Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

is found in Proverbs chapter 22 beginning at verse 22. We’ll read into chapter 23. Proverbs 22 beginning at verse 22. Please stand for the hearing of God’s word. Do not rob the poor because he is poor, nor oppress the afflicted at the gate. For the Lord will plead their cause and plunder the soul of those who plunder them. Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man, do not go, lest you learn his ways, and set a snare for your soul.

Do not be one of those who strikes hand in a pledge, one of those who surety for debts. If you have nothing with which to pay, why should he take away your bed from under you? Do not remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set. Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings. He will not stand before unknown men. When you sit down to eat with a ruler, consider carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are a man given to appetite.

Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. Do not overwork to be rich because of your own understanding. Cease. Will you set your eyes on that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings. They fly away like an eagle toward heaven. Do not eat the bread of a miser, nor desire his delicacies. For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. Eat and drink, he says to you, but his heart is not with you.

The morsel you have eaten, you will vomit up and waste your pleasant words. Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words. Do not remove the ancient landmark, nor enter the fields of the fatherless. For their redeemer is mighty. He will plead their cause against you.

Let’s pray. Almighty God, we thank you for your grace and mercy and kindness to us who are poor in your sight, destitute of any righteousness that would merit us favor with you. But we thank you, Lord God, for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for your graciousness to us in sending your beloved son to die for our sins. We thank you for his full atonement and for our right standing with you.

Now, Lord God, we ask that you would minister your word to us. May the spirit bring to us things of our savior, his diligence in his work and his vocation. May the spirit give us truths from your scriptures to inform our vocation and work. And may he do more than simply inform our intellect, but may the spirit transform us and cause us to go from glory to glory. Build us up, Father, into the image of our elder brother, the Lord Jesus Christ. May we reflect your character in our workplace as a result of hearing your word, ministered to us by your spirit. We ask this in the mighty and powerful name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, it’s a wonderful time of year. Beautiful weather coming out. Wonderful Lord’s Day service today. Wonderful to have a baptism in the context of it. Wonderful for Elder Wilson and myself both to kind of drop things and show that while the standard of God’s word is always perfection, we never attain to it. God is gracious and kind to us.

So I preach today about vocation and work, I don’t want you to walk away thinking you can’t attain to what the scriptures give us. Through the grace of God, he is causing us to go from glory to glory. A very important aspect of that is our vocation. It’s also a wonderful day coming up tomorrow for myself and our family and for the Shaws as we see this wonderful, joyful wedding. Hope many of you will be able to attend tomorrow at church to that wedding.

What we’re going to talk about today really is kind of good as a prelude to tomorrow’s wedding service in the sense that the scriptures in the book of Proverbs gives us over and over again the idea that vocation precedes the establishment of a household. I’m going to talk today about the first 10 of the 30 sayings of the wise. This is the very core of the book of Proverbs in terms of their literary structure.

And those 30 sayings go from the first 10 being about vocation and diligence and work. The second 10 being about the establishment of one’s household, the young man. And the third 10 being about kings. And that is the arc of the proverbs as well. There is this call to wisdom, relationship to God, which is demonstrated in establishing vocation. Then after vocation is established, there’s a household that’s established. You prepare your field first. Then you build your home. And then as the process of maturity goes on, God brings us to rule. So that’s kind of the progression. And today we’re talking about work. And tomorrow seeing with great joy the establishment of another household in the context of this church and the extended family of this church.

Today we need to talk about Proverbs and this is a book that is not—it’s been on my mind a lot the last two years. It’s one of the great delights to be able to meditate on the book of Proverbs having taught it to a high school class a couple of years ago or in the middle of another Sunday school class on it now.

And in terms of work, we talked last week about the holiness of work in relationship to the tribute offering—very important foundation laid there I think. That our work is acceptable and pleasing to God through the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember the tribute offering, the grain offering, is layered upon the ascension or animal offering. Cain’s problem was wanting the grain offering—his work—to be acceptable in its own right apart from the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. But through the blood of Christ, God actually brings us in the holiness of worship into his throne room and accepts our labor by accepting our tithes and offerings. The Old Testament picture was the tribute offering.

Today we’re going to move on to talk about work in wisdom. Talking about work in holiness last week, work in wisdom today, work in dominion next week from Zechariah 1:18-21. So I want to talk about wisdom and I want to talk to you about the importance of vocation and some keys to proper vocation that we find in the Proverbs. And I’ve got two outlines in the order of worship for you.

So it’s, you know, I hope this isn’t complicated, but there are these basic themes that echo throughout the scriptures. And you know in the last portion of the second collection of Solomon’s proverbs in chapter 25 and following—they’re kingly proverbs. And the very first one of these proverbs put together by Hezekiah after long after Solomon’s death says that it’s the glory of God to conceal a matter but it’s the glory of kings to search a matter out. God expects us to plumb the depths of his word. And he expects us to do that by understanding the basic things well.

And one of the basic things that we all should know well is how God goes about creating work—not his creation labors, that is what is the progression of how he created the world. This is a basic theme that’s established in the opening chapters of Genesis and that continues to echo throughout the rest of the scriptures. The seven-fold pattern is another basic pattern in the scriptures. The ten commandments are which we’ll talk about in a little bit. If we take the book of Proverbs and look at how they’re structured—clearly structured, no doubt about it—there is this short formal introduction in the opening verses of chapter 1, and on your outline I’ve got that entitled the formal introduction. Section 1A is the first seven verses or so of chapter 1, a formal introduction to the book identifying the author.

