Making Life Work #20

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The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.

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How many times have you gotten yourself into trouble by speaking up when you should have kept your mouth shut? If we’re talking about making life work, and that’s what this series is about, the mouth may be the biggest single problem we have to solve. Man’s a social creature, and being a social creature requires communication. You mess this up, and your life is going to be messed up right along with it. In the book of Proverbs, Solomon brings up the mouth, the tongue again and again because it is such a problem and because it is so crucial to the way we live our lives, the way we get along with people. In Proverbs 10, 19, for example, he said, In the multitude of words, sin is not lacking. In other words, if you talk too much, there is no way you’re not going to commit a sin. That makes sense. If a person is running off at the mouth, or we get a bunch of guys around the table, and we sit there talking long enough, somebody’s going to say something they shouldn’t say. So principle number one is this. When it comes to words, more is not better. When in doubt, shut up and listen. You cannot keep talking, and sooner or later not put your foot in it. The tongue of the just, Solomon continues, is like choice silver. But the heart of the wicked is little worth. Now, I’ve explained before that sometimes things become clearer in the book of Proverbs and Psalms when you understand that you’re dealing with poetic forms, in particular, the couplet, which is one of the most common forms that crops up in both places. The couplet is a form in which two parallel expressions, or perhaps inversely parallel expressions, are used in the same verse. For example, the tongue of the just is as choice silver, the heart of the wicked is as little worth. Heart is contrasted with tongue, and in the process, it tells us where the problem really is. Elsewhere, he will say, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So the only way to address this problem is from the inside out. Nine times out of ten, when we have caused a problem by something we have said, we try to convince ourselves, and others as well, that we didn’t really mean it. Now, that’s not the real me we’re likely to say. I would not normally say anything like that. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. But you’ll be far more likely to solve the problem. If you look in the mirror and say, that was the real me, and I don’t like it. Yes, I know, that runs counter to conventional wisdom. We’re all supposed to think well of ourselves. We’re supposed to use positive speak concerning ourselves. I’m a good person. I do good things. Well, the only problem is that you can’t grow without changing. And presumably, we’re changing from something we don’t like to something better. So, like I said, take a look in the mirror and say, hmm, that was the real me. I don’t like that. I need to change my heart. Then I won’t respond to people that way. You can’t grow as long as you’re making excuses for yourself or as long as you think you really are what you ought to be. So if you tend to make trouble for yourself with your mouth, look inside first. The real you may need an attitude adjustment. Solomon shifts gears at this point and gives us a simple life principle about being rich. It’s found in Proverbs 10 and verse 22. The blessing of the Lord, it makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it. You should always think of the blessing of the Lord as a multiplier. You do a piece of work, and God multiplies it. Now, if you did your multiplication tables, you know that 1 times 0 is still 0, right? How much is 5 times 0? Well, it’s still 0. So God can bless nothing, and you still come up with nothing. He can multiply it several times over, and you still come up with nothing. God promises to bless those who pay tithes. But we’re not talking about a lucky charm here. If you tithe and then make bad financial decisions, you’re not going to get rich. If you tithe and sock all your money into some kind of Canadian penny stocks and mining stocks and so forth and go broke, you didn’t go broke because you tithed. You went broke because you made bad decisions. If you tithe and then slack off at work, you’re still going to wind up in the poorhouse because ten times zero is still zero. You actually have to do something. You have to produce something for God to be able to bless it