Clough Proverbs Lesson 53

DI #1: The Law of the Soul II – How the Soul Works

Before we begin in Proverbs this morning I’d like to take this time to answer some questions that you handed in on the white cards on teaching and various issues. One is: Does they church have the moral responsibility to judge the believers within the church and not the ones outside the church, or is it God’s responsibility alone to judge? The New Testament seems to be very clear in this regard that the passages in Matthew 5 and 1 Corinthians teach that the people in authority inside the local church do have the right to evaluate in a limited area. Obviously there are things they have no right to evaluate, mental attitudes and so on, which are beyond the capability of someone to evaluate but the deacons and the pastor are charged in the New Testament to maintain order and to evaluate the spirituality with regard to specialized tasks of people inside the local church. This is not a free for all and is not a blanket approval of any and all judging. As far as people outside the local church the believer has the responsibility to provide divine viewpoint in every area and obviously if you apply divine viewpoint in the area of your job, in the classroom and so on, you are going to be automatically evaluating so the question becomes academic.

The second question: I am having a hard time in understanding how you categorize verses for the laws of temporal and final effect and self-destruction. Verses on self-destruction seems the same or sound like temporal or final effect verses. I can’t see a clear-cut distinction. The answer is that there isn’t a clear-cut distinction between these laws or principles. This is why when I began, if you remember I said that the book of Proverbs is very difficult to categorize. The way the book is written by the Holy Spirit shows there aren’t any airtight compartments. And we are categorizing them only for the sake of application. These are not either/or categories; they overlap considerably. But I have chosen to teach and present the book of Proverbs in this way because I think it will be of maximum help to you in applying the content.

You didn’t give us a chain of verses on the first law concerning the soul; how come? If you want the list it’s about 25 verses long and that’s why I didn’t bother to take your time with it. This will be issued later on when we finish the book of Proverbs in a mimeograph supplement to the tape series on a catalogue for the book of Proverbs.

Please explain why God’s giving His only Son is so much greater a sacrifice than man’s giving his only son in a just cause such as defending his country or going out as a missionary to teach God’s Word. The answer is given for you in Roman 5:6-8 where the point there is that God gave His Son and He didn’t have to. God gave His Son out of no obligation whatever. God gave His Son not only out of no obligation but God gave His Son out of a situation in which He would be giving His Son to the hands of the enemy, so it’s a simple case of grace and this is what makes it greater.

Another question that was handed in: Does it help with being taught the Bible at use in preparing you to know Christ? As I understand it you must receive knowledge of Christ before you can receive personal relationship with Christ. Right? Right! Okay, I answered that one. The point there is that even if a child is not a believer you’re not going to harm him by presenting him with the Word of God. You are building categories into his mind that will give him a head start when he finally does become a Christian at whatever age he receives Christ. This can be most clearly seen historically in the Jew. People often refer to the book of Acts and say oh, why is it that we can’t get back to the book of Acts today. What we need is a New Testament church that operates just like the book of Acts church did. They forget one thing; the book of Acts was written about Jewish people who have had years and years and years of teaching in the Old Testament. And when these people came to know Christ and throughout the book of Acts it’s like dropping a match on gasoline, they took off very rapidly. Why? Because before salvation they had Old Testament categories in their minds and they were all prepared for the gospel. This is why New Testament evangelism in our age doesn’t work that way because the average person that is evangelized has about .01 the amount of background that the Jew did in the book of Acts. It’s just that simple.

Another question: Why is “all your mind” repeated at the end of Matthew 22:37 if, as you say, mind is the same thing as heart. It sounds like they are distinct entities. When the word “mind” and “heart” is used, when those two words are used together in the New Testament, heart generally takes a contracted meaning of conscience. So when you have heart and mind together one means conscience and the other means the intellect. But neither of them ever refers to emotions, which was the point, if you recall, that was made at that time.