Then he goes into this section beginning with the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and exhorting sons to take pay strong attention to their parents. And this is clearly an introductory section to the formal proverbs. It goes on for nine chapters of introduction—it’s quite important that we understand how difficult it is to get the ears of young people. They really have to be hit over the head usually. They have to be shouted at nearly. And Proverbs shouts for nine chapters about the importance of wisdom. And really all of that is to get the attention of people so that then when Solomon begins to unveil his proverbs in chapter 10, they’re listened to.

So we have a long introduction where we have two women—folly and wisdom—being portrayed as two women. And there are important aspects of that there. The second day of creation, God makes the firmament and splits apart two different portions of creation. At the Passover, he has a heavenly people and earthly people that are destroyed. There’s this division that happens. And so the second section of Proverbs correlates with the second day of creation. It creates two separate groups of people, the wise and the foolish, and it shows what will happen to them. And that prepares us for then the third section, the first collection of Solomon’s proverbs in chapter 10 through the middle of 22.

Now proverb—the word itself—means its roots are Latin: pro, in place of, or with word. And so the idea is that a proverb is a very short saying that is in place of a number of words. So instead of going on and on and on about something, we can have a short pathy saying from God and it speaks volumes. You see? So that’s what a proverb is.

And these proverbs begin formally—or the actual proverbs in chapters 10—and it actually says in verse one, these are the proverbs of Solomon. Now they’re going to happen, and there are these short fifty sayings. There’s much more structure to them than we realize I think, which is the topic for another sermon—several more when I get done at the Gospel of John we’ll go back to the proverbs I think for a while.

But after those proverbs continue on for a while, then very clearly in chapter 22 there’s another break. And proverbs instead of all these individual proverbs now Solomon says, Have I not given you 30 sayings? Sayings of the wise. This happens in chapter 22. So if you could open your scriptures to chapter 22, we’ll see where this happens. Okay. Verse 17. So verse 16 is the last of these formal proverbs by Solomon: He that oppresses the poor to increase riches. He that gives to the rich shall surely come to one.

And then we have kind of another call to listen up: Bow down thine ear. Hear the words of the wise and apply thine heart also unto knowledge. This is the marker for another section. This is not the proverbs of Solomon. These are the words of the wise. And there’s several verses of introduction to the words of the wise: It’s a pleasant thing. If you keep them within me, they shall with all be fixed in my lips.

So these are words that are supposed to be on our lips. The words of the wise are a central section of basically 30 statements. And these 30 statements are supposed to be ready on our lips. You can’t hold all 375 of Solomon’s proverbs in chapters 10-22 on your lips. But you can take these 30 and have a good sense of what the wisdom of Solomon is all about. It’s the core of the book. And there we’re exhorted here to pay close attention to these words of the wise. They’re almost a structuring device or could be seen as such for the rest of the proverbs.

And as I said earlier, these words of the wise have a movement to them from establishing vocation to establishing a household to establishing then rule as kings. This is the movement of the whole of Proverbs. This is the movement of the words of the wise right at the center of the book.

On the fourth day of creation, God creates sun, moon, and stars to rule the day and rule the night. And so the ruling aspect of the proverbs is seen in this collection, this tightly well-edited and composed collection of words otherwise the center. Following that, then Hezekiah’s collection comes in chapter 25:1. It says, These are the proverbs of Solomon put together by Hezekiah’s men. Separate selection or collection of them. And these are harder proverbs. These are proverbs geared more toward kingdom rule.

Proverbs—the first collection by Solomon—are more simple, more direct contrast. Hezekiah’s stuff is more kingly in its rank. In its chapter, the next to last chapter is a whole separate section: The words of Agur, a man who struggles and is much strife. Some people think Jacob, if not Jacob like—he’s a man clearly has had a lot of struggles in his life, but he knows Yahweh. And then finally, the concluding chapter of Proverbs is by Lemuel, who’s a king and who has listened to his mother, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

So there’s this structure to Proverbs that draws that is an echo of the creation week. And it draws our attention to the very middle section, the words of the wise, as being very, very important for us. And the words of the wise give us, again—we do have it in the rest of the book, but they give us the ark of the proverbs by going first from vocation and diligence in that to establishing a household and then to establishing civil rule as well.

So that’s one of the themes of the book: this idea that in the new creation that we come into with Jesus Christ, we should understand that this is how we live in the context of proverbs wisdom. And we have then this section of the words of the wise to help us focus upon them.

Now another theme before we get started in the actual exposition of the text that’s found in the scriptures is the ten commandments. Proverbs is a book written by a king, the king of Israel, the covenant king. His call was to meditate upon the law of God, actually write out a copy of it regularly, meditate on it. He’d be very familiar with the ten commandments, and we can expect to see them echoed in the proverbs. And we do see them over and over again.

And what I’ve got on your outlines here is that there’s a sense in which we can think of the ten commandments as being encapsulated in the first four. In the first four, the first commandment of course is to have no other gods. Second commandment, no idols by which we worship God. Third commandment, not to take God’s name in an empty way—in other words, to have a full witness of God. And then the fourth commandment is to work diligently six days and then enter into Sabbath rest. That’s the culmination, right? Once you enter into Sabbath enthronement by God and honor the Sabbath and he’s honored you, that’s kind of the end of the cycle. So there’s a definite cycle that’s easy to see in the first four commandments of the ten words.

Not so easy to see, but I think there nonetheless, is that the next three commandments repeat on a horizontal level the first three commandments, which are more geared toward our relationship to God directly. So, how do we honor—how do we have no other gods, no other father but our father in heaven—how do we do that and demonstrate that in our relationships? Well, we honor our parents. They’re an image to us of God. Okay? And so I think that the next set of commandments kind of mirror this first set of four. And I don’t want to spend a lot of time on that. I’ll just put it out there for your meditation and reflection.

