Clough Proverbs Lesson 51

DI #1: The Law of Self-Destruction

We are continuing our study in the middle section of the book of Proverbs, chapters 10-22, and this particular section of Proverbs continues with chokmah or wisdom but its emphasis is not on exhorting one to get wisdom. The emphasis is instead upon the laws of creation themselves which reveal wisdom. And as we have approached this we have decided to approach it by these various laws. Now please be forewarned that when we use the word “law” here we’re not using it as it usually encountered in human viewpoint. Law, when we use it in Scripture means God has ordained certain principles for the creation. Nature has no law in and of itself. The human viewpoint person, the person who operates in human viewpoint categories is a person who holds what we call an autonomous view of law; that is, law exists in and of itself, there’s no reference whatever to the Creator. That is not our position. Our position is that these laws exist only because God has decreed they will be there and if tomorrow he decreed they would be changed they would be changed. There is no such thing as inherent law.

But for simplicity we are handling the book in the Proverbs in the sense of different laws and different areas of these laws. We have divided up the laws into categories by reference to the divine institutions and we have so far dealt with two laws under the first divine institution, which is individual responsibility. The first divine institution is a very widespread one, one that is very neglected in our own day. And this institution has to do with volition. Without the first divine institution there would be no responsible part of creation. Without the first divine institution there could be no angels; without the first divine institution there could be no men. There could be animals, there could be rocks, there could be planets, there could be stars but there could be no responsible creatures.

So the first divine institution is the base for all other divine institutions, and we have categorized the laws of the first divine institution under category one, general laws of responsible actions. That is the first large category under the first divine institution, laws of responsible action. And under that category we have divided, first the law of temporal effect. This is that every day details of life will reflect some of God’s righteousness and justice because He is the sovereign Creator. The law of temporal effect shows through in many ways in life. It shows through many ways with regard to nations in history, why nations that go against the Word of God will inevitably fall, why nations have lost battles in the warfares of history, why nations have gone down economically and so on are related to the law of temporal effect, that man reaps what he sows. And Paul restates this in Galatians, “Be not deceived, God is not mocked, whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap.” We call that the law of temporal effect.

Last time we dealt with the law of final effect, which means that though the scales are balanced in eternity they are not necessarily balanced in history. So because of grace, because God does not give us all that we deserve, sometimes He suspends the operation of the law of temporal effect. Oftentimes this is true in the way people who reject the Word are continually blessed in their lives and why others who reject the Word seem to get away with it. This is because God is being gracious to them; God is withholding His sic upon them. And so grace will suspend, temporarily, the law of temporal effect but grace will not suspend the law of final effect. The law of final effect cannot be suspended by any grace whatever.

This Sunday, we come to the third law in the group which is the laws of self-destruction. To get background on the law of self-destruction we must turn to Genesis 1:2. What is the law of self-destruction? It means that God has established the creation in such a way that rebellion and evil always reduce the creation to chaos. The creation is built to be destroyed by volition and this is the law of self-destruction; it operates in your life, it operates in the life of nature, it operates all over the field, but negative volition will always produce chaos. The creation has been designed to fail/safe. In other words, a creature that rebels against God cannot be secure in his rebellion because not only does creation around him but he himself will deteriorate and this is a fail/safe system that God has built into creation so that people who go on negative volition will eventually destroy themselves. This is a safety feature. This means that people who become animals through negative volition will eventually die as animals, and this is because God has safeguarded the existence of those creatures who are on positive volition.

Now in Genesis 1:2 we have what chaos looks like. “The earth was without form and void, and darkness is upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Now that is pure bare existence in verse 2 but it is not beautiful existence. It is not something that God comes along and says it is good. It has no beauty, it has no form, it has no appeal, and therefore it is not pronounced, as it says in the Hebrews, tob, or pleasurable; it is not pleasurable. The reason it is not pleasurable is because God has put the finishing touches of His created order on the creation. Genesis 1:2, therefore, shows what must happen whenever you have chaos. Negative volition will always reduce the creation back to Genesis 1:2. That describe what we will call bare existence.

Now notice something here, the creature on negative volition can’t destroy himself in the sense he ceases to exist. He can’t destroy himself that way; he can only make his existence miserable but he can’t cancel out his existence. There’s a fallacy, and some people always at the least sign of trouble want to commit suicide; I’ll end it all. You’re not going to end it all; all you’re going to do is make things more miserable for yourself. You’re going to, if you are a believer, you’re not going to lose your salvation but you are going to terminate your opportunity for service to the Lord. You are going to be forced to prematurely appear before the bema seat and suicide is no answer to anything. And suicide is no answer to anything; it’s just a chicken’s way out. But suicide is one modern day illustration of people who are on negative volition, who have fouled up their lives, who refused to appropriate God’s grace, who refuse to use the faith technique, wonder why they’re miserable and therefore want to blow their brains out.

But, whenever you have negative volition you can only go back to this state and no further back; you can reduce yourselves to the chaos of Genesis 1:2 but you can’t go back of that; you can’t destroy yourself absolutely. Now I the Oriental religions, such as Hinduism and others, you have movements that have been dedicated, not only to causing you to have a miserable existence but just simply to eliminate existence all together, just be reabsorbed into a blob. And the Bible says you’ve got to shock awaiting you if you think that you can destroy your existence; you will never destroy your existence. You will go on living forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and there is no way to stop it at all. You can place yourself on a hydrogen bomb and blow it up and it still will not destroy your soul. There is no way you have of ever terminating your existence. You will always go on, you will always have self-conscious, you will always know what God’s righteous standards are. There is no escape. And therefore people who try to commit suicide are people who are very, very foolish indeed.