Now we have one more question on my remark several weeks ago regarding 1 John 1:3. Explain, if it’s not fellowship with God first and then the Bible, why do we make sure that we have confessed sin and are in fellowship before we understand the Bible? Also, why then if it’s with apostles first, then why is the Bible foolishness to an unregenerate person. If we don’t know about our human viewpoint being built up what can we do? Now this goes back to 1 John 1:3 where I made the statement that you must have fellowship with the apostles through the Word of God before you can have fellowship with Jesus Christ. In other words, you cannot enter into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ apart from first having assimilated the content of the apostle’s teachings in your mind. And the answer simply is, why, if it’s with the apostles first, then why is the Bible foolish to an unregenerate person, the Bible is foolishness to an unregenerate person because he’s rejecting the apostle’s teaching. The content of the apostle’s teaching is offensive to the unregenerate person, and for that reason the unregenerate person rejects it. Now there is a work of grace by the Holy Spirit in which He opens the mind. But there are two works here and don’t confuse them.

Now this is an important point and you’ll encounter it over and over and over again in Christian circles so I’m going to go into it a little bit here before we get in Proverbs 10. There is one work that comes through directly the ministry of the Holy Spirit and this work is illumination. There is another work that comes always through the Bible and nowhere else, and that is content. In other words, you cannot come to know Jesus Christ without the content of the Bible being presented to you. Now the work of the Holy Spirit illuminates you personally, subjectively, to what’s there in the text.

For an illustration of this, how many times have some of you had the experience of reading a passage of Scripture, very familiar to you, Psalm 121 or Psalm 23 or something like this and you’ve read it and read it and read it and read it. Something happens in your life, maybe a crisis, maybe a problem, and you read that same passage of Scripture again and all of a sudden you see something in Psalm 23 or 121 you never saw before. Now that’s been the work of the Holy Spirit illuminating your eyes so you can see. Has Psalm 23, the text of it changed? Are you now reading a different Psalm 23 than you did before? No. Has the Bible been changed in between readings? No. What has been changed? The Holy Spirit’s illumination. What has been given to you? Bible content. So in evangelism as well as restoration to fellowship, it is always the content of the Bible that is used by the Holy Spirit to illuminate your mind but the Holy Spirit does not give you direct revelation. Direct revelation ended with 1 Corinthians 13. There is no direct revelation today, there are no living prophets today, there is no open canon today. The canon of Scripture has been closed throughout the duration of the church age and that’s taught in 1 Corinthians 13:8-10. So if that’s the case, then obviously we must have fellowship with the apostles first.

Let’s turn to Proverbs 10 and we’ll continue studying the laws of the soul. Remember the book of Proverbs teaches on a very simple basis; master this principle and all seeking after truth will be an exciting experience for you. God is a person and thinks in language and mathematics. Because God thinks in language that means that nature was one time a thought in the head of God, in the mind of God. If that’s the case, man, being made in God’s image, with a conscience and with a mind, can understand nature. And so we summarize this by a series of laws or principles. And we have studied the general laws of responsible action, which includes the law of temporal effect, the law of final effect, the law of self-destruction. We are now on various laws of the soul.

Today we come to Proverbs 10:23; these deal with how you are built and how your soul works. Now in Proverbs 10:23 we read, “it is as sport to a fool to do mischief; but a man of understanding has wisdom. [24] The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him; but the desire of the righteous shall be granted.” Again we will study this word by word, sentence by sentence, to find the principle of how our souls work, remembering that we are the most complicated beings in the universe and that whereas a machine can be complicated, nothing is as complicated as the human soul. The human soul is tremendously complicated.

Now in verse 23 it says, “as sport is to a fool,” the first word to understand here is the word “fool,” and it is in the Hebrew k^esil, and that is the Hebrew word used here for a fool. Now many words are used in the Hebrew Bible to describe the unbeliever or the believer who is out of fellowship, he has chaos in the heart. The fool, the word “fool” emphasizes this word, k^esil emphasizes dullness. There are various attributes to a person who is in compound carnality. For example, we go through, it starts out with negative volition; it starts out with a darkening of the Holy Spirit, the acquisition of human viewpoint, a hatred toward God and those things that remind him of God, and then finally a deep frustration. Those are attributes or characteristics of compound carnality. And one of the outward manifestations of the ending of the Holy Spirit’s illuminating ministry is a spiritual dullness. So k^esil, the word k^esil, refers to that stage of compound carnality. It refers to an outward manifestation. The k^esil then is a person who has gone negative toward the Lord in some area.

