We’re not going to have such a deep dive today, we’re just going to look at four texts and highlight some principles and points from the book of Proverbs from what Colin had highlighted for me. By way of introduction, I will say that whenever you have a topical approach or when you look at a book and you have a different speaker perhaps each night comes along to look at the passage or to develop the theme, there’s almost a risk I feel that the speaker redoes the introduction and repeats the groundwork that’s been laid by the person who opened the series, which obviously was Colin, or anybody who comes subsequently. So I’m going to give a slightly different sort of introduction tonight, hopefully one that is helpful for you.

Tonight’s subject obviously is the wisdom of work and wealth or reward that comes through in Proverbs. And I want to bring before you as an introduction, and just come back to the issue of the relevance of what we’re looking at, perhaps from a slightly different angle. When you come to study, maybe David found this last week, but when you come to study those, anybody else who’s speaking, the book of Proverbs, it’s interesting that it speaks to you personally very much, so it’s very much a challenge to me and myself looking over the subject.

But it’s also something when you try to preach from it, it’s really to individuals, the work that’s been written in the book, rather than groups of people, primarily, much like the epistles, you know, Paul writes to churches and Peter etc and John to groups of people as well, my dear children. But Proverbs is very much targeted to you and to the individual, so it’s something that very much hits home to a person. And I was quite challenged by some of the things in the passage while I was preparing.

But I thought about, as I was thinking about Proverbs as a whole, as we study it as a church, it came to my mind that there are three criticisms that scoffers and sceptics sometimes say about religion in general and Christianity in particular. And I’ll tell you what those three things are, and I would say to you the book of Proverbs actually has, not by a proverb within the book, but the body as a whole helps address these criticisms you will have heard and may have come up in conversation when you speak to people who are not Christians or not believers, and certainly people who are antagonistic, and certainly if you’re on social media. The first criticism is, what do the writings of late Bronze Age sheep herders or goat herders have to do with us today? Have you heard that before? Sometimes that’s levelled more at Muslims than it’s levelled at Christians, but what relevance has something from the Bronze Age got for us today? Well I would point out to people who ask that question that actually when you read Proverbs you realise it’s still contemporary.

Now I didn’t check with Rebecca Adams this first of all, but you might know that the film The Odyssey has been very popular in the movie theatres. It’s nearly three hours long, I’ve not seen it yet, and it’s about the story of Odysseus and the Odyssey written by Homer over 3,000 years ago it was written, and the social media analysis of this has been very interesting. One of the things that’s come out about this is that it’s been pinpointed that Odysseus, if he actually lived, that the events took place at the fall of Troy round about the year 1175 BC, which just happens to be a critical almost decade in history where eight civilisations all collapsed, and it marked in a very sudden way the end of the Late Bronze Age.

Now you didn’t come here just for an academic treatise on this subject, but that’s relevant because that’s when Proverbs began to be written. So we know that King Hezekiah’s scribes assembled all the sayings and wise sayings they could get and assimilated and probably produced the Book of Proverbs as a whole then, but Solomon, you know, whose name is associated with it, much like David’s name is associated with the Book of Psalms, certainly started it off with the Proverbs of Solomon and the wisdom literature. So that same period of time when Troy fell and Odysseus is sailing the seas and Homer’s getting ready to write about that story, which people are still flocking to the movies to learn about, and I’m told if you go to Watersons you can’t get your hand on a copy of it for love nor money, that it still resonates with people today, things from so long ago.

But not only that, the story, not so much maybe the film, but the story of Odysseus, the themes are the same that resonate to us, the choices that are made about what you do with your life and some of the things that come up in that story. But what’s interesting is in the discussions about it, the morals are very different in that story compared to us today. And for those who are maybe into literature you’ll maybe know that one of the criticisms about this is that the movie’s been based on a translation where the person who translated that story makes out that Odysseus is this person who’s got post-traumatic stress disorder because of what he’s witnessed in battle.