The Bible teaches the law of self-destruction as going back to a chaos of Genesis 1:2, but not destroying existence absolutely. There are several verses in Proverbs that deal with this law, the law of self-destruction. I will give you the verses and then we will see the details on only some of these verses this morning. Here are some of the verses in the book of Proverbs that teach this law or have reference to it.

Proverbs 1:16-19; Proverbs 1:32; Proverbs 7, the entire chapter, that’s the chapter, introduction to the idiot. This is a person who is on negative volition who is pictured in the Bible as the world’s biggest clown, the person who would reject God’s grace, would reject the promises of the Word, and wind up instead of being smart this is a smart aleck, and smart alecks are always people who think they are a lot smarter than they are and they wind up being very, very naïve in certain areas. In certain areas they’ll be smart but in other areas they are very, very naïve, and they are very susceptible to temptations at certain times. And Proverbs 7 deals with the idiot and gives you a biographical portray of his life, showing why he is an idiot and why, because he is on negative volition he encounters human viewpoint. Human viewpoint never illuminates and therefore he falls into the trap every time; he is a sucker.

So Proverbs 1:16-19; Proverbs 1:32; Proverbs 7; Proverbs 11:5-6; Proverbs 12:13, 14 and 26; Proverbs 13:6, 15; Proverbs 17:11; Proverbs 21:7; and Proverbs 22:3.

[Proverbs 1:16-19, “For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood. [17] Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird. [18] And they wait for their own blood; they lurk secretly for their own lives. [19] So are the ways of everyone who is greedy of gain, who takes away the life of the owners thereof.”

Proverbs 1:32, “But whoso hearkens unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.”

Proverbs 11:5-6, “The righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way, but the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness. [6] The righteousness of the upright shall deliver them, but transgressors shall be taken in their own iniquity.”

Proverbs 12:13-14, “The wicked is snared by the transgression of his lips; but the just shall come out of trouble. [14] A man shall be satisfied with good by the fruit of his mouth; and the recompense of a man’s hands shall be rendered unto him.

Proverbs 12:26, “The righteous is more excellent than his neighbor, but the way of the wicked seduces them.”

Proverbs 13:6, ‘Righteousness keeps him that is upright in the way, but wickedness overthrows the sinner.”

Proverbs 13:15, “Good understanding gives favor, but the way of transgressors is hard.”

Proverbs 17:11, “An evil man seeks only rebellion; therefore, a cruel messenger shall be sent against him.”

Proverbs 21:7, “The robbery of the wicked shall destroy them, because they refuse to do justice.”

Proverbs 22:3, “A prudent man foresees the evil, and hides himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished.”]

All these verses teach in some way or have reference to in some way the law of self-destruction. Now let’s turn to Proverbs 11:5; in Proverbs 11:5-6 we have two of these verses in the chain I just gave you, and here is a portrayal of the law of self-destruction. Please notice again we are studying the laws of creation that are there by virtue of creation. You must understand it goes back to the basis of the divine viewpoint framework, to the foundation. The foundation is creation; these laws are just because God has created it that way. They have been somewhat affected by the fall but they are not cancelled by the fall. So the laws are here by virtue of creation.

And in Proverbs 11:5 we have the Creator revealing verbally how He made it. Looked at another way, all we’re looking at here is the operating instructions for creation. “The righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way, but the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness.” That is the law of self-destruction. “The righteousness of the perfect,” now we have to examine the righteousness of the perfect because you must carefully distinguish what it is and what it is not. In the Hebrews, first the word righteousness, tsedekah, this is the word for righteousness. It means conformity to a standard of sorts, and therefore conformity to God’s righteousness. God is sovereign, He is righteous, He is just, He is love, He is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable and eternal, and it is conformity to that attribute of God, God’s righteousness. That is tsedekah and that is the righteousness that is under discussion in verse 5, “the righteousness of the perfect.” Now there are two points where we acquire righteousness and we must be clear on the difference between these two points or we’ll be fouled up forever.

The plan of salvation is divided into three parts. Theologians have terms for them; generally they use justification, we’ll call it phase one. That is the point in time, a thousandth of a second when you receive Jesus Christ as Savior. That is point 1; that is the starting point of the Christian life. Your Christian life has to have a starting point like your physical life has to have a starting point. Some of you may be here this morning who are believers and can’t remember when you received Christ. That’s all right, as long as you know now that you believe in Jesus Christ. You don’t remember the details of your physical birth either but if you’re breathing you know that somehow it must have happened. So it’s not necessary to know all the details of your physical birth, as long as you’re alive.

The second part of the plan of salvation, often called sanctification, exists from time or the point that I accept Christ to the time I die or the time we are raptured to be face to face with the Lord. And then point three, which is often called glorification, is the time of death, or the time that I go to be with the Father for eternity. Those are the three parts of the plan of salvation.

