morning, and I'm gonna keep it pretty brief for a couple of reasons.

One, we're only doing half the chapter, and number two, it is a very warm day today in Moses Lake. And so, I'm gonna do my bit here, and then we're gonna turn on some fans and stuff and try and keep it cool in here.

But if you are in the Moses Lake area, hope you're staying cool, drinking lots of water. Heat, stroke and things like that are no joke.

So make sure that if you are doing, you know, some hard work or something like that, even working outside, that you just be careful with your health. And do want to continue to be in prayer for a couple of things as a church.

As was mentioned last night, Mel Neil needs our prayers and he's up in Wenatchee right now. And today is actually his wife Maxine's birthday.

So if you would pray for Max and Mel, just that the Lord would be with them and that he would work in that particular situation. Also want to be in prayer for who we had some other things, Robert and Beth.

They have not had their baby yet, so continue to be in prayer for them. Just that everything would work out well for them and that they would be able to have the baby soon. And also want to pray for Fountain Senior as always with his stuff.

And pray for him and for Miss Judy. And I would joke about one having to put up with the other, but honestly love both Fountain Senior and Miss Judy. And so thankful for everything that they do for our church.

Do be in prayer for Junior Camp next week for our kids. I think it's grades fourth through going into seventh. And they're going to be spending the week up at Camp Graceway.

And they're going to have an amazing time. And so pray for all of the sponsors that are going up with them.

And pray for them as they hear God's word preached throughout the week, as they have a great time playing games with friends and things like that. Just that God would really work next week at Junior Camp.

So have all of these prayer requests that have been mentioned. And do be in prayer for those. But we are going to start this morning in Proverbs 22.

And we are going to take kind of just the first half of the chapter and go through these. These are somewhat focused, just a little bit.

The first part, maybe the first five verses or so, really focus on our integrity, particularly in front of others. And it starts off with this in Proverbs 22, one.

A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold. Man, isn't it so much better to have a good reputation with others than to be rich and to have a horrible reputation?

Man, I think of, you know, you can't go to a grocery store today without passing by the tabloids.

And, man, those are pretty entirely composed of this type of thing, that, hey, this person, this rich person, this famous person, this musician did this thing, and they don't have a good name or a good reputation.

And the Bible says it's so much better to have integrity attached to your name than it is to have, you know, whatever amount of figures that you would make. Verse number two kind of clarifies, hey, why would this be?

Why would it be better to have a good reputation than to have lots of money?

Verse number two says, the rich and poor meet together, or they have this in common, that the Lord is the maker of them all, that you are not better if you have more money, and you're not better if you are poor or have no money.

The answer is not, okay, if I just give away all of my money, then I will be a better person. That's not really the answer. The answer is the integrity with which you are poor, have less money, or are rich, have more money.

What do you do with it? How did you obtain what you have? And just having integrity in that is a great thing.

Verse number three, a prudent man foresees the evil and hideeth himself, but the simple pass on and are punished.

A prudent person, a person that's looking ahead to what's happening in his life, is going to see when a road that he's going down is going to not end well. And it says that he sees what's going to happen. It says he hides himself.

He removes himself from that path that would have brought ruin or destruction. But it says the simple or the inexperienced, they pass on, they just continue on that way, and they are punished.

It is always a great thing to look introspectively at our lives and to go, okay, man, what is the direction that I'm going? How is this going to turn out for me? Verse number four, by humility and fear of the Lord, our riches and honor and life.

I love this verse because obviously, as we've talked about before, it's Proverbs, it's not necessarily a thing of, okay, if I'm humble and I respect, I fear the Lord, I'm going to be rich, people are gonna honor me, I'm gonna have a super long life.

Obviously, we know these would be general principles that would happen, but I just love the encouragement of this, that you don't necessarily always have to be the most intelligent in a room, you don't have to be the best looking, you don't have to

have the greatest pedigree. Instead, God says, hey, if you want honor in your life, if you want to have sufficient riches for your need, if you want to have a good life, that comes not through trying to whatever the system, not trying to lie and

better yourself, not putting other people down. Instead, it just comes through saying, hey, I know who I am, that I and myself, I'm nothing. But the Lord is the one that is who should be honored, who should be praised.

And as we focus on humility in our own hearts and lives, and focusing on the Lord, and even pointing other people to him, that there is good things that come as a result of that.

Verse number five, thorns and snares are in the way of the foward, or the perverse. And he that doth keep or guard his soul shall be far from them.

That kind of like in verse number three, where a prudent man looks ahead, sees that evil is in the path, and goes the other way, he hides himself. The simple just keeps on going.

Thorns and snares, thorns and traps that would be set for birds or for wild animals are in the way of the person that is perverse. And it says that if you guard your soul, you will be far away from those traps.

So kind of the same thought as verse number three of look ahead to the path that you're going down and make adjustments as necessary. This next section is a little bit, maybe more random, but it starts in verse number six.

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Oftentimes, the path that we set our children down is the path that they will follow, or at least the path that will speak into their mind and their heart for the rest of their life.

This verse does not mean, hey, if you raise your kids in church, they will absolutely accept Christ as Savior, and they will do everything right.

If you look through the Old Testament, there's example after example of great men of God, that even though they raise their children in the temple, that even though they themselves worship the Lord sincerely and with a pure heart, that their children

didn't do the same. And this happens because we as humans have free will, that God's not going to force himself onto someone just because they were born into a believing family.

That each one of us individually has to make that choice of, I'm going to follow God. And sometimes we can think when we read verse number six, that it's just train up a child in the way he should go.