All the other translations actually point out he was very proud of the horrors he’d committed and how cunning he was, but that Christopher Nolan in making the movie knew that that main version would never resonate with modern audiences compared to the version of somebody who’s a wounded soldier trying to make his way home and dealing with the wrongs he’d done. That resonates with a modern audience and that’s the answer to the criticism of the sceptics. Not just that what happened so many years ago speaks to us because our humanity is the same as the millennia go by, but also because that the truths of proverbs have permeated society in such a way that we all now hold the same set of values of right and wrong even if we sometimes don’t do those right and wrong things.

There’s that Christian or Judeo-Christian, some people would say, effect has permeated society to affect the laws and even people who would be anti-Christian still have a set of core values that now means that how people behaved 3,000 years ago no longer resonates with us about what morality is because the morality from here has changed society. And then the third reason is, so people would then say what’s so special about it, it’s all just good advice. You may as well read Confucius or you may as well read, you know, Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard Sayings, it’s good advice, things that are published in good advice columns.

It’s the same and I would say to you, well that’s true because it shows that there are truths across the whole of society that are still permeate through all religion, that God has sown it into the hearts, minds and lives of people that resonate with our humanity no matter where we are in the face of the world, these things are true. It’s not therefore that things from so long ago are not relevant but they are relevant and it’s not that they’re crazy because they’re from a bronze age but they actually speak to us and they are applicable. But what then makes the difference between these proverbs of good advice in one sense compared to the sayings and teachings of other wise men or Benjamin Franklin or whoever your favourite person is to look at aphorisms and proverbs and people would say religion is used to control people and I would say well that’s right.

If you’d been at your church home bible study group on Thursday you’d have noticed that chapter 1 verse 7 was one of the things we had to discuss, wasn’t it? Okay, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and that’s the context in which you practise all the things that follow in the rest of the book. So some things will seem very blindingly obvious as most of our scriptures today will but the context and the environment and the oxygen in the room that we breathe to do these things and practise them brings a whole moral dimension to it that’s different and if people say well religion is used to control people and a friend of mine in Europe who was on the phone to me yesterday that’s something she says to me very often and I point out, but look at the fruit and the consequences of the people who obey these proverbs and do them and practise them in the context of the fear of the Lord and reverence before him and that speaks for itself as an answer also. So the first proverb we’re going to look at tonight is Proverbs chapter 14 verse 23 and it says this, all hard work brings a profit but mere talk leads only to poverty.

(9:08 – 10:08)

So I would say there’s the wisdom when it comes to working wealth this is the wisdom of effort in what you do. On face value this is just a true saying, it hardly needs Adam Smith writing in the Wealth of Nations or any other economist to sort of bring it to you to unpack something that’s difficult to explain. All hard work brings a profit very simply you can exchange your time and your effort for basic payment or you can invest it like a farmer in nature or a carpenter in a piece of wood and fashioning into something and you can invest it in nature for a natural return or you can spend your 10,000 hours to master a skill or an expertise to become a really good musician or a tennis player and it’s just something that makes sense you spend your time you spend your effort and you put the effort in and you work hard at it and you get something out of it that’s profitable to you you can earn a living and is beneficial to other people as well.

(10:10 – 37:26)

But may I point out while these things are generally applicable that we must ask ourselves that this is something that Christians must do. We must work and I mentioned it about 20 years ago I was involved in a seminar over in Texas and one of the things in preparing for that that surprised me is that work or some aspect of work is one of the few things that occurs in every book of the Bible. Even John’s epistles it’s in there when you look for it.

Work is there. Second Thessalonians chapter 3 Paul points out that you have to tell people in the church at Thessalonica they were told that they had to tell people to work that if you have got an ability and there’s something that you can do to earn some money or to do good and to benefit so that you can feed yourself and feed other people in the church who might not be able to. It’s something that we must do it’s a fact it’s a command in second Thessalonians chapter 3 and if you think that you can’t actually go out and find a job and do work you can at least learn a skill.

The apostles all had skills that they could do. Our Lord was a carpenter. Might I also suggest to you if you want to be an evangelist if you really really want to be an evangelist and you feel called to do that and prepare maybe even for mission work to go overseas or mission work locally if there’s one skill that you should learn it’s to cut hair.