Now, in our own day we have confusion because people do not distinguish between the parts. People who have existing in the second phase of salvation is what they say is that I am working or I’m going to lose my sanctification, I’m going to lose my salvation or something. You’re not going to lose your salvation, that’s already secure because phase one is finished before phase two starts. So you cannot reverse phase one. But you can hinder phase two, phase two being sanctification. Now we’re on the theme of God’s righteousness and we have to, therefore, relate +R or God’s absolute righteousness to phase one and phase two. And we want to see how the righteousness of the person comes about in history and we want to find out how to relate these to the two parts of the plan of salvation.

First let’s relate righteousness or tsedekah to phase one. How does a person who is a non-Christian, who may be very religious and very moral, how does that person acquire God’s righteousness. He is given God’s righteousness because of the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, in His life and in His death, considered as a unit, Jesus Christ manifested God’s righteousness through His humanity. And therefore Christ’s life is righteousness. That is why four books of the Bible are essentially a divine viewpoint biography of Jesus Christ, to show what righteousness is and to show what it is not. If you want to know what God’s righteousness is, look at the person of Jesus Christ. There is righteousness. There is righteousness lived out. Please derive your content to the word righteousness from the biography of Christ and not from the taboos that you will encounter in religious circles. If you try to fit some standard of righteousness that you picked up from your local Christian group, you are going to be a very warped believer. There is only one source of righteousness to understand it and that source is God’s Word and particularly the biography of the person of Christ. There you have righteousness. You have it in other places, of course, but there it comes out with particular clarity.

So you have God’s righteousness through the life of Jesus Christ. And there you will notice the difference between pseudo righteousness and human good and genuine righteousness or divine good. Jesus Christ had no human good, it was all divine good. The people who criticize Christ were religious people and they had a lot of human good, just like in this area of the country we have a lot of human good, people who would say I am moral, I am ethical, I do this, I do that, I don’t do this and I don’t do that, but nevertheless never spend five minutes a week studying the Word of God. Any person who is moral who does not study the Word of God is not moral by God’s standards. They are deeply immoral and they are anti-righteousness. So next time you encounter some prissy individual who thinks they are so righteous and thinks they belong to this club, that club, and they have such a glorified reputation in the community, and they do not study the Word continually during the week you’re looking at a phony. And these people are people who have confused the issue. So perfect righteousness can be seen in the life of Christ.

Now, how does Christ’s life and the righteousness that shows in Him, how is this brought in contact with us, because obviously in order to apply verse 5, “the righteousness of the perfect one,” we have to somehow acquire this righteousness. So we’re asking the question, how do I acquire true righteousness, not pseudo righteousness, not human good, but how do I acquire absolute righteousness? It goes back to two doctrines, both grounded on grace. One is imputation and the other is justification. We have been through this 100 times but since obviously from my counseling experience it still isn’t getting through so here goes 101. And we will continue to do this until it absorbs. So imputation and justification.

Imputation is crediting; in this day of credit and so on, you shouldn’t have any trouble understanding what imputation it; it simply means crediting. And it is not an experience. You don’t feel the act of crediting; you may get a notice in the mail and you may feel miserable afterwards, you may have very unusual experiences with the credit card people. We’ve all had the experience of the results of a bad credit. Now you didn’t feel it the moment the man entered something in the books that the computer printed you out on some sheet. You didn’t feel that; that wasn’t part of your experience. And if you hadn’t been informed through the mail that it had happened would you ever have known that this had been credited to your account? No you wouldn’t, because you didn’t feel it; it was not directly experienced and couldn’t be directly experienced. It is an inexperiencable category. So crediting is a non-experience. All right, same thing on imputation; it is a non-experiential thing. It occurs in the throne room and you don’t feel it. So you may not feel like you have the righteousness of Christ and it doesn’t count; your feelings don’t enter into the discussion at any point whatever.

The point is that Jesus Christ’s righteousness has been credited to your account. Here is your account; your account is in two places in the throne room of God; actually three but we won’t discuss the third one today. One is in the book of life, the Lamb’s book of life. Then the books, plural, of works. And you have an account in both these places. Now when Jesus Christ died for you He died for every member of the human race. And when you accept Jesus Christ your credit in the book of life becomes secure and inerasable, it can never be erased, it is indelibly placed there. And no matter how many sins you commit, no many how many taboos you violate, no matter where you go geographically, no matter what you do, this cannot be extinguished. Your credit remains in the book of life, period, and it is not changed in any way. Over here you have works; when you receive Jesus Christ’s righteousness your claim in this book is erased because you have given up at that point any hope of securing an audience with God the Father on the basis of your human works. When you receive Christ’s righteousness you give up or have given up all hope of securing an audience with God based upon your human attainment. No matter how proud you may be, no matter how many degrees after your name, no matter how many years in the academic area that you have spent, all of that is given up as a means of securing an audience with God the Father.

So at this point, when imputation occurs it is a very, very important thing for you though you never can feel it. You can’t sit there and sing a couple of hymns and feel it; you may feel something but it isn’t imputation. Imputation is not an experience, it is a non-experience and the only way you can learn of your imputation is through the Word of God, the same way the only way you can learn of what your credit account is some place is through the mail, by verbal revelation. And God’s Word is the mail for you and God’s Word tells you the conditions under which your credit shares Christ’s righteousness. When you believer on Jesus Christ as your sole Savior from sin, then and only then is His righteousness credited to your account. Notice, I did not say when you are baptized. I did not say when you joined the church, when you gave money, when you do all the other things, but when you receive Christ as your sole Savior from sin. And I did not say invite Christ into your heart either; I said when you receive Christ as your sole Savior from sin.