But to reemphasize kind of what I’m saying here in terms of the Proverbs, turn to chapter 10 verse 23. Now remember chapter 10 is the first section of the actual proverbs of Solomon. Verse 22 is the first use of the term Yahweh. We read, “The blessing of the Lord, it makes rich, and he addeth no sorrow to it.”

Now, I don’t have the time now, but if I was to exposit those first 22 verses, I believe they form a section clearly delineated by this concluding text of Yahweh’s blessing upon the righteous and the evil are completely absent. What God has done in the first set of 21 proverbs—he’s got seven, and every seventh one indicates an eschatology of doom upon the wicked and they’re increasing in their intensity to verse 20-21, which says that the fool dies for one of wisdom—and then verse 22, the blessing of the Lord, it makes rich and he adds no sorrow to it. Now the unrighteous are completely absent from the proverb and only the righteous are left. This is the flow of history. History belongs to those who are blessed by God, who have wisdom as a result of his grace, and they inherit the earth and the fools are destroyed off the earth.

And so that forms that section. So verse 23 begins another section and we read, It is sport to a fool to do mischief but a man of understanding has wisdom. So the new section begins with the call to have wisdom. Verse 24 says, The fear of the wicked it shall come upon him but the desire of the righteous shall be granted. There’s a transition from wisdom and folly to righteousness and wickedness.

Wisdom in the proverbs is not abstract. It finds itself in community relationships. The vertical relationship we have with God of humility and fearing him and having wisdom plays out on a horizontal level as we are either wicked or righteous to men. You see, so that movement is shown in these two proverbs: Wisdom in terms of the father, righteousness in terms of the son, who is our elder brother, righteousness to other people in our actions.

And then the next proverb says, “As the whirlwind passes, so is the wicked no more, but the righteous is an everlasting foundation.” The whirlwind is a reference obviously to the spirit of God, who blows and who brings about judgment and eschatology in the context of the earth. So we have the same repetition, it seems to me, of father, son, and holy spirit in this section of these wisdom proverbs as Solomon opens up this task to us.

Verse 26 follows. It’s the fourth in this series: As vinegar to the teeth and as smoke to the eyes. So is the sluggard to them that send him—the man who isn’t diligent. A reference to work or failure of work. The fourth commandment. Verse 27: I won’t go on all the way, but verse 27, the fear of the Lord prolongs days. The years of the wicked shall be shortened. Well, that’s the fifth commandment, right? Honor your parents that your days may be prolonged in the land.

It seems to me that Solomon is restating in proverb form the ten commandments. And the fourth slot there is that one about the slugger and the danger to community that the slugger is. This is typical throughout the proverbs in various places. You see this pattern of the first four commandments. Sometimes all ten, as in here, but frequently just the first four commandments put in a row like this—again in terms of our relationship to the father, to the son, and to our fellow man as a result of the son, the spirit, and then to the Sabbath commandment of diligence and entering into Sabbath enthronement through that diligence.

So this is another echo. This is another pattern that we find throughout the scriptures: the father, son, and the holy spirit—correct relationship to them as mirrored in the first three commandments leading to the diligence in vocation and Sabbath enthronement at the end of the period of evaluation as we come into the presence of God.

This can be seen in terms of an outline for Genesis I’ve given you on the outline as well. Again, we won’t get into that, but I think that we can see this mirrored in the three falls of Genesis and the way Genesis is structured according to the falls of Adam, and then Cain, and then the Sethites who marry the wrong kind of women.

Cain, you know, Adam steals from the father in heaven. He’s not righteous toward God. He breaks the first commandment. Cain strikes out at his fellow man. Idolatry through a worship of created things always comes along with the despising of our true brother, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only mediator between God and men. And it breaks down our relationships on a horizontal plane. And Cain is the picture of that.

And then the Sethites fail to carry proper witness, spirit-filled witness into the world by marrying the wrong people. The spirit of God weds the bride to Christ. And to marry improperly is a violation of the spirit, and the Sethites do that. A series of three falls and then these things are recovered.

Abraham is the patient one. Jacob is the one who acts properly to Esau and the end result of that relationship is one of blessing. Esau receiving blessing through Jacob the way that all of us receive blessing to the greater Jacob, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jacob is kind to Esau. No, I know what presuppositions we all bring to that text from evangelicalism. It’s all wrong. Jacob is a picture of right relationship to the brother and blesses the brother by the end of the story. Read the whole story, the rest of the story.

And then Joseph, of course, is the picture of holiness before God. He resists, you know, the daughters of men, so to speak, unlike the sons of God, the Sethites, the God line who married the wrong women. Joseph restrains himself sexually from the wrong woman. And so we have this recovery. And these are the themes that continue to echo through in the context of Proverbs: hanging out with the right people, hanging out with the right woman, being godly in our relationship. So these things are just echoes.

Now let’s turn to this text itself. And I want to look at this text for a couple of minutes and see the structure of it and then make some very short comments. This is, as I said, I believe a unit of 10 sayings. And I think that these 30 sayings of the wise are definitely structured in this way. And my contention is that these 10 sayings follow the same pattern of the first four commandments.

