Episode Transcript
If you'll take your Bible tonight and turn to the book of Proverbs chapter 10,
Proverbs chapter 10, the title of the message tonight is Pithy Proverbs.
Pithy Proverbs. Proverbs chapter 10 and God willing will be expounding the first two verses.
We're starting a brand new chapter tonight.
And with this new chapter, we're reminded what we are about to read.
We are reading, if you'll look now in verse 1, the Proverbs of Solomon.
And if you'll go back and look, you'll see that the first nine chapters of this book
that we call Proverbs, the collection of the Proverbs.
If you go back and read the first nine chapters as we have,
or if you'll go back and think about what we have been studying in the first nine chapters of this book,
it enlarges upon various matters of wisdom.
It talks about wisdom itself.
We just covered an entire chapter about wisdom building her house,
and then the anti-Christ spirit, the spirit of anti-Christ building her house as well.
One verse leads into another verse and so on, explaining the topic before the reader in those first nine chapters.
But when we enter into chapter 10, things are different suddenly.
There's a change to brief one verse statements that are independent of each other.
Verse 1 is a complete, total separate thought than verse 2.
There is no nexus between them, or at least not expressed.
Certain news hosts back in the 2000s, early 2000s, Bill O'Reilly, you all may remember him,
he used to encourage people to send in their pithy comments, remember that?
Pithy comments, which basically meant he wanted them to use as few words as possible whenever they emailed him.
And that's what these proverbs are in chapter 10. They are pithy comments.
They're wise truths expressed in a few words.
And by the way, the fewer words you say, which is a nice thing to learn, a byproduct to learn here tonight,
but the fewer words you say about a matter, the less likely it will be that your thought that you're trying to convey will get lost in the words you say.
Did you know that?
Anytime you write, you then go back, whether it's a poem, a speech, a book, whatever.
Anytime you write, you then go back and you read over it again, and you need to pull out any extraneous words possible
and use as few words as possible to express your thoughts.
And if you could think of going to Walmart and buying all of your items and putting in the buggy,
and then you check out, of course, self-checkout. So you're checking yourself out and you have no bags.
So when it comes time to carrying those items into your kitchen,
you grab each, every item up and you're putting it here and you're tucking under your chin and you're trying to carry those in.
The odds are you're probably going to drop a few things along the way.
If you're able to put them in a few bags, then you can run your hand in those little straps
and you can carry all those items in and not lose any of it.
So the fewer things you have to hold onto, a few bags versus a whole bunch of items,
the more likely you are to not lose things on your journey.
And so the Proverbs here are going to be very terse, a few words,
but they're going to hold a lot of doctrine in them.
And hopefully by watching how Solomon writes and the things he says in these Proverbs,
it'll help us in our communication as well.
So with this collection of pithy comments, we're reminded again tonight that they're the Proverbs of Solomon.
And let's now take a look at the first pithy comment in this chapter.
Solomon said, look in your text now, a wise son maketh a glad father.
A wise son maketh a glad father.
Now I want you to pay attention to the key words in this sentence.
If you're taking notes, they are these wise maketh and glad.
Wise maketh and glad.
Here's a kingdom truth for you tonight.
Wisdom makes gladness.
Wise maketh and glad.
Just modernize it and you'll see wisdom makes gladness.
Wisdom makes gladness like a cow makes milk.
One produces the other.
So if there is wisdom in the heart, then there's always going to be gladness in the heart.
But we see tonight that wisdom not only makes,
not only that wisdom not only makes for you, but it also makes gladness for other people too.
It makes gladness for those you love.
It makes gladness for those who love you.
In this case, it is the wisdom of the son that makes the son's father glad.
The father loves his son.
And because his son is wise, the father is glad.
Wisdom not only has benefits that are directly benefiting us,
but wisdom that we have will benefit others indirectly as well.
I have a wise wife and her wisdom makes a glad husband.
If you care about your loved ones, then you should be actively seeking God's wisdom
in God's word and then faithfully living that wisdom out in your life.
If you care about your loved ones, why?
Because if you appropriate the wisdom of God and you carry that wisdom out,
that wisdom in your life will make the ones you love glad.
It'll bring gladness in their lives.
I want you to notice now that there is a general relationship
between the one that's wise and the one that's glad.
There's a relationship.
The glad person in the verse is the father.
The wise person in the verse is the son.
So there is this relationship between the person who is wise
and the person who is glad.
Here's a kingdom truth for tonight.
When wisdom is passed down, gladness is passed up.
A wise son makes his father glad.
Isn't that beautiful?
So when wisdom from the father is passed down to the son,
the son that appropriates that wisdom just by appropriating that wisdom,
the wisdom then passes gladness up.
It's a wonderful truth.
The most important thing you can pass down to your children is wisdom.
You can pass down money.
You can pass down status.
You can pass down education or privilege.
And if your child receives every one of those from you,
they can still leave you brokenhearted.
But if they receive wisdom that you pass down,
then you will surely receive that gladness passed back up to you.
Now I want you to notice a word here, and that is the word maketh.
Wisdom maketh.
Wise son makes his father glad.
The wise son doesn't create an atmosphere that's suitable for gladness.
He makes gladness, which means wisdom is like love.
It's an attribute of God.
What does the Bible say about charity?
Charity never fails.
Guess what?
Why does charity never fail?
Because God is love.
Well, what did we learn about wisdom in the Proverbs?
Who is wisdom?
It's not what is wisdom, it's who is wisdom.
