Greetings everyone. Let’s turn to Proverbs 22:1 and resume the Bible Study through this wonderful book. Proverbs 22:1, a very important verse:
1 A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold.
In other words, this is talking about a good reputation. One of the keys to studying the Bible and really understanding the Bible is to ask questions about what the Bible really says. For instance, in this verse, a good thing to do is to ask who, why, where, what, and how, and then answer those questions and we’ll have a deeper understanding of what this verse is talking about and the tremendous principles being brought out here.
Let’s just ask one question.
1 A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches,—
Now why is that? Why wouldn’t riches and silver and gold be something that we would want more than a good name? If you have riches and silver and gold, it brings with it certain opportunities and certain power. So why would we want a good name rather than those things?
Well, when you really think about a good name, a good reputation, it’s far more valuable and important than whatever riches or treasures we might have. A good name is pleasing in God’s sight. A good name gives opportunities that nothing else would give. It will develop relationships. It will open doors. Our reputation, a good reputation, will bring about opportunities and benefits that riches and silver and gold will not bring. You know, a person can have riches and silver and gold, but it doesn’t mean people would like to be around them, people would trust them. It doesn’t mean people will take their word, people would want to employ them or give them a raise. It doesn’t mean people would want to have them as a friend. It doesn’t mean people could trust them.
But when you have a good name and a good reputation, not only is God pleased and will bless you, but people of substance and people of integrity will want to work with you and want to be friends with you and want to interact and interrelate with you and want to be on the same team with you. And it just opens up an unlimited field of opportunities and benefits and blessings. And so there’s so many reasons why a good name—which is just another way of saying good character, and a good reputation, which flows from our good character—is one of the most valuable and should be one of the most safely guarded things that we can have. Much more desirable and much more valuable than riches and silver and gold.
2 The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of them all.
Or a better translation: The rich and poor have this in common, the Lord is the maker of them all.
We’re all born equal in terms of God’s love and God’s mercy, and then we go from there. And some go the right way through their life, and some go the wrong way. And some end up being rich, and some end up being poor and some end up in between. But when it’s all said and done, we all come from the same One, and that’s the great creator God. And we all have this in common: we all die.
So whether someone lives in a mansion and has tremendous money and has servants that go here and there at their least beck and call, and someone else might live in a small house and just have their needs met or might even be poor. There comes a time when all men must die, and when we die, that’s it. What we’ve done in our life from birth to death then stacks up to the way God is going to judge us and the decision and final outcome that He’s going to establish regarding our future.
So rich or poor, we must choose to walk with God if we want that outcome to be all it can be. But rich or poor, we’re still just human beings. We still need water, air to breathe. We still need food to eat. We still need to please God, and we still need to love our fellow men. And whether we’re rich or poor, if we don’t do those things or if we don’t have those things met, then our life is indeed empty and will fail. But if we are rich or if we are poor and those things are met and we do those things, then our lives will succeed.
But, when you really think about it, what’s the great big difference between the rich and poor? It has to do with our relationship with God because the rich and poor were made by God, and the rich and poor are going to die. So it’s best to make sure that however we live our lives, we live it by walking with God. And if we do that and we are well–off, we’ll handle those riches properly. And if we’re poor, we’ll be blessed and God will bring us out of that poverty, and we’ll handle that properly.
3 A prudent man foresees the evil, and hides himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.
See, a wise man, an intelligent woman, a prudent individual, they are alert, they’re watching. It’s not that they’re paranoid and they’re jumpy and anxious. That’s not it at all. But they’re intelligent. They think ahead. They use wisdom, and when they see danger, they’re not going to just keep plunging right on into a dangerous situation, whether it’s walking down the wrong street or a dark alley at night, or driving down the wrong road, or walking into a situation that looks very, very iffy, or developing a friendship with someone that could end up really doing harm to them or someone else. A prudent man foresees that kind of thing and removes himself from it, and if necessary even hides himself, makes himself scarce.
But the simple, the naïve, those who are not aware and alert, they don’t pay any attention to that. They just throw all caution to the wind and plunge ahead and end up in big trouble and end up actually doing wrong things and being punished. That’s what verse 3 is telling us about.