Let’s look at them. Okay. So verse 22, do not rob the poor because he is poor, nor oppress the afflicted at the gate. For the Lord will plead their cause and plunder the soul of those who plunder them. This is a proverb about showing grace to those who are in a vertically inferior relationship to us. Okay? This isn’t equals. You’re rich, they’re poor. You’ve got more, they got less. You’re the dad, she’s the mom. You’re the husband, she’s the wife. You’re the employer, they’re the employee. Whatever relationship it is, see, they’re all by this one little proverb God can address them all and say, “Don’t take advantage of a position of power over someone else. Why? Because the Lord God has been gracious to you. You are where you are because of the grace of God. Our relationship to God the Father, to God who has given us this stuff, the right position that we stand in—that’s stressed here. A vertical relationship is the first of these proverbs of the sayings of the wise.”

What a wonderful place to begin. I mean, at first it seems, well, you don’t rob the poor. Why is that at the beginning? Why is it the most important from a sense word of the wise? Very one to start with. Because if you don’t start with an understanding of the grace that God has shown to you and a need to demonstrate that grace to others, you’re going nowhere. The fear of the Lord, proper understanding of him and his grace to you, is the beginning of wisdom. So a proper comprehension of the grace of God to you through a demonstration of grace to others is where wisdom begins.

The second one is, Make no friendship with an angry man and with a furious man. Do not go lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul. So now we move our relationship vertically to our relationship horizontally. What’s our relationship to the son, our elder brother? We see it mirrored by our relationship with other men. And here there’s a warning against improper men. We’re supposed to have proper friendships and not improper ones. There’s a warning about a particular kind of person that we’re supposed to avoid.

Now this isn’t the only kind of person. A proverb is in place of many words. And so what it’s saying is that in our friendships, be very careful. Again, one of the prominent themes as the proverbs open up is if you hang out with bad company, you’re going to get bad. That’s just the way it is. One of the most important things that Christian parents tell their children is be careful who your friends are because you will become like him. You’re supposed to. You’re supposed to imitate your friends in the providence of God. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. And that’s why you’re supposed to hang out with godly guides instead of ungodly ones. And here it says, don’t hang out with the angry man lest you learn his ways. You’re going to be like him if you hang out with him. So there’s a warning in terms of a horizontal relationship.

Then third, don’t be one of those who strike hands or shake hands in a pledge, one of those who is surety for debts. If you have nothing with which to pay, why should he take away your bed from under you? This refers to our covenantal interactions with people by way of a, you know, a simple statement about surety. But what it’s saying is be very careful the covenants you enter into.

The spirit of God brings about covenantal relationships ultimately between the bride and the bridegroom, between Jesus and his church. We’ll see that again pictured for us tomorrow. We go to the marriage supper of the lamb. The spirit of God brings us to Christ in covenant. Covenants are bound or bonds between persons, and the bonding aspect is the work of the Holy Spirit. And in this third slot here, we have warnings against being improperly bonded to people. Be bound in the spirit. You see, don’t enter into improper covenants.

Now, if that’s right, we’ve discussed vertical, horizontal, and then covenant relationships. We’re ready for the fourth commandment. And it’s my contention that all the rest of the sayings here—the next seven—are a structure that talk about work and diligence and what we should do correctly.

Do not remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set. Don’t steal in its simplest form. Labor. You want things to get, you don’t do them by stealing. You attain them through labor. Do you see a man who excels in his work? He’ll stand before kings. He’ll not stand before unknown men. And here we have a very direct reference now to our labor, right? So don’t steal, but be an excellent man. That’s how you’re going to get honored. That’s how you’re going to get what you desire properly in the Lord. This is how you’re going to be successful. Not through stealing, through changing the landmarks, but rather through diligence in the context of work.

When you sit down to eat with a ruler, consider carefully what’s before you. Put a knife to your throat if you’re a man given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies, for they are deceptive food. Okay. Do not overwork to be rich because of your own understanding. Cease. Will you set your eyes on that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings. They fly away like an eagle toward heaven.

Do not eat the bread of a miser, nor desire his delicacies. For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. Eat and drink, he says to you, but his heart is not with you. The morsel you have eaten, you will vomit it up and waste your pleasant words.

Now, clearly, we’ve got warnings against how we’re going to eat with rulers. Then we’ve got a call not to overwork, not to work for the primary motivation of getting riches. And then we’ve got a warning again against desiring the delicacies now of the greedy man. So food and proper motivation is what’s called for at the center of this section on work.

And then verse 8, do not speak in the hearing of a fool. He’ll despise the wisdom of your words. Do not remove the ancient landmark, nor enter the fields of the fatherless, for their redeemer is mighty. He will plead their cause against you.

So we’ve got we’ve got a little chiastic structure. I promise never to use that word. We’ve got a structure that mirrors itself, right? Very clear to see this. This structure was first shown to me by a small lad. I think he was 10 years old at the time. You won’t embarrass him by saying his name. It’s that simple to see. We’ve got don’t move the landmark. Don’t move the landmark. Well, maybe there’s something going on here. And then we have don’t eat or be careful I eat with a ruler. Be careful I eat with the greedy person. Something going on. There’s a core going on here.

And the very center of that structure of these seven sayings of the wise is the concept of a proper motivation before God. You don’t do your labor, as we said last week, to attain wealth, to attain riches. You don’t do your labor to feed yourself ultimately. That’s important. What does Jesus say? Seek first the kingdom of God. Our primary motivation for work is to take the world round about us and to bring it on a plate to God, transform matured by us through the power of the spirit and bless God with it. That’s why we work. That’s why Adam was created was to take the whole world and to bring it through his labors acceptable to God to him to bless God. That’s the call why we work. That’s the holiness of work.

And here at the beginning of the words of the wise is this large section on our labor. And the warning right at the middle is do not have an improper motivation for how you labor. And while you go to work tomorrow morning. So I think that this section—these set of the wise—form a nice unit for us, and I think that we can discern some truths now from this unit that I’ve listed on your outlines. And now we’ll go to the numbered points.