Imputation then means that I have credited to my account, though I cannot feel it, I have Christ’s righteousness. I know I have Christ’s righteousness because the Bible tells me that when I received Christ I gained that righteousness. 2 Corinthians 5:21, He has become our righteousness. 2 Corinthians 5:17, He has become our righteousness. And you know it not on the basis of feeling; you know it on the basis of the Word.

Now the second time that you come in contact with righteousness is during… let’s go one further step here, the doctrine of justification. After Christ’s righteousness is credited to my account and your account, then immediately there’s a trial held. You are brought into the courtroom by representation; again this is not an experience. You can’t feel this happen. Now this actually happens before the throne. You are hauled into court and tried. At your trial the issue is whether you’re entire life as one unit, from the time of physical birth until the time of physical death, whether that life conforms to God’s righteousness or not. That is the issue. And during that interval of time the question is: does it or does it not meet God’s absolute standards. You are on trial; Jesus Christ is your defense attorney, and you are brought before the Father and the question is asked of your life, doe sit or does it not absolutely conform to righteousness. Because now on your account is credited God’s righteousness in Christ, the doctrine of imputation solves the problem of the trial, so that as a result of the trial you pass and you are justified.

When the Father pounds the gavel and pronounces the case dismissed, the case is closed, that is a decree; it is an unalterable decree; it is a once and for all decree that states that your life positionally with the Father now is absolutely righteousness from physical birth to physical death, even though right now you may be only here on the time scale, you may not be near physical death, and you may be, but you may not be, it doesn’t make any difference. The point is wherever you are the trial includes your whole life. You don’t come up before the throne for three trials every year of your life as it passes. There is only one trial and that trial is over in an instant of time.

This is what is happening when a person receives Christ; get away from all this subjectivism, and all this I invite Jesus into my heart and all sorts of things happen and I feel this tingly sensation from head to toe. Now you may or may not, that isn’t the issue. The issue is whether you have Christ’s righteousness credited to your account or whether the Father has justified you; that is the issue and that is a non-experience. And you don’t trip down the aisle in front of an experience to gain this. This is a transaction that is fulfilled in heaven instantly, without your advice. I don’t come along and tell the Father how to do it. This is all instantaneous when I receive Christ. So that is the righteousness of in phase one.

But still we have to get more background to understand why the righteousness of the perfect directs his way. There is a second place that righteousness touches our lives and that is phase two, from the time you accept Christ to the time we die. This righteousness is what is known as sanctification, a big long word but it means phase two, the time of training. How does absolute righteousness come into the life during phase two? Absolute righteousness first of all, can be measured and it is measured not by emotions. Righteousness is measured by the standards of the Word. Therefore, why I always put up here positive volition, Christ in the heart, we have the enlightening ministry of the Holy Spirit, we have divine viewpoint framework and then we have the experience of love with God. You can’t analyze experience unless you first have a frame of reference, and you don’t have a frame of reference apart from the Word of God and therefore you can’t analyze experience.

Experience follows the Word, not precedes the Word. So in your life as a believer now in phase two you must first know the Word of God, because it’s only the divine viewpoint framework that tells you what is righteous and what is unrighteous. You may have been brought up with many hang-ups; you may have been brought up in a very religious environment; you may have been brought up in a very moral environment, and you may have been brought up that certain things are proper and certain things are improper. You may think that every time somebody uses a four-lettered word it’s a violation of one of the Ten Commandments. It is not. If you knew what that particular commandment was talking about you would be shocked, because what the commandment is about thou shalt not lift up the name of the Lord thy God in vain, means taking the Lord and identifying Him with apostasy. And every time you have a cult and an apostate organization that’s a violation of the commandment you’re thinking about, and you’d never dream that that was a violation but that’s what the original commandment means.

And some of you may have all sorts of problems when it comes to the (?) of the Word of God in the Old Testament. We noticed that with the Saul/David series. Some people have just been brought up that talking about foreskins is something you don’t mention from the pulpit. But the Holy Spirit mentions it and has a good laugh about it in 1 Samuel. Now that tells you, you see, the difference between your prissy standards that you have, that you carry, and they may be sins in your family but don’t force them over on other people because they’re not absolutes. They may be your personal family traditions but leave it at that. The Word of God has its own set of standards and we must submit to its standards, not our family standards or some other set of standards.

You may consider that it is right or it’s wrong to have service beyond 12:15, I once got a feedback card, if you expect us to be in here on time then we expect you to finish on time. I felt like answering okay, I’ll finish on time, we’ll end the service at 1:00 p.m. and then we can have two solid hours of the Word of God, and that’ll be twice as good. To some people this is a tradition, that you don’t go beyond 12:00 o’clock, you have to stop there, you’ve got a roast in the oven and that’s more important than the Word, and because my roast is more important than the Word of God then I will go home at 12:00 o’clock regardless, whether the Word is taught or whether it isn’t taught. And you may have been brought up that going to church is right in and of itself, and you maybe starting off with some apostate church that teaches nothing but liberalism all the time. Because you’ve been brought up that when the alarm goes off Sunday morning at 11:00 o’clock you’re supposed to put in a show somewhere; after all, you don’t get a chance to wear your dress or your coat during the week and you’ve got to do it at least once a week so let’s put in a show some place at 11:00 o’clock, and that may be one of your family … I was brought up proper, you go to church on Sunday at 11:00… sure, right smack to apostasy. That’s very smart. There are some times and places where you’d be better off not going to church at 11:00 o’clock to get your weekly dose of poison. It would be absolutely better for you not to go but because people have absolute standards, and they’re not absolute but they’ve made them absolute, they’re in trouble.