Everybody goes to the hairdresser everybody sits in that seat everybody talks. O.K. in this discussion my father even this past week when you go to the barber do you talk and he can’t keep his mouth shut. Yes he talks about all sorts of things but and he gets an opportunity to speak to people.

If you’re a barber you hear what people’s problems and concerns are and you can speak to them. So if you want to do evangelism learn to cut hair. Now the second part of this is that mere talk leads to poverty so you do need to cut the hair and cut it well.

Okay but all talk and no action that also hardly needs any explanation but just talking about something squanders time and opportunity and impoverishes and the Lord pointed out this fact in one sense when he was asked a question he says I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day the night is coming when no man can work. There is a period and an opportunity given to us in life where we have the strength the intellectual ability to actually work and do things and I mentioned at the start that I’m very convicted by some of the things that I read and every single time I go for a nap during the daytime okay especially on Sunday afternoons and especially if you’re getting a little bit stressed because you’ve got something you need to do for work coming up but it’s not a word of a lie every single time I go for a nap ever since I was a student at university Proverbs chapter 6 verses 10 and 11 comes into my mind and I always feel convicted and you don’t need to turn to it I shall quote it to you I can quote it to you in my sleep and the words are a little sleep a little slumber a little folding of the hands to rest and so your poverty will come upon you like a thief and your want like an armed man. I think that’s the New King James version okay but I just can so a as you lie down to sleep as you have a slumber and a rest or a prolonged siesta and time is slipping away there’s a period that you don’t get back to do something now most economists would conclude that what I’ve told you so far is the Protestant work ethic but it’s really just good advice until we look at it in the light of chapter 1 verse 7 and that is there’s a moral dimension to work we’ve got a different attitude towards doing a good stables work in the fear of the Lord there are some jobs therefore that it’s not for Christians to do. David Wiley gives good advice if you’re ever wondering about what you should do as a career David’s got some good chat about that basically it’s open to you do whatever you want but you must ask yourself a few questions is it moral? Will you find it satisfying and will it be beneficial to other people and if you can tick those boxes it’s really an open playing field for what you want to do from a work perspective but there are some jobs it’s not for Christians to do and there are some jobs that I have to say have to be entered into with a bit of caution and a bit of discussion with wiser Christians. There is such a thing, there was a baptism this morning, of living the baptised life a life of open scrutiny by the world at large and about what you do with your time and what you do as a job enters into that as well through some of my background reading the early church it used to be if a person applied or asked to be baptised one occupation they had to give up that they were not allowed to continue in was being an actor or an actress because the lifestyle was so associated with immorality that at that point in time the early church said you have to change an occupation do something else you can’t be an actor and be baptised it’s not compatible with a good Christian testimony or witness, So, there are some things to think about. Down in London, I happen to know a couple who started their own beer brand you now buy it in Waitrose. Okay, they’ve made a lot of money and they’ve bought a large house where there’s a new church plant done so they could be close to the church plant and get really involved with it fabulous Christians here in Scotland certainly 50 years ago that would have been a highly dubious occupation to have and say that you’re a Christian I think that’s one that takes a bit of careful thought so before you go out and buy the pub around the corner that’s up for sale you might want to talk to the elders about what sort of testimony that would give.

But then it comes on to the question of why do you work? We work in the fear of Lord but why do you work is it to earn money for food or for clothing and these are all legitimate things and certainly you get that impression from the book of Proverbs the Lord Jesus says actually no that’s not why you go to work that’s why the nations or the gentiles go to work in Matthew chapter 6 and Luke chapter 12 we go to work to seek the first the kingdom of God and all these other things will be added to us naturally we tend to think about that if we’re honest in our flesh in a very sort of negative way but Jesus teaches it as a liberating approach to your work seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you because he then goes on to say, “because your father in heaven knows the things that you need before you ask him” do you need a job pray for it do you need purpose in your job pray about it do you want to find joy in your job pray about it these things are all possible another quick story. When I was living in London for a period of time I had a fellow who was Chinese who’d become a Christian and was in ministry training and he was staying with me and Abel was a one he is a wonderful guy and he fits the stereotype very Chinese in lots of ways and there was one day he had come in from work and I stand in the kitchen and he was eating a bowl of noodles and I was just moaning about my job I was having one of those days I think we all get them maybe not if you’re on full time service but for the rest of us you come home in a funk right okay and you’re just you’re not enjoying the job and I was really going off on one and I was standing in the kitchen and he was just nodding his head eating his noodles as he was going and eventually put the bowl down and after he when he thought I’d got most of it out of my system I says what you got to say about that then and he said just pray and so this has become one of my answers to things and that is Abel he just goes he listened to you and then all of a sudden you just get just pray the hand came out like a dagger straight to the solar plexus just pray I was like well now I feel convicted you’re absolutely right he’s absolutely right a lot of these things you just need to pray and God is our heavenly father and interested in our needs it’s not an airy fairy belief he knows your struggles at work and the Lord Jesus says he cares just pray if you need a job if you need to find something that’s going to meet the demands or somewhere where you can give a witness or something fine joy just pray there’s a wisdom in the effort that you put in and if you find that you don’t think you’re getting return for that effort just pray.