Here are some ways you can become a k^esil, and you ought to know some of these ways; it’s easy to become one, very easy, and so therefore we want to see the various methods that a person can become a k^esil. The first way a person can become a k^esil is as a young person; a very young person. In fact, a person apparently can become a k^esil at age eight, nine or ten; in other words, at the point of initial God-consciousness. A child attaining God-consciousness apparently when he becomes usually agile at using language. When a child becomes God-conscious, and every child becomes God-conscious, no matter what culture he is in, no matter what home background he has, every child is God-conscious, with the possible exceptions of organic brain damage and so on. But you have God-consciousness then and if the child goes on negative volition early in life, say as an unbeliever, he never accepts the gospel, either he is never presented with the gospel in his home situation and has rejected it by someone outside the home or his mother and his father have tried to teach him the gospel and that child, at age eight or even seven or even six has gone negative toward the gospel, then again he can become a k^esil. So it can be at God-consciousness he becomes on negative volition, k^esil, he can become a k^esil at the negative volition at the point of gospel hearing. That’s another place where he can become a k^esil. He can become a k^esil later on in different ways and context.

But let’s take the believer; the believer is one who has received Jesus Christ as Savior, regardless of whether he’s been baptized, joined a church or anything else. That’s not the issue; the issue is whether he has received Jesus Christ as Savior. Now if that young child, say at age five years old, he becomes God-conscious and his parents are alert enough to present enough information at the dinner table and in other places, bedtime stories, etc. to communicate the gospel to that child. And that child accepts Christ and so initially he becomes a Christian. But because of various attitudes and so on he goes negative after receiving Christ and so he now becomes negative toward the Word of God. And this can happen at any point but it can happen very early. And this means that he will become a k^esil and all during the time that he is growing up, say he becomes a k^esil at age, all the way down to say 25, so for 17 years this child is a k^esil meaning that he is on negative volition toward the Word of God. A child that is a k^esil, on negative volition, depending on how extensive it is, will then miss many of the lessons in his home that he should learn.

For example, he will miss the lesson of authority, for it’s authority that is one of the first lessons that a child must learn. He will learn how to become very agile at the use of blaming somebody else, the so-called acrostic that we use here, the (?), he will become very agile at using fantasy to escape reality. He will use fantasy, when his parents tell him to do something he will throw a tantrum. And if his parents are stupid they will let him throw his tantrum. If his parents are ignorant of the Word of God they will go right along with modern educational theory and let him thrash around the floor and yell and scream and carry on instead of swatting him on the rear end which is the way you treat… that’s first aid for tantrums. And the way to break a tantrum up is to apply certain force to the place that God has designed it to be applied to. And that solves tantrums. But tantrums should never be permitted on the part of any child because if you permit tantrums on your child you are training them to respond to life with tantrums and when they become an adult they will be throwing their fits and tantrums. Don’t you ever allow a child throw a fit or a tantrum, and by this time if you’re a parent you can tell when your child cries because he really is hurt and when he is crying just out of anger against you or someone else. You never permit a child to do that under any circumstances, whether he’s in a restaurant, whether he’s at some other place, it’s socially embarrassing, you take him to the men’s room or the women’s room and have it out. But wherever it is don’t you ever let a child get away with a tantrum. If you do, you’re training him; you’re training him that he can have his won way, that he can manipulate you, that he can have his own way as long as he throws a tantrum that’s large enough and great enough to that you are afraid to do anything about it. In other words, you are training your child how to bully you by allowing tantrums.

