Trinity Evangel Church

# Introduction

I can’t recommend everything in the heist movie of course, but in _Ocean’s 11_ Danny Ocean shows up unexpectedly to his ex-wife and in their conversation she says, “You know what your problem is?” And he replies, “I only have one?”

If I only had one problem it would be *anger*. It developed, I wouldn’t say “matured,” in my early 20s. Not that I was never angry before that, but my dad was angry enough for the whole family and I mostly wanted to avoid the fallout of his fury. But when I started living away from home I continued the family business, and really started getting good and mad.

Mo has never been blind to it, and she has certainly born the brunt of it. I probably didn’t really reckon with it until Calvin was about 18 months old and such an angry tiny tyrant. He was mad about everything, and that made me more mad. We stopped taking him out for a while because Mo or I would end up in the van with his screaming self while everyone else finished their fun/food.

Then I read a short blog post about [adversarial fathers](https://dougwils.com/the-church/practical-christianity/adversarial-fathers.html) teaching their sons how to respond. It finally hit me, by God’s grace, that I was totally showing Cal how to respond to things he didn’t like. My childish temper tantrums were the problem, and I didn’t even have the excuse of being a child. I repented, I kept repenting, and I was also up close to some other people in my life that weren’t repenting, and started to get a clearer picture of the destruction that anger, both the loud and quiet-seething kinds, causes.

Proverbs has plain teaching about anger. But there is a proverb in Ecclesiastes worth starting with:

> Be not quick in your spirit to become angry,
> for anger lodges in the heart of fools.
> (Ecclesiastes 7:9 ESV)

The KJV has it, “anger resteth in the bosom of fools.” (Contrast it with wisdom resting in the heart of a man of understanding that makes itself known in the midst of fools, Proverbs 14:33).

In English the word *anger* means “a strong feeling of annoyance and displeasure, or hostility.” Angry men often want to plead the dictionary and claim that they are just “irritated” or “frustrated” but not angry. And maybe they can hide in some shades of meaning. But arguing about how you’re not angry is like trying to convince someone to focus on the smell of the air freshener in the porta-potty.

Anger is almost always a fool’s affection. It is a feeling with physical effect, red cheeks and loud mouth and dead eyes (see “angry looks” in Proverbs 25:33). The thing I hope to argue is that the antidote to anger is not no feelings, but getting our feelings to submit to what is true, right, and real.

To say that an angry man is a fool means he isn’t wise. And what keeps a man a stranger to wisdom? He lacks the fear of the Lord.


# The Reality of Values

I’ve been thinking about the objective nature of the world for a few months. It started as I was brainstorming ideas for Rhetoric class, and how Rhetoric often hovers around the discussion of beauty but truth and goodness ride the rails of objective standards. Beauty often floats in the wind of subjectivism. Beauty may be varied, but it’s not dependent on the beholder, or listener. There are real things that make it attractive, appealing, smelling good.

_The Abolition of Man_ by C. S. Lewis is a sustained screed against the skull and crossbones of subjectivism. It’s a prophetic word against the meaninglessness that follows when there is nothing external, transcendent for us to hold, measure, enjoy, or submit to. When we live outside the reality of values all that is left is *want*, and when wants are not met, we get *angry*.

A wise man fears the Lord. That includes revering His value and authority, yes. And fearing the Lord means receiving what He gives. It turns out that He is quite generous, a giver of good gifts, including wife (Proverbs 19:14), grandchildren (Proverbs 17:6), wealth (Proverbs 8:18), and more. He also gives the roll of the dice (Proverbs 16:33), the expected broken walls of laziness (Proverbs 24:30-34), and the relationship ruin of gossipy whispers (Proverbs 16:28). A wise man lives according to reality. He does not resist reality, and try to make up his own.

A goal of instruction is to give knowledge and understanding about how things work in the Lord’s world. Wisdom is skillful application of that knowledge, but it is also *skillful submission*.

This is why wisdom is also hating evil and pride and perverted speech (Proverbs 8:13), a strong negative affection because evil deserves to be hated. Wisdom laughs at the chronic know-it-alls who are sure the crash won’t come to them until it does (Proverbs 1:26). That’s how God made the world to work; depend on it. A wise man wants his heart to match the reality of values. Getting wisdom is the process of getting a better fit between our affections and the values, matching and ordering our loves to what is lovely. Love this not that, love this more than that.

An angry person is building sand castles on the wing of a plane at 30,000 feet going 700 mph and writing negative reviews of the pilot. An angry man thinks he knows better how things should work, and he forgets or denies or attacks reality as given by the Lord. He rages about how many cars on on the road. Get gets dyspepsia about when the food gets put on the table. The tone of voice in the kids’s “Yes, sir” makes him testy. At heart the angry man wants reality to bend to him. What a fool.


# Adult Fit Throwing

One thing I noticed while while gleaning the field of Proverbs for wisdom about anger is not just how many times anger is mentioned (12 by word count), but how many of those mentions are part of a phrase about “whoever is slow to anger.” Slow is not “quick to become angry” as in Ecclesiastes 7:9.

> Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding,
> but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.
> (Proverbs 14:29 ESV)

This is true in terms of providence, and it is especially true in interactions with persons. When they come to complain at you or criticize you, consider:

> Good sense makes one slow to anger,
> and it is his glory to overlook an offense.
> (Proverbs 19:11 ESV)

When criticized, fairly or not, when mocked, in fun or not, show *glory* by not getting angry. You hold onto reality. If the comments are false, why get mad? They won’t stick. If they are true, then why deny it? Either way it should take more than a comment to knock your joy train off the tracks. Whether face to face, or on Facebook, getting angry shows who the fool is even if you are technically right.

This makes you a non-starter; you are an empty box of matches.

> A hot-tempered man stirs up strife,
> but he who is slow to anger quiets contention.
> (Proverbs 15:18 ESV)

> A man of wrath stirs up strife,
> and one given to anger causes
> much transgression.
> (Proverbs 29:22 ESV)

Neighborhoods (Democratic cities) and institutions and households and generations are set on fire. Anger leads to other sins: *slander* to make someone else look bad rather than yourself, and *laziness* to avoid taking responsibility for your problems.

When we get angry, we are not only self-referential, we are self-reverential. When we communicate that anger, we want others to fear us. We take a throne that does not belong to us. We’re demanding the glory without actually exhibiting it. Fast to adult fit throwing makes us unworthy, and makes us vulnerable.


# Walls Like Jericho

I am indebted to [a sermon by Doug Wilson on the subject of self-control](https://dougwils.com/the-church/s8-expository/themes-proverbs-self-control.html), in which he targets anger rather than lust or gluttony or laziness. He compares the angry man to one who is pushed around by circumstances, his buttons are big and accessible and have a sensitive trigger. He is like a man whose walls are broken down.

> A man without self-control
> is like a city broken into
> and left without walls.
> (Proverbs 25:28 ESV)

Wilson says “you should want walls like Babylon had, where four chariots could drive abreast around the top of them. Now that’s a wall.” Where does that self-control come from? It comes from the stability and strength of living according to reality as given by God.

The angry man is defenseless, both because his anger doesn’t have basis in reality and because it leaves him open to further attack. He has walls like Jericho after the trumpets played.


# Angry Little Impotents

The way of the modern world deceives us in many ways. If we don’t use technology as a tool that helps us match reality, but employ tech to manipulate all our annoyances out of the way, we learn habits of impatience, habits of blame rather than responsibility. A farmer would be an obvious fool for getting angry at a seed for sprouting too slowly (though he may direct anger toward God's choice of weather). We become angry little impotents.

Which is the same thing as making us little devils. Satan wasn’t willing to submit in his God-given lane. He thought of himself too highly and lost it all. He is still a fool resisting the reality of values.

“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (Jams 1:19-20). Take a step back, take a breath. Your life is bigger than the situation. Your life is bigger than creation. You are an eternal creature among other eternal creatures. This makes something serious in the situation, but you’re focused in too far. *The most serious thing is for you to fear the Lord.* Imagine you could look in at what’s happening from 100 windows rather than your little personal peephole.

A wise person isn’t seeking that isn’t there, a wise person is seeing *better* what’s there. He is better at seeing within the God-given constraints. It’s not that he doesn’t see problems, he sees them in context. The world of the Lord is a cosmos, with coherence and order, versus the algorithms of anger on timelines that are almost always out of context.


# Thanks Against Anger

You cannot flex your bi-cep and triceps at the same time. Both of those muscle groups are useful, unlike what I’m about to compare. But anger and thanks do not engage together. You’d think some of us are reading 1 Thessalonians 5:18 as “be angry in all circumstances.” Or Ephesians 5:20, “being angry always and for everything.” Instead, give thanks to the Lord. This isn’t stoicism—suppressing feelings, or sophistry—making fallacious arguments to our feelings. It’s fearing the Lord as Lord.

What about *righteous* anger? I think it is an appropriate category, and also one that gets claimed more than it should. There is righteous anger that Jesus showed toward religious people who were looking to accuse Him for healing on the Sabbath (Mark 3:5). In wisdom, fearing the Lord and hating evil, and perhaps strong feelings of displeasure, even antagonism against the evil is appropriate (see also Ephesians 4:26).

Anger dwells in the bosom of fools. Your sex life will not be better with more anger. Your kids will not be more well-adjusted because they survived the gauntlet of your anger. Your neighbors won’t see your good anger and glorify God on the day of visitation. Anger is a destructive folly, and a defenseless one while resisting reality. It exposes you as the fool, opens you up to further criticism.

Angry men are defensive men not because there is something worth protecting but because of desperation to make it *appear* that there is something worth defending. Losing one's temper is the same thing as unveiling one’s ego. Emotional regulation is arrogance regulation.


# Conclusion

When we are slow to anger we are ready *for* the right kind of fight:

> Whoever is slow to anger is better than
> the mighty,
> and he who rules his spirit than he
> who takes a city.
> (Proverbs 16:32 ESV)

I am thankful to my friends who have disobeyed the wisdom in Proverbs 22:24–25 and helped me learn new ways.

Sadly, my kids cannot say that they've never seen me get angry. But the next best thing is that I've had to preach about it while they listen. *That's* some accountability.

Do you exalt more in any other verse in Romans than 8:1? Maybe 5:1 comes close. But even there, as good as it is, it doesn’t lift up from as low down as the last half of chapter 7. Wretched man! Nothing good in me dwells! There is a law of isn that keeps pulling me back to sin when I know it’s no good. Now, though, no condemnation!

This is what our justification means. The peace in it is what 5:1 brings to bear. We were sinners, no righteousness of our own, even self-righteousness dragging us down. But the Father accounts believers righteous with the righteousness of Christ, He receives Christ as a perfect and complete substitute for us.

We didn’t need deliverance from a guilty verdict in chapter 7 as much as we need deliverance from the strangle sin still has on us when we look at the law. Even as believers we are tempted to look at the law as our judge, but the law itself cannot release us from sin’s hold. Sin will take the good law and ruin us. You were just trying to do good, and let the law show the way, and the law got all judgy about how imperfect you are and unworthy you are and even gave you some ideas about how to break it.

Even as a Christian it feels condemning. Especially as a Christian, you care. Something happened and your eyes were opened to the evil of sin and how much sin is in you. The law makes the standard clear. But it is as hard as a rebar ruler, and you have been measured and found wanting.

Chapter 8 opens as an explanation, not just as a new subject. (In the original manuscript without such divisions we might assume that the reader didn’t even take a breath.) Without saying that anyone is wrong to be in 7:13-25, we can say that 7:13-25 is not the end. Thank God. It’s normal, but it’s not all there is. We do keep getting punched in the mouth by our own sin, but we are in the process, as those under grace, of making progress toward Christlikeness. It’s gospel, it’s supernatural, it’s all in Christ from the Father through the Holy Spirit. We can expect righteous fruit because of Trinitarian deliverance.

Important: there are no commands in chapter 8, not in the beginning middle or end. God’s saves sinners. God sanctifies the saved, and God loves us and won’t be done until He’s glorified all His people.