and have it come out anything. If you can just produce a factor of one and God blesses you ten times over, you’ll have ten. Now, following this is a proverb to memorize, one really for your children to learn. It is as sport to a fool to do mischief, but a man of understanding has wisdom. Several years ago, I was dean of students in a college in England. And one morning, when I got into work, I had some students show up at my doorstep telling me that during the night, they had been out the previous night and had been on the town until something like 1 or 1.30, and they came back into the dorm still singing songs and enjoying life and feeling good about everything, but a little bit bushed and wrung out and ready to go to bed. And so they came to their rooms, opened the door, walked inside, and found nothing. No beds, no chairs, no clothes, nothing. It seems some of their friends in the other wing of the dorm had decided to play a little practical joke on them. So they came down, dismantled all their beds, moved them clean down to the other wing of the dorm, stacked them up in a room, took all their clothes, everything that was in the room, all the furniture, chairs, the whole works, and just cleared it out. And so here are these guys that come in at 1, 1.30 in the morning and find nothing. Now, I would say that while their other erstwhile friends were getting a chuckle over this, they were not amused, to say the least. Well, as dean of students, it always falls your lot, you know, to have to deal with this kind of thing when guys start playing practical jokes on one another. And so I lined them all up, and guess what proverb I read to them? Proverbs 10, verse 23. It is as sport to a fool to do mischief. I told them that they had demonstrated themselves to be fools by finding sport in mischief. Now, this is a very bad habit, and it starts early. Children need to be taught. Just little children need to be taught what makes good sport. And it is not making trouble for other people. Well, does that mean you can never pull off a practical joke? Well, I’ll tell you what. I think I can make it through life without ever being the butt of a practical joke and not feel like I missed much. What about you? Do you really feel the need to have someone jerk your chain like that in the middle of the night? Now, here’s a little joke those fellows could have played on their classmates. This would have been fun. They could have gone through all their cupboards, pulled out all their shoes, and shined them up real nice. And then they could have left a note saying, Shined shoes, courtesy of Wing A. You guys are great classmates. Well, it’s not exactly a joke, but it’s a little prank of sorts, and it’s doing something for someone else that will make them feel good, make them feel appreciated. you kind of wonder, what is the object of a practical joke? What is the object of making people look silly or feel silly? Is it so they’ll know you like them? Well, I guess so, because you’d better like them, and they’d better like you, or you’re not going to get away with it. After this, Solomon reveals a life principle that, well, it’s kind of spooky when you think about it. He says, “…the fear of the wicked it shall come upon him.” but the desire of the righteous shall be granted. I heard someone say once, I have had a lot of bad things in my life, most of which never happened. And I thought, boy, is that ever true. You do have a lot of bad things in your life, you think about them at least, and most of the time, they don’t come to pass. But you know, from this proverb, I get an idea that one of the reasons we are afraid so often is because we have not done right. And that really is true. The times when you’re lying awake at night worrying yourself to death about something coming down the pike is probably because you’ve done something you hadn’t ought to have done. And you’re worried about the consequences coming home to roost. You know, you can look at this. Very few people are wicked all the time. But even fewer people are never wicked. And so all of us wicked folks do have our fears. We do have our worries. Then Solomon has to say, the fear of the wicked? Hey, it’s coming. You might as well get ready for it. When you are afraid, try this. Put your life right. Apologize to anyone you should apologize to. Repent and ask God’s forgiveness for what you have done wrong. And then get on with life. Because if you sit around and indulge your fear… it’s far more likely to come to pass. I’ll be back with more right after these words.