Now that’s the difference between human viewpoint and divine viewpoint. Now under divine viewpoint you know what righteousness is from the Word; does my experience fit the categories of the Word or doesn’t it. That is the issue, not whether I am having all sorts of emotions in my Christian life. That doesn’t count. I’ll show you a place where this comes out in a very graphic way. We have a group of people in this town who have gotten the idea that you become a Christian and then shortly thereafter or may be several years after you have to have a crisis experience. And this crisis experience is called the baptism of the Holy Ghost. They don’t say Holy Spirit, it sounds better to say Holy Ghost. And this is the baptism of the Holy Ghost and usually there’s a quiver in the voice as they say it, have you got the baptism or something like this. Now they have made some sort of an experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now there is a baptism of the Holy Spirit but it’s a non-experience, not an experience. It’s part of phase one, not part of phase two. You see the value of this, of dividing the plan of salvation up in parts. Phase one is finished, and phase one includes baptism of the Holy Spirit. It is not part of the second phase. But people have this experience; they flap their tongue at both ends or something and this is the baptism of the Holy Ghost. That’s ridiculous. That’s just experience; who wants another experience, you have one every day. Who wants one of those? That has nothing to do with the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The baptism of the Holy Ghost occurs in an instant of time with justification; it has nothing to do with experience, absolutely unrelated.

So we have, then, God’s righteousness coming to us at the point of phase one by imputation and justification, and now the indwelling Holy Spirit starts to produce Christ, Christ’s nature in the believer.

Now Christ’s nature in the believer occurs in two ways. First it occurs in an absolute sense; if you are in fellowship or out of fellowship at any given time. If you are in fellowship with Christ, you’re walking with Him, you have no known sin an issue between you and the Father, and so therefore at that point you’re in fellowship. Then you’re out of fellowship, rebellion over something. So at any given time you are out of it or in it; in fellowship, out of fellowship. Or if you like the vocabulary, the filling of the Holy Spirit, if you like John’s vocabulary it’s abiding, if you like Paul’s vocabulary it’s walking in the Spirit, whatever the vocabulary it’s talking about the same thing whether you’re in fellowship or out of fellowship. That’s the absolute.

Now the relative; the relative is Christ in the heart again. This takes time and it starts out always with positive volition, submission to God, then you have the enlightening work of the Holy Spirit, and what He enlightens to you first, notice, is not experience; He enlightens you first to doctrine, divine viewpoint framework, that is the first thing the Holy Spirit illuminates to you; He does not illuminate you to experience, He illuminates you to doctrine, and you cannot have experience until after you have had doctrine. And after you have doctrine then you come up here to love. And that is when you know what it means, God loves me! How can you know God loves you? Do you feel it? Negative. You know God loves you because of what the Word has told you that He has done on your behalf; that is why you know God loves you and that doesn’t change from day to day with how you feel. So God’s love becomes real through doctrine, and after that and only after that, then you can start to give thanks.

Thanksgiving is the end product of a long line here; you give thanks when you’re convinced that it is worth giving thanks for, and you can’t honestly give thanks. You can go through the motions because maybe someone who led you to Jesus Christ said now the Christian is supposed to give thanks in all things. Now everywhere you go give thanks to the Father, so you sit there, I thank You Father, I thank you Father, I thank You Father, and you grit your teeth and you don’t mean it; it’s not an honest thanksgiving because you’re not sure He is working together to good for you because you don’t have enough doctrine so you can trust in that situation so don’t give thanks for it, just forget about it, give thanks when you can. And then gradually you build up and so on.

So that is where you have righteousness, this nature of Christ in your heart and soul is righteousness. And please notice another thing. We use two terms here, “heart” and there’s another word for emotions in the Bible; the Bible has no word for emotions, it has three words actually, “kidney, “belly” and “stomach.” And the word for heart is lev (לב) and it just means heart. Now isn’t interesting that nowhere in God’s Word does it say Christ is in my belly, or bowels. It doesn’t say Christ is in my kidneys, that Christ is in my belly. Those terms are missing from Scripture. The only place where Christ is in is in my heart and heart has to do with mind, not emotions. Now isn’t that interesting. Nowhere in Scripture does it say Christ is part of your emotions. Your emotions are responding to what your mind sees of Christ but your emotions have nothing to do with your spiritual life. They are there, given to you by creation, not regeneration. Emotions are not part of the regenerate work; your mind is but your emotions are not. Your emotions must train like your hands, feet and everything else; your emotions are derivative.

Let’s go now to Proverbs 11:5, now that we have seen where righteousness comes from and what it is and what it is not. Even this righteousness in the heart that Christ gives, though it manifests itself in experience, is a work of grace. Verse 5, “So the righteous of the perfect,” that is a righteousness which doesn’t come from doing something, it is given to you, first phase one, at the point of salvation; phase two, the work of the Holy Spirit in your heart. You can tell when it’s there because you have conformity with the Word, but it’ll be because you want to, not because of approbation lust because you’re trying to impress your girlfriend or you boyfriend or your wife or your husband or some leader in a Christian group.