Would you rather have verse 1 or verse 39? The chapter division after verse 39 makes sense; a particular argument develops in chapters 9-11. But 7:25 has believers begging for more. Maybe you didn’t appreciate the week’s break between sermons. Well let’s wait no more. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Condemnation is the antonym of justification. It could also be understood as damnation, the way Tyndale translated it, a derivative from the Latin translation: damnationis. It’s the judicial doom pronounced on the guilty: sinner, be damned.

Even with the inconsistent wants and outcomes, wrong doing and not-righteous doing, even with the bright light of the law showing all the sin, even with all that there is PEACE between us and God because we are un-married to the law.

When we lived with the law, so to speak, it kept following us around and knit-picking at everything we did wrong. We were the dripping faucet, but the law kept commenting after every drop, counted every drop, and told us the cost of the whole collection. But we died to the law’s surveillance and were united to Christ. We are in Christ Jesus. He not only doesn’t condemn us, though He is perfect, He took on our condemnation. He both fulfilled the law and destroyed its damning power.

Those who are not in Christ are outside His protection. Whether they care or not, all the standards of the law will be upheld and they will face the Judge and judgment. Get to Christ!

But, believer, even now, in your embattled condition, wanting to do good and fighting sin, you stand before God uncondemned. The declaration for Christians colors the conflict. Sin is not more powerful than Christ, and the law is not your master. Your sin has been damned, you are not.

How do we know that there is no condemnation? Here’s the reason.

We see in Paul’s follow up that our no-condemnation status belongs with freedom from the CONTROL of sin, not just its consequences. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

The law of sin is what we’ve been confronting (7:21, 25). That principle is frustrating and messes with us, but it is no longer dominant.

The dominant rule for the Christian is not the Mosaic Law (or Ten Commandments); it is not letters but personal, not two-dimensional but supernatural: The law of the Spirit of life. The Holy Spirit is referred to twenty times in chapter 8 (only four times before now in the epistle). The Holy Spirit makes all the difference between flesh and faith, between works and fruit, between death and life. The “Spirit is life” (verses 6 and 10). The “Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). The Spirit unites us to Christ; note in Christ again in verse 2. The Spirit is the operating principle.

He sets us free, not to license but to an obedience that is fruit. The law legislates, the Spirit liberates.

Another For, another reason. How do we know that we’re free? Here’s how.

This is as good a place to rehearse the standard three uses of the law as recognized in Scripture: 1) a mirror to show sin in our hearts, 2) a restraint on sin in society, and 3) a guide to what is good for those in Christ. The third use only works for the regenerate, for the Spirit-filled.

The law doesn’t save, forgive, justify, or sanctify (almost the entire epistle to the Galatians is written to knock down this wrong-hold. “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh”? 3:3). The law has no more power than a map, it makes no one take a step, it offers no hand to those stuck in a ditch, it will push you into the slough of despond if you’re not careful. As Paul’s been saying, the law is fine in its place (if one uses it lawfully). But fallen man’s flesh weakens the law’s work.

God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. Don’t let caricatures fill your mind of a harsh Father, demanding sacrifices and making threats in the OT as often portrayed. God, and Father as distinguished in person from the Son, sends. The Father initiates the saving.

The Son came in the likeness of sinful flesh, a careful distinction. Jesus came in flesh, not “likeness of flesh,” but His was only “like sinful flesh.” Full and real flesh, empty of sin. The Son came to deal with sin, He condemned sin in the flesh. In His death He damned sin.

In Christ we are not damned, sin is damned in Christ, and there is a result in verse 4 that puts legs on our justification.

This is the effect of the sentence and the aim of sanctification. When we start in Christ then we see the good that He will work in us. in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

By the Spirit we are walking toward the life the law describes. The form of the sentence shows what’s happening to us; the subject is the requirement, it is fulfilled in us, not we accomplishing the fulfilling.

This cannot happen on our own, in our own power. The next paragraph leaves no doubt that the flesh is incapable, the flesh is hostile. We walk in the Spirit’s energy, step by ordinary step.

Here is the right order: 1) in Christ 2) according to the Spirit 3) toward what the law wants. But we as Christians are continually tempted to look to the law first. Look to Christ first.

For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:16–17 ESV)

This Not Damned status for those in Christ is promoted every week in our Lord’s Day liturgy; believers are united to Christ for blessing and fruit. It’s not a perpetual questioning of your non-condemned status, but urging you to live according to it. Such good news reforms generations.

"From this buoyant humility, this farewell to the self with all its good resolutions, anxiety, scruples, and motive-scratchings, all the Protestant doctrines originally sprang." C. S. Lewis on the 16th Century Reformation

Hate your damned sin. When you sin you are letting the damned sin loose, you are unleashing hell. “If you are led by the Spirit you are not under law” (Galatians 5:18) and you are ready to walk in righteousness.

There is no damnation for those in Christ Jesus.

I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, to keep the commandments without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Timothy 6:13-14), and to keep the commandments by walking in the Spirit because your sin has been damned in Christ.

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (Jude 24–25, ESV)

# Introduction

Do you exalt more in any other verse in Romans than 8:1? Maybe 5:1 comes close. But even there, as good as it is, it doesn’t lift up from as low down as the last half of chapter 7. Wretched man! Nothing good in me dwells! There is a law of isn that keeps pulling me back to sin when I know it’s no good. Now, though, *no condemnation!*

This is what our justification means. The peace in it is what 5:1 brings to bear. We were sinners, no righteousness of our own, even self-righteousness dragging us down. But the Father accounts believers righteous with the righteousness of Christ, He receives Christ as a perfect and complete substitute for us.

We didn’t need deliverance from a guilty verdict in chapter 7 as much as we need deliverance from the strangle sin still has on us when we look at the law. Even as believers we are tempted to look at the law as our judge, but the law itself cannot release us from sin’s hold. Sin will take the good law and ruin us. You were just trying to do good, and let the law show the way, and the law got all judgy about how imperfect you are and unworthy you are and even gave you some ideas about how to break it.

Even as a Christian it *feels* condemning. Especially as a Christian, you *care*. Something happened and your eyes were opened to the evil of sin and how much sin is in you. The law makes the standard clear. But it is as hard as a rebar ruler, and you have been measured and found wanting.

Chapter 8 opens as an explanation, not just as a new subject. (In the original manuscript without such divisions we might assume that the reader didn’t even take a breath.) Without saying that anyone is wrong to be in 7:13-25, we can say that 7:13-25 is not the end. Thank God. It’s normal, but it’s not all there is. We do keep getting punched in the mouth by our own sin, but we are in the process, as those under grace, of making progress toward Christlikeness. It’s gospel, it’s supernatural, it’s all in Christ from the Father through the Holy Spirit. We can expect righteous fruit because of Trinitarian deliverance.

Important: there are no commands in chapter 8, not in the beginning middle or end. God’s saves sinners. God sanctifies the saved, and God loves us and won’t be done until He’s glorified all His people.


# The Declaration against Damnation (verse 1)

Would you rather have verse 1 or verse 39? The chapter division after verse 39 makes sense; a particular argument develops in chapters 9-11. But 7:25 has believers begging for more. Maybe you didn’t appreciate the week’s break between sermons. Well let’s wait no more. **There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.**

**Condemnation** is the antonym of justification. It could also be understood as *damnation*, the way Tyndale translated it, a derivative from the Latin translation: *damnationis*. It’s the judicial doom pronounced on the guilty: sinner, be damned.

Even with the inconsistent wants and outcomes, wrong doing and not-righteous doing, even with the bright light of the law showing all the sin, even with all that there is PEACE between us and God because we are un-married to the law.

When we lived with the law, so to speak, it kept following us around and knit-picking at everything we did wrong. We were the dripping faucet, but the law kept commenting after every drop, counted every drop, and told us the cost of the whole collection. But we died to the law’s surveillance and were united to Christ. We are **in Christ Jesus**. He not only doesn’t condemn us, though He is perfect, He took on our condemnation. He both fulfilled the law and destroyed its damning power.

Those who are not in Christ are outside His protection. Whether they care or not, all the standards of the law will be upheld and they will face the Judge and judgment. Get to Christ!

But, believer, even now, in your embattled condition, wanting to do good and fighting sin, you stand before God uncondemned. The declaration for Christians colors the conflict. Sin is not more powerful than Christ, and the law is not your master. Your sin has been damned, you are not.


# The Explanation against Damnation (verse 2)

How do we know that there is no condemnation? Here’s the reason.

We see in Paul’s follow up that our no-condemnation status belongs with freedom from the CONTROL of sin, not just its consequences. **For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.**

The law of sin is what we’ve been confronting (7:21, 25). That principle is frustrating and messes with us, but it is no longer *dominant*.

The dominant rule for the Christian is *not* the Mosaic Law (or Ten Commandments); it is not letters but personal, not two-dimensional but supernatural: **The law of the Spirit of life**. The Holy Spirit is referred to twenty times in chapter 8 (only four times before now in the epistle). The Holy Spirit makes all the difference between flesh and faith, between works and fruit, between death and life. The “Spirit is life” (verses 6 and 10). The “Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). The Spirit unites us to Christ; note **in Christ** again in verse 2. The Spirit is the operating principle.

He sets us free, not to license but to an obedience that is fruit. The law legislates, the Spirit liberates.


# The Explanation for Freedom (verse 3)

Another **For**, another reason. How do we know that we’re free? Here’s how.

This is as good a place to rehearse the standard three uses of the law as recognized in Scripture: 1) a mirror to show sin in our hearts, 2) a restraint on sin in society, and 3) a guide to what is good for those in Christ. The third use only works for the regenerate, for the Spirit-filled.

The law doesn’t save, forgive, justify, or sanctify (almost the entire epistle to the Galatians is written to knock down this wrong-hold. “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh”? 3:3). The law has no more power than a map, it makes no one take a step, it offers no hand to those stuck in a ditch, it will push you into the slough of despond if you’re not careful. As Paul’s been saying, the law is fine in its place (if one uses it lawfully). But fallen man’s flesh *weakens* the law’s work.

**God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.** Don’t let caricatures fill your mind of a harsh Father, demanding sacrifices and making threats in the OT as often portrayed. God, and Father as distinguished in person from the Son, *sends*. The Father initiates the saving.

The Son came **in the likeness of sinful flesh**, a careful distinction. Jesus came in flesh, not “likeness of flesh,” but His was only “like *sinful* flesh.” Full and real flesh, empty of sin. The Son came to deal with sin, **He condemned sin in the flesh**. In His death He damned sin.


# The Result of Freedom (verse 4)

In Christ we are not damned, sin is damned in Christ, and there is a result in verse 4 that puts legs on our justification.

This is the effect of the sentence and the aim of sanctification. When we start in Christ then we see the good that He will work in us. **in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.**

By the Spirit we are walking toward the life the law describes. The form of the sentence shows what’s happening to us; the subject is **the requirement**, it is fulfilled in us, not we accomplishing the fulfilling.

This cannot happen on our own, in our own power. The next paragraph leaves no doubt that the flesh is incapable, the flesh is hostile. We **walk** in the Spirit’s energy, step by ordinary step.


# Conclusion

Here is the right order: 1) in Christ 2) according to the Spirit 3) toward what the law wants. But we as Christians are continually tempted to look to the law first. Look to Christ first.

> For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:16–17 ESV)

This *Not Damned* status for those in Christ is promoted every week in our Lord’s Day liturgy; believers are united to Christ for blessing and fruit. It’s not a perpetual questioning of your non-condemned status, but urging you to live according to it. Such good news reforms generations.

> "From this buoyant humility, this farewell to the self with all its good resolutions, anxiety, scruples, and motive-scratchings, all the Protestant doctrines originally sprang." C. S. Lewis on the 16th Century Reformation

Hate your damned sin. When you sin you are letting the damned sin loose, you are unleashing hell. “If you are led by the Spirit you are not under law” (Galatians 5:18) *and* you are ready to walk in righteousness.

There is no damnation for those in Christ Jesus.

----------

## Charge

I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, to keep the commandments without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Timothy 6:13-14), and to keep the commandments by walking in the Spirit *because* your sin has been damned in Christ.

