Show Notes
Proverbs 23:17-18
Pastor Stephen Lauer
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Your Word gives light and life.
[00:00:05] And you even say of your Son, our Lord Jesus, that he is your word.
[00:00:14] That as it were, the sending forth of your son is as God speaking.
[00:00:22] And we thank you then, that as we hear your Word, the same is also true, that in your Word we hear and see Jesus, our Savior and our King.
[00:00:37] But, O God, we know that this only happens as your Spirit works on our hearts to remove the veil that keeps us from seeing Jesus.
[00:00:47] We ask that you would do so, opening our hearts and minds, removing the sin that clouds, so that we might see and hear Jesus speaking to us.
[00:00:59] Help us to be drawn to him, help our hearts to be set on him, that we might have a certain and sure hope in him.
[00:01:08] For we know that his hope does not disappoint.
[00:01:12] In Jesus name we ask. Amen.
[00:01:18] Our sermon text is Proverbs 23:17 and 18. We're going to pick up where we left off last week.
[00:01:26] Proverbs 23:17, 18.
[00:01:33] Hear God's word, let not your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the Lord all the day.
[00:01:44] Surely there is a future and your hope will not be cut off.
[00:01:51] Please be seated.
[00:02:12] In Genesis we read the story of a man who worked year after year for no pay.
[00:02:20] What was it that kept him going?
[00:02:24] You may remember this fellow named Jacob. He was a bit of a sneaky fellow, but he went to live with his uncle Laban.
[00:02:33] And he met Laban's daughter Rachel and was smitten.
[00:02:39] And he probably said to himself something to the effect of, I would do anything for her. And Laban asked of him exactly that. Work for me for no pay, seven years, and I'll give you my daughter Rachel in marriage.
[00:02:55] And of course we remember Laban was just as sneaky as Jacob, or almost as sneaky as Jacob. And. And after seven years, he gave him Leah.
[00:03:05] And he said, if you work another seven years, I'll give you Rachel.
[00:03:10] Have you thought about that? That man worked 14 years, no pay, no other reward, waiting the whole time. And in the middle, having been tricked once, waiting the whole time so that he could marry Rachel, we won't talk about what a disappointment all of the strife in their marriages must have been after that.
[00:03:31] But just think about those 14 years. What was it that kept him going?
[00:03:38] If we were to summarize it in one word, it would be hope.
[00:03:43] He kept going because he had hope that if he fulfilled his end of the bargain, if he worked seven years, then another seven years more, his uncle would give him Rachel. That was his Hope that he would receive a reward at the end of those 14 years.
[00:04:00] He would get to marry Rachel and live happily ever after. Maybe that part, maybe not quite so much, but you get the idea. He worked hard. And what was it that kept him going through thick and thin, through hard times? He was a shepherd. That's some of the hardest work there is. Year after year, there's trouble, there's wolves, there's drought, all kinds of trouble.
[00:04:22] Protecting the sheep, making sure they're fed and watered. All this time, night and day, he has to care for his uncle's flocks with no pay.
[00:04:30] What keeps him going through all of that is hope.
[00:04:35] And that's what the verse, verse 18 that we read just now we're going to look at is about.
[00:04:42] It's about hope. Surely there's a future and your hope will not be cut off.
[00:04:49] Last week we looked at verse 17, where wise king Solomon instructs his son. And we said, king Jesus is now instructing us in his wisdom.
[00:05:01] He wants us not to be envious of this evil world and sinners. All kinds of ways in which we can envy sinners for the things they seem to have that seem good, that we don't seem to get, the good times they seem to have when we're having hard times.
[00:05:16] All sorts of things that we can envy for them. Jesus says, don't envy them. Instead, fear God.
[00:05:23] And we pointed out two ways in particular in which the fear of God teaches us not to envy sinners. One, that as we are impressed in our hearts with an awe about God, who He is, his awesomeness, his holiness, his justice, our hearts are led away from sin and towards obeying God. We want to obey such a good holy God. We want to please Him.