And this is one of the things that a child on negative volition toward the Word of God will accelerate in and learn very proficiently. He will learn as he gets older and becomes an adolescent, he will learn how to rationalize his way out of various situations. Oh well, you see it was this way, or you see, everybody else was doing it so you see, I had to because I have to be with the group to keep my testimony, or some other lame brain excuse. And this is called rationalization. And then we have isolation, where the child learns that if he can’t have his own way well then he’s just going to go and isolate himself in a closet somewhere or isolate himself from all his friends and then everybody will feel sorry for him, and this is just catering to self-pity. Well, there are a number of things that a child will learn on negative volition toward the Word of God.

Now all of this can be summarized by the Hebrew word k^esil; a k^esil is an individual that is dull spiritually. They never perceive the issue, and in Proverbs 10:23 they make an analogy; an analogy is made between a fool doing mischief and as sport, except the word “sport” here is the word for laughter and we can see this expression where it’s used elsewhere in the book of Ecclesiastes 7:6, the laughter of the k^esil.

So turn to Eccl 7:5-6, here the same expression is used and by turning here I think you’ll see the flavor of what this idiom means. Verse 5, “It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools.” Now that is a proverb and verse 6 comments on the proverb. So verse 5 is a quote from a previous proverb that Solomon knew. Remember Ecclesiastes is written from the human viewpoint but nevertheless it has certain principles in it that are very important for us. The proverb in Ecclesiastes 7:5, “It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than for a man to hear the song of fools,” has reference to divine viewpoint and human viewpoint. It refers to two people who can give you advice. A song of a fool or a song of an idiot is a song of praise, and it means that you can be patted on the back by somebody full of human viewpoint and the song of a fool is advice that encourages you but it is given to you by someone who is soundly imbued with human viewpoint, doesn’t know a thing about divine viewpoint. And they can praise you that you do this right, you do that right and so on, and Proverbs, in this verse, this proverb says that “It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise,” in other words, it’s better to hear correction from somebody operating on divine viewpoint than it is to hear somebody patting you on the head from the standpoint of human viewpoint.

And then verse 6 is the explanation, why, “For,” “for” introduces us to the commentary on verse 5, “For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the k^esil; it’s vanity.” Now what does this mean? The “crackling of thorns” under a pot has reference to the fact that while they are cooking and water and so on they make a lot of noise and it simulates that something good is cooking, something good on the stove. And you hear this crackling and so on, and popping and it sounds good. But the thorns are useless, so the thorns, while cooking, give the false impression that there is nourishment, and there isn’t any nourishment in thorns, in these thorns anyway. So therefore the point is that human viewpoint is like thorns, it is minus nourishment to your human spirit, even though it sounds, when you’re hungry, it sounds like you want to eat it. It sounds like something that will satisfy your hunger need. So the thorns that are cooking in the pot sound at first glance that they will satisfy your need, but when you actually eat them, they are vanity, they are nothing, they contribute zero.

All right, “the laughter of fools” is the phrase we’re studying. The “laughter of the fool” is the laughter of the k^esil and it means the things that he rejoices in. Now this person on human viewpoint is a k^esil and the k^esil is one who is very much in favor of human viewpoint because in his soul, because he’s gone on negative volition, the Holy Spirit has darkened him, and therefore his soul has picked up human viewpoint. And so the things that the k^esil enjoys, the thing that the k^esil approves of, which are the things that give him joy and laughter, are the things of human viewpoint. So “the laughter of the fool” is simply the things that the k^esil approves in life, the things that turn him on, the things that give him pleasure, his sense of values in other words.

Turn back to Proverbs 10:23, it’s not the word “sport” as in the King James, it’s the word “laughter.” “The laughter of a k^esil. Now the k^esil is often laughing. Why is the k^esil laughing? Because the k^esil has made a learned behavior pattern in his soul, it looks like this. Now we meet a situation, his mind is beginning to evaluate the situation, as part of the way God made us, immediately the mind searches, of if you want to say the conscience searches that, but there’s a connection between the mind and the conscience that begins to come into action. But the k^esil, since the conscience is that which judges the thoughts and intents of the heart that’s filled the Word of God, the conscience begins to evaluate the mind but the k^esil has erected a defense. So as a result he has callousness; his conscience has become callous, or his heart has become hardened. And so the rebuke of the conscience comes through this thing very weakly, and the k^esil then has cut off his conscience, which results in the fact that he is manufacturing a world of fantasy. Human viewpoint is always disconnected from reality. I once said that we are all partly insane, to the degree that we have human viewpoint in our minds. Human viewpoint disconnects us from reality and to the degree to which your mind is filled with human viewpoint is the degree to which you live in an unreal world.