Look at verse 4. You know, as you read through Chapter 22 of Proverbs, this is one of the richest and most profound and incredibly wonderful chapters in the entire Bible. I wish we could stay here and study it for a long time. We have to move forward. But I hope you’ll take time to come back to it again and again. Notice here in verse Proverbs 22:4:
4 By humility and fear—
Does it say by connections, political movements, power, brute strength, high IQ, inheritance, royalty, beautiful appearance, stunning talent? Does it say that? Is that what the idea or the truth or the point is here? No, here’s what it is:
4 By humility—
And it doesn’t matter who we are. With God’s help we can cultivate humility and the fear of the Eternal. And it doesn’t matter who we are, where we came from, what our status in life is. With God’s help we can develop fear of the Eternal, which means standing in awe and having deep respect and reverence for the Eternal. And what is the result of that? By the attitude and the integrity and the character of humility and the fear of the Eternal are riches. Spiritual riches most of all, and even physical blessings. And honor, spiritual honor and physical honor. And life, spiritual life, eternal life and the abundant life here and now.
You know, if you really want to know where happiness and joy and the abundant life and the peace of mind and total fulfillment comes from, it’s all capsulized and put in a nutshell right here in Proverbs 22:4. It has to do with our attitude of humility and our attitude of standing in awe of God. Because if we do that, we’re going to love Him with all of our heart, mind, and soul, and we’re going to love our neighbor as ourselves, which means we’re going to keep the Ten Commandments, which means we’re going to be blessed beyond measure. And therefore we will have riches or blessings. We will have honor, and we will have life.
How many of us are willing to take a look at that and to re–calibrate our lives and to get traction in our lives toward doing the things that really count? Being humble, being kind, being meek, being patient, and standing in awe of God, worshipping Him, adoring Him, responding to Him, giving Him our full attention. If we do that, it opens up the windows of heaven and God pours out showers of blessings on us in little ways, medium–sized ways, and big ways, and in physical things and in spiritual things. There’s a very important key, a “little secret” to being happy. But very few people step up and plunge in to that tremendous stream that will bring that kind of happiness—that flowing pure, clean, wholesome stream of humility and the fear of, the proper awe and respect of the Eternal. I hope we’ll all do that because that’s at the heart and at the center of true, practical, day–by–day, biblical Christianity.
5 Thorns and snares are in the way of the froward: he that does keep his soul shall be far from them.
Thorns. What happens when we get into a patch of thorns? We get all entangled and ensnared, and our clothes get ripped and torn, and our skin gets cut, and abrasions result from bumping into those thorns and thistles.
5 —and snares—
A trap. It could be any kind of trap. It could be a steel trap or it could be a rope trap. It could be something that just binds us and captures us. That’s what is in the way, those things are in the way of the perverse, the twisted, the weird, the abnormal, the off–track, the kind of wrong thinking and wrong doing that we see in the world today. And the result is thorns and snares.
But what’s the last part of the verse say about our conduct?
5 —he that does keep his soul—
He that watches out for his life and for the lives of others, he that has enough gumption and enough common sense to pay attention to what’s going on around them, he will keep his life by being far from them. He will see, “That’s a trap, that’s a snare, that’s a patch of thorns. I’m not going there. It sounds good, it looks good, it seems good, it’s pretty inviting and tempting, but the result is just going to be misery and pain and suffering and ultimately death. Therefore I want to live life the right way. Therefore I’m going to simply take the other route and go way around that and stay way far off from it.”
The wrong movies, the wrong magazines, the wrong books, the wrong music, the wrong dancing, the wrong people, violence and perversion and filth and garbage and selfishness and greed—that’s what it’s talking about. We go far from those. That’s just thorns and snares waiting to capture us. Let’s go around that. Let’s stay far from that. Let’s take heed to verse 5.
6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
This starts at birth. We have children. We have responsibility that goes with those children. Those responsibilities never cease, and we have to grow along with our children. We don’t train a 15–year–old the way we train a 1–year–old. And we’re able to relate to and connect with the 1–year–old and train that little boy, train that little girl. But we’re also able to move along through life and connect with our 15–year–old and continue to train that young man and train that young woman. And we ask God to give us the ability and the love and the desire to do that, and He will.