SPEAKER 02 : 10:23

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SPEAKER 03 : 10:51

Some of the principles that we find in these proverbs are really obvious when you stop to think about them. And the value of the proverb is often the fact that it puts it in a pithy way and you’re more likely to remember it as a result of it. Take verse 26 as an example. Has vinegar to the teeth and is smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that send him. Oh, you bet. The lazy lout is an irritant, a constant irritant in any company, like vinegar in the teeth and smoke in the eyes. Now, if you can get your kids to understand this, you will have given them the best employment insurance that there is. Remember, we’re talking about the things that make life work, the things that divide winners from the losers. And the losers are the sluggards because they’re an irritant to the people they even work for. Well, why then does anyone hire a sluggard? The answer is they don’t if they can help it. That means if you’re a winner, there will always be a job for you. Think about it. The very fact that in any company there are the sluggards, there are the lazy workers, there are the shiftless types, there are the people who dope off when they ought to be at work, there are people who will work for a month and then quit. That means that there aren’t enough people like you who are hustlers, who are winners, to go around all the jobs. And so if you stay on the ball, if you’re not a sluggard, if you’re a dependable person, you’ll always be able to find work. Now moving on, would you like to live a long life? Solomon has a proverb for that. The fear of the Lord prolongs days, but the years of the wicked shall be shortened. It all starts, as wisdom starts, with the fear of God. And there are causes and effects to the length of time. Now, I know there are diseases that come along and take people’s lives, and there are things that are out of our control. But as a generalization, the fear of the Lord prolongs days. You can live a lot longer. And the years of the wicked, as a generalization, are going to be shortened. Now the 10th chapter finishes with an interesting little set of inverse couplets, each of them stating one thing, then giving us the opposite. The hope of the righteous shall be gladness, but the expectation of the wicked shall perish. The way of the Lord is strength to the upright, but destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity. The righteous shall never be removed, but the wicked, they will not inhabit the earth. The mouth of the just brings forth wisdom, But the lips of the righteous know what is right and acceptable, but the mouth of the wicked speaks perverseness. Now, the message of all this here is that actions have consequences, that if you live a certain way of life, it’s going to work one way. If you live the opposite way, it’s going to work the opposite way. So pay attention to what you do, and pay attention to what you do in the light of the wisdom and the knowledge that is conveyed by the Word and the law of God. It will make a difference in the way your life comes out. Now, here’s another concept. Try this one on for size. Is it okay to cheat a little from time to time if you can get away with it? Well, Proverbs 11, verse 1 starts off this way. A false balance is hateful to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight. Well, that’s cheating, isn’t it? Whenever you start changing the weights, when you start adjusting the springs on your scales because you’re supposed to sell a pound of cheese and you wind up selling an ounce short of every particular pound you sell. Cheating may seem like a good idea if you can get away with it. Solomon says you can’t get away with it because God knows. And just as important, I think, you know. You diminish yourself when you cheat. What you say when you cheat is, well, I’m not good enough to make it honestly. I’m not smart enough. I’m not talented enough. I’m not good enough at this business that I’m in. I just can’t make it work for me honestly. And so when you cheat, you basically call yourself a failure. And a cheat is just a thief by another name. But what you really steal is your own self-respect. You diminish yourself when you cheat. There is such a thing as self-respect. It’s a kind of pride, I suppose. But then there is another kind of pride, and that’s discussed in verse 2 of chapter 11. When pride comes, then comes shame, but with the lowly is wisdom. I think what he’s talking about is false pride, overstated pride, overweening pride. And the reason they bring shame is because we can never measure up to that kind of pride. We will boast ourselves, and then we will fail. We will never live up to the pride that we have in ourselves like that. Now, I hope I have not given the impression that everything is consequences and that God really doesn’t care very much what we do. That’s not the case. Solomon says in verse 4, Riches profit not in the day of wrath. Righteousness can deliver from death. What he means by this is that there is a day of wrath, and by that he means a day of God’s wrath, and riches are not going to help. The Bible speaks of that day of wrath in many places. One of them is in Isaiah 2, verse 19. And it says when God arises to shake terribly the earth, when he is really beginning to show his wrath because of what man has done to the earth, that they shall go into the holes of the rocks and the caves of the earth for fear of the Lord and for the glory of his majesty when he arises to shake terribly the earth. In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, his idols of gold, which they made to worship, to the moles and to the bats, to go into the clefts of the rocks and the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord and for the glory of His majesty, when He arises to shake terribly the earth. But short of the day of God’s wrath, most of the bad stuff that happens to us in this life is self-inflicted. So if we can avoid the self-inflicted wounds, we can make an enormous difference in our lives. In Proverbs 11, verse 5, the righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way, but the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness. In other words, it’s your own actions that are going to bring you down. In most cases, God does not even have to lift a finger. And so don’t think that you can live a nasty little life here and then go to God and say, Oh, God, I’m sorry, and have God forgive you and make it all right. Well, God will forgive you right enough. But that doesn’t mean that if you have been a liar that your reputation will not still be destroyed. It doesn’t mean that if you have slept with your neighbor’s wife and he finds out about it, he’s not going to blow your brains out. God will forgive you, but your neighbor, well, he may not. The righteousness of the upright shall deliver them. Notice that. The righteousness itself will deliver them. God doesn’t have to lift a finger sometimes to deliver the upright. Their own righteousness puts them in the right place at the right time. But transgressors shall be taken in their own naughtiness. When a wicked man dies, all of his expectations shall perish with him, and the hope of unjust men perishes. The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked, he comes into it in his place. I’ll have more when I come back after these words.