And so therefore this person lives in an unreal world and he laughs at it, and it’s natural for him to laugh at it. This is the way he gets his high, is laughing. We, today, translating Proverbs 10:23 might say, As anything he would substitute for laughter, the things that would give him pleasure. Whatever other things besides laughter would give the k^esil pleasure? Drugs; drugs would give the k^esil pleasure because with drugs he could tune out; he could make up his own little world. And so “as drugs are to an idiot,” or to a k^esil, “so also is the act of doing mischief.”

“…to do mischief” is the next thing. In other words, it’s natural for a k^esil to act with laughter. Now watch what is taught here in this Proverbs and this will explain some things that will shock some of you. Some of you have been in business; some of you have been around believers, and all of a sudden they will walk out with half your money, or some of you have been involved in various civic groups and you’ll see somebody that that all of a sudden it just seems like they go completely off their rocker. Or sometimes you’ll be in a family situation and you’ll see somebody that appears for all intents and purposes to be all right, and then all of a sudden they do some big grossly gruesome thing. And you wonder what happened. Well, Proverbs 10:23 is dedicated for your understanding. Here’s how it happens.

“As sport is to an idiot,” or a k^esil, now that’s the first analogy; in other words, here’s your k^esil and the k^esil has a certain nature; part of his nature is to seek self pleasure, that’s part of his nature, the laughter, he’s always after laughter, he’s always seeking pleasure. Now that’s a natural thing and it’s easy to see and this is harmless, generally speaking. In other words, this is the harmless side of the k^esil but Proverbs 10:23 warns you, there is a hurtful and harmful side to the k^esil and here it is. It is just as much the nature of the k^esil to be harmlessly idiotic as it is for him to be vicious.

And the word for “mischief” isn’t mischief at all, it’s zimmah and zimmah in the Hebrew is reserved for the most gross, anti-social acts of sin in the Mosaic Law; zimmah refers to violent murder; zimmah refers to adultery, to idolatry, to fornication and so on. Not that these things are worse than the mental attitude sins, but they are overt acts that are socially recognizable. So what Proverbs 10:23 is saying, don’t you ever look at somebody who’s on negative volition and say well, they’re just harmless. Huh-un, somebody on negative volition can be harmless or they can be harmful and one is just as likely as the other and you watch people who are on negative volition toward the Word. All of a sudden they will shock you by coming out with something like this. Why? Because it’s as just much their nature; it’s just as much part of their nature to be violent toward you, toward your business, toward your social group, or whatever it is, wherever you meet these people it is just as much to be expected that they will violently hurt you in some way as it would be for them to act foolishly.

So Proverbs 10:23 balances that and gives us wisdom in dealing with these kinds of people. We have had some men at LBC for example who have had a tremendous shock on their jobs as they sought to be loyal to the Lord Jesus Christ, as they have sought to do everything in their power to be loyal and faithful to the Word of God, to carry the Word of God out into every area of their job. We’ve had some men that have exemplified this in a very wonderful way. And all of a sudden, bam, somebody on the job, their boss, a fellow worker, or someone else will suddenly devastate them. And we have had this happen to a number of young men in the church, and older men. Now why? Because we are k^esil, they have worked with people who are on negative volition and for a while the k^esil hid his harmful side. All this time, for maybe three or four months working with this k^esil character he was a very harmless person, he’d joke, about it and ha-ha, kind of thing, and ridicule the gospel and so forth but laughter never hurt anyone so he’d just roll on. And then all of a sudden he goes to work someday and there’s a big plot in the office to get him fired or something. Now where’d that come from? The k^esil, it’s just as much part of his nature to do that as it to laugh at your face.