And so then, not only does it involve loving and caring and being attentive and participating in and encouraging and tucking them in at night and providing for them, it also involves instruction. It also involves passing along to them what we know, passing along to them as wives and mothers, how to cook, how to sew, how to keep house, how to be feminine, how to be pure, how to be chaste, how to be a virtuous woman. And if we are a man and the father, how to work, the work ethic, what different tools will do, how to drive, how to lead, how to look after the heavy lifting that goes on in any home and to do it with masculinity and to do it with class and style and humility. And the mother will pass along femininity and how to do that with grace and charm. That’s all a part of the training up a child in the way he should go.
And the most important training of course is the spiritual training. We begin to introduce God into their lives early, and we introduce God and His way of life at their level. And we show them about creation. And when we show them flowers and we show them animals and we show them sunrises and sunsets and trees and human beings and hands and feet and eyes and ears and hair, we ask questions like, “Where did this all come from? Who made this?” And then that leads to a discussion of the great creator God. And then we teach them about God in the way that He is real. Then we start teaching them how to pray and how to study and how to live His way and obey His laws, how to tithe, how to do all of these things, how to worship God.
And as they begin to get older and older and into their teen years and over into their adult years, the most important training that we give is that of spiritual training. We set the example for them in our relationship with God and in our virtuous living, and in the standards and values that we follow on a day–by–day basis. And so we let our light shine, and we set the proper example. And then along with that, we give them instruction. And then along with that, we give them discipline when it’s necessary. And then we give them responsibility, and we give them validation, and we give them support and encouragement.
Verse 6 is a way of life when it comes to parents and children, and it’s a way of life that’s going right out the window in our society today. We must not let that happen in our families and we must not let that happen in God’s church and among God’s people and in true, practical Christianity. That’s going to take courage. It’s going to take change. It’s going to take forgetting what’s being perpetrated all around us today in our society and getting back to the faith once and for all delivered from God’s word and stepping up and living God’s way of life in this world today that’s spinning out of control.
But if we really want to do that, we can do it, and God will help us do it, and the results will be magnificent. Not just for us but for our children as well. Who will step up and do that? I hope we all will.
7 The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.
Well, that’s too bad it’s that way, but that’s reality in this world today. The people who have money tend to lord it over the people that don’t, and those who borrow tend to be enslaved by the ones that they borrow from. That’s just the way it is in our society today. Now, that’s not the way it ought to be among God’s people and that’s not the way it ought to be and it will not be that way in society in the Kingdom of God.
But in reality, that’s the way it is now. So the best thing to do is to make sure if you are well–off, that you don’t fall into that trap of lording it over other people even though they may not have much. We are to respect everyone no matter what status in life we are. And if we do have to borrow money or we have to use our credit—and there comes a time when we have to do that especially for the big items—but we have to make sure we manage that credit. We have to realize that we can end up being enslaved to the lender and not let that happen. And if we do loan somebody something, we have to make sure that we don’t have the attitude of, once again, treating them like they’re our property, etc.
So there are two things that I want to bring out in verse 7:
1. That is the reality of our society today and it’s wrong.
2. We don’t want to fall into that way of doing business as Christians, and we don’t have to.
And we can look forward to the day that that will be changed for everyone, but we can see to it that we don’t fall into that way of doing business in our lives today. But we also have to recognize the fact that that is the reality of our society and so therefore be alert to it.
8 He that sows iniquity shall reap vanity: and the rod of his anger shall fail.
Or he that sows iniquity shall reap trouble and the rod of his wrath shall perish. Once again, an admonition that actions have consequences. So an admonition to recognize that and a precept or principle here that whatever you sow, you reap.
If you sow love, you sow kindness, you have an attitude of give, that’s what’ll come back. But if you sow iniquity and perversity and sin and abuse, then you’re going to reap trouble because that’s what’ll come back. And the rod, the power of his anger—he may think, “Well, I can bully people around because when I get mad, boy, they better look out.” Well, in the long run, and sometimes in the short run, that’s going to fail. That will never take anybody anywhere except into failure and misery. And so, once again, let’s make sure that we don’t go there and do that because the end results are not good and others get hurt. Let’s avoid that. Let’s take that admonition in Proverbs 22:8.