## Benediction:

> Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (Jude 24–25, ESV)

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

I'm gonna pray and then I'll get started. Father, I thank you for tonight. Be with me as I speak. You call us to fear you, and you know where each of us are at, and I pray that you would strengthen what remains in our congregation. Help us to understand this by your spirit, help us to apply it. But I do pray that this message would be profitable to me and our people, And I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So tonight we continue our sermon series in Proverbs. The title of my message is Reverend Disciples, The Call to Fear the Lord.

The theme I wanna draw upon from Proverbs is the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord occurs 14 times in Proverbs. Proverbs gives us a lot of wisdom regarding the fear of the Lord. It is something that we must be growing in. The idea of being godly and growing is that you're a disciple that is increasing in the fear of the Lord. I want to share a quote from a book called A Holy Vision for the Family Life. I really appreciated the definition that the author gave regarding the fear of the Lord. William Gao, the author, says, The fear of God is in all filled respect of the divine majesty. Sometimes it arises from faith in the mercy and goodness of God.

Then the heart of man has once felt a sweet taste of God's goodness and found that all happiness consists only in his favor. It is struck with such an inward awe and reverence that it would not displease his majesty for anything. Rather, it would do whatever it knows to be pleasing and acceptable to him." There are two effects that arise from this kind of fear of God, William says. First is a careful endeavor to please God, and the second is a careful avoiding of such things that offend the majesty of God and grieve his spirit. In one of the commentaries that I have, they quote this guy named C. Bridges, who wrote an exposition of Proverbs, says, the fear of the Lord is that affectionate reverence by which the child of God bends himself humbly and carefully to his father's law.

While I do not know where I heard this from, I have come to know the fear of the Lord as having a heart that loves what the Lord loves and hate what the Lord hates. When someone loves what the Lord hates, they have departed from fearing the Lord, which means that they have disobeyed the great commandment to love the Lord their God with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their mind. And when you get this wrong, whatever follows will be wrong. Beloved, do you understand what it means to fear the Lord? Last Men to Men we talked about how the fear of the Lord is connected to wisdom and fruit. This is important to understand.

God promises that we will reap what we sow. This is a promise we must remember. You will become wise and fruitful when you walk in the fear of the Lord. You must learn how to live under God and before man, and to do this we have to get wisdom. And this is impossible without first fearing the Lord. Our first proverb to consider is Proverbs 1.7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. To have knowledge that is profitable to your soul, first you must first belong to Jesus Christ. Unless he saves you from yourself, you will not have this knowledge. And just like the fool says, there is no God, the fool also despises wisdom and instruction.

The only fear a fool should have is standing before God facing his righteous and holy judgment and being cast into hell for all eternity because he refused to repent of his sins and honor God and give him thanks. The thing that I found interesting was in verses 8 and 9. Solomon says that fools despise wisdom and instruction in verse 7 and then in verse encourages the youth to hear their father's instruction and forsake not their mother's teaching. There is a connection between fearing the Lord in verse 7 that leads to hearing and not forsaking the instruction and teaching of parents. If our youth are going to grow up in wisdom they need to fear the Lord and respect their parents. This certainly puts a heavy weight on the parents of our youth. There is an instruction and teaching of parents are responsible for when raising their children up in the fear and instruction of the Lord. A parent that despises wisdom and instruction will be teaching that worldview to their children. Parents play a big part in the spiritual lives of their children.

While God saves sinners, He uses means, i.e. here He saved parents giving instruction and teaching to bring about the salvation of those He has predestined. As Mr. Sarr says, you are always teaching. And it's important that our kids are seeing us fear the Lord all that we do. Another verse to consider regarding fearing the Lord is Proverbs 9 10. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. Similar to Proverbs 1 7. If a man is to be wise and knowledgeable the heart must be marked with the fear of God. The fear, this fear is something that grows more and more as the Christian walks in obedience to the Lord and all that he has commanded. One way this works is when you seek the Lord and his blessing as you read his word and then seek his blessing to be able to walk in light of his commandments. I heard a preacher say that if you want to be a good Christian you need to read good books and I agree.

Often I find myself whether I'm reading the Bible or a book I am praying for the Lord to help me because like I'm not wanting to be wise in my own eyes I'm wanting him to teach me what I need to know to fear him There is much wisdom and knowledge that you can get from reading if you have a heart that fears the Lord and want to please Him and all you say and do if you consider the wise in verses 8 8 be and 9 which says give instruction to a wise man and He will still be still wiser teach a righteous man and he will increase in learning This goes into verse 10. This tells us that when God saves someone, they become humble.

I have heard it as someone being fat, faithful, available, teachable. If we are running in that direction, it will bring about wisdom, growth, and fruit to the glory of God. There is no place for pride in someone who is fearing the Lord. God will give grace to the humble and in that they become wise and fruitful.

We can't escape the truth that we will be known by our fruits. Those who fear the Lord will have good fruits and it is something you can't hide. It is impossible to have a heart that fears the Lord and a life that produces bad fruits. If you know Jesus Christ your life should not look the same as before you didn't know Him. John tells us in 1 John 2, 3, and 6, and by this we know that we have come to know Him if we keep His commandments. Whoever says I know him but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him but whoever keeps his word in him truly the love of God is perfected by this we may know that we are in him whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked there is wisdom and fruit that the fear of the Lord produces in his disciples you can't escape it your heart is like a teabag and those around you will taste and see what fruit is in your heart and And it is not possible to fear the Lord in your heart and walk in a manner that is not pleasing to him.

If you are fearing the Lord, you will walk in a manner that is pleasing to him. And if you're not, then he will discipline you. But the fear of the Lord is what guides us and instructs us in that way. Those who fear the Lord will profess to know God and will walk in good works. But those who do not fear the Lord may profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. Like Jesus said, we will be known by our fruits. Another proverb that has helped shape my worldview in faring the Lord is Proverbs 3, 5-7. Early in my Christian walk I memorized verses 5 and 6. Many Christians know this verse, and Bruce Walt says in his commentary that to trust him is a platitude divorce from the book.

Many can go their way and tag this verse somewhere in their conversation to justify their choices and actions. What allowed me to think differently regarding to trust him was verse 7. I don't remember when the Lord opened my eyes to connect the verses, but it was an aha moment for sure. If you have a Bible or an app, you can turn to Proverbs 3, 5-7. It says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. To fear the Lord complements trust in the Lord.

Without verse seven, it would be easy to misunderstand verses five and six and apply them wrongfully. The idea of being not wise in your own eyes should challenge a disciple to consider their own opinions and heart's desire when put up against God's law and his will for your life. To fear the Lord here would mean to turn away from evil. the fear of the Lord and turning away from evil present the sum of godliness and goodness, as one commentary said. Beloved, what does repentance look like in your discipleship? If you are fearing the Lord, we should be growing and turning away from all that is evil. Fearing the Lord includes repenting from sin, and without act of repentance, you are probably guilty of not fearing the Lord in all your ways.

One way that I have repented and turned away from evil was by seeing my bitterness as a sin and dealing with that. It's a funny story, but my wife struggled with a relationship years ago and I thought she was bitter. She probably was. So I bought her the book How to be Freed from Bitterness and she never read it. And still probably I don't think she's read it to this day, but I actually did and one time I came across it and decided I would pick it up and read it. And And it was brutal. Like that book exposed my bitterness towards a brother and I had to repent and deal with that.

What I learned was that for me bitterness was when when my brother did something that was good that the Lord would have been pleased with. I would have looked at that as something that was bad and that that showed me that I had bitterness. And so as I repented and dealt with that the Lord allowed me to grow out of that and we actually have a very good relationship today. So praise the Lord. But what is crazy is I would have never thought that I had struggled with bitterness. But God used that book to expose it and show me how and when bitterness is taking root in my heart. Maybe not everyone is fighting the same sin, but there are sins that we are each blind to.

And we need to remember not to be wise in our own eyes and to fear the Lord when we see sin in our own hearts. If you are not turning away from evil, you find you are not fearing the Lord.

Proverbs was a blessing to teach me that fearing the Lord included turning away from evil. A book that was helpful in gaining a better understanding of turning away from evil for me was Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges. In the book he says, sin is sin even though sins that I call the acceptable sins of the saints, those sins that we tolerate in our lives are serious in God's eyes. Our religious pride, our critical attitudes, our unkind speech about others, our impatience and anger even our anxiety, all these are serious in the sight of God." End of quote. It is easy to think that this sin over here is not as bad as that sin over there, but as Jerry says, sin is sin and God had his son crucified for our sins. When we tolerate even the smallest sins, we are playing with nails in our pockets. I had heard a sermon long ago that referenced a Christian pursuing sin as like playing with nails in your pocket. Why would you think about playing around with sin, nails and purposely crucifying the Lord for a sin that he has paid for and with

his death on the cross. We must remember that Jesus died for our sins and we need to stop playing with sin and become better repentors and that happens when we fear the Lord. Consider Proverbs 8 13 which says, the fear of the Lord is hatred of evil, pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate. Here we see that the favor of the Lord teaches us to hate evil. There is a difference between turning away from sin and hating sin. Often men can turn from sin but still have some desire for it. Wisdom guides men in being prudent with their affairs and business and public matters. This wisdom leads to knowledge and discretion and is good for both man's head and heart. The evil we as God's flock are to hate is pride and arrogance in the evil way and perverted speech as said in Proverbs 8 13 not only does God hate them but they lead us toward the destruction of our souls those who are proud and arrogant are only interested in their own glory rather than the Lord's glory I can't help but

think of Colossians 3 16 which says let the word of Christ well in you richly teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom and letting the word of Christ-willing you richly leaves no room for you to be proud and arrogant. It certainly would keep you from other sins. James also tells us in James 3 17 through 18, but the wisdom from above is first pure then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. This is the complete opposite of pride and arrogant people. It is why we must hate sin and not only in other people but more in ourselves. The way of evil is the path to ruin and all you could gain in this world you would still forfeit your soul. Jesus said that in Matthew 16 26 for what will profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul or what shall a man give in return for his soul for the Son of Man is going to come with these angels in the glory of his father and

then he will repay each person according to what he has done. Those who are ruled by pride and arrogance might be able to grab much in this life but they will fail to find the Lord in their ruin. This brings me to Proverbs 23, 17, and 18 which says, let not your heart envy sinners but continue in the fear of the Lord all the day. Surely there's a future and your hope will not be cut off. The temptation to end these sinners is real, but like death sin is all-consuming and will take you down to hell. Whether sin or success, as Matthew Henry says, their prosperity is their portion. Nay, it is their poison. Like even though people out there who don't know the Lord may look like they are prospering, in the end they don't. They don't have a blessed life and they certainly are are giving up something that's much more worthy when they pursue earthly praise rather than the Lord's praise.

Consider Proverbs 2, 20-22 which says, "...so you will walk in the way of good and keep to the past of the righteous, for the upright will inhabit the land and those with integrity will remain in it, but the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be rooted out of it." consider Psalm 1 which says, Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous for the Lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked will perish. This proverb here is for our caution and encouragement. Jesus said those who endure to the end will be saved. The fear of the Lord is our refuge. There is a future for God's people who trust him by faith. Those who trust him have a solid hope that cannot be broken. There There is a sure future and hope for the one who conquers. Another proverb that is for our caution and encouragement is Proverb 2814, which says, blessed is the one who fears the Lord always, but whoever hardens his heart will fall into calamity.

Here is the path to a blessed life, one who fears the Lord always.

The heart is an idol factory and will keep you from fearing Lord and walking in his commandments. The Reverend disciple must keep his heart with all diligence. Proverbs 4, 23 to 27 says, keep your heart with all diligence for from it flow the springs of life put away from you crooked speech and put devious talk far from you let your eyes look directly forward and your gaze be straight before you ponder the path of your feet then all your ways will be sure do not swerve to the right or to the left turn your foot away from evil. There has got to be a purpose and intention with your own discipleship. You have got to lead your heart in holiness. You have to tend your heart in such a way that you pull weeds when needed. There are no days off when it comes to fearing the Lord. When you fail to keep your heart with all villages, you will start to compromise here and there. Failure to practice and keep after holiness will lead you to hardening your heart, the scripture encourages us that those who endure and conquer will be saved. Consider

2 Peter 1 3 through 11 which says, his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who has called us to his own glory and excellence by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that isn't a world because of sinful desire. For this reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so near-sighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore brothers, be all the

more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That is what it looks like to fear the Lord, to keep, you know, to keep making progress, to keep moving forward for God's glory. I want to finish off this point with a quote from Matthew Henry in his commentary on Proverbs 2317.