[00:05:50] But then a second way in which it helps us, the fear of God helps us not to envy sinners is that as we become gripped with the fear of God and who he is, especially of his goodness, and the fact that every good thing, every blessing, comes only from God and not from. From sinners in sinful ways. When we're gripped with the fact that God is the source of all good gifts, in the fear of God we seek him, and we're not tempted anymore to envy sinners. Okay, there's your quick review of last week's sermon.
[00:06:24] But here Jesus gives us another reason why not to envy sinners. There's the fear of God. If we cultivate the fear of God, of God, our hearts are aimed to God, we will be led away from the envy of sinners towards serving and loving God. But here he adds another reason. And that is the Christian's hope.
[00:06:42] That the Christian has a hope, a hope the sinner doesn't have, and a hope that leads us away from envy and toward the Lord.
[00:06:52] We want to look at that hope this evening under three headings.
[00:06:56] First, that that hope is a future thing.
[00:06:59] See that there in the verse? Surely there is a future.
[00:07:04] That hope is a future thing.
[00:07:06] Secondly, that hope is a reward.
[00:07:10] And thirdly, there is a certainty to this hope. So the hope is future, the hope is a reward, and the hope is a certain and sure thing.
[00:07:21] The future hope.
[00:07:23] There is a future. That seems like a very, very simple thing. And maybe we're used to thinking about the future as Christians, so maybe we don't ponder it all that often.
[00:07:31] In the context of this proverb, you could think of it as the destination.
[00:07:38] If one has sort of calibrated his heart, compass toward the fear of the Lord and is living his life in the fear of the Lord. This is where you are now headed.
[00:07:50] This is your future destination.
[00:07:54] You, you now have a future.
[00:07:58] At the end of life, you will arrive at something beyond the end of life, a future reward and hope.
[00:08:06] There is a future for those who fear God.
[00:08:11] This idea is hinted at in various places, actually in this chapter here, chapter 23 of Proverbs. It's really all over the Old Testament. But if you look at verse 13 and 14, these are verses we often quote thinking about disciplining our children.
[00:08:28] Don't withhold discipline from a child. If you strike him with a rod, he will not die. And then if you strike him with a rod, you will save his soul from Sheol.
[00:08:40] When you initially read these, you might be tempted to think that what Solomon is saying is that if you discipline your children, they're going to avoid death.
[00:08:51] But that's kind of a silly thing when you step back and think about it, because all of us one day will die.
[00:09:01] Now, the discipline that Solomon and Jesus is instructing us in is not to try to avoid death here in this. This existence, this life will one day end in death.
[00:09:14] Disciplining our children doesn't keep us from that.
[00:09:18] It's viewing what's beyond death. You might say eternal death. If we die outside of God, outside of the fear of the Lord, what is there for us?
[00:09:30] Eternal death. Sometimes we talk about damnation.
[00:09:34] To be saved from Sheol is another way of saying to come back from the grave.
[00:09:41] Resurrection.
[00:09:44] This chapter has the hints of an idea of a future beyond the grave.
[00:09:49] And this future Life. Our verse here is saying is, for those who belong to the Lord and fear him, this idea of eternal life, a life beyond this one, it's found all throughout the Old Testament.
[00:10:07] It's first there in the garden. When God makes Adam, he puts him in the garden.
[00:10:12] He's alive, he has fellowship with God. But it's temporary, it's probationary, it's not permanent, right?
[00:10:20] And to point to that, God plants a tree in the garden. He calls it the tree of life. And he says, adam, if you eat from this, you'll live forever.
[00:10:29] There is a forever future that the Old Testament has in view. And the Proverbs do too.
[00:10:37] You see this all over the Psalms, and here's a couple Psalms we're familiar with where you hear it.
[00:10:43] Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life here on earth, and I shall dwell in the house of the lord forever.