“The righteousness of the perfect,” now let’s go to the word perfect; it is a word in the Hebrew which means sound and healthy. It’s more of a word of healthy than anything else. It does not mean perfect the way we normally use the word. It does not mean 100% perfection. People often quote, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” And they completely misinterpret that, they’re talking about perfection morally; it’s talking about grace, a gracious attitude. Perfection here is not 100% perfection. If it was then verse 5 could only apply to one person, Jesus Christ. So if verse 5 is to apply to all believers, it can’t mean perfect. Perfect is something else; it is not perfectionism.

What perfect means is that you are in line with your conscience. Here’s your conscience; your conscience has certain categories in it and it’s letting you know when something is right and something wrong, and when the conscience has a red signal that something is wrong and you fail to do something about it, … [tape turns] … something is wrong you use 1 John 1:9, you are perfect. That is the meaning of perfect here. “The righteousness of the perfect,” the believer who uses 1 John 1:9 and confesses his sins. He knows he’s not perfect, that’s why he’s confessing his sins. David knew he wasn’t perfect but every time David goofed, David picked himself up, didn’t cry about it and moved on; that is a “perfect” believer in this sense of the Word “perfect.

So now let’s look at the whole sentence in verse 5, “The righteousness of the perfect one shall direct his way,” now the word direct does not mean guidance. This is not a divine guidance verse. Now the principle is correct, that doesn’t happen to be what is taught here. The word “direct” means to make smooth, it means to make easy, to ease his way, and it’s referring to two things. By position, phase one, because I share Christ’s righteousness, here absolute righteousness makes the way perfect for me. How? All right, here I am, at the time I receive Christ God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit do certain things for me; I am in position in Christ. There I am; there I am with righteousness. Now that position which is called righteousness in this verse, that position is what makes the way smooth for me. How does that position make the way smooth for me? First of all, it makes the way smooth for me before the throne and the Father. When Satan comes to accuse me, there could be a rocky time downstairs if Satan’s accusation is held up. Satan accuses you all the time. When was the last time you had a good does of mental attitude sin? All right, Satan had a ball, he said ha-ha; Satan is the biggest tattle-tail in the universe. And when he sees a believer with mental attitude sin or overt sins, there he goes, to tattle to the Father; look at that Father, look at this down there, look what they’re doing. And it could be rough for you if his charge held up before the throne. But because you share Christ’s righteousness it makes the way smooth for you, because at that point your imputation takes over… huh-un, you’re credited with Christ’s righteousness by position.

Now it also has another way that His righteousness makes the way smooth and this goes back to our chart of Christ in the heart again. When the Holy Spirit sees that I am in fellowship, I’ve used 1 John 1:9, I’m back in fellowship, what does the Holy Spirit immediately begin to do when I am in fellowship? It frees the Holy Spirit to work in other areas of my life. You see up until… while we’re out of fellowship the Holy Spirit is having a little context with our conscience and us; we are saying no, no, no, no, no, no, and the Holy Spirit is enforcing our conscience and saying that is wrong, that is wrong, that is wrong, that is wrong, that is wrong. And while the Holy Spirit is saying that is wrong, that is wrong, that is wrong, He is, you might say, spending His time majoring on that point. There is no time left for the Holy Spirit’s ministry in other areas, relatively speaking.

So when you confess you’re back in fellowship. Now the Holy Spirit can move up here and can begin to work in your heart in a new way; he can begin to illuminate doctrine, He can begin to show you and open your eyes to number one, what the doctrine is, and number two the historical reasons that make it credible so you can trust it. So the enlightening work of the Holy Spirit in illuminating Bible doctrine through the local church and a pastor teacher and the Holy Spirit illuminating doctrine in the sense of faith, showing you the historical basis for it and the credibility for it. Then we have the divine viewpoint framework and then you can use the faith technique. See, you can’t use the faith technique while you’re down here; while you’re out of fellowship the only faith technique you can use is 1 John 1:9, but after you’re back in fellowship, then you can use the faith technique over a whole range of problems, and therefore “the righteousness of the perfect makes smooth your way.”

Let’s look at this verse once more and look at what it does not say; it does not say the perfection of the righteous ones smoothes their way, does it? What’s a noun? The subject of the verb, the verb is “direct and make smooth” in verse 5, but the subject of the verb isn’t perfect. The subject of the verb is righteousness. So if the righteousness… where do we get the righteousness? By grace, it was given, we do not earn it, we do not deserve it. So it’s God’s grace giving righteousness that smoothes the way.