He says, we must be in the fear of the Lord as our employment, exercising ourselves in holy adornings of God in subjection to his precepts, submission to his providences and a constant care to please him. We must be in it as our element, taking pleasure in contemplating God's glory and complying with his will. We must be devoted to fear, he quotes Psalm 119.38, and governed by it as our commanding principle in all we say and do. All the days of our life we must constantly keep up with the awe of God upon our spirits. Must be must pay a difference to his authority and have a dread of his wrath. We must be always so in his fear as never to be out of it." End of quote. The last proverb that I want to talk about tonight is Proverbs 14 26 through 27 which says, in the fear of the Lord one has strong confidence and his children will have a refuge. The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life that one may turn away from the snares of death. In the Lord we have a strong confidence. Consider Proverbs 21,

2031, which says, the horse is made ready for the day of battle but the victory belongs to the Lord. It does not matter how strong the opposing army is. Our God can save without armies. Consider David and Goliath. David was in the fear of the Lord and had a strong confidence and was not afraid of the Philistines and their champion Goliath. David trusted that God would be his help and acted on that in faith. He was not wise in his own eyes and submitted to his God who was sovereign overall and is able to determine the outcomes and who shows favor to his people. This is the kind of confidence we have, we can have. God is for us and not against us. Parents have the opportunity to teach their children that there is safety and security in the fear of the Lord.

When a father has a strong confidence in the Lord and instructs his children, they can find refuge in the Lord. The Proverbs are a call for the disciple to enter into the rest that is found in the fear of the Lord. Proverbs 1, 4 says, I to give prudence to the simple knowledge and discretion to the youth. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, And for the Father and His children that keep in fear of the Lord, they will find the abundant life. Think about John 10.10. And it will be saved from death. Because our Lord Jesus was raised from the dead and defeated death, we who are in the Lord will have the same victory over death.

For your encouragement, I wanna share 1 Corinthians 15, 54 through 58. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written. Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. So where do we go from here? I would think that you need to take an inventory of your own heart.

Where are you with the Lord? If you have not trusted the Lord Jesus, why not? What is keeping you from trusting and obeying Him by faith? Because for you, death is your victory, and you will fill the sting in hell for all eternity. For those of us who belong to the Lord and would claim Jesus Christ as Lord of our life and have submitted to His authority, what effort are you making to supplement your faith? make 1 Peter 1, 5-8.

Like the slight edge there, nothing in life is a flat line. The trajectory of your life is either heading closer to the image of Jesus Christ or further away. God has promised that he will conform his children into the image of his son. Romans 8, 29 says, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. How is this working out in your life? A few questions to stir your heart and what it means for you to walk in the fear of the Lord. While I was much older than the Lord when he saved me, these are questions that I wish I would have pondered in my youth.

And regardless if you are a youth or an adult, these questions are worthwhile to ponder and consider. What will your name stand for in the end of your life? If you can think about Proverbs 22.1, you know, you are showing people something about your name. And what will it mean to come from or be a part of your household? You know Proverbs 31, you know you especially if you have children you're wanting them to Know what it means to be a part of your household so that way hopefully they can make something better when they have their own household How can you move towards this in some incremental increment of time? You know, where do you want to be? You know one two three five years?

We're in your discipleship, are you lacking the fear of the Lord? That would be an area where you need to get after and you need to seek the Lord to help you fear him In all the areas, you know, we can lean on those that we are we feel confident in but Ultimately, the Lord wants us to fear him in all crevices of our lives What areas in your character need to be strengthened by God's grace? what respectable sins are you tolerate tolerating in your character home marriage children friendships etc you will get more of what you create and allow and if you are fearing the Lord like those respectable sins those things will be put to death what running partners do you have brothers need a brotherhood a band of brothers who are willing to sharpen your iron and who need you to sharpen your iron, Proverbs 27, 17. We are not meant to run the race alone.

Is this something that we can just keep in our heart? And so those are some questions that I thought would be good to share with you. And that is it. I pray that I'm going to pray and then we'll be done. Father, thank you for tonight. Thank you for your son. Thank you for giving us hearts that fear you. And I do pray that you would strengthen what remains in us. Help us to be the disciples that you have called us to be. May your name be hallowed among our lives, whether that's in our church, whether that's in our community, our homes, our workplaces, may it be apparent that we love you and we hate the things that you hate. So I pray that you would bless us, help us to work through the things that were said tonight and may that strengthen us in our faith. And thank you for the future and hope that we do have in you because of all the work that your son has done for sinners. And we trust you and thank you for your grace. In Jesus Christ's name we pray, amen.

Is this something that we can just keep in our heart? And so those are some questions that I thought would be good to share with you. And that is it. I pray that I'm going to pray and then we'll be done. Father, thank you for tonight. Thank you for your son. Thank you for giving us hearts that fear you. And I do pray that you would strengthen what remains in us. Help us to be the disciples that you have called us to be. May your name be hallowed among our lives, whether that's in our church, whether that's in our community, our homes, our workplaces, may it be apparent that we love you and we hate the things that you hate. So I pray that you would bless us, help us to work through the things that were said tonight and may that strengthen us in our faith. And thank you for the future and hope that we do have in you because of all the work that your son has done for sinners.

I am not a professional psychologist, but I am an amateur, in that I love the souls, the psyche, of people. As a pastor/shepherd, discipler, and as a practicing disciple of Christ myself who walks the road of sanctification every day, I can also say that identity of soul is vital and internal conflict about identity is destructive and paralyzing.

For example, the misery of young men and women being catechized and cajoled by worldly counsel into gender denial and attempted transition is a hellish reality. The confusion of and combat against embodied fact ruins lives. Some of the physical damage is irreversible, and as great as grace is to deliver from guilt, we can expect severe struggles on the road to restoring the image of God for those who convert to Christ.

As another example, I've been a part of a couple conversations about PTSD recently, and if I had known I forgot, that the stress of trauma after the fact is regularly not about what a soldier saw but what a solder himself did. The worst conflict isn't over atrocities witnessed but atrocities committed by oneself. Who we thought we were doesn't hold up to the evidence of our behavior, and that leaves a lot of unwanted, uncomfortable memories. Soldiers without a Savior, without gospel, may have a lifetime conflict in their minds that threatens their survival long after they’ve left the field of military conflict.

These identity conflicts provide at least a partial analogy to the Christian's experience with the passions of the flesh that wage war against the soul (1 Peter 2:11). It is war, and Romans equips us.

A reporter once asked Mike Tyson about his plan for an upcoming fight with Evander Holyfield: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Romans chapter 6 equips us to throw punches in the fight, and chapter 7 equips us so that we'll be ready when we get punched in the mouth.

In chapter 7 Paul refers to it in terms of law, and all faith and hope and mind-renewal must be brought to bear. This is no playground. The saints will persevere by God's grace, and they need to know the right path lest they be surprised when harassed. Christian, your saved soul needs to know this.

We considered last time that the frustration is so intense in verses 13-25 and the expressions so explicit that a surface reading may make one think Paul represents an unbeliever. But then we put the passage in context and demonstrated that only a believer actually has the sort of care and want for good. He sees an internal division, a spiritual conflict, but the conflict is a sign of life.

Paul is clarifying how the law of God, primarily the Mosaic Law, and even the 10th Commandment against coveting, is holy and good. Yet the law also aggravates and awakens sinful desires and even is found "producing death in me" (verse 13). Paul does not back off the goodness of the law, nor back off wanting the law's standards, nor back off how the law itself runs roughshod over the souls of believers who, though well-motivated, get their relationship with the law out of order. That's because their is another controlling principle in yet-to-be-glorified believers, namely, the law of sin, that resists. Sin is the enemy, and we need to hold on to our identify as those united to Christ and not as declared by the law.

Paul rejects any idea that the good law has fault in bad death. Did that which is good, that is the law, bring death to me? By no means! We may ask, why go about using the law at all, Lord? Because it trains us to see sin for what it is. The Lord wants us to grow wiser by learning our own depravity.

Here’s the purpose: in order that sin might be show to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. The law is a 5 million lumens make-up lamp to show and magnify every defect. Whether it shows more clearly a pre-existing rebellion or proves that sin is so ruthless in its demands that it will pervert the good for its own benefit, those who are Christians are trained to see more of why Christ's crucifixion was so crucial.

The next two sections come at the same problem from two angles, both portray a conflict between intention and outcome, wants and actions. The first shows him doing what he doesn't want, the second not doing what he does want.

The law is spiritual but he is of flesh, and that can't be a simplistic dualism between material and immaterial. Spiritual refers to a purity and integrity. Jesus was spiritual in flesh, but not "of the flesh." For believers, even though we have died to sin and are no longer slaves to it, we are being trained to see its deceiving and destructive work while still connected to it. We are saved, but we are not done being saved. More than just a man's body, there is a problem in fallen human nature.

Verse 15 explains the sold under sin in context. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Paul has been given a taste of true freedom but finds himself back at the table of fake freedom. When he looks at the law this is what he sees. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. The intention has some benefit: to show that what he did was wrong and that sin is a masterful manipulator.

So now it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells in me. He is not claiming multiple personalities. He is not making excuses. It's the opposite. He's recognizing that this is worse than he thought. He's saying that there is an enemy within. He's saying that peace with God (per Romans 5:1) means war with sin. There is still sin to be exposed, and the law, useful to expose it, so necessary and good, must be held as a mirror. But it must not be looked to as the judge. Going to the law as judge never results in good. The law can be a means toward righteousness, but it is a brutal master.

Verse 18 gives two further pieces of explanation. Sin is connected to the flesh and so nothing good dwells there. This affects the actions. Paul has desire but not the ability to carry it out. Verses 19-20 repeat the point, but we've moved from inconsistence with wants to impotence of wants. He does what he didn't want to--sinning by transgressing the standard, and he doesn't do what he wants--falling short of the standard. The problem is sin, and sin can be singled out as an unwelcome but persistent resident.

Sin causes sin. The law does not cause sin to exist, but yet the law does not cause sin not to exist. All the frustrations Paul describes happen under the shadow of the law. He wouldn't know what good to want without the law, whether he does it or not. In fact, the law is good for showing what is good. But we are not neutral observers. We are not a blank slate waiting to find a good template. In Adam we aren't fixed by just knowing.

The conflict is so persistent that Paul calls the conflict a law. That means that in the next couple verses there are two laws. The law of sin (in members) and the law of God (in mind). Both are controlling principles, but the law of sin is known by more than words.

There is a nagging and controlling pest, a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. In a more humorous anecdote, there is a law that when we're told not to imagine a pink elephant, to process the prohibition in order to obey it is to fail to follow it.

If he did not have an interest in the better it would be different, not righteous, but maybe not quite as disruptive. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Four descriptions cover two laws. God's law is the one in his mind, the sinful use of law is the one in his members.

There are two laws but three participants: law, us, and sin. We will never know what it would have been like without sin, mostly because law is for sinners, but also because law makes sinners worse. When we are glorified, the law will be written on our hearts so perfectly that we will not need external standards and we will be delivered from the part that sin attaches to. But for now sin is the third wheel that makes our time with the law awkward.

Sin in him was not an excuse. Sin in him was worse. The more delight in God's law the more despicable was his sight of living with it. He could see what it could be, he could see and desire the fruit of righteousness. The solution wasn't the law.

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

He needed, we need, to go forward as disciples, and in reading the epistle. Verse 25 is good, so is chapter 8. We look to no condemnation in Christ.

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

The final summary after the expression of faith leaves us, along with Paul, in a state of conflict, with sin and with identity.

Romans 7 is normal Christian conflict, and this chapter equips us so that we will not be surprised. It is not instructions on what we should seek as a spiritual state of authentic misery. This was Paul as maturity, but it is not what made him mature.

Should you seek to stimulate anxious groanings?