[00:10:55] Psalm 23 has an eternity perspective. There's an eternal life, a future ahead of those who fear the Lord. Same thing in Psalm 16:11. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
[00:11:12] There is a future beyond this life, something beyond death for the Christian.
[00:11:20] What about for the sinner? Those who are not supposed to envy the world, which doesn't fear God, but satisfies every one of its lusts and pleasures and desires here in this life.
[00:11:34] If those who fear God have a future, by implication, sinners have no future, or at least nothing good to look forward to anyway.
[00:11:46] Look at the very Next chapter, Proverbs 24:19.
[00:11:50] Fret not yourself because of evildoers, and be not envious of the wicked, for the evil man has no future, and the lamp of the wicked will be put out.
[00:12:04] This life is all he has. He has no future to look forward to.
[00:12:10] Do you see now part of why in our sinful lusts, when we were outside of Christ, all we did was seek to satisfy and gratify our desires here and now.
[00:12:25] That's because it's all we had. It's all the sinner has now. This idea of our having a future and the world not having one, even though we know it in our heads, it's often hard for us to remember it. I'm going to keep trying. I'm not going to. There's all sorts of things that we can talk about regarding the future that the Christian has to look forward to and our hope. I want to keep trying to keep coming back to this idea of how it helps us with the problem of envying the sinful world in the thick of life. As we're going through the grind daily, it's hard to think about the future.
[00:13:03] The demands of life, our struggles, our trials, our aches and pains. They all press in on us, don't they? The bills. We don't have enough money. If we're poor, struggling, they press in on us. And it's hard for us to think about the future.
[00:13:22] But the wisdom of King Jesus, the wisdom of the Proverbs says that it is foolishness to think of life only in terms of the here and now.
[00:13:32] If you think, this is all I've got, this is what I've got to live for, that's foolishness.
[00:13:38] Those who belong to the Lord Jesus have a future.
[00:13:42] The wisdom of King Jesus comes to us and says this. Don't envy sinners. They have no future.
[00:13:50] You don't want what they have coming.
[00:13:55] You don't want to envy what they have now because that's all they've got and there is no future for them.
[00:14:04] His wisdom says, you have a future life.
[00:14:08] What does that mean for your struggles, your problems? That means all kinds of things.
[00:14:16] If there is a future life, that means there's an end to this life and its struggles.
[00:14:23] Do you struggle with sin? Do you struggle with envying the world?
[00:14:29] Jesus says, there's an end to that struggle, too.
[00:14:33] There's a future where you won't struggle with sin.
[00:14:38] Don't look to the sinners, look to Christ.
[00:14:43] Do you struggle with frustrations, with the futility of this life? Work seems empty. I go and I do the same things. I wash the same dishes, I fight the same battles, I pull the same weeds. The futility and frustration of this life. And. And we're tempted to look at the world and think, they've got it easy.
[00:15:05] Jesus says, that will end.
[00:15:08] You have a future beyond this.
[00:15:10] This life is not all there is.
[00:15:15] And you can keep. You can think about how you can apply this idea that there is a future and an end to this life, to every sort of temptation you might face.
[00:15:27] So there's a hope.
[00:15:28] The hope is a future hope, but the hope is a reward.
[00:15:34] What is it that we hope for? There's a destination. Where is that destination when we get there? What does it look like?
[00:15:42] What does the future hold for those who fear God?
[00:15:47] The way it reads here in this proverb is that the hope, the thing we hope for is. Is kind of like a reward for those who spend their life fearing God. If we fear God, we push away envy, turn our face away from the world, and we pursue the Lord, our Compass of our hearts is set towards him. And we pursue him day in and day out.
[00:16:11] We have a hope that is something that the Lord will reward us with at the end of life, that one day God will come and bless his people.