But now we come to the law of self-destruction, “but the wicked one,” and the word “wicked” is the old word that we’ve encountered again and again here, rashah, this word means evil or wickedness with emphasis on the chaos of it all, with emphasis on the confusion of it all. This is the one Isaiah uses, when he says “The wicked are like the troubled sea that turns up mire and dirt,” turbulence in other words. So this is a Hebrew adjective referring to the wicked one, but with emphasis on the result of the wickedness or characteristic of the wickedness, the confusion. But the confusion or the confused one “shall fall by his own confusion.” And here you see it worked out very beautifully because what’s happening under the chaos of the heart, that’s what this is, rashah refers to what we’re calling chaos of the heart. And so you have the wicked one, negative volition. What’s happened at the point of negative volition? The person is out of fellowship, they’ve stayed out of fellowship, so what’s happening to the Holy Spirit. He’s darkening, He has withdrawn His illuminating ministry which creates a dullness, a lack of perception, and when that dullness sets in the next thing that starts to come is human viewpoint. It’s all around anyway and it comes charging in. You can’t stop it; there’s no way you can stop it; it’s just like water pressure, when the pressure goes down inside the water outside leaks in and it’s the same way with your soul. When you don’t have divine viewpoint to keep up the internal pressure of your soul your soul is going of leak, and judging by some counseling experiences I’ve had recently we’ve got a lot of leaks because people have not filled their soul with the Word, and so the human viewpoint is just leaking in like crazy, pouring in.

That is what happens, and that’s what it means, “the wicked one,” or the confused one, or the one with chaos in the heart, “shall fall by his chaos in the heart,” that means God doesn’t have to clobber him, he’s usually so stupid he trips and falls himself. It’s very easy to do. The person like this usually goes on mental attitude bitterness, that’s one of the signs, jealousy, bitterness, all these mental attitude sin. What’s going to happen to the person’s social life? Do you like to be around a person that’s always jealous, always bitter, always tense? No, you’re going to avoid them. So the first thing you know he’s ostracized. And you can begin to see how the chaos in the heart works to produce further destruction. And this is the law of self-destruction, where God destroys the person through his own chaos.

Proverbs 11:6, a very similar verse, teaching the same truth, we can speed through verse 6 now, it teaches basically the same thing as verse 5 except from a different perspective. “The righteousness of the upright shall deliver them,” please notice the righteousness is the same grace given righteousness, and the word “deliver” is in the passive voice, the subject receives the action, which means again this is the voice of grace. This is a gracious operation; “the righteousness of the upright will deliver,” they will be delivered by this; they don’t do the delivering, it’s not operation bootstrap, you don’t take a course on how to deliver yourself, you are delivered by grace. “… but transgressors shall be taken in their naughtiness [own iniquity],” isn’t that a sweet word? It meant something in King James; today outside of kindergarten it’s not well understood. The word “naughtiness” here is a word that refers to desire and it refers to a principle you will often observe in yourself and one of the mechanisms for developing chaos in the heart.

Verse 6 is amplified, incidentally, in Romans 6, the same principle. Let’s go through it a minute, the last part of verse 6. “The transgressors shall be taken in their own naughtiness.” The “transgressor” is a word that means covenant rebel, it means one who rebels, a traitor, and is a word with negative volition. So now God’s Word is going to give us a little tip on how this chaos in the heart takes over and works in a person. It starts out with negative volition; here’s the person in rebellion against God’s will for their life and it can be in an amoral area, so to speak. The greatest acts of rebellion I have observed as a pastor do not come in the moral areas; they come in God’s general will for your life, whether God wants you to do this, or this, or whether someone says I don’t care what God wants me to do I am not going to do that. And it may be going in the ministry or it may be staying in business or it may be something else. You be careful when you say that; that’s a vow that you’ve just made and you can be setting yourself up for misery, misery, misery. Don’t you ever say that, whatever God’s will is I don’t care but it’s not going to be that. Now God is not a meany and He doesn’t go giving you the result of your vows but vowing like that oftentimes is a very, very pious way of rebelling against God. And you can be very moral and ethical and fit all the community standards while you’re going it, it doesn’t mean a thing; it’s an act of apostasy.

So you have negative volition, that’s the word “transgressors,” the ones on negative volition “shall be taken in their naughtiness.” The word “naughtiness” means their desires. Now here’s what happens; we go back to the soul chart that we have. Here’s how this negative volition gets started and what it leads to. You have negative volition, the mind begins to clash with the conscience; the conscience is here and the conscience begins to develop scar tissue. The mind says no, no, no, no, to conscience. So we have a big “no” going on here. Now what happens is that while the mind is going on no, it is failing to exercise leadership over my emotions. So now my emotions down here, the three biblical words, belly, kidneys which really means adrenal glands, and bowels, these are the three physiological terms because your emotions are best seen in those areas, the Jews knew a lot about how the emotions worked out in the body, these emotions begin to get out of control because the mind no longer is mastering the emotions; the mind is too busy fighting the conscience and so you have people begin to live on the basis of their emotion; it’s always how they fell. How do you feel about this, how do I feel about that, not what the Word has to say.

So this is where the naughtiness or the desires begin. Now the desire is a word that refers to this whole thing, mind plus emotions in a pattern, we call that a learned behavior pattern. And so in times of negative volition the transgressors are developing patterns of responding to life. For example, you may be in a group of people and you may not be able to respond gracious to people that cut you, people that are catty, people that are gossiping, people that are maligning you. And you have never learned how to relax in grace and let it go and move on. And so you are one of these people that every time this happens instead of claiming the promises which are available, you actually, though you wouldn’t think this, you actually are going on negative volition at that point. For example, you’re not giving thanks for it. And right there it shows you something’s wrong. So you’re actually on negative volition; the mind begins to do battle with the conscience, your emotions begin to boil. And now you’re in trouble. Actually you have started the process of apostasy in your heart, in your soul here.