And we would say, okay, if you train him in the right way, they're going to go down that path.

Oftentimes, it's also true that if we train our children in the wrong way and with the wrong habits, that they will continue on that path throughout the rest of the course of their life.

And obviously we know that God's grace and God's power is enough to help save anyone in to even curb bad habits that we've put into our own life. But man, we ought to be careful.

We ought to be really prudent looking ahead to the path that we're sending our children down as we read just a couple of verses ago. Verse number seven, the rich ruleeth over the poor and the borrower is servant to the lender.

This verse says just as much as those that are rich in society have much over the poor, you would think of maybe a rich person like a Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or an Elon Musk would have just hundreds of employees that work underneath them and they

have great sway over society and its trends and habits. That's the same kind of thing that a lender has over a borrower.

And so if you are in a situation where you have to borrow money, just realize, okay, I don't want to have this be for a very long time.

I don't want this to be something that I just make a habit of, oh, I'm just going to continue swiping the credit card.

My dad would often remind me of this verse when it came to things that he was trying to teach me about finance of, hey, just as surely as the rich rules over the poor, the borrower is a servant or a slave to the lender.

So be careful in your finances that you would make wise choices. Verse number A, he that sews iniquity shall reap vanity or emptiness. Sow iniquity, reap emptiness from it.

It says in the rod of his anger shall fail. Man, when we make a habit of sowing sin in our life, of sowing unkindness, of sowing dishonesty, of sowing cruelty, it's not going to reap any sort of meaningful harvest in our lives.

So, let's focus on sowing what's good. On the opposite side of that, verse number nine, he that has a bountiful eye shall be blessed, or he that has a generous eye, a person that's generous will be blessed, for he giveth of his bread to the poor.

And there's this common theme all throughout Proverbs of as we take care of and love the poor, those that maybe would be looked at as the least of society, it honors God, and God says there is blessing that comes as a result of that.

Verse number 10, cast out the scorner, and contention shall go out, yea strife and reproach shall cease. Man, if we are the person that when we leave a room, everything else is peaceful, we need to honestly check ourselves.

We should be the person that whether we're there, or whether we're not there, we are not adding problems and strife and fighting into situations.

Verse number 11, he that loveth pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips, the king shall be his friend.

Man, when we speak good things and when our speech is right, it is such that it would place us in high and elevated places because of the excellence of our words.

Verse number 12, the eyes of the Lord preserve knowledge, and he overthroweth the words of the transgressor. That God is the one that's in charge of judgment and justice, and he will preserve truth and overthrow all the words of the transgressor.

Verse number 13, the slothful man saith, there is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets.

The important part of verse 13 is the beginning part of it, the slothful man, a person that's just lazy, doesn't want to do stuff, will say, oh man, you know, I get up and go to work, but there's a lion out there in the street, and I don't want to

die, so I'm just gonna stay in bed, I'm not gonna go work. And man, we shouldn't look for excuses to get out of work. Instead, we should be diligent and not be slothful or lazy.

Verse number 14, the mouth of a strange or an immoral woman is a deep pit. He that is abhorred or detested of the Lord shall fall therein. This one obviously talking about immorality and just how we need to be walking with God.

And I see there at the end of the verse, he that is abhorred or he that's detested of the Lord will fall therein. I don't want that to be me. I want to be the person that would be walking with God.

And we would know from even James 4, that God loves and honors the humble, but he resisteth the proud. And so I don't want to be resisted by God, so have humility and that will help us in life.

Verse number 15, second to last verse, foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.

We are born with an inheritance in nature, that all of us are born sinners, and that is our natural bent in life. However, it says that correction will drive it from us.

And many of us that maybe grew up with corporal punishment would know, man, after you get a couple of those spankings, you're not going to continue doing whatever action it was that got you the spanking in the first place.

And then verse number 16, he that oppresses the poor to increase his riches and he that give it to the rich shall surely come to want or to poverty.

If we have most of our finances strictly taking from the poor, and then we take our money and try and bribe the rich, as it were, of trying to use our money to impress other people, rich people so that they will befriend us so that then we can make

even more money. The Bible says that that kind of backhanded finances, that I think of James 2, that respect of persons, that partiality, that people pleasing, Bible says will only lead to poverty.

And that's not the financial habits that a child of God should have. Instead, as we read earlier, we should be those that would give to the poor, not that would take from the poor.

And I can think probably most of us would maybe lean a little bit more towards the poor side of things than to the rich side of things. But man, the general principle also still applies of, hey, are we generous? Are we giving?

Are we those that would be honest in finances? Or are we corrupt? Are we tricksters in our dealings with other people?

And just having honesty and integrity in our finances. Well, I hope these verses would be an encouragement to you. I know it was to me this morning.

And man, just this reminder of, let's have integrity in everything that we do. And let's be those that would have a good name. And maybe even over the next couple of days, as Moses liked Baptist Church, let's have a good name in our community.

Baby B, you wanna come on the podcast for a second? I'll show off my son. He hasn't been on here for a while.

So, yeah. Come here, son. Yes, come here.

Hi. Hey, can you say hi to the people? Can you tell, we'll see you tomorrow for Donuts and Doors at 10 a.m.

We're gonna meet, eat some donuts, we'll have water and coffee, head right on out before it gets too hot that day, and we'll put some tracks on doors, invite people to church, and then we'll be all done. You like that? You like that idea?

All right, well, we'll see you tomorrow, and it's been great to be with you on Strength of the Day.