The first point is that the context for wise work is the first three words and humility. So if God is giving us here primarily 10 words that focus upon our labors, the motivation for our labors, the requirement to be excellent and wise in our labors and not foolish, the requirement to be careful about how we enjoy the fruit of labor in terms of eating and being careful not to attain things through theft, but rather to labor for them—the landmark brackets, you see, we got a whole section here about labor and its produce. Well, this whole section—well, first of all, we see that the very first set of 10 of the words of the wise focuses on your work. It focuses on what you’re going to do if you’re a man, or some of our women work as well, tomorrow when you go out to do your vocation. It’s that important. It’s more important in the terms of the progression than the establishment of the household and then ruling. These things follow this. So this is primary importance, and what it tells us is that the proper context for our work are the first three commandments.

The proper context for our call, the commandment we have to work six days a week and then to honor the Sabbath. The context are the first three commandments. The context is correct relationship to God, understanding his grace and being gracious to others, correct understanding of the need for careful relationships on a horizontal plane with the proper friends as opposed to the improper friends. And an understanding of the importance of covenants and how the spirit binds things together. This is the context for these seven words about vocation—the three words about a relationship to the father and to the son and to the holy spirit. And you cannot get to proper work then without a proper sense of humility before God.

All the premise for our being gracious to the poor instead of abusing them is a recognition of our own grace from God. Proverbs 26:12 says, “Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There’s more hope for a fool than for him. Humility before God is the most important thing. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes.” Isaiah 5:21. And prudent in their own sight. Romans 12:16. Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion. A proper grace shown to those who are less than us in possessions or stature or position. This is a demonstration of our humility before God. And so if you want to be a good worker, you must first be humble before God. And you must be humble in terms of your relationship to the father, the son, and the holy spirit.

But it goes on to give us more. The second point we want to make is that a proper motivation is central to wise work. The very center section of these seven words on vocation warns us against improper motivation. Do not work to be rich. Riches take wings. They fly away. And we know well, probably if you’ve been around as long as I have, 50 years, you’ve known people who, through no fault of their own, have really lost much of their riches through the providence of God. God says, “Don’t set your eyes on the wages you’ll receive for your work. Don’t work primarily for the purpose of obtaining wealth. Rather, work for the purpose of being holy before God.”

Proverbs 28:20 says, “A faithful man will abound with blessings, but he who hastens to be rich will not go unpunished.” Do not allow that to be your motivation in your vocation. Do not set that as your goal to pile up x amount of dollars. It is not the proper motivation.

John 6:27, our savior says, “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the son of man will give you, because God the father has set his seal on him.”

And then in 1 Timothy 6:8-10, we have the same warning. I’ve got Thessalonians in your outline. It should be Timothy. 1 Timothy 6:8-10. Having food and clothing, with these we should be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves rather through with many sorrows.

So the wisdom of the proverbs is mirrored in the direct instruction of Paul to Timothy, that it is an improper motivation for our labor to try to be rich. Set that apart. You may think you’re going to go about doing it well. You know that riches are good. Blessings from God are not bad. That’s not what the scriptures are saying. But the scriptures are saying that when that becomes the motivation for your work, God takes it all away in his grace to us.

God intends to bless us through our labors—diligent labors. That’s the normative way. But that never is what we’re striving to attain. We’re striving to attain that tribute offering to bring before God that represents the holiness of the work that we’ve done in transforming the world and beautifying it for him.

Third, avoiding overworking is necessary to wise work. This same center tells us in verses four and five, do not overwork to be rich because of your own understanding. Cease. And then the warning against riches. So there is a sense in which one of the most important things to consider—these are the words of the wise. These are to be on your lips. You should know these well enough to be able to speak them out, not go look them up in the Bible. You should have them memorized at least the basic content. And one of the things you should have ready on your lips, Christian men and women who enter into vocation, is this truth that there is such a thing as overwork.

Do not overwork. The proverbs tell us to be wise. Solomon, the same man who wrote these words, understood how it is the grace of God that brings us excellence and diligence, the many blessings we seek in the context of vocation. Psalm 127, one of the Psalms, you know, says that it’s foolish for you to rise up early and to stay up late trying to build your house or to build your vocation. For the Lord gives to his beloved even while they sleep. What’s it a reference to? It’s a reference to Solomon, right? Who received the great gift of this wisdom from God in the midst of his sleep.

God’s gifts are the basis for our vocation. And if we find ourselves, you know, Doug H. was at family camp a couple of years ago. He said, you know, if a guy’s working more than 50 or 55 hours a week, he’s probably sinning. He’s probably overworking. There is that problem. If he’s working less than 40 hours a week, he’s probably some sort of, what do they say, goof off. So work is important, but overwork is a warning here that the words of the wise give to us. So wisdom from the scriptures in terms of our vocation says we got to have proper motivation, a proper context of the fear of the Lord and the first three commandments, and we have to have a proper avoidance of overworking.

Fourth, contentment is a required component of wise work. And here I go to the outer brackets of the section. These are the brackets of do not remove the ancient landmarks. And clearly this is an admonition against theft. But you know, as I said, the word proverb means that it’s a small statement for a big lot of words that God could give us. And he just doesn’t say don’t steal here. He says don’t remove the ancient landmarks. Okay? And there’s a reference here to the fathers who have established the landmarks.

Now in the context of Israel, the landmarks had been set directly by God. The tribal lines, the tribal boundary lines were established directly by God. And so reading behind just the obvious statement not to steal—don’t move landmarks and steal land that way—there’s the admonition here to be content with the heritage that God has given to you. The landmark can be seen not just in terms of land and property, but in all kinds of conventions and the establishment of God’s overarching providence in our lives.