9 He that has a bountiful eye—
a generous eye, a generous heart, a giving attitude
9 —shall be blessed; for he gives of his bread to the poor.
Once again, that’s the Godly attitude, that’s the Godly approach. God is generous. He is love. He cares for others. He helps others. He forgives others. Where would we be if God didn’t have that attitude? Well, we are to try to reflect Jesus Christ. We are to try to be more and more like God with each passing day. We are to take on His character and characteristics. And if we do that, we are going to be kind, we are going to be generous, we are going to be giving and helping and loving and forgiving. And as we have that attitude, God will bless us.
Now, it doesn’t mean we give everything away. It means that we give what we’re able to give to help those who will use it properly because that’s where we’re coming from, that’s in our character, that’s our attitude, that’s the godly approach, that’s the mind of Jesus Christ. How much happier is a person who has that attitude than one who just wants to get, and squeeze, and gather in to themselves, and by hook or by crook get the best of the other fellow? That doesn’t bring happiness to them or the other fellow. But this attitude of generosity and this attitude of giving brings happiness to other people and to the one who is the giver.
10 Cast out the scorner, and contention shall go out; yea, strife and reproach shall cease.
Whether it’s in a congregation, whether it’s in a company, whether it’s in a relationship—why put up with just a constant perpetual and intensifying attitude of the scorner? The negative critic, the one who just creates trouble in every direction for everybody, contention and strife and upset and hurt feelings—why put up with that?
Once that pattern and trend has been established and this person has been told and they won’t change, then basically the action that must be taken after that is just move them on out, send them packing, let them go somewhere else. If that’s what they want to do, they can do it somewhere else, but not in your company, not in your congregation and not in your area of responsibility. And as soon as you get that problem taken care of, once it’s clearly established that it is a permanent problem and the person will not change, and you move them on out, you will see this:
10 —strife and reproach shall cease.
Because they were generating that all the time. And when they are moved on, that stops. And so that’s what they cause. They cause contention and strife and reproach, and everybody is pulled down by it. So sometimes even though it’s hard to do and you might be reluctant to do it, there comes a time when they’ve got to be put out so that will cease and peace will set in. And it won’t set in, peace will not set in, until that action is taken. And so it’s an act of love for everybody concerned, including the scorner, if that action is taken because they’ll learn a lesson. And the other people who have been subjected to the contention that they perpetuate will then have peace. It takes courage, however. It takes leadership. It takes the desire to do the right thing to go ahead and deal with somebody like that. But if you will and you have the authority to do so and you do it in firmness and love, the results will be wonderful.
11 He that loves pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips the king shall be his friend.
He wants to do the right thing, and he thinks in the right way, and she thinks in the right way, and she wants to do the right thing. And so therefore what comes out of his or her mouth is really worth listening to. You want to hear what they have to say. You want their input. You want their feedback. You want their opinions. You want their ideas because it’s worthwhile. And anybody does that, anybody wants that, anybody wants to be around people like that. And even those in positions of power and authority, even kings and princess and presidents and supervisors and leaders, if they have any gumption or any substance at all, they recognize, “Now here’s somebody that I want to be around. Here’s somebody who can be a tremendous employee or a tremendous friend or somebody that I can help and who can really help me. So I want to be their friend because they have something that is of value and I can learn from and benefit from, and maybe they can learn and benefit from me.” And a tremendous beneficial relationship can develop because of an individual who has a right heart and who has right words coming from them.
12 The eyes of the Eternal preserve knowledge, and he overthrows the words of the transgressor.
Or of the faithless. God is in charge. He is aware. He sees everything. He hears everything. He knows everything. Nobody can wipe out His knowledge. He will preserve His knowledge. It will stand no matter what. The truth will never be wiped out, and those who try to wipe it out will themselves be wiped out. He overthrows the words of the faithless. But He preserves the attitudes and words of those who want to obey Him and keep His true knowledge as the central part of their life.
Let’s stop there and we’ll pick it up next time in Proverbs 22:13.
This is Charles Bryce with the Enduring Church of God.