Over to Proverbs chapter 10 verse 2 the different kind of wisdom to do with work and it says this ill-gotten treasures have no lasting value but righteousness delivers from death there’s the wisdom of moral values now this conjures up the picture in my mind of the big bonanza payout you know it’s like something from one of the oceans 11 oceans 12 sort of movies where there’s all this activities taking place and cunning and then you’re going to get this massive payoff that you don’t need to work a day for the rest of your life there’s this big bonanza by guile or fraud by theft or extortion by swindle or dubious quick rich schemes some sort of Bernie Madoff, ponzy scheme venture and then you get all this money or you get all these treasures and the bible says it’s got no lasting value you see treasure has the idea not only of monetary worth but treasure someone else has already invested into it and it’s also got an emotional aspect when you think about treasure maybe you don’t have the same imagination as me but I always sort of imagine a pirate’s casket and the lid comes off and there’s pearls and doubloons and faberge eggs and diamond tiaras sort of spill out onto the sand in the desert island that’s what comes to my mind and you think you pick up one of these faberge eggs and you look at the intricacy of it and how much it’s worth all the time that faberge and his workshop spent creating this masterpiece using gold and jewels or to arrange matchstones for the princess’s tiara there’s time and there’s investment and because there’s been investment of time there’s emotional worth and value has been put into the thing that you call treasure okay it’s not just money there’s something more to it than just its monetary value but when you get it by ill-gotten means it loses that. When a person gets treasure by ill-gotten ways the money gets spent quickly we often find people who are so in their mind so impoverished that they have to take these unscrupulous immoral ways to get money they can’t handle it once they’ve got it and very quickly they’re back to the same situation it gets spent but people who work hard to get it know the value and retain it and it lasts secondly ill-gotten treasures have no lasting value says the scripture because not only does the money get spent quickly but the lustre of it quickly fades the soul that designs the trespass is too small and hasn’t the capacity to really appreciate the treasure or maintain the value of the treasure because their soul is shrinking but not only that the soul perishes while you hold and retain it the thing that you’ve done wickedness for to get as you hold it it’s pulling you under your soul is getting smaller and shrivels and perishes the longer you hold it it’s a bit like why Tolkien wrote the character of Gollum if you’ve watched the movies or if you’ve read the book this you know what once was a person has withered away to the singular thing that they lust after from a monetary point of view the Lord Jesus says in Mark chapter 8 verse 76 for what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul the value of a treasure is partly by how it was gotten and the estimation of others.