Derek Kidner in his commentary calls this line, don’t betray the past. Don’t change what God has through past actions established you in. Don’t be discontent with your station that God through his providence has placed you in the context of its first application. You’re in a particular plot of land. That’s where God has planted you. Don’t move the landmark thinking that somehow the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Be content. You’ve got vocation. Maybe your vocation is tiring to you at this point in time. Well, maybe that’s God telling you to change vocations. But until you change vocations, you see, you should be content with the heritage that God has placed you in, right?

You don’t want to remove the ancient landmark. God has placed you, whatever vocation it is that you’re exercising now, and you don’t want to be discontent with the lot that God has established for you. Now, it’s okay to change vocations, but don’t be discontent—can grumble against it because something looks better somewhere else.

You’re married. You’re brought into a covenant relationship. We all enter into marriage like Jonathan and Joanna will tomorrow. Great joy and happiness apart. But there comes a time at which you know, I heard a guy once say that marriage was like a bath. After a while it’s not so hot. But now you get past that and it becomes more delightful. But there are times in any relationship—best of friends, you know, Hard and I spent a couple of weeks together in Poland and after a while you get a little cranky. You know, this is what happens.

Well, okay, but you should be content with the wife or the husband that God has given to you. That’s the lines. That’s the boundaries that God has given to you for your well-being. You see, in your vocation, it’s very important—even while we work and are diligent—it’s very important to have a sense of contentment about the promise. The provision of God is a necessary component. These scriptures tell of wise work.

So there are these distinct lines. We could make broader application of that text. We could say that the evangelical church 100 years ago despised the ancient landmarks, the delineations of God’s judgments and evaluations as found in his law in the scriptures. And this was to change the ancient landmark. This was to betray the past, to give up what God’s system of ethic was with a new set of ethics which was based more on objective observations on subjective feelings and other considerations that did not have things to do with the objective truth of God’s word. That was a betrayal of the past. It was an attempt to move the ancient landmarks.

So we could talk about the broad scope of this, but very specifically in terms of vocation, I think it’s very important to understand the need to have uprightness and honesty in our financial dealings. Contentment with the station that God has called you to—either in your vocation, the size of your business, whatever it is. It’s proper to try to grow it, the proper also to be content and thankful for what God has given to us.

Fifth point, diligence and excellence are required for wise work. A truism, but still it’s very important, and this text tells it to us in a very pronounced way. We read in verse 29, you see a man who excels in his work? He’ll stand before kings. He will not stand before unknown men. Now, the center of this section, as I said, is motivation. But God has another way that he draws attention to this particular verse.

Have you noticed it yet? Probably not. But if you look at all these 10 sayings of the wise—the first 10—they’re all negative except for one. They’re all warnings about things not to do except for one. And so God draws our attention to the one positive command that he gives us here in terms of wisdom and work. And that’s found in verse 29. If you see a man who excels in his work, he’ll stand before kings. He will not stand before unknown men. So God draws great attention to this.

God from the wisdom of the proverbs says that our job is to be diligent, to be excellent in what we do. Kidner refers to this term as craftsmanship. Be a wise craftsman in what you do. A man who excels in his work. This word for excel is a Hebrew term that has a lot of different connotations. In the first instance, it means being quick and alert to something. So God is fast when he brings forth his judgments into the world. He sees things, he attends to them, he excels at them. That’s what the term means in its first instance.

So in terms of your vocation tomorrow, the very positive—the first—the only positive command God gives you in this set of 10 sayings about work is this requirement to be speedy. Now not hasty, not overly hasty, but to be attentive to what’s going on in the workplace and to get at what needs to be done. It has the connotation of diligence, and the proverbs repeat that over and over again—the idea of diligence and hard work. But the connotation also is one of being attentive to the details of your vocation, having an eye to them and then actions taken to address either positive opportunities or negative difficulties that occur in the context of your work.

So it’s a warning against monotonous work. It’s a warning against just getting to work, doing the same thing. No, there’s to be an attentiveness, a diligence to our workmanship and a positive looking both for problems that can occur and addressing those proactively and opportunities that open themselves up in our vocation and attend to those things. That’s the connotation of this work—of this word rather—to excel in one’s work.

And this, you know, now the arc of proverbs is to get to becoming a man who has rule and authority and culture. And here we’re told that the one who is diligent in his vocation, who excels at his work, will stand before kings instead of standing before common men. So this arc that goes through wisdom and the importance of establishing wealth, all that stuff connects your vocation to the exercise of dominion in the land. And this is a theme that I’ll pick up more on next week, the relationship of vocation and the exercise of dominion.

But we have it right here. The whole arc of Proverbs—going from being a son to a wise ruler—is by way of this verse tells us of excellence in our vocation. Excellence that has diligence attached to it. Excellence that has attentiveness attached to it and speed as well.

Proverbs 10:4 says, you know, so verse 4—if you understand the structure again that means early on, verse 4, the fourth of the proverbs that Solomon begins his entire collection with has to do with diligence. See the place forward. So see if you get to know the structure of Proverbs, when you find these specific proverbs they fit in a context and bring importance. At least to this verse, the fourth proverb of Solomon’s formal proverbs says this: He who is a slack hand becomes poor but the hand of the diligent makes rich.

Proverbs 12:24 the hand of the diligent will rule but the lazy man will be put to forced labor. And again there, what do we have? The hand of the diligent will rule. Will stand before rulers and will rule. You see? So vocation is absolutely critical to getting to societal dominion and to rule in the context of the land.