Now what preventative measures can a Christian man on the job take in this situation? Specific prayer to bind and restrain the k^esils. In other words, protect yourself. If you are on the job don’t be naïve; if you are going to stand up for Jesus Christ, guard your flanks against the k^esils. That is a legitimate concern of every Christian businessman. You have the right as a Christian businessman to make it a petition before the Father to protect your flank, protect your rear against these k^esils and the kind of goofy things that they can do to you in the business world, that’s part of your legitimate petition.

Now Proverbs 10:23 should be a little chokmah dedicated to every Christian businessman who is very likely to get the shaft from some k^esil on the job with him. It’s not a very pleasurable experience and oftentimes it can be very unnerving. Just remember Proverbs 10:23, whenever you see someone to whom you have witnessed, whenever you see someone who confesses that they know the issue and they are out of it, watch them. It is better for you to run your business with somebody that is an ignoramus, who knows nothing about the Word of God, than to run your business with somebody who has been exposed to the gospel and rejected it. Watch out for those people, and when you evaluate somebody for a job, when you work with them as a team, probe into their background. You have to be careful because the federal government will be after you for religious discrimination or something if you do it overtly. But there are ways of handling that kind of a problem and I leave it to your own ingenuity. But if you want to run a business successfully, one of the ways is to get these k^esils out of your way and eliminate them because they’ll give you trouble somewhere along the line.

Proverbs 10:23, the last part, “a man of understanding has wisdom,” “a man of buna,” now the buna is a Hebrew noun made up of a verb which means to distinguish. Now what do you suppose that refers to? All these Hebrew nouns refer to some phase of your soul. What phase of your soul is that which distinguishes? Your conscience. So what this is, is a man of strong conscience, has wisdom. In other words, he’s the opposite to the k^esil. See, what the k^esil does, he specializes in becoming dull because he dulls the power of his own conscience. But a man who is sensitive to the conscience is a man of buna, or a man of understanding or discernment. How can you recognize the man of buna? Because he’s always concerned with what is right and what is true first, everything else second. He is a man hungry for where the absolute values are and there’s a man of buna, a man of understanding and he has wisdom.

Now Proverbs 10:24 continues with the laws of the soul, verse 23 gave us part of the soul and warned us about certain people you will meet in business and you can meet them in the academic establishment. You can have a situation where a Christian faculty member may be ridiculed by his fellow colleagues and some of these fellow colleagues may be k^esils and they’ll ha-ha and he’ll say fine, we’ll just banter around somewhere with friendly little jokes. And you think that’s all there is to it until some day you walk into the classroom or you walk into the head of the department and all of a sudden you’re in trouble and who started all the trouble? That k^esil because it’s just as much part of his nature to undermine you as it is for him to ridicule you. And don’t ever dismiss a k^esil as somebody who is harmless; they are potentially very dangerous people.

Proverbs 10:24 gives us another insight into the soul and this is a most interesting thing because this tells you that operating in the heart of every person who is on negative volition, either unbeliever or carnal Christian, there is a force that God the Holy Spirit has placed there. And if you’re cognizant of this force you can use it to your advantage. If you’re not, well, you just miss out, but there’s a fifth power operating on the inside of every unbeliever and of every person in compound carnality, and it’s explained in the first part of verse 24. “The fear of the wicked shall come upon him; but the desire of the righteous shall be granted.” Now the word “fear” is not the process of fear, it is the object of fear. This is a noun, it does not refer to the act of fearing, it refers to what is feared, a specific object. “The fear,” now it does not mean something that you’re afraid of, the wicked one, it’s rather something that the wicked one is afraid of. So it is fear that’s inside the soul of the wicked one.

The word “wicked” is rashah, and rashah remember is the word for negative volition that refers to chaos. It emphasizes chaos, and if that’s the case, then “the fear of the chaotic one,” now obviously it’s (?) linked together, a person on negative volition and compound carnality has chaos in the soul. Now he fears something. Now look at what he fears; he’s going to fear something. What do you have to do in order to fear something? Let’s think a minute. Before you can be afraid of something what has to occur first? You have to know something or think you know something. So before you can fear something you’ve got to know something. So the wicked one here, the rashah, is a man who knows something.