This passage is indeed remarkably fitted for the purpose of beating down all the glory of the flesh…. Paul, by his own example, stimulates them to anxious groanings, and bids them, as long as they sojourn on earth, to desire death, as the only true remedy to their evils; and this is the right object in desiring death. (John Calvin)

I think you should seek to win the fight, not seek to get hit in the face, but recognized that its your own sin punching back. It’s not a feeling to celebrate, though it is a feeling that shows we’re in the right conflict. We are not in a wretchedness competition.

Maturity is recognizing the law of sin, staring it in the face, and telling it, I am dead to you in Christ. It is looking at the law and saying, If you are here to hurt me, I am dead to you. I am with Christ now. (see Romans 7:4)

So we live from faith to faith, not under law but under grace.

Christian, you are a Christian. You are reconciled to God in Christ, You are, by God’s grace, being made more and more like Christ. You are grafted into Him as a vine, baptized into His death and raised to walk in newness of life. Christ in you is the hope of glory. Walk in Him.

[M]ay your hearts be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

# Introduction

I am not a professional psychologist, but I am an amateur, in that I love the *souls*, the *psyche*, of people. As a pastor/shepherd, discipler, and as a practicing disciple of Christ myself who walks the road of sanctification every day, I can also say that identity of soul is vital and internal conflict about identity is destructive and paralyzing.

For example, the misery of young men and women being catechized and cajoled by worldly counsel into gender denial and attempted transition is a hellish reality. The confusion of and combat against embodied fact ruins lives. Some of the physical damage is irreversible, and as great as grace is to deliver from guilt, we can expect severe struggles on the road to restoring the image of God for those who convert to Christ.

As another example, I've been a part of a couple conversations about PTSD recently, and if I had known I forgot, that the stress of trauma after the fact is regularly not about what a soldier *saw* but what a solder himself did. The worst conflict isn't over atrocities witnessed but atrocities committed by oneself. Who we thought we were doesn't hold up to the evidence of our behavior, and that leaves a lot of unwanted, uncomfortable memories. Soldiers without a Savior, without gospel, may have a lifetime conflict in their minds that threatens their survival long after they’ve left the field of military conflict.

These identity conflicts provide at least a partial analogy to the Christian's experience with the passions of the flesh that wage war against the soul (1 Peter 2:11). It is war, and Romans equips us.

A reporter once asked Mike Tyson about his plan for an upcoming fight with Evander Holyfield: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Romans chapter 6 equips us to throw punches in the fight, and chapter 7 equips us so that we'll be ready when we get punched in the mouth.

In chapter 7 Paul refers to it in terms of law, and all faith and hope and mind-renewal must be brought to bear. This is no playground. The saints will persevere by God's grace, and they need to know the right path lest they be surprised when harassed. Christian, your saved soul needs to know this.

We considered last time that the frustration is so intense in verses 13-25 and the expressions so explicit that a surface reading may make one think Paul represents an unbeliever. But then we put the passage in context and demonstrated that only a believer actually has the sort of care and want for good. He sees an internal division, a spiritual conflict, but the conflict is a sign of life.

Paul is clarifying how the law of God, primarily the Mosaic Law, and even the 10th Commandment against coveting, is holy and *good*. Yet the law also aggravates and awakens sinful desires and even is found "producing death in me" (verse 13). Paul does not back off the goodness of the law, nor back off wanting the law's standards, nor back off how the law itself runs roughshod over the souls of believers who, though well-motivated, get their relationship with the law out of order. That's because their is another controlling principle in yet-to-be-glorified believers, namely, the law of sin, that resists. Sin is the enemy, and we need to hold on to our identify as those united to Christ and not as declared by the law.


# The Law Exposes Sin (verse 13)

Paul rejects any idea that the good law has fault in bad death. **Did that which is good**, that is the law, **bring death to me? By no means!** We may ask, why go about using the law at all, Lord? Because it trains us to see sin for what it is. The Lord wants us to grow wiser by learning our own depravity.

Here’s the purpose: **in order that sin might be show to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure**. The law is a 5 million lumens make-up lamp to show and magnify every defect. Whether it shows more clearly a pre-existing rebellion or proves that sin is so ruthless in its demands that it will pervert the good for its own benefit, those who are Christians are trained to see more of why Christ's crucifixion was so crucial.


# The Law Provokes Conflict (verses 14-20)

The next two sections come at the same problem from two angles, both portray a conflict between intention and outcome, wants and actions. The first shows him doing what he doesn't want, the second not doing what he does want.

The law is **spiritual** but he is of **flesh**, and that can't be a simplistic dualism between material and immaterial. Spiritual refers to a purity and integrity. Jesus was spiritual in flesh, but not "of the flesh." For believers, even though we have died to sin and are no longer slaves to it, we are being trained to see its deceiving and destructive work while still connected to it. We are saved, but we are not done being saved. More than just a man's body, there is a problem in fallen human nature.

Verse 15 explains the **sold under sin** in context. **For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.** Paul has been given a taste of true freedom but finds himself back at the table of fake freedom. When he looks at the law this is what he sees. **Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good.** The intention has some benefit: to show that what he did was *wrong* and that sin is a masterful manipulator.

**So now it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells in me.** He is not claiming multiple personalities. He is not making excuses. It's the opposite. He's recognizing that this is worse than he thought. He's saying that there is an enemy within. He's saying that peace with God (per Romans 5:1) means war with sin. There is still sin to be exposed, and the law, useful to expose it, so necessary and good, must be held as a mirror. But it must *not* be looked to as the judge. Going to the law as judge never results in good. The law can be a means toward righteousness, but it is a brutal master.

Verse 18 gives two further pieces of explanation. Sin is connected to the flesh and so **nothing good dwells** there. This affects the actions. Paul has desire but **not the ability to carry it out**. Verses 19-20 repeat the point, but we've moved from inconsistence with wants to impotence of wants. He does what he didn't want to--sinning by transgressing the standard, and he doesn't do what he wants--falling short of the standard. The problem is sin, and sin can be singled out as an unwelcome but persistent resident.

Sin causes sin. The law does not cause sin to exist, but yet the law does not cause sin *not* to exist. All the frustrations Paul describes happen under the shadow of the law. He wouldn't know what good to want without the law, whether he does it or not. In fact, the law is good for showing what is good. But we are not neutral observers. We are not a blank slate waiting to find a good template. In Adam we aren't fixed by just knowing.


# The Law (of God) Wars Against the Law (of Sin) (verses 21-23)

The conflict is so persistent that Paul calls the conflict a law. That means that in the next couple verses there are *two* laws. The law of sin (in members) and the law of God (in mind). Both are controlling principles, but the law of sin is known by more than words.

There is a nagging and controlling pest, a **law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand**. In a more humorous anecdote, there is a law that when we're told not to imagine a pink elephant, to process the prohibition in order to obey it is to fail to follow it.

If he did not have an interest in the better it would be different, not righteous, but maybe not quite as disruptive. **For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.**

Four descriptions cover two laws. God's law is the one in his mind, the sinful use of law is the one in his members.

There are two laws but three participants: law, us, and sin. We will never know what it would have been like without sin, mostly because law is for sinners, but also because law makes sinners worse. When we are glorified, the law will be written on our hearts so perfectly that we will not need external standards and we will be delivered from the part that sin attaches to. But for now sin is the third wheel that makes our time with the law awkward.


# The Law Makes Desperate for Rescue (verses 24-25)

Sin in him was not an excuse. Sin in him was worse. The more delight in God's law the more despicable was his sight of living with it. He could see what it could be, he could see and desire the fruit of righteousness. The solution wasn't the law.

**Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?**

He needed, we need, to go forward as disciples, and in reading the epistle. Verse 25 is good, so is chapter 8. We look to no condemnation in Christ.

**Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!**

The final summary after the expression of faith leaves us, along with Paul, in a state of conflict, with sin and with identity.


# Conclusion

Romans 7 is *normal* Christian conflict, and this chapter equips us so that we will not be surprised. It is not instructions on what we should seek as a spiritual state of authentic misery. This was Paul as maturity, but it is not what made him mature.

Should you seek to stimulate anxious groanings?

> This passage is indeed remarkably fitted for the purpose of beating down all the glory of the flesh…. Paul, by his own example, stimulates them to anxious groanings, and bids them, as long as they sojourn on earth, to desire death, as the only true remedy to their evils; and this is the right object in desiring death. (John Calvin)

I think you should seek to win the fight, not seek to get hit in the face, but recognized that its your own sin punching back. It’s not a feeling to celebrate, though it is a feeling that shows we’re in the right conflict. We are not in a wretchedness competition.

Maturity is recognizing the law of sin, staring it in the face, and telling it, *I am dead to you in Christ.* It is looking at the law and saying, *If you are here to hurt me, I am dead to you. I am with Christ now.* (see Romans 7:4)

So we live from faith to faith, not under law but under grace.

---

## Charge

Christian, you are a Christian. You are reconciled to God in Christ, You are, by God’s grace, being made more and more like Christ. You are grafted into Him as a vine, baptized into His death and raised to walk in newness of life. Christ in you is the hope of glory. Walk in Him.

## Benediction:

> [M]ay your hearts be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
> Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:2–3, 6–7, ESV)

If the previous paragraph belongs among those vital to anthropology—that is, what makes men and their cultures tick, the second half of Romans 7 belongs among the do-not-ignore passages for Christian anthropology and discipleship. There is a change in tenses, from past to present, as Paul continues to use his own experience as representative of the kind of internal battle to be expected for believing, but not yet glorified, men.

In Romans 7:7-12 Paul describes, without using these words, his pre-conversion conviction of sin. He grew up a Jew, so the Law was as unavoidable as his mother's cooking. But at a certain point the law "came home," it got in, and started to expose his ugly little coveting heart. Rather than fix his heart, the law aggravated him. The law works in God's plan to teach us our need for grace and point us to forgiveness and freedom in Christ. Without God's Spirit changing our hearts, the law inevitably aggravates the heart into rebellion against the rules.

Paul carefully eliminates the law itself as the source of sin. The law isn't sin, the law is holy. But because of sin, the law kills: sin came alive, it took the commandment and "it killed me" (11). This requires further clarification.

Verses 13-25 are more fun to argue about than they are to experience. The fact that there is such debate, actually, demonstrates the severity of the battle even more. The weight of arguments is nothing compared to the weight of seeing one's sinfulness. Brutal.

As the law aggravates sin in verses 7-12, in verses 13-25 the law assaults the conscience of those who care enough about the law to be vulnerable to its hard edges.

I remember the first time I really studied this text. I was in seminary, and I was teaching through Romans to Junior High students. I had a low-resolution idea about what this passage referred to, but wasn't finding satisfaction in some of the surface answers. I must have read over a thousand pages of commentaries and journal articles. Martin Lloyd-Jones has an entire volume for chapter 7. I read the whole thing to track with his arguments and interpretation.

The big question is: do verses 13-15 describe the unbeliever or the believer? There really are problems to reckon and wrestle with on both sides. I'm going to cover the passage in two sermons, and while I'll give you what I believe to be the true and obviously true interpretation before the end of this message, I also believe it's valuable to wade into the text together and get honest about our pain and propensity to sin. We are sinners. This is Post-Adam Anthropology 101, and it is Great Commission 102 as we teach others to observe all that Jesus commanded, this is what they’re getting into.

What makes anyone think that verses 13-25, or at least through verse 24, describes a non-Christian’s frustration?

The most significant reason is due to how different this person's experience with sin sounds than the previous three chapters. Especially in chapter 6, we are dead to sin and alive in Christ (Romans 6:11). Sin no longer has dominion over us (Romans 6:14). We're united to Christ to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4). We've been set free from sin (Romans 6:22). Know, reckon, yield. We've been committed to a new master (Romans 6:22). Even at the beginning of chapter 7, we belong to another, to Christ, "who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit to God" (verse 4).

But look at these phrases in the last half of chapter 7:

So verse 24 is a crashing crescendo: "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" And perhaps the “Now” in Romans 8:1 is meant to be a transition from death to life.

What about having peace with God (Romans 5:1), standing in grace and rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God (5:3)? And in the most immediate context, he just finished describing a time when he thought he was good until the law convicted him (Romans 7:9). That is a pre-conversion, unbelieving condition.