Now, when that pattern of behavior gets established, because you go into this group, the same thing; you go into this church, you think oh, that’s the ideal church, and the first thing you do, you meet the first two people, two sin natures, you’re disillusioned, so you react to it. You go over to this group, some civic club, well at least I can get away from all the religious people, I’ll go over here and you find out there are hypocrites there too. And you can’t stand them, so you react. So you go from one group to the other group; you react to your family that way, you react to your group that way. You join a class in school and you find the people in the classroom are that way. You’re a teacher on the faculty, you find the faculty is that way. If you’re a man in business you find the men in business are that way. You may be in government and you find the people in government are that way. Wherever it is you always react this way. So you begin to build a –R learned behavior pattern. You respond to jealousy with jealousy; you respond to bitterness with bitterness.

Now what happens? One sin leads to another and that’s the principle of the law of self-destruction. They shall be destroyed by their own desires. All right, you have the desire here; the desire starts off –R learned behavior pattern number one; that may be I react to bitterness with bitterness. But now I’ve got to hide my bitterness because it’s not considered appropriate to express bitterness. So instead of dealing with the bitterness on the basis of 1 John 1:9 what do you do now? You begin to get a kind of reaction to this one because you’ve got to cover up the first one. So you cover up the first one with a false piety on the outside. You learn to smile while you’re murdering the person inside; you blankety blank while oh my, you’re sweet, how is it today and so on. You’re developing this piety on the outside. So now you’ve got a second pattern of behavior on the outside. Where did that one come up from? That one came up because of the first one. So it’s fig leaves all over again; that’s what Adam and Eve tried. It’s just the same thing, this is operation fig leaf all over, just stack one on top of the other until you’ve got enough. And that’s the same thing that Christians do, we all do it. And this is –R, we’ll get another one here just for illustration, you always have to have three. After you have bitterness, then you have piety on the outside, then you have to notice something, you can’t get too close to people, some of your friends because if you were too close to them then they discover the piety and they look underneath and they see the bitterness, so now you begin to develop a third behavior pattern which is isolation from other people and gradually you notice your social life deteriorates. Gradually you notice that people that were once your friends are no longer your friends. Every time you come to church they sit one person further away, then it becomes one pew further back, until you’re sitting in the front, they’re sitting in the back, or if you’re at the back they’re at the front. So you have one learned behavior pattern stacked on top of another and that’s what it means, the law of self-destruction, the transgressors, the people on negative volition “shall be taken in” or with or by means of “their desires.” Their desires are stacking up.

One further verse, Proverbs 22:3, it amplifies the same principle and brings out the law of self-destruction by way of summary. “A prudent man foresees the evil, and hides himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished.” The word “prudent” is a word which means shrewd and it was used of the serpent in Genesis 3:1, remember the [Hebrew word (?)], the (?) there was the most subtle of all the creatures, that word subtle means wise, clever or skillful. There it was in a bad sense; here it is in a good sense. It means shrewd, and what this means is that three’s a divine viewpoint framework operating in that heart so the mind has a frame of reference that can cope with the problems of life; just exactly opposite, most people have their image of Christianity as a bunch of naïve boobs tripping around on the basis of their emotions, and you’ll find, particularly if you go into business or if you’re in some other area where things are a lot more give and take and straightforward, you will find that many men are particularly turned off by this kind of thing. They consider Christians to be the most naïve people alive. And it’s a tragedy in our own generation that Christians have so badly fouled up our testimony that we have gotten that reputation.

But actually, from the Hebrew point of view chokmah or wisdom means exactly the reverse. If we knew more about how God made the universe doesn’t it follow that of all people should be least naïve. The shoe is precisely on the other foot, it’s the unbeliever who’s the naïve one because he’s operating as though the universe isn’t what it is. The believer, knowing what the universe is, operates the way God made it. This is why Proverbs was written, to give us operating instructions. So “the prudent man foresees the evil,” in other words, he sees the first two laws, the law of temporal effect and the law of final effect. He may be in the middle of a business decision and he knows the law of temporal effect is operating, he knows the law of final effect is operating and he knows it operates for him, it operates for his competitor, it operates for all men. And so knowing these laws, how God has established creation, he makes his decision accordingly. “He foresees the evil and hides,” or literally “he abandons himself,” he gets away from the thing, “but the simple one,” this is the word which means a person on negative volition without wisdom, this is the peti, the idiot. I came across somebody that had a very stupid dog and they named it Peti and I think that’s good, I like to see doctrinal names on animals, beginning with Adam it was so, so when people name their pets this way it’s fine. “Simple,” the peti, the one who was without chokmah, they “pass on,” they don’t need a shove, they just pass on, but in a more modern proverbial sense, you’ve heard the expression, give a man enough rope and he’ll hand himself. And that’s exactly the law of self-destruction, God gives you enough rope we hang ourselves. Don’t blame Him for it, He just supplied the rope by grace. And we’re the ones that are the goofballs that go out and hang ourselves with it. “The simple pass on, and are punished.” Notice it is passive now. The first verb is active voice, that means the doing is done by the idiot; he passes on. But he can’t change the nature of the universe even though he’s an idiot, and even though he’s such an idiot he thinks he can change the nature of the universe he can’t, and so he runs into a brick wall and he is punished.

Next week we’ll deal with one final law in the book of Proverbs that corresponds to these laws of general behavior.