SPEAKER 02 : 19:03

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SPEAKER 03 : 19:31

The next set of Proverbs, beginning in chapter 11, verse 9, are community-related Proverbs. That is, they have to do with a man living in a community and the way in which living a righteous life, living a good, clean life, affects a community. In verse 9, Solomon says, A hypocrite with his mouth destroys his neighbor, but through knowledge shall the just be delivered. Hypocrite is a really nasty word. It’s talking about people who preach one thing and practice another. The word literally means play actors. It’s people who pretend to be something that they are not. Well, this hypocrite, because of what he says with his mouth, destroys his neighbor. You can actually cause your neighbor a great deal of grief by the things that you say about him. But it goes on to say, through knowledge shall the just be delivered. I mean, you can say things about a person, and it’s only going to be through knowledge. That is, through the truth. that the man can actually be delivered. And the just will be, eventually. It may have to be in court, but sooner or later, you can get it straight. When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices. And when the wicked perish, there is shouting, let’s party, let’s pop the corks on the champagne when the wicked die. You know, that’s one thing that some movies nowadays, and for a very long time have done for children, is they help them to understand that when the good guys win out, there’s rejoicing. And when the wicked guys perish, well, everybody celebrates. And that’s a good lesson to drive home. All of us should rejoice with the righteous and when it goes well with them, and when the good guys win. And we should all rejoice when the bad guys lose. By the blessing of the upright… The city is exalted, but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked. Now, what in the world does that mean? Well, for an example, take Sodom and Gomorrah. Here were two wicked, nasty cities. And when God was on his way down to Sodom to see if it was really as bad as he’d heard it was, he talked to Abraham about it and said, I’m going down there. I’m going to look, and when I’m there, I will know what the circumstances are. And Abraham pleaded with him. He said, well, you know, what if there are 50 righteous people in that town? Would you destroy the town because of those 50 righteous? And God said, no. If I find 50 in that city, I will not destroy it. And Abraham said, well, what if there’s only 10 missing out of that 50? There are 40. God says, I won’t destroy it if I find 40. Abraham worked his way all the way down to 10, and God told him, okay, if I find 10 righteous people in Sodom, I will not destroy the city. Having 10 righteous people in Sodom would have saved a lot of lives. By the blessing of the upright, a city is exalted, and it’s overthrown by the mouth of the wicked. The fact is that the presence of righteous people in a city can save it. He that is void of wisdom despises his neighbor. But a man of understanding holds his peace. Now here again is a couplet, two parallel expressions that help us one to understand the other. In what sense does the man who is void of wisdom despise his neighbor? He does it by the way he talks about him. He talks his neighbor down. The hypocrite destroys his neighbor. A man of understanding will keep his mouth shut about his neighbor. Supposing your neighbor is bad. Supposing he is wicked. Supposing he has done something that he ought not to have done. Well, a man of understanding is going to keep his mouth shut. The message of all this is, no man is an island. Our actions affect our neighbors. Our neighbors’ actions affect us. We depend on one another. In verse 13, Solomon says, A tale-bearer reveals secrets, but he that is of a faithful spirit conceals a matter. Now, I think as a generalization, secrets should be kept. And we should conceal things, the nasty things and the wicked things, for the most part, that other people have done. But I can think of an exception to this. When keeping the secret places others in danger, you have to speak. A man is a child molester, you must speak. A man is abusing his children, you must speak. There are many exceptions to this. But most of the time when we’re bearing tales, we’re not telling anybody who needs to know. We’re not telling anybody who can do something about it. We’re not telling it to protect anybody. We’re just telling it so we can have something to tell. Where there is no counsel, verse 14, the people fall. But in the multitude of counselors, there is safety. Now, that’s good advice. But it is advice we’re talking about. What he is saying is, go get some good advice from a multitude of people. But then, make up your own mind. A lot of people look at this and they assume that it’s better to get things done with a committee, right? But if it were that way, what it would say is, in a multitude of decision makers, there is safety. No. Advisors, counselors, in a multitude of decision makers, there is indecision. I’ve heard it said that a committee is an organized way of avoiding a decision. Now, what follows, Solomon shifts ground a little bit and talks about a gracious woman. And he says, a gracious woman retains honor, and strong men retain riches. Then I want to add to this, verse 22, we’re going to skip down a little bit, where he says, as a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman who is without discretion. And then all the way to chapter 12, verse 4, a virtuous woman is a crown to her husband, but she that makes ashamed is as rottenness to the bones. Now, a lot of preachers, when they come to scriptures like these about the woman, the gracious woman and the fair woman who is without discretion, love to wax eloquent about the foibles of women. But, you know, really, in talking to the audiences listening to me, if you’ve listened this far in the book of Proverbs, you’re obviously a gracious woman and a woman of discretion. But if you’re a mother, I want to ask you the question in a different way. Which woman would your little girl grow up to be? I worry about these little girls whose mothers push them into beauty pageants, made up like adults, and dancing and playing musical instruments and performing for crowds to applause. They learn the talents to win competition. They learn to compete, which involves being prettier and more talented than the other girls. I have never known a gracious woman who thought of herself as superior to other women in any way. I have met some truly beautiful women. I say met because I have never felt that I knew them. It seems that a really beautiful woman is not always but sometimes so full of herself that she leaves no room in her life for anyone else. I guess as a mother you need to think about this. Do the things that you do with your little girl, the activities you put her into, do these have anything to do with whether she will be gracious or merely beautiful? Mamas, bring up your little girls to be gracious, to be winners.

SPEAKER 02 : 27:25

Until next time, this is Ronald Dart. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win Post Office Box 560 White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1-888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:58

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