Proverbs 11 - Righteousness

I am going to continue looking at the theme of righteousness in Proverbs. So what does this chapter tell us that righteousness does:

• Delivers us from death (v4)
• Makes our paths straight (v5)
• Delivers them (v6)
• Rescued from trouble (v8)
• Escape danger through knowledge (v9)
• Bring joy to a city when we prosper (v10)
• Reap a sure reward (v18)
• Go free (v21)
• Our desires lead to good (v23)
• Thrive like a green leaf (v28)
• Our fruit is a tree of life (v30)
• Receive their due on the earth (v31)

Now we know that it is in Christ that we are made righteous. We are brought back into relationship with God, our sins are forgiven, and Christ's righteousness is credited to us.

So we should look to these promises to be fulfilled in our lives. We know that we will be raised to eternal life after we die. But most of these proverbs apply to this life, so we should expect fruit now.

Knowing that we are forgiven makes our paths straight. We have the security of belonging to God. So that when many things assail us in life we are able to maintain a wise course. 

We have also repented, ie turned away from our ways and turned towards Christ's ways.

Many of these promises talk about being rescued. We will face trouble, but in Christ we will overcome it.

And our success will bring riches to others. Many of the proverbs contrast the opposite effects of "good" and "bad". When men make money through dishonest or exploitative means it impoverishes all but a few in society, and the effects of this are all too easy to see. But wealth is not the problem. When the righteous prosper it brings joy to many.

We thrive like a green leaf. A green leaf thrives because it is receiving water and nutrients up through the root system. When we put our faith in Christ we become reconnected to God, and we start to receive our sustenance from the supply we are meant to receive it from. This will bring health to our minds and bodies.

We all face many things and go through many trials, but we should look to God with expectancy. Through Christ and in Christ we will overcome.

Proverbs 10 - Righteousness

Back to Proverbs for a while now and we embark on the bulk of Proverbs which is a series of pithy one-liners. In reading these we must remember that they are proverbs, they are not laws. This becomes clearest when we come to the part where two adjacent proverbs flatly contradict each other.

A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son grief to his mother. Why is it the mother that feels the grief? No doubt the father would be upset too, but fathers tend to have the attitude, "he has made his decision and has to take the consequences". Anyway, whether we are wise or foolish, our behaviour has an impact on people beyond ourselves.

There are several themes in these proverbs, let's just look at one of them

Righteousness

• Delivers from death (v2)
• Blessings crown our head (v6)
• Give us a good name (v7)
• Speak words that are a fountain of life (v11)
• Brings life (v16)
• Speak good words (v20)
• Speak words that build others up (v21)
• Their desires are granted (v24)
• Stand firm forever, even in the midst of storms (v25)
• Joy is our heritage (v28)
• Will never be uprooted (v30)
• Speak words of wisdom (v31)
• Speak positive words (v32)

These are the fruit of the righteousness that Christ brings. There are many other things in this chapter. We cannot focus on them all at once. If there is some other that has grabbed your heart as you read the chapter, then meditate upon that.

Luke 12:49-59 - Division

Sometimes popular views of Jesus are totally without foundation. The popular conception is that Jesus is all "love" and no judgement. Nothing could be further from the truth, and a simple reading of the gospels reveals this. Jesus is both love and judgement. 

Here Jesus says He came to "bring fire on the earth". Moreover He is eager to do this! He came to bring a separation, there will be a separation between those who belong to God and those who do not. In the present times we are seeing our society become increasingly anti-Christian. We should not despair when we see this happening, for it is not the world's plan that is being fulfilled but God's plan.

However, before the judgement Jesus had to go to the cross. But division will come and this will affect some of the deepest parts of life. Even families will be divided. Now we need to read this carefully. Jesus is not giving a law here! He is not saying every family will be divided, but there will be families that are divided. We should bear this in mind as sometimes we have a simplistic notion that if only we bring our children up properly they are bound to become Christians. This is not so. Every human being is born in sin, and every human being needs to repent and believe, and not everyone will. However, don't go to the other extreme! It is far better to bring our children up well, and this will bear fruit!

Jesus then rebukes the crowd because they had no idea what was going on. They could predict the weather, but did not realise that God was calling them to repentance. We will do all we can to avoid confronting the reality of our sin.

Luke 12:35-48 - Servants who are ready

Chasing after money or worries about life can so easily distract us from doing what really matters, as Jesus tells us in the parable of the sower. Here Jesus urges His disciples to always be ready for service. The servants a wedding would not know exactly when the master would return from a wedding banquet, but had to be ready to jump into action whenever he did and have everything ready. We are always to be ready to serve the King and will not always receive warning. Then Jesus says that He will serve them and have them recline at the table. The relationship between God and His people is truly amazing and does not fit any of our man-made pigeon holes.

The key thing is that we are always ready to serve and we do not know the hour. In Matthew a similar message is given in the context of the return of Christ. Some people are obsessed with all sorts of details about the last days, and some are even stupid enough to predict actual dates. If you want to lose your credibility then a good way to do this is to predict the date of the second coming.