It sounds a lot like there is no faith. There is no reference to the Holy Spirit. There is no mention of union with Christ, our resurrection identity with Him. The lack of victory over sin, the seeming lack of even hope of victory, sets an arduous tone.

In some ways it would be easier to make a blanket statement about this. It would be easier to say that verses 13-23 describe Saul, not Paul, a man dead in sin. All or nothing, obedient or not, takes less effort to judge.

On the other hand there are phrases that are impossible to reconcile with an unbeliever's spiritual sensitivity/capacity, especially in light of verses 7-12, where the law provokes the wrong wants, rather than as here where what the law says is wanted.

Paul wants good even if he doesn't do good. "I do not do what I want" (verse 15), meaning he wants to obey the law, and what he hates is sin. Do unbelievers hate sin? He can distinguish, however the line is drawn, between a “me” and "sin" (verse 20); "no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me." Is this a non-Christian division?

He wants to do what is right (verse 21). He even claims that "I delight in the law of God in my inner being" (verse 22). And after the desperation in verse 24 there is a declaration of thanks to God through Jesus Christ (verse 25). Pagans don't praise Jesus as Lord an an expected answer to deliverance from the body of death.

Add to that:

The third way of Lloyd-Jones is to take the person as elect, but not regenerate, a person in whom the Holy Spirit has begun to work (and we do believe that "he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it"). He does not give a length of time that such a conversion process might last, and that is only one weakness of his idea. It's interesting, but it’s like falling between two stools, and one of the stools only has two legs anyway.

What was determinative for me, and what provides the best explanation of all the factors, is to recognize that verses 13-25 pick up the burden of verses 1-6. The problem is the law. Law dominates the whole chapter.

At the start of the chapter he needed to clarify how it is that we are not under law. We must be released from it. "While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death" (verse 5).

And though we are not living in the flesh, we are still connected to the flesh. The flesh does not own us like it did, but we still are in flesh, and "in my flesh" nothing good dwells.

What is the "flesh"? That question has not only buried librarians, it has been much more of a practical discipleship hurdle than pinning down a definition of the imago Dei. Man's “flesh” can't only be the material instead of the immaterial, because its fleshy desires are more volitional than animal instincts of the body.

The part of us that is being sanctified can’t help but pull the (good) law down on ourselves like a bookshelf. God's plan wasn't immediate perfection. Some of what He's doing is redeeming us to understand more of the value of our redemption. He grows our strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth of His love for rebels that forgives them into fellowship, and that includes increasing our understanding of sin, its evil, its power. Our sanctification is not just theoretical anthropology, it is practical anthropology. Sin is bad, and its strength is coming from inside the house. We have met the enemy, and we can’t evict him in our own authority.

The burden of sin’s remnants and our battle against sin’s wants is war (1 Peter 2:11). Our frustration is that we are wretched and look to Christ for full and final deliverance. Deliver us, Lord!

Let us look to the progression in these verses next time. But this is the believer's experience, reckoning with remaining sin and part of the urgency for reckoning ourselves dead to it.

It humbles us as “sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure” (verse 13). The Lord is maturing us to sin for what it is.

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. (Lewis, Mere Christianity, Location 1855)

Believers, this is the right battlefront, but the wrong place to call home.

Church, as you abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul (1 Peter 2:11), get busy trying to do good (Titus 3:8, 14). As a defense against discouragement when you find that you're not doing all the good you want, be careful to get busy getting God’s blessing to do good; be zealous for blessing.

[M]ay God make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 1:11–12, ESV)

# Introduction

If the previous paragraph belongs among those vital to anthropology—that is, what makes men and their cultures tick, the second half of Romans 7 belongs among the do-not-ignore passages for Christian anthropology and discipleship. There is a change in tenses, from past to present, as Paul continues to use his own experience as representative of the kind of internal battle to be expected for believing, but not yet glorified, men.

In Romans 7:7-12 Paul describes, without using these words, his pre-conversion conviction of sin. He grew up a Jew, so the Law was as unavoidable as his mother's cooking. But at a certain point the law "came home," it got in, and started to expose his ugly little coveting heart. Rather than fix his heart, the law aggravated him. The law works in God's plan to teach us our need for grace and point us to forgiveness and freedom in Christ. Without God's Spirit changing our hearts, the law inevitably aggravates the heart into rebellion against the rules.

Paul carefully eliminates the law itself as the source of sin. The law isn't sin, the law is holy. But because of sin, the law *kills*: sin came alive, it took the commandment and "it killed me" (11). This requires further clarification.

Verses 13-25 are more fun to argue about than they are to experience. The fact that there is such debate, actually, demonstrates the severity of the battle even more. The weight of arguments is nothing compared to the weight of seeing one's sinfulness. Brutal.

As the law aggravates sin in verses 7-12, in verses 13-25 the law assaults the conscience of those who care enough about the law to be vulnerable to its hard edges.

I remember the first time I really studied this text. I was in seminary, and I was teaching through Romans to Junior High students. I had a low-resolution idea about what this passage referred to, but wasn't finding satisfaction in some of the surface answers. I must have read over a thousand pages of commentaries and journal articles. Martin Lloyd-Jones has an entire volume for chapter 7. I read the whole thing to track with his arguments and interpretation.

The big question is: do verses 13-15 describe the *unbeliever* or the *believer*? There really are problems to reckon and wrestle with on both sides. I'm going to cover the passage in two sermons, and while I'll give you what I believe to be the true and obviously true interpretation before the end of this message, I also believe it's valuable to wade into the text together and get honest about our pain and propensity to sin. *We* are sinners. This is Post-Adam Anthropology 101, and it is Great Commission 102 as we teach others to observe all that Jesus commanded, this is what they’re getting into.


# An Unbeliever

What makes anyone think that verses 13-25, or at least through verse 24, describes a non-Christian’s frustration?

The most significant reason is due to how different this person's experience with sin sounds than the previous three chapters. Especially in chapter 6, we are dead to sin and alive in Christ (Romans 6:11). Sin no longer has dominion over us (Romans 6:14). We're united to Christ to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4). We've been set free from sin (Romans 6:22). Know, reckon, yield. We've been committed to a new master (Romans 6:22). Even at the beginning of chapter 7, we belong to another, to Christ, "who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit to God" (verse 4).

But look at these phrases in the last half of chapter 7:

- "I am of the flesh” (verse 14), “carnal” as the KJV translates it.
- I am “sold under sin" (verse 14). This sounds like the slave imagery of chapter 6.
- "I do not understand my own actions" (verse 17)
- He does what sin wants; "sin that dwells in me" (verse 17)
- "Nothing good dwells in me" (verse 18), and again (verse 20)
- He sees a dominating principle that makes him "captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members" (verse 22).

So verse 24 is a crashing crescendo: "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" And perhaps the “Now” in Romans 8:1 is meant to be a transition from death to life.

What about having *peace* with God (Romans 5:1), standing in grace and rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God (5:3)? And in the most immediate context, he just finished describing a time when he thought he was good until the law convicted him (Romans 7:9). That is a pre-conversion, unbelieving condition.

It sounds a lot like there is no faith. There is no reference to the Holy Spirit. There is no mention of union with Christ, our resurrection identity with Him. The lack of victory over sin, the seeming lack of even *hope* of victory, sets an arduous tone.

In some ways it would be easier to make a blanket statement about this. It would be easier to say that verses 13-23 describe Saul, not Paul, a man dead in sin. All or nothing, obedient or not, takes less effort to judge.


# A Believer

On the other hand there are phrases that are impossible to reconcile with an unbeliever's spiritual sensitivity/capacity, especially in light of verses 7-12, where the law provokes the wrong wants, rather than as here where what the law says is *wanted*.

Paul wants good even if he doesn't do good. "I do not do what I want" (verse 15), meaning he wants to obey the law, and what he hates is sin. Do unbelievers hate sin? He can distinguish, however the line is drawn, between a “me” and "sin" (verse 20); "no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me." Is this a non-Christian division?

He wants to do what is right (verse 21). He even claims that "I delight in the law of God in my inner being" (verse 22). And after the desperation in verse 24 there is a declaration of thanks to God through Jesus Christ (verse 25). Pagans don't praise Jesus as Lord an an expected answer to deliverance from the body of death.

Add to that:

- We know from Paul’s own testimony that before his conversion he thought he was “faultless” before the law (Philippians 3:6). He didn’t recognize himself as the chief of sinners until he believed (1 Timothy 1:13-15), his clear conscience was out of ignorant unbelief.
- Paul has switched from past to present tense.
- The primary subject since 3:21 has been the righteousness of salvation in justification by faith alone resulting in sanctification by faith and union with Christ.

The third way of Lloyd-Jones is to take the person as elect, but not regenerate, a person in whom the Holy Spirit has begun to work (and we do believe that "he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it"). He does not give a length of time that such a conversion process might last, and that is only one weakness of his idea. It's interesting, but it’s like falling between two stools, and one of the stools only has two legs anyway.

What was determinative for me, and what provides the best explanation of all the factors, is to recognize that verses 13-25 pick up the burden of verses 1-6. The problem is the law. Law dominates the whole chapter.

At the start of the chapter he needed to clarify how it is that we are not under law. We must be released from it. "While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death" (verse 5).

And though we are not living in the flesh, we are still connected to the flesh. The flesh does not own us like it did, but we still are in flesh, and "in my flesh" nothing good dwells.

What is the "flesh"? That question has not only buried librarians, it has been much more of a practical discipleship hurdle than pinning down a definition of the *imago Dei*. Man's “flesh” can't only be the material instead of the immaterial, because its fleshy desires are more volitional than animal instincts of the body.

The part of us that is being sanctified can’t help but pull the (good) law down on ourselves like a bookshelf. God's plan wasn't immediate perfection. Some of what He's doing is redeeming us to understand more of the value of our redemption. He grows our strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth of His *love* for rebels that forgives them into fellowship, and that includes increasing our understanding of sin, its evil, its power. Our sanctification is not just theoretical anthropology, it is practical anthropology. Sin is bad, and its strength is coming from inside the house. We have met the enemy, and we can’t evict him in our own authority.

The burden of sin’s remnants and our battle against sin’s wants is war (1 Peter 2:11). Our frustration is that *we* are wretched and look to Christ for full and final deliverance. Deliver us, Lord!


# Conclusion

Let us look to the progression in these verses next time. But this is the believer's experience, reckoning with remaining sin and part of the urgency for reckoning ourselves dead to it.

It humbles us as “sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure” (verse 13). The Lord is maturing us to sin for what it is.

> No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. (Lewis, _Mere Christianity_, Location 1855)

Believers, this is the right battlefront, but the wrong place to call home.

----------

## Charge

Church, as you abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul (1 Peter 2:11), get busy trying to do good (Titus 3:8, 14). As a defense against discouragement when you find that you're not doing all the good you want, be careful to get busy getting *God’s blessing* to do good; be zealous for blessing.

## Benediction:

> [M]ay God make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 1:11–12, ESV)

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

For those who wish to become wise Proverbs 4 7 says the beginning of wisdom is this Get wisdom Kind of sounds like jocko could have written that you want wisdom get some Proverbs 26 4 says answer not a fool according to his folly But the very next verse says, answer a fool according to his folly. What's up with that?

Proverbs along with Psalms are probably the two most popular go-to books in the Old Testament for Christians, but if you don't properly understand Proverbs and its purpose, you can get into trouble pretty fast by misusing it. The most common mistake is to treat the sayings found in it as if they were ironclad promises. If you do A, then B will happen. It's an easy trap to fall into. An example of this is Proverbs 22 6 which says, train up a child in the way they should go, and when he becomes older he will not depart from it. There are many broken-hearted parents who clung to this verse as a promise in their parenting days only to have their children abandon the faith as adults. One particular group that regularly misuses Proverbs is the Prosperity Gospel Movement or I like to call it the Blabid and Grabid crowd. One other keen pens wrote a book on Proverbs titled The Power of Proverbs and in the marketing pitch for his book book, it says this, quote, remember, you're planting seeds when you speak and at some

point you're going to eat that fruit. So make sure you're planting the right kind of seeds. You can't speak defeat and expect victory. Instead, make bold declarations, declare healing, success and new levels of faith. When you meditate on the words of life, you're going to reap a supernatural harvest of good things." Sadly, many churches today subscribe to this name it and claim it mindset. It was popularized by the American pastor, Norman Vincent Peale, in the 1950s with the release of his book, The Power of Positive Thinking.