[00:16:20] We could put it directly, what is that blessing, that future blessing and reward that we hope for Again, we can walk through the whole of the Old Testament and the theme that we find is that from beginning to end, in the beginning, God promised and held forth to Adam eternal life in the tree of Life.
[00:16:40] There Adam was in a paradise garden, having fellowship with God. God would come and go, but he could talk to God and spend time with God.
[00:16:50] And the Tree of Life held out a hope that there was something beyond this garden with only temporary communion with God. There was a time when Adam and mankind could be with God forever.
[00:17:02] Not temporary, not coming and going, but permanence with God forever in the eternal Sabbath rest.
[00:17:10] No interruptions, no coming and going, just us with God beholding him face to face.
[00:17:18] And all of this is pictured throughout the whole story of the Old Testament. God comes to Abraham. He promises to bless him.
[00:17:26] And then he expands that promise. He says, I'm going to make your descendants a nation.
[00:17:31] And then he says, I'm going to give them this land everywhere you look, the land of Canaan, it's going to belong to a nation that I'm going to bring forth from you the promised land, the land flowing with milk and honey. A land that God then gave to his descendants, Israel.
[00:17:49] Every Israelite had a piece of that land, their inheritance, their token piece of Abraham's promised blessing. And there, in the midst of the land, we find a temple where man could go. God's people could go and meet with God and have fellowship with God. God's throne on earth, where through the sacrifices, they would have fellowship with God.
[00:18:17] But all of this was pictures.
[00:18:20] It wasn't permanent. Israel lost the land. The temple was destroyed.
[00:18:24] Hebrews 11 tells us very clearly that the Old Testament saints, Abraham and all the others who believed in God had faith in his promise.
[00:18:34] It tells us that they sought a city not here on earth, not that promised land of Canaan where Abraham was. They sought a different city, a city whose builder and maker was God. A heavenly city, a heavenly Jerusalem.
[00:18:55] That's the reward, that future hope that's promised here in this verse to those who fear God once again, what is the hope of the sinner?
[00:19:10] The sinners that we're tempted to envy? We want to go and envy their sins. They get to take the shortcuts Pastor Schelcke keeps talking about that in the Sunday morning sermons, right? The sinful shortcuts that we can take to get the things we want. When we're stuck in hard places, we're tempted to go and do that.
[00:19:28] What hope do the sinners have?
[00:19:31] Psalm 17:14 speaks of the men of this world.
[00:19:35] And the psalmist is pleading with God to save him from the men of this world.
[00:19:40] And he says of those men, he says this.
[00:19:44] Their portion is in this life.
[00:19:47] Their portion, their inheritance, their blessing is only what they have in this life. That's all they get.
[00:19:55] There is no future blessing and promise, no hope and reward for the sinner.
[00:20:01] Or more to the point, Proverbs 17, verse I'm sorry, Proverbs 11:17.
[00:20:08] When the wicked dies, his hope will perish, and the expectation of wealth perishes too.
[00:20:19] The sinner whom we're tempted to envy has no hope. You have a future hope, a hope of that heavenly Jerusalem of union and communion with God.
[00:20:30] What Adam was promised, what Abraham and Moses and all of the Old Testament saints looked forward to, Christ offers you that.
[00:20:42] But the sinner has no hope, no future.
[00:20:46] This solves the problem of envying the sinner, doesn't it?
[00:20:52] We envy. We want to be in his place. We want his wealth, his prosperity, the love and attention that he gets from others, his successes, his power.
[00:21:05] But this teaches us all of that is here today and gone tomorrow.
[00:21:09] He has no hope. Don't envy him.
[00:21:14] But you have a hope, dear Christian, a hope in King Jesus, one that he offers. He is the king of the kingdom of heaven. He reigns on the throne of heaven. He's the Lamb who sits on the throne.
[00:21:29] What the Old Testament saints longed for, we have not just in promises, but Jesus has accomplished.
[00:21:37] He is sitting there in heaven, reigning, and his kingdom belongs to him, and he gives it to us.