Years ago I had a patient who was a jeweller he was third generation and he owned a jewellery shop down in Largs and he was being treated for cancer and none of his family were interested in continuing the business and he was trying to sell off his gems and it wasn’t just that he was selling off gems he’d had but he was the third generation of of jewellers who had perfectly matched stones worth a lot of money because of how he was able to assemble them together and so I asked that question that people will sometimes ask them where where’s the value really in it how much is it really worth and that’s the question that no jeweller ever really answers and he says the value of the stone lies in the eyes and the joy of the young lady who gets the ring a person who is a very simple man young man and works hard you know doing a very simple job and gets paid a meagre salary and he saves up and De Beers have convinced him to save three months wages to buy that ring compared to somebody who works in finance in the city you know and doesn’t think anything about dropping a hundred thousand for a car and he saves up three months salary and buys some big rock you know for his fiancee the joy and appreciation in the hearts of the girls is I would say the same regardless of the size of the stone because of what the beloved has invested into providing that treasure for them yet the greatest treasure you can possibly obtain is the Lord Jesus and we get that not by working at all but what a work he has done that we get that treasure for which we can and do sell everything we have that we can buy that field that he and his kingdom are in once we know it’s there and the righteous that delivers me from eternal death is his righteousness not my own. Treasure gained by righteous activity gives you life and health even in everyday things when you work hard and you save up and you buy something precious maybe you have it as an ornament for your house or a ring for your beloved or whatever that’s something that actually brings nourishment and joy into your relationship as long as that doesn’t become an idol in and of itself but the righteousness that the Lord Jesus has delivers me from a daily death the more I think and ponder on him the more time I spend in prayer he feeds me with the living bread his righteousness is effective now and for eternity that’s our righteousness delivers from death.

Then proverbs 11 verse 1 says this. The Lord detests dishonest scales but accurate weights find favour with Him. There’s a wisdom in daily faithfulness. If the last proverb had the idea of some grand scheme that’s going to get you, you know, rob a bank and get you all this money that you would never need to work again this is to do with daily, it’s the means and mechanism of daily work. The means and mechanism of your daily work to gain wealth. The big payday versus the hidden daily trades that we all must make. It’s three things, four things maybe, I’d like to bring to you from this verse. The first is that we must have honesty in our hidden daily dealings because they actually matter to the Lord. There’s a few things in the Bible that says that God detests and that his soul hates the Lord Jesus hates the deeds of the Nicolaitans it says at the end of the New Testament. The Lord detests dishonest scales. If you think about that that um you know when you when you would be going to buy something whether it was grain or whether it was food in the marketplace and the dealer would bring out his scales and they put the weights on and you weigh your bananas or your dates or your grain or whatever it was and it would weigh up and you’d get that and you’d pay the money. And then, maybe behind the counter, he’d have weights that had the mark on them but a bit of extra lead in it, okay, and then when it came to a different exchange, it would always benefit the person holding the scales with the different weights. So, they’re dishonest; or the scales are tipped in one direction, but God watches. He detests it, and it tells me there needs to be honesty in our daily small trades, the daily small activities in our work. God sees and it concerns him. And, as we heard this morning and as we heard last week from David, these small trades we make, form a habit that marks our destiny. The second thing is, not only does God watch what happens in the inward small aspects of our life, but God detests you and I making a profit at the expense of our fellow man. You are both meant to work and trade using his resources for mutual growth and benefit. It’s not just ,dare I say it, that God cares about the amount of silver or the amount of lead in the weight or where the needle has been fixed in the scale, per se, but the consequence is what it means to use that for you to gain your profit. Because you are therefore making a profit off somebody else who incurs the loss. But, if the weights are just, all other things being equal, when we’re looking at proverbs, a person has come along they have ploughed the field sown the grain God has given the water and the grain has grown and then you have harvested it and they come to you, and say I want to sell this to you so that the thing that you have made I can get benefit from. He needs a chair to sit in, you need grain to make bread to feed your family. There’s had to be an equitable exchange takes place so that you’re both blessed; and God has given resources for both that we might use part of our stewardship of the natural world well. What is being detested here by God is me getting more money out somebody else so he actually has a loss for his time and effort that he has put in and I have had an unrighteous gain from it. These things matter. So, God expects us to work and trade with one another to bless one another but not to make a profit at the expense of our fellow man. The third thing is everyday righteousness of doing your daily work well it’s a life lived in God’s favour. Accurate weights find a favour with him. What you do, and you think is a small job and perhaps a little inconsequential life that you have in the grand scheme of things, God watches and he finds favour. Righteous living of doing your everyday task is living in God’s favour. It doesn’t need to be a big pilgrimage, it doesn’t need to be a grand gesture, the small things that you do matter to God, and your life is not insignificant but you are seen. and that’s liberating.