And then one of his disciples, Robert Shuler, took the theology to a whole new level with his weekly radio and TV broadcast called the Hour of Power. I remember my father-in-law for some reason was a fan of that show and so sometimes when I was there on a Sunday I had to watch it. I wonder what Schuller who died in 2011 would think about the fact that his crystal cathedral ended up being sold off to the Roman Catholic Church because they couldn't afford to pay the bills so much for naming and claim it. Proverbs rightly understood should be seen as a a collection of poems and short pithy statements that describe how to live your life consistent with how God made it. Proverbs helps us understand what we can ordinarily expect if we follow the principles taught. It is a book that lays out for us what the path of wisdom looks like. There's an order to God's universe when he's spoken into creation. He imbued it, if you will, with a plan, a way it works. A blessed life isn't a luck of the draw or meted out according to some cosmic lottery system. Proverbs 9 10 tells

us where the path leads or where it begins. I should say where it begins. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. This makes sense because wisdom as one of God's divine attributes originates with Him. If we want true wisdom we have to go back to the source, we have to go back to God. If we want to have a blessed life we have to live the way the world is designed and it's again imbued with the wisdom of God. When When God created the universe and its workings, He did so in such a way that it continually manifests His wisdom. To walk wisely is to go with the flow or work with a grain of His creation.

And when we do so, we can ordinarily expect to reap goodness and blessing. C.S. Lewis latched on to the Chinese word, Tao, which means way of the universe, to point out that cultures across place and time have largely agreed on what makes up for wisdom, what is the basic truths of life, how one should live in this life.

There's obviously some differences but there's a phenomenal amount of commonality and he would attribute that to the fact that cultures even though they don't know God have learned, have discovered through trial and error this wisdom that God has imbued into his creation. This is the wisdom of God as displayed in the universe that men have recognized even if they don't recognize him as the source. Well if the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom that raises the question if an unbeliever could be considered wise. Obviously anyone who can follow, anyone can follow wise principles and reap the corresponding benefits. So in one sense you could say they're being wise. However, the ultimate purpose in gaining wisdom is to know God and to enjoy him forever. Jesus himself asked the question, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? We conclude that person's a fool. So to say that any pagan can walk wisely in this earth, you could maybe put a lowercase W on that wisdom, but ultimate wisdom, the kind that leads to

salvation, can only come from God and knowing God and embracing the fear of the Lord. What about those times when we are living according to wisdom and the results don't seem to match what Proverbs says. We keep doing A, but we're not getting B, we're getting C, D, E. Proverbs is not a book of concrete promises or laws. It's a book of principles that when followed generally lead to a long, happy, and fruitful life, as many Proverbs would indicate. So why only generally? Why not absolutely? Why can't we say do A and get B? It's part of the answer lies because we live in a fallen world where sin is present and in addition we know that God tests his people to examine the genuineness of their faith. The book of James tells us to consider it all joy when we encounter various trials. First Peter reminds us that God allows us to endure fiery ordeals to test our faith. Job is a classic example of a righteous man whose faith was severely tested. There are lots of examples of the righteous dying young or suffering greatly. A businessperson can follow all the

principles and proverbs and still go bankrupt. This is where other books in the Bible then that make up the wisdom literature help us to get a fuller picture of God's workings. Books like Job and Ecclesiastes and parts of the collections of other books often called the wisdom literature, looking at all of those in totality helps us to get a better understanding of God and how he deals with mankind. Proverbs is just one. Proverbs again gives us a pattern that we should follow, but when we say well that didn't seem to go according to plan, we can then look to Job, we can look to Ecclesiastes and other places and say well what happens when God allows in his sovereignty, what then?

So in addition to Job, Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, we can also include the Psalms and some would say the Son of Solomon. These show us that God is still good and all wise, even when His plans for us don't follow the rosiest path. Life under the sun is complex and it cannot be reduced to a simple A then B proposition no matter what all the self-help gurus and TBN talking heads are trying to tell us. Now this does not mean that life then boils down to random chance. God has revealed the path of wisdom and His ultimate plan includes His glory and His children's good. So then, Proverbs is extremely beneficial for showing us how the wise person orders his life for maximum blessing and fruitfulness, even though sin, or God's providence, may cause pain and suffering at times.

Now the authorship of Proverbs is a source of much discussion among the scholars. Three of the sections in there explicitly claim Solomon to be the author. Verse 1-1 says the Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, covering chapters 1-10. Then in 10-1 it says the Proverbs of Solomon which covers chapters 10-1-22-16. And then we jump and in chapter 25 verse 1 we're told, these also are the Proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, the king of Judah copied. And those covered chapters 25 through 29. But that leaves chapter 22 verse 17 through the end of chapter 24 without any declared author other than saying the words of the wise is that one section and then chapter 30 attributes it to agar and then a son I should say agar son of jakke and then chapter 31 is attributed to King Lemuel so there's no doubt that Solomon wrote or accumulated the bulk of what is in the book of Proverbs in In 1 Kings 4 32 it tells us that he spoke 3,000 Proverbs and wrote 1005 songs.

Eat your heart out Taylor Swift. A few verses prior it says, and God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure and breath of mind like the sand of the seashore so that Solomon's wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all of the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all other men, wiser than Ethan, the Ezraite, and Heman, and Calcal, and Darda, the sons of Mahal, and his fame was in all the surrounding nations." So he was one smart dude. But note this passage indicates that there were lots of other wisdom literature floating around at this time as well besides the Israelite tradition. Now only about 800 of Solomon's 3,000 Proverbs are found in the sections of Proverbs that are attributed to him. We also know that he was a collector of wise sayings so he went around and he heard what was the wise guys were saying in his region because it says in Ecclesiastes 12.9, the preacher Solomon sought to find words of delight and to go out yet to go out and find words of delight and uprightly he wrote words of truth.

We know the Proverbs in chapter 25 through 29 were assembled by Hezekiah's scribes and we know the prophets Isaiah and Micah ministered during that same time period so it's possible they might have been involved also with the scribes in the compilation of Solomon's sayings. The group of proverbs found in this passage 2217 through 2423 are again attributed simply as the words of the wise. These proverbs have remarkable similarity to some Egyptian document titled the wisdom of a mean mope written by an Egyptian person presumably summer between 1000 BC and 600 BC. Debates continue as to whether these proverbs originated in the Hebrew literature or if the wise men referred to lived before Solomon's time and then Solomon gathered them into his collection of proverbs. The scholars go back and forth debating that. It was not uncommon for kings and sages to travel around and listen to the wise sayings of other cultures. Solomon undoubtedly took some of those sayings and then added them to his own collection. Either way, the Proverbs, as

we have them today, represent the eternal wisdom of God. Solomon, being recognized by the Hebrews as the wisest man to ever live, serves as both the literal and the figurative head of the collection of wise sayings. When Proverbs 1-1 says the Proverbs of Solomon, it should not be taken to mean that he originated every single proverb in there necessarily, although he certainly did the bulk of them. But again, he was responsible for the acquisition, the accumulation, and he probably rewrote some, and however he being the wise man that he was, we can trust that what he, God working through him to accumulate in the Hezekiah and his scribes, we can trust that what we have is what God wanted us to know when it comes to being wise. In Proverbs 30 and 31 we're introduced to Agard and Lemuel. We don't have any information on exactly who they were other than we're told Lemuel was a king. The three main thoughts on who Lemuel was are are Solomon.

Some of the Jews, I think, would argue that he was Solomon. Hezekiah is another suggestion because Hezekiah, we're told he and his scribes put together, compiled the Proverbs. Or it's possible a third option is Lemuel is just some fictional person being used to teach a lesson in chapter 31. The Proverbs Solomon authored would have been written around 931 or before 931 BC and then it was 230 years later that Hezekiah scribes organized those Proverbs and others from Solomon's collection. Again the ones I've mentioned in chapter 25 through 29. We aren't sure but it seems likely Solomon wrote his Proverbs in his younger years to midlife years before then his personal life took a turn for the worse. We're all familiar with the story and his foolishness later in life. Now on that point it's worth noting that even though Solomon was the wisest person to ever live, he was still a man and just as susceptible to sin as anyone else. The warning found in 1 Corinthians 10-12 comes to mind, therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

I mean it's astonishing to think what we just read about him and the wisest man throughout the land and then to think of the folly and the foolishness he fell into. The purpose of the book, let me get those popping peas on the mic here, the purpose of this book is stated for us at the outset. In verse 1, 2 through 6 we read, to know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction and wise dealings in righteousness, justice, and equity, to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth, let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance to understand a proverb and a saying the words of the wise and their riddles so from all that we can boil it down into two broad purpose statements for Proverbs one is to impart the moral principles that we need to lead a good life that be from one verse 2a and verses 3 through 5. And then secondly, to develop mental clarity and perception. I get that from chapter 2b and verse 6. It says it's written to give prudence to the simple

and knowledge and discretion to the youth. And that doesn't imply that the scope of its usefulness is to just those groups. The gaining of wisdom is something everybody should be pursuing. There's no end to this quest, this side of heaven. Solomon himself is exhibit A. He should have been reading his own Proverbs later on. The purpose can be broken down further into the following objectives. To receive teaching in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity. To help the simple gain prudence and the youth to gain knowledge and discretion. To increase learning and to acquire skill and understanding, and then to understand proverbs, parables, and wise sayings and riddles.

Together, these skills make up what it means to be a wise person. One of Solomon's Proverbs says that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. This means that we're not blank slates at birth. The need in this kind of training is to drive out the foolishness and instill wisdom.

shouldn't be surprised when the naive and the simple do foolish things. That's the default setting they have from birth. Now Solomon's prologue shows that wisdom is not something that comes naturally. It must be acquired through training and discipline. Like any training program, there has to be a starting point and we find it in verse 9-10. I've mentioned it already. It says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. The fear of the Lord here should be taken primarily to mean the awe and the reverence of God, although a dread of displeasing him is certainly not unwarranted as well. It makes sense that this would be the starting point since he's the author of all wisdom. Wisdom is an attribute of God and is baked into his creation and to get to it you must start with him. The principle is simple as Dave likes to always say, God is God and we are not. You do not get to define wisdom. All we can do is comprehend it, we can learn it, we can be taught it, but

we do not get to generate wisdom. Those who reject God and think they are wise are actually worse off than a fool. Proverbs 26 12 says, do you see a man who's wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him. Now we do see a reciprocal relationship between the fear of the Lord and the gaining of wisdom. Proverbs 9 10 tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but we also see in verse 2.5 that when we gain wisdom then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find in the knowledge of God. So the fear of the Lord leads to wisdom, wisdom leads to increased fear of the Lord and so it's kind of a perpetual machine if you will. Another point that needs to be made about the kind of wisdom we're talking about is that it isn't simply head knowledge. You can memorize all of Proverbs and still not be considered a wise person. The Hebrew word for wisdom carries with it a moral sense but it also refers to having a skill. The same word is used elsewhere in the Old

Testament when they're talked about the craftsmen who are going to build the temple and when it talked about their skill, find skilled individuals, that's the same word for wisdom that's being used here. And so obviously there's a sense that it's not what you just know but it's does it come out your fingers and toes. That's when you are a wise person. You show skill in these proverbs.

Hence a wise person just doesn't know a lot of useful things but he lives it out well in his life. Now when we look at the overall structure of the book of Proverbs, we have a serious disadvantage. We do not know Hebrew, and so we lose the structural beauty of the Book of Proverbs. The book begins with a series of lessons for life. It's a father giving lessons to his son about life, and then it ends, the book ends with a mother instructing her son how to be a wise King. In chapters 1 through 9 we see 10 speeches or exhortations from a father to a son. Each one starts with the phrase, my son. The father calls his son to listen to wisdom and to cultivate the fear of the Lord. He shows him how the fear of the Lord will lead to things like virtue and integrity and generosity and success and peace. He warns his son about the dangers of folly and evil and how those things will lead to his ruin and shame.