[00:21:45] So be wise when you suffer and things go poorly, set your hope on an eternal life where things will only ever go well for you.
[00:21:55] When you have poverty and not riches, don't envy the world.
[00:22:00] Set your hope on the riches of eternal life.
[00:22:05] When things go very difficult, when you lose loved ones and you're drowning in sorrow and mourning here too, be wise and set your hope on the kingdom Jesus offers you, the one that he holds already. Now, one day he's going to come and bring you into that kingdom. And what's he going to do with your sorrow and mourning? He's going to wipe away every tear and replace it with joy.
[00:22:35] That is the reward that Christ holds. Forth to you as your king.
[00:22:40] But thirdly, and lastly, we want to look at how this hope is certain and sure.
[00:22:47] And that idea is very clearly present here in verse 18.
[00:22:51] It's a future hope, it's a future reality, it's a reward, and it's one that will not be cut off.
[00:23:00] That means it's certain.
[00:23:02] That means it can't be lost.
[00:23:05] It's not a wish or a whim. Sometimes we talk about having a hope and it's something that we desire.
[00:23:14] We don't have a lot of certainty of it coming true.
[00:23:18] Maybe you've said, I hope that so and so might become president, and lots of good things might come from that. But you know full well that that person has no chance of standing for election, let alone of winning.
[00:23:33] I hope that maybe someday things will be better in this or that relationship. But things seem so bad you aren't really very certain that they will.
[00:23:43] We use the word hope in English that way, but that is not the Christian's hope.
[00:23:49] Christians hope is not a wish or just a desire that maybe someday something good might happen.
[00:23:56] The Christian's hope is something that will not be cut off. It's firm, certain and sure.
[00:24:05] There are things in this life that are certain, firm and sure, but that we wouldn't say we hope for.
[00:24:11] But they're very certain, right?
[00:24:14] Death and taxes, for example. And maybe some other things you could think of that are yet future for you.
[00:24:22] Maybe they come around once a year. Maybe they come around every paycheck. Maybe it's going to come once at the end of your lifetime. They're certain, right? You know they're going to come about this is like that. But it's a positive thing. Of course it's certain that Christ will come again. It is certain that he will give his people the reward of the kingdom.
[00:24:45] That's what Jesus wants you to hear in this verse.
[00:24:48] Be wise and know that the thing that you hope for, that you long for and look forward to all your life long while you turn your face away from the wicked and towards the Lord, that thing that you hope for, eternal blessings, is certain and sure.
[00:25:05] Some people work their whole life long in a career and they do so with a kind of hope, right? Maybe it's a reasonable hope that one day they'll have enough saved, they'll be vested for their pension and they'll be able to retire and enjoy being grandparents and playing golf or traveling the world or gardening or whatever it is. They have this hope.
[00:25:25] And for most people it's a fairly Reasonable hope. And yet it's not a certain thing, is it?
[00:25:32] All kinds of things could happen. Your career field could disappear because of technological changes, the market could crash, you could lose your investments, your company could go under, and we could keep going. You get the idea.
[00:25:45] As reasonable as the American dream seems for many workers, it's a hope, but not a very certain and sure one.
[00:25:54] This hope that King Jesus offers us cannot be cut off. It is certain and sure. And here are some reasons why.
[00:26:07] First of all, because Jesus has secured the reward for for you.
[00:26:12] How did he do that? He went and he died on the cross. You know why Jesus is reigning on high in heaven? Why the kingdom belongs to Him.
[00:26:21] Because he went to the cross and he died. And he purchased a people for Himself so that he might be their king.
[00:26:28] And when he did that, the Father said, I accept your sacrifice. And to prove that he raised Jesus from the dead, Paul says he was raised for our justification at the end of Romans 3. What does that mean? That means that so that we might be declared righteous, God showed him to be the righteous one, showed that he accepted his sacrifice and he raised Jesus from the dead for our justification. The Father says, in the resurrection, I accept your sacrifice and I hand you the kingdom a people that you might reign over them.