Finally proverbs 23 verses 4 to 5 Do not wear yourself out to get rich do not trust your own cleverness but cast a glance at riches and they are gone for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle. I’ve called this the wisdom of balance and priorities. The end goal of work is not riches and abundance of riches. So, when you do get a good return for your work, you get that promotion at work and the job isn’t really that much more taxing, but yet you get an increase in your pay packet. Don’t fall into the trap of wanting to work more and more to gain more and more, and this is something that convicts me, right. So, I have to watch the amount of work that I take on and do. I love my job, what I do, it pays me well, but there’s a risk that I can just want to do more and more and my life gets out of balance by overworking. Compared to other things, I need to give time and attention to in life, not least of all, all of you, okay, that we have a care and a concern for our brothers and sisters in the church. This also is applicable not just to people who have paid employment or business ventures but it’s also true for Christian ministry be very careful that the work doesn’t take over. It’s important to have a balance. And no matter what structured financial arrangements you’ve put into place to legitimately minimise your tax liabilities or to structure your savings plan it can also easily come to nothing. All it takes is a stock market correction, and everyone says there’s going to be one this month, or a new chancellor, with some new novel idea about how to redistribute wealth, and all your plans can come crashing down. The … the writer of the proverbs uses this word that you just need to cast a glance at riches and they’re gone or sprout wings and fly off the sky like an eagle. You think about little sparrows and hedgerow blue tits. You know, they’re very easily frightened and they just flit away, and the same thing can happen to our money. So, please don’t don’t make the mistake of thinking that your financial security is your security. Your security, my security, is in the lord jesus. We like to sing the hymn, whether it’s the old version or the new version, My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness. But, I’ve got a cash Isa and a stocks and shares one as well, and surely they must be quite helpful for my retirement. These things can all go we must save up in the bank of heaven and just like the wee birds fly away very quickly and the eagle flies very far far away up into the heavens, our money and our finances can very quickly change, and you often hear the phrase you can’t take it with you. Okay you can’t take it with you, you hear that all the time actually but you can send on ahead! If you find yourself in a beautiful situation of having some extra money in surplus, invest it in some gospel initiatives, okay, give into some kingdom work, just helping a person who’s poor, they don’t have to be a christian, it’s a good thing. That’s part of how God wants kingdom to work. A very very dear friend of mine was walking into work the last week and the sidewalk was cordoned off because a homeless person had died in their wee tent in the side of the street in Glasgow city centre. I think the most of us tragically we go “Happens all the time” and this person who’s a new Christian was so, was quite bothered by this. So, they went and signed up at Glasgow City Mission because we need to do something to help people. So, if you’ve been blessed with having some extra, then think about how you can invest it in the church, and ministries, and gospel work overseas, and just by doing good. That’s one of the reasons we’ve been saved. God has saved us to do good things.

Let’s pray. Lord God we come to you in prayer just now at the end of this time of bible study and we thank you that we can pray to you that whatever job we do or whatever our hand finds to do that we can do it well and this is in Colossians we do it unto you, and that you can give us joy in whatever our circumstances are and we bless you that you through the book of Proverbs and through doing things in the fear of the Lord and the sanctifying work of the Spirit in our lives that you raise our horizons above what takes place in the workplace to see the great glory of making your kingdom bringing it in and making you known Lord and we thank you for the things that you do bless us with that we can use them to share to bring joy to other people to bless others as well. Aye, and we thank you for reminding us and challenging us that our hope is to be in you. As we said this morning in the word of testament at baptism we trust you and you alone for salvation. We pray that we’ve been challenged tonight that we still trust you, and you alone, for our security. We pray that tomorrow we might be refreshed and still remember the good things that your Spirit brings from this passage and that we can go into the workplace with a sense of joy, a sense of fun, a challenge, and make you known in ways that are just really exciting, that we can’t predict just now but you’ve just prepared us for for that very moment. Oh, so, Lord we thank you for this time together. We pray now as we enter into a time of remembering you through your death on the cross. You, who had everything, yet laid it aside to give up your life, to secure our salvation, now and for eternity. We pray that your Spirit might enrich our memory and our thoughts of you, as we now focus our attention on the emblems and the bread and the wine. Amen

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