Matthew 25:21, his Lord said to him, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You are faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things.” Faithful steward over vocation. God exalts men who are blessed in their vocation, who are attentive to it and diligent, and makes them rulers over larger things. Rulers in the context of the civil order.

In Psalm 147:15, we read that God sends out his command to the earth. His word runs very swiftly. And this is the same Hebrew term. God’s word runs swiftly. It attends to things. It goes to where it needs to go. And in your vocation tomorrow, you’re supposed to run swiftly to the task that God has called you to do. To work hard, to work quickly and efficiently—not hastily. Bible warns against that, but attentively to what you—the labors that you’re to enter into.

Now, of course, the opposite of the one who is diligent is the slothful man. And the proverbs have a lot to say about him. The slothful man won’t start things, right? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest and his poverty comes upon him. It’s a proverb, folks. It’s not a warning against oversleeping. It is that, but it’s much more than that. It’s the admonition to start tasks. The slugger doesn’t start the task up. He won’t wake up. He won’t get to the task. He doesn’t start things.

The slugger won’t finish things either. Remember one of my favorite proverbs, you know, the slugger doesn’t roast what he takes in hunting. He doesn’t make preparations. And Kidner in his commentary thinks it actually rots on him before he eats it. He gets the bunny, but the bunny rots before he can eat the bunny. He doesn’t prepare it in a way that would help preserve it by cooking it.

So the slugger doesn’t finish things either. He finds things in the way. The slugger makes excuses for himself as well. There’s a lion in the streets, yada yada. Now, these are important truths. These little chunks find what we’re not to be tells us what we’re supposed to be. The man who is diligent in vocation starts tasks. He gets at them. He sees opportunity or danger and he begins the task. But he’s not just a starter. He’s a finisher as well. He doesn’t just start by grabbing the rabbit. He roasts what he takes in hunting. He brings the process through to completion. Will we do that as a church or will we be slothful?

We begun well. We started the task of vision planning. Will we carry through to the end? That’s an evaluation, a test that God has before us. And in your vocation, there may be things that you’ve started, but have you brought them through to the end? Not if you make a self-conscious decision that you’ve started improperly. All right? But if all it is a matter of not having heart for your vocation enough to get you to make plans and to follow through on those plans, that’s not all right.

Do you make excuses in your vocation? Well, this blew up because of this problem or this problem or I shouldn’t do this because of this. Always looking on the negative. Then you’re not going to be a man who excels at his work. A man who excels at his work sees the opportunity, begins the task, attends to the task without excuse, and finishes the task as well. This is diligence and vocation. This is the man who will stand before kings.

This is by way of emphasis, and the only positive command—this is the most important thing you can take away from this talk and Proverbs that practically apply to your work and your vocation—is this requirement to be diligent, to be attentive to start, finish, and not make excuses.

Now, the sluggard has no heart for what he does, and he tends to frustration. You’d think he didn’t, but he does. It frustrates him that he never gets anything done. God doesn’t just let him sit there without frustration. He gets frustrated and he gets depressed. Classical depression, as we see it today and usually attend to with various medications, the Bible calls it slothfulness. He is so depressed, he won’t feed himself. Do you know people like that? Their depression causes him not to eat.

Well, that’s the slugger. He’s so slothful, he won’t bring the food to his mouth. The Proverbs tell us he enters into depression. Depression and frustration are cured by diligence and excellence in vocation. That’s the cure. Now, there may be some medical things that go on in the brain, and I’m not saying that’s always wrong to attend to that with medication. That’s not my point. There is some brain chemistry stuff that is being developed in the providence of God today. But more often than not, depression has as its root, I think, a failure of vocation, a failure to have heart for the task that God has called you to do, to appreciate the heritage he’s given to you and to approach your task with excellence and with dominion.

God says that we’re supposed to attend to our tasks with excellence. We have a positive commandment to do that.

Six, control of one’s appetite is necessary for wise work. You know, around this great warning against improperly seeking riches by vocation are these two statements about eating properly, and it’s a warning against the exercise of our appetites. If in your vocation you don’t approach it with moderation in terms of your appetite—if you approach it with a desire just to feed yourself—and again there it’s a picture for many other sorts of desires that you fail to control. If you don’t have control of your appetites then your vocation is going to be squandered and the things that God blesses you with from that vocation.

So control of one’s appetites is necessary for wise work.

Seventh, the proper evaluation of others is necessary for wise work as well. You have to evaluate. Now we can look at this from the warning against being around the angry man that precedes these statements about vocation. But we could also take it from the ruler who is actually evaluating you even as he invites you to dinner, right? Be careful when you go to eat with the ruler. Why? Because he’s got an evaluation of you that he is performing. Now, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing to do. In fact, it’s probably a wise thing for employers, where they’re going to hire important people in their organization, to take them out for dinner and to observe their eating habits. That’s what a wise person does.

God’s going to do that right here. He invites us to this meal. But he warns us in Corinthians, doesn’t he, that the ones that were judged by him were the ones who did not control their appetites at the table of the King of kings, the ruler of all rulings. God structures a meal to evaluate us, and the meal is effective. Whatever we do, God reads the hearts and intentions of us as well as our exterior appetites.

So understand that you’re being evaluated by men in the context of your vocation. Unspoken evaluations go on all the time. It’s not a bad thing to do, and it’s a proper way to assess potential employers in your workplace as well. Control of appetite is absolutely essential, and a proper evaluation of others is necessary for wise work.