[00:27:04] Your reward is certain and sure because Jesus has purchased it. He sealed it with his blood. The transaction is finished, accomplished. It's done. The Father has handed him the kingdom.
[00:27:15] And as further evidence for that, that this reward is sure and certain for you. Jesus has gone to heaven.
[00:27:22] And we can say two things, at least two things about that, that secure our hope and and our future.
[00:27:29] That heaven belongs to us, that it will not be cut off for those who fear the Lord.
[00:27:36] First of all, Jesus has taken to himself our human nature. And as the God man, He now has taken possession of heaven.
[00:27:48] It belongs to him. He has a glorified resurrected body which is in heaven in the presence of God, having full communion with God, Jesus, human nature, just like yours and mine, has that eternal life communion with God that we are promised.
[00:28:06] That certifies for you, makes utterly certain that when Jesus comes and raises you from the dead and gives you a glorified body, you will have the same communion that he has right now with God.
[00:28:21] Secondly, because Jesus, as the God man, sits on the throne of the kingdom of heaven, because he is the Lamb, because he went to the cross, he is worthy to sit on the throne of heaven.
[00:28:40] Because he sits on the throne and is worthy, you can know that heaven belongs to him, and therefore he will give it to you.
[00:28:49] It's certain, it's sure.
[00:28:52] You can hang your hat on this. As they say, this is your anchor behind the veil, that Jesus is there and the future belongs to him. And so it's certain and sure for you.
[00:29:09] So here's the King's wisdom for you.
[00:29:14] Instead of lusting after sinners and what they have, when you hit those moments where you say, man, I wish I could do what they do, man, I wish I had what they had because my circumstances are so hard, Jesus says, that's your moment to say, now wait a minute, I have a hope, something they don't have, and I need to think about that.
[00:29:38] We talk about relying on the providence of God in hard times and in difficult situations, trusting it in that. That's one doctrine we can go to. Here's another one.
[00:29:48] And that's what this proverb is calling us to. To cultivate that hope of eternal life and of future blessings in ourselves, so that our heart is looking to that and longing for that, rather than looking to this world and its things.
[00:30:08] You say I'm poor, you say I'm weak, you say I'm suffering.
[00:30:13] What do you do? These are opportunities.
[00:30:17] Yeah, there are opportunities for us to go and covet and sin, but God gives them to us as opportunities to contemplate and to meditate the future blessings that Christ already possesses for us.
[00:30:30] That's what this proverb is saying. There is a future hope for you and it will not be cut off.
[00:30:37] Focus on that hope. Draw near to that hope. Think about that.
[00:30:43] Every problem and trial you face in this life, there's something corresponding to it in the future that you can meditate on that will resolve that difficulty for you.
[00:30:54] Jesus says, everyone that follows him in this life, they may lose homes and families and all kinds of things for his name's sake.
[00:31:03] And he says, but every single one who loses things in this life for My sake will receive countless blessings in this life, but especially in the life to come. Let's pray.
[00:31:21] O Lord our God, you bring all sorts of trials into our lives.
[00:31:27] And we ask that you would help us to learn to be thankful for them, to begin to think of how we can use these difficulties so that as we go through suffering, we might begin to cultivate hope.
[00:31:42] And that clinging to that hope that we find in Jesus, we might learn that hope does not disappoint.
[00:31:50] O Lord our God, we have far more than seven years. For 14 years even, we have an entire lifetime in which we need to cling to Jesus and to the hope that he offers us.
[00:32:03] We ask, O Lord our God, that by the power of your spirit, you would fill our hearts with this hope and that like sails carrying us forward, we might be drawn forward ever onward in service to the Lord Jesus, in faithfulness to him, in love for him, in service to him.
[00:32:25] Help us, we ask, by your spirit, in Jesus name, amen.