He extols the beauty of wisdom, and then he presents it as Lady Wisdom, who is there to guide and instruct the Son in the way he should go. We then see four poems about Lady Wisdom. In chapters 1, 20 through 33, she cries aloud in the street, appealing to anyone who will listen to calm and learn from her. She warns the fool that she will laugh at their calamity when her folly catches up to them. In 13 through 20, another poem, we are told of the virtues of Lady Wisdom and that blessed is the person who finds her. The gain that comes from knowing her is better than precious metals and jewels. With her name comes peace, or with her comes peace and pleasantness of life.

She's called a tree of life. The third poem is all chapter 8. It repeats some of the benefits of knowing Lady Wisdom and adds that she was with God from the very beginning, and it tells her role in the creation of the world. And as such, she holds the keys to understanding how the world works. She declares that the person who finds her finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. And then finally, in chapter 9, the fourth poem on Lady Wisdom, she describes in more detail the way of wisdom. She specifically calls to the simple and those who lacks sense to come and eat at the table that she has prepared. She warns against hanging with the scoffers because doing so will only bring harm.

She also introduces the woman named Folly and warns the simple not to fall for her seductive lies. Now let me go back and let me take it just a little bit of a rabbit trail just for a moment here. Our men-to-men talk got a little bit lively on Monday night when the question was asked about the appropriateness of us laughing like Lady Wisdom, of us laughing when calamity strikes the fool. Is it okay for, if it's okay for Lady Wisdom to laugh, is it okay for us to laugh? What does this laugh look like? I mean after all our school motto is laughter is war, right? Now some men in the group thought laughing was totally appropriate and others weren't not so sure. Now I'll admit I was one of the ones that was a little more nervous with that concept. Although I one level I get it but another level I was nervous. I think Craig you and I were by ourselves arguing the other side of the corner. So I did a little more thinking about it. So just here's some more thoughts about it just for whatever it's worth. On the one hand we could go to a passage like Psalm 52 6 through 7

which says very explicitly, the righteous will see and fear and shall laugh at him saying, see the man who would not make God his refuge, but trusted in the abundance of his riches and sought refuge in his own destruction. So that seems pretty clear. On the other hand, there's Proverbs 24, 17 through 18, do not rejoice when your enemy falls and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles. Lest the Lord see it and be displeased and turn away his anger from him." So what's the right response? Laugh? Don't rejoice? Are they mutually exclusive? Can you do both at the same time? Now I'm not going to claim to have the right answer and others in the room here may differ with what I'm about to say, but I think a key is found in the psalm that I read. It doesn't just say the righteous laugh at the man who would not make God his refuge, it says they see, they fear, and they laugh. The fear here is not of man, but it's the fear of God. I believe we can laugh in the sense that we recognize that we're that were it not

for God, we would be like the fool. Our laughter is an acknowledgement of God's right to judge sin and our gladness in him when he exercises his prerogative. Our laughter is not like the schoolyard boy laughing because someone got hurt and we thought it was funny. Our laughter is not rooted in us being the judge but in God's righteous judgment. Our laughter is in God exercising his dominion over his creation. When we laugh at the fool we are really laughing because God is is being God, and that's a delight to us when we see God, even when it's him giving somebody else a spanking. OK, end of that rabbit trail. In the first nine chapters of Proverbs, the father's speeches and the poems about Lady Wisdom are an invitation to learn what has been handed down from God to Solomon and the other wisdom writers.

Then having read, both the father's appeal to his son and Lady Wisdom's cry to the simple, chapters 10 through 29 then give us an abundance of short pithy sayings that instruct us for much of life. There are hundreds of Proverbs covering pretty much all of life. Work, business, neighbors, friendships, sex, marriage, parenting, money, anger, forgiveness, the proper use of food and alcohol, just to name a few. Again, these Proverbs give us the general rules for a good life under the sun and don't address the exceptions that happen due to sin or God's hard providences. Now tucked inside chapter 10 through 29, we then have those set of Proverbs described simply as the sayings of the wise, 2217 to 2422, and And then again, more sayings of the wise, 24-23 through 24.

I think that's a little longer now, I may have the wrong address there, but through 24. The structure of the first group reverts back to the pattern of a father addressing a son seen in the first nine chapters of Proverbs. So once again, these sayings of the wise, that first block, there's two blocks, sayings of the wise, more sayings of the wise, the first block is 30 sayings and it's all written like a father speaking to a son. And in the set we're given the 30 sayings that are an extended admonition followed by the motive or the reason for the admonition. An example of this pattern from that passage says, for example, make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.

That's the reason. So that block follows that pattern. By the way, this is a great tip for parenting. Don't just give your kids commands to obey. Give them the moral reason why you're commanding them.

When you do this, they can then begin to build a moral framework from which to formulate right responses in situations that they have not even encountered yet. Your instruction in one area of life usually has application to a lot of other areas but if you're training them to just simply say do this don't do that then don't be surprised if they face a new situation where the same principle applies but all they know is you just told me don't do this here you didn't say anything about this. So this pattern we see here in Proverbs is a good pattern for parenting to give them the instruction but then to also explain why the moral reason why so they can then begin to build that library of okay this situation is like that situation I probably should have a similar response this set of 30 sayings are the ones that have in this first block are the ones that are very noticeable and similar to a mean mope in addition to the 30 sayings of the wise then we have the more sayings and these appear to be just

additional proverbs that Solomon probably collected in his travels and perhaps adapted. Oregon I suppose would be scholars around that would say well no he wrote them and the Egyptians stole them. I didn't get deep enough in it to make up my own mind but just so you know that that debate rages. Chapter 30 then we just left 10 through 29 moving into chapter 30 switches gear and gives a collection of poems by someone identified as Agar, son of Jaki. We are given no other information on who this person is. He does not appear anywhere else in the Bible. His words start out pretty depressed. He says, quote, The man declares, I am weary, O God, I am weary, O God, and worn out. Surely I am too stupid to be a man. I have not the understanding of a man. I have not learned wisdom, nor have acknowledged the Holy One." Sounds like a pretty depressed guy. Maybe he's somebody who's reflecting on their life and they're thinking, wow, have I been a fool or what? Given that we do not know who he is, it's possible that he's not even a real person but rather an example

of a person who foolishly disregarded sound wisdom in their youth and then later comes to regret it and is now regrets not having sought the wisdom of God sooner. Having expressed his brokenness though then over his own stupidity, he points to the solution in verses 5 through 6. Says every word of God proves true. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you, and you be found a liar." And then the rest of that chapter, if you read it, it sounds like some basically somebody who was stupid young in life now mocking the current stupid people and poking at them and telling them what they shouldn't be doing. It's like he's talking to a mirror of his younger self. He jabs hard at the hypocrisy he sees in those who curse their father and do not bless their mother or those who are righteous in their own eyes or those who are just never satisfied and always want more talks about the leech in that passage. One of my parenting go-to verses is actually in this section. It's verse 17. You guys know the verse. I would use this

verse on my kids when they got a little sassy. It says, the eye that mocks a father and scorns a mother to obey a mother will be as I will be picked out by the Ravens of the Valley and eaten by the vultures. And I still use that verse sometime on them today in jest when they usually are saying, they're saying to me okay boomer because I'm ranting about something and they're trying to tell me how old I am and ridiculous but then I'll just say ah I see do I hear a raven? Well the last chapter chapter 31 contains two more poems. The author identifies himself as King Lemuel. Again, we do not know for sure who this person was or if they were even a real person. Jewish custom holds that it was none other than Solomon and the mother in this proverb is Bathsheba, but there's no clear evidence to support that. Others suggest it might have been Hezekiah, which could make some sense again if his hymn and scribes were compiling the Proverbs, you know, maybe. And then some have suggested he was a king of a place

called Massa. And there's some support for this because Agar in chapter 30, son of Jacob, that translation for his name could be translated as a man of Massa. So maybe in chapter 30 we got Agar, a son of Massa, chapter 31 we maybe have the king of Massa, you know, these are all just speculations, we don't know for sure.

The bottom line is that no one knows with certainty, but in any case it doesn't take away from the lessons to be learned from those poems. The first poem is contained in verses 1 through 9 and it describes, we could say, the noble king. In it, the king is passing the wisdom his mother gave him regarding of being a good king. And then the second poem is in verses 10 through 31 and that's where one place where we really lose the beauty of the Hebrew it's written as an acrostic where every line begins with the letter of the Hebrew alphabet and it describes as you know then the noble wife or noble woman or a wife. Scholars again debate whether this second poem was written by Lemuel because they look at the form of the first poem and they say wow the second poem is way different. And so they're saying, I'm not sure this is the same person that wrote this, but then other scholars say, well yeah, but there's other poems we have where we know who wrote those poems and those poems are very different, but we know it was the same guy, so it's possible that Lemuel,

whoever he was, did write both poems. Now some think this poem is a template for being a godly woman over a course of a lifetime, the so-called Proverbs 31 woman. Others suggest this is Lady Wisdom again and the poem is describing what wisdom lived out looks like. We see again this beautiful symmetry to the overall book with the opening chapters being that father addressing his son and again the final chapters is the mother doing the same thing. So some final thoughts. Proverbs fits in the Old Testament as part of the wisdom literature. This literature along with the books of the law and the prophets makes up all of the Old Testament. God used in the Old Testament the roles of priest, prophet, and sage to communicate his truth to us. The priest gave the law, the prophets gave a word from the Lord, and the sage gave us why sayings. Proverbs is not the book to go to for law or prophecy. It shows us the general pattern in life that the righteous can expect to live longer and prosper while the unrighteous will experience the opposite. On the other

hand, it must be remembered that this general principle is balanced by the reality that the wicked sometimes prosper, Psalm 73, 3, and 12, though they will only prosper for a while, Psalm 73 again reminds us. So we do see the pattern of wisdom broken at times because of sin, because of God's sovereign will for our life at that point in time. As we embark on this study in the book of Proverbs, we should use the life of Solomon as both an encouragement and as a warning. Solomon started his reign on the right foot by humbling himself before God and asking for the wisdom to lead people. And God, we know, granted that request in abundance and the people of Israel experienced one of the greatest times of prosperity in their history under Solomon's wise leadership. But, as we know, it didn't stay that way. Solomon disobeyed God, he took foreign wives who turned his heart away from God. And even though sullen may have come back to his senses by the end of his life, the damage was done. He did not successfully pass

wisdom onto his son Rehoboam. In just one generation, Israel went from perhaps its zenith as a nation to becoming a divided nation within a long history of pretty bad kings. They're moving forward with a few good ones thrown in. Wisdom is there for the taking, but it can also be elusive to the one whose heart is not baked in the fear of the Lord. Without constantly cultivating the fear of the Lord, we are going to always be at risk for repeating the same trajectory of the wisest man who ever lived.

If we lose sight of the fear of the Lord, and if we start experiencing the blessings that Proverbs promises or offers to us, we can fall in the same trap and so we have to keep reminding ourselves the fear of the Lord, the fear of the Lord. When it comes to growing in wisdom and keeping it, it's worth really remembering the saying, I've heard different people say this before, but the saying goes, the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing, which is the fear of the Lord. And if we do that and then as we study Proverbs and live our lives accordingly, we can ordinarily expect to see tremendous blessings in our life. Let's pray. Well, Father, as we do dive into the book of Proverbs, I'm looking forward to it and I assume the rest are here as well. It is a book that we have all come to love. Help us to learn to approach it appropriately, not as a magic genie that we just rub it and it'll pop out good things, but that at the same time it is full of your wisdom it is full of your truths and that if we do learn it and obey it and

apply it we can expect lives that are blessed that that will be the normal outcome and even in those situations where perhaps it doesn't always work out that way may we be like a Job and we can say even if the Lord slay me still I will trust him either way father you get the glory we get ultimately whether in this life and a life to come, we get to experience all of your goodness that you have in store for us. So I just pray that as we spend the next year going through some proverbs that you will increase all of our wisdom and that as you examine our lives and how we're walking, you'd be well pleased with what you see in our lives. We just pray this all now in your Son Jesus' name. Amen.