You don’t work in isolation. You don’t want to end up working in a strong business relationship or partnership with an angry man. You’re going to get like him. This is why these warnings against covenants in our horizontal relationships are so critical to proper vocation. A wrathful man stirs up strife. He who is slow to anger allays contention. One of the worst things that can happen in a business place is contention. And what stirs up contention are wrathful men.

The Proverbs gives us pictures of various people: the wrathful man, the fool, the proud man, the mocker, and the scorner. There are certain characters kind of drawn out—six or seven of them in the book of Proverbs. And as a wise businessman, you should be familiar with those different character sketches of the proverbs. And then have that effect on who you employ, who you work for? Do you want to go to work for a fool or an angry man? Probably not. So you have to have a proper evaluation of others to enter into vocation correctly. And we have to have understand that we’re being evaluated by others as well, even in the context of something so innocent as a business dinner.

Finally, a sensitivity to the poor is the setting or the context for wise work. You know, if you look at the handout in the last verse that refers again to the ancient landmarks, it brackets the fourth saying to not remove the landmark which your fathers have set. That it certainly brackets that. Do not remove the ancient landmark nor enter the fields of the fatherless, for their redeemer is mighty. He will plead their case against you.

But it also gives us a one and ten bracket to where the first saying of the wise was—remember not to rob the poor because he is poor—and the last of the first 10 sayings of the wise is to not move the landmark of the fatherless because he’s got a defender for him. So at the beginning and end of the entire section of these first 10 are requirements of being sensitive to the poor. So it brackets not just the fourth commandment central sayings of the seven, but it brackets the whole thing.

And so what it tells us is something that’s very indirect. We don’t normally think in terms of how charitable we are to poor people in terms of our vocation or our business. But God says that right here in the context of this great discussion of diligence, proper motivation for work and use of our work and all that stuff—that in the context of all of that is a requirement to be gracious toward the poor.

You know, as people are granted blessings by God, you know what happens as you mature is you receive more and more blessings from your vocation. This is the wisdom of God for vocation. And in the wisdom of God, he grants you blessings. The question is, do you remember what it was like before you got those blessings? It’s not just a matter of about stealing from the poor. Over and over again, it’s those who are gracious to the poor, who lend to the poor, that God sees and is gracious and kind and compassionate to them.

God works in relationship to us in terms of our attitudes toward the poor. And you know, I think it’s important too to say that we don’t fulfill our obligations to the poor by just giving to some relief agency or helping some guy out that we’ve never met before until the time he comes looking for money. Those are important things to do to train us in gracious attitude toward people that we don’t even know.

But here, the poor that’s being talked about is your neighbor, right? The fatherless is the one who has the landmark right next to you. The question is, do we have a sensitivity to one another in the context of our own congregation, in the communities in which we live, to the people that are less fortunate than us, and are we gracious and compassionate to them? Do we understand that there are people in our church, for instance, to whom $5 is a budget item?

You know, most of us, it no longer is a budget item except in a big scheme of things. But there are people in our church, there are young married couples in our church to whom $5 is a big deal. You see, now I’m not saying they’re poor necessarily, but they are in a subservient position in terms of material possessions and wealth to others of you. And God says that one of the keys—one of the wisdom for how to establish yourself in vocation so that you can exercise rule and authority in the land—is your compassion and your understanding and sensitivity to poorer people in the context of your own specific community, whether it’s the church here or where you live.

It brings us back to the basis for everything. Jesus came as one who did the work that the father gave him to do. His very food, he said, was to finish the work that God had given him to do. He came as the excellent workman. Calvin’s prayers are great, you know. They’re always full of sloth and sluggardly. “Lord God, you know how slothful and sluggardly we are apart from your grace. You know that even if you give us stuff, we’re going to use it improperly. Please God, grant us diligence to understand your scriptures, diligence to attend to our tasks.”

What I’ve lined out here, the wisdom of God in terms of work, the need to be diligent, the need to be excelling in your vocation, the need to respect the heritages of the past and to not steal through deception, the need to be content with the things that God has given to us, the need to be gracious to those who have less than us—the context of this diligence is be motivated not through riches but through the holiness of God. We can’t do any of these things. We can’t apply any of them. But the Lord Jesus Christ can and did.

He came and did all of these things. And today he grants us his diligence, his steadfastness, his kindness, and his compassion. God says that through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the spirit ministers the Lord Jesus Christ to us. He brings the wisdom of Proverbs set out by our savior’s example in the gospel, applies it to us so that we can go into tomorrow and be workers who see our vocation in terms of holiness and workers who understand the wisdom and the requirements of the first 10 sayings of the wise as to how to fulfill proper vocation and calling before God.

And at the very brackets of the whole thing is an understanding of the grace of God given to us through the merits of Christ. You don’t have position or authority. You don’t have diligence as a gift of your own. You have it as a gift of the grace of God. And so God calls us to be gracious to others and demonstrate through that the grace we receive from him.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your proverbs. We thank you for the importance that they place upon the idea of vocation and calling. And we pray that you would enable us, Father, to walk into tomorrow empowered once more to want to transform this world and bring it back to you next Lord’s Day, giving you tribute and giving you the matured creation that we’ve affected through the power of the Holy Spirit by our work.

Help us, Father, to be diligent and excellent in our work and so to attain to a dominion in the context of our land. We pray that we would have proper motivation for our work, a proper attention to our work. Help us, Lord God, to start projects and to stop and to finish them through to completion, to not be distracted by potential difficulties or excuses, but to be men and women who indeed take up the work you’ve given us to do, following the example of our savior, who said that his very food was to do the will of his father in heaven and to complete the work that he’d been given.

To that end, Lord God, accept now our tribute before you. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.