Now where do you suppose he knows this something? In his conscience, here’s how it works. Here’s a picture of his soul, like the k^esil, same kind of person looked at from a different point of view, the mind goes over here to the conscience. The rashah is one who is on negative volition, the judgments of his conscience have been partially stopped by scar tissue. But here is the principle from the Word of God. No matter how hard the person on negative volition tries he never can drown out his conscience totally and therefore there’ll always be part of the conscience coming back to the mind. The mind is in revolt against the conscience, the emotions are in revolt against the mind. But always his mind knows something. And this fear that is spoken of, the fifth column inside the person with negative volition is the result of the work of the conscience in his heart.

Turn to Romans 1:32, now there are many kinds of worry in Scripture. Worry is a mental attitude sin for the believer. But there’s one kind of worry that’s legitimate and what Proverbs 10 is talking about is legitimate worry and it’s also covered in Romans 1:32, here is legitimate worry and legitimate concern. “Who,” these are people on negative volition in the ancient world who never heard the gospel, that’s Romans 1 so next time you hear this, well what about those who never heard the gospel, Romans 1 tells you all about those who have never heard the gospel. And look at this; the people who have never been witnessed to know something. What do they know according to verse 32? The people to whom a witness has not ever been given know “the judgment of God, that they who are committing such things are worthy of death, not only do them but have pleasure in them that do them.” That’s what the person who has never heard the gospel is aware of. He has legitimate worry and legitimate fear. And that is always true of every unbeliever.

Now coming back to Proverbs 10:24, “The fear of the wicked,” what is the fear of, it is the fear of judgment. It is the fear of judgment. Now let’s take an unbeliever or a person in compound carnality and watch how this works out in experience. Maybe you can see this operate in your own soul; maybe you can see it operate in people you know. Let’s take a person in compound carnality; they have fear. Fear, according to Proverbs 10:23, what is it fear of? Fear of an object, that which he’s afraid of? Romans 1:32 tells us he is afraid of God’s judgment upon him. Now what does he do? He’s on negative volition that results in –R learned behavior patterns. Maybe he has a propensity to steal so let’s just take stealing as one illustration of a learned behavior pattern, he’s a klepto. And so he goes in the place and half the store comes out in his pockets and he is a person, then, who has a tremendous behavior pattern of stealing. Now, as a result of this he has this fear that eats him; this is one of the starting points of psychological disturbances in the human soul, for your information. It doesn’t come because your mother dropped you on your head when you were a baby, it comes because you’re on negative volition and you know the judgment.

Therefore, what is the person in compound carnality going to do with this fear? They can do two things; they can come and use 1 John 1:9 and get rid of the fear because they can say all right, instead of being disciplined by the father I’m going to confess my sin and “He is faithful and just to forgive my sins and cleanse me from all unrighteousness.” That’s one option the person in compound carnality can do. But the second thing is he can continue in negative volition and what is he going to do if he stays in negative volition. He’s going to cover up this pattern with another one on top of it and we’ll just say… maybe this is lying now, as a cover up to his stealing. So he lays one –R learned behavior pattern on top of another and this is the outward manifestation of fear. This is how you can recognize in experience the fear spoken of in Proverbs 10:24. The fear that the wicked have… the fear that the wicked have! What does the promise say in verse 24, “shall come upon him.” In other words, no matter how many learned behavior patterns he piles on top of it he is going to pay. “Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap.”

Now in contrast to this, whether it’s a believer in compound carnality, what is he going to reap first? He’s going to reap discipline from the Lord. That discipline can take various forms; it can take pressure in circumstances; that discipline can be depriving you of even legitimate needs at times, that discipline can take the form of demonic affliction, all sorts of things. For the unbeliever ultimately, of course, it is hell in the lake of fire.

Now in contrast to this, “the desire of the righteous shall be granted.” Now the desire [second side of tape missing]