In all of Jesus' teaching on His return the emphasis is on being faithful servants now so we will be ready whenever He returns. In fact Jesus' words here are very direct, even harsh. There is work to be done so we don't have time to engage in idle speculations. 

While this is applied to the return of Christ it also has more immediate application. We do not know what Jesus will ask us to do today, or what He might require of us tomorrow. We should constantly be working to prepare ourselves. 

The judgement will take account of how much someone knows. If God has revealed stuff to us then we have a greater responsibility.

Luke 12:22-34 - No worries

"Do not worry". Notice also the emphatic "Therefore I tell you". These words come direct from Jesus. It is part of the human condition to worry about things, especially our daily needs. This is not the way things are in the kingdom. There is also the "therefore", referring to back to the warnings on money not providing the security we so often think it does. The dominance of worry in human lives is part of our fallen condition. When Christ comes in to our lives it is something that the Spirit will work on changing.

Jesus then gives reasons for not worrying. First life is more than food and clothes. God created us for a greater purpose than just existing, and He has saved us for a greater purpose. Then Jesus points to nature. The birds are provided with food. Notice also that "God feeds them", it is not just chance that the birds are fed. We are more important than birds.

Moreover, worrying doesn't actually achieve anything, in fact it will only make things worse. Yet we are so addicted to worry and anxiety, we need to be set free from this addiction.

Next Jesus points to the wild flowers, they do not labour or spin, yet God clothes them. See again it is God who does it, it does not just happen. Flowers are here one day and gone the next, we are more important than flowers, so how much more attention does God to give to us? We need to realise how precious we are to God. 

The pagan world spends all its time chasing after money, we were called to something greater. So we should seek first the kingdom, and these things will be given to us as well. 

We are not to live in fear and do not need to do so. The Father has been pleased to give us the kingdom. Just consider that statement. So what are the consequences? We are free to give, free to be generous towards others. In so doing we store up treasure in heaven where it is perfectly secure.

Luke 12:13-21 - Money is not that important

We are always ready to argue about money and it is one of the biggest causes of disputes and divisions. Here someone wants Jesus to sort out a financial dispute with his brother. When we get uptight about something we will often find our vision clouded. We become so focused or obsessed about the issue that we cannot see anything else, and we usually become absolutely convinced that we are in the right and the other party is in the wrong. However, when we take things to God we will often find that He has a very different perspective on things. This means we should definitely take things to God for we need our thinking to be changed, though we usually think it is the other person's thinking that needs to be changed.

Jesus replies in an interesting way, He asks "who appointed me a judge between you". Now given that Christ is going to judge the whole earth you might think that He could surely judge between these two. However, this is to misunderstand the purpose of God. God created us to be independent beings making godly decisions out of godly attitudes. Even "solving" this one problem would actually achieve very little, for they would just find something else to argue about a day or two later. Instead their heart attitude needed to change.

We get so excited about money because we think it so important. Our life does not consist of the abundance of our possessions, yet it causes us such anguish if we think we are not being treated fairly. It can also result in greed. 

Jesus then illustrates the point by a parable. A man devotes all his efforts to making money and is very pleased with the results. Then God speaks to him and calls him a fool. 

Now the problem is not with being rich, the problem is with not being rich towards God (and that includes being rich towards the poor). However, our hearts can be so corrupted that we will change this to mean "I will give to God and the poor so that I can be rich". This is such a wrong and misguided attitude for our focus is still on money. We need to guard and watch our hearts very carefully in matters of finance.

Luke 12:1-12 - Whom should we fear?

After the incident with the Pharisees Jesus gives a warning to His disciples to avoid the hypocrisy that inflicted the Pharisees. You see, the capacity for sin resides in all of us. We can see the fruit of this very easily in others, but we are often strangely blind to seeing the sin in our own lives. We are all prone to hypocrisy, so we all need to be on our guard against it.

Our hearts deceive us, they tell us that no one will know, no one has seen, therefore we can get away with it. But this is not true. God sees everything and everything will be brought to light, some at the final judgement, some in this life, but it will be brought to light.

The Pharisees lived to please men, to gain praise from men. We can live in fear of men, but this is stupid. It is God whom we should fear, for He is the one with all power and authority, He can throw our body into hell. 

Yet this awesome God actually cares for us. So when we truly fear God fear actually goes. Oh what fools we are when we rebel against God!

Jesus is quite clear that there is a spiritual kingdom, a spiritual court, that we should be more concerned about than any earthly kingdom. We should seek to be acknowledged by Christ in this court.

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is then mentioned. No one really knows for sure exactly what this means, but it probably involves rebelling against the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Receiving clear inner revelation and rejecting it.

Jesus then goes on to tell them that when they are hauled before courts and councils the Holy Spirit will give them words to say, He will witness through them. In rejecting this the courts and councils could be blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.