And who is wisdom in the Proverbs?
It's Jesus.
It's the Lord himself.
And so wisdom is an attribute of God, just like love is an attribute of God,
and wisdom like love being an attribute of God, wisdom never fails.
Because God never fails.
Now underscore the word glad.
Glad.
And now a little further down, if you would, in the verse,
in the next sentence, underscore the word heaviness.
One son makes gladness, the other son makes heaviness.
Now I want you to notice that the parent doesn't make these conditions.
Who makes the conditions?
The son, the son.
The child makes the conditions, not the parent.
As a parent, you have a tremendous influence on your child.
As a parent, you have a tremendous responsibility for your child.
But at the end of the day, your child, not you,
will be the one who makes the decision to walk according to the wisdom of God's word
or according to the foolishness of this world.
That's how it is.
The parent makes the choices in the beginning.
That's true.
But the child makes the choices in the end.
How many of y'all turned out quite opposite of one of your parents?
Yeah. There are several hands go up.
Several hands go up.
And that can go for the good or for the bad.
So you make the choices in the beginning, and you need to make the wise choices.
But in the end, it's your child that makes those choices.
I remember spending some time alone with Allison, my oldest daughter, one day after church.
She had just gotten married to Luke.
And they hadn't been together very long.
And I believe he was at work, doing his nursing thing one day.
And so Allison wrote home with me after church.
And back then, they lived in Athens down the road from me.
And on the way home, we were talking,
and she started talking about some of the things she wanted for her home.
Not material things, but spiritual things.
She began talking about the standards that her and Luke wanted for their home,
the Christian standards.
And I tell you what, to hear my daughter talk about those things brought much joy to my heart.
It brought me gladness.
Because at home, when she lived at home, it was dad's standards.
It was dad's convictions to follow God's word.
Those were my decisions, my choices in the beginning.
But now it's her choices in the end.
And for her to make those choices and her godly husband Luke to make those choices,
that makes a father glad, makes a father-in-law glad.
I'm sure it makes Luke's daddy glad.
Once more, a wise son makes his father glad.
And this is not suggestive.
It's imperative.
He makes the father glad, as if the father has no choice in the matter,
but to be affected by the wisdom of his son.
Here's another kingdom truth for you tonight.
There is a lifelong, undeniable, inescapable connection
between a child's decisions and their parents' emotional well-being.
And repeat that again.
Man, I see heads shaking everywhere.
Can y'all parents agree with that?
And you're just getting started.
You just wait.
I'm serious.
But already, her and Russ, you know, there is a lifelong,
undeniable, inescapable connection between a child's decisions
and their parents' emotional well-being.
Children, young people, y'all listen up.
If you can understand what I'm saying tonight, listen up.
Your conduct, children, has a tremendous impact on your parents' emotional health.
And if you're too young to understand emotional health,
your conduct has a tremendous impact on if your parents' happy or not.
Not because your parents are emotionally weak,
but because they love you and they care about your well-being.
If your parents didn't care, then no matter how you acted,
it wouldn't affect them too much.
But because they do care, how you are in your life greatly affects them.
Your parents did not change your diapers at 2 o'clock in the morning,
hold you when you cried, cleaned up when you got sick, fed and clothed you,
take you to the doctor, dedicate you to God,
pray for you, and schedule their lives around you
as you grew up and took you to all the activities you had
just to see you grow up to be an irresponsible, immoral nitwit
who lives for the day and gives no thought for eternity.
I had to get that off my chest. It's true.
Have some respect for yourself and your parents
and try to make them proud of you while you still have your parents around.
A wise son makes his father glad.
Look back in your text.
But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.
Wisdom makes gladness. Foolishness makes heaviness.
Oh, I know what it is to have a heavy heart for a child.
Foolishness produces heaviness like wisdom produces gladness.
You simply cannot escape it.
It's one of the hardest things in the world to watch your child
live a foolish life. Very difficult.
And because they're foolish, if you try to correct them,
they'll either get angry at you, avoid you,
or they'll get a kick out of her to get with her behavior,
all depending on how much the devil's got to them.
Because they are foolish, the parent has to watch their child's destruction
take place while their foolish child laughs their way through the calamities
of their life and then dies and goes to hell if they do not repent.
A foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.
You see that relational connection again.
A foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.
Another kingdom truth. When foolishness is passed down, heaviness is passed up.
So when wisdom's passed down, gladness is passed up.
When foolishness is passed down, heaviness is passed up.
If a parent passes down foolishness to their child, and many parents do,
many parents live foolish lives in front of their children.
Many parents raise their children foolishly.
And when a parent passes down foolishness to their child,
then that child will pass heaviness back up to their parent.
Mark it down. Parents never do anything in front of your child
that you don't want your child to do in front of you.
That's one good rule for you to have.
Never say, well now don't you ever smoke?
Well don't you ever do this? Don't you ever do that?
Now don't do this? Or don't tell your mom you saw me do this? Or whatever.
Parents, never put the world before the Word of God with your kids.
I'm going to say it again. Never put the world before the Word of God with your kids.
Make church a priority for your family.
Show your children and grandchildren that God's Word comes before anything else.
Adam made the mistake of putting his family before his God.
He put his wife before his God, and it destroyed his family.
It destroyed his children.
When you as a parent miss church to entertain your children or your grandchildren,
you're making a bad mistake.
Let me say it again. I hope everyone's watching online who's not here.
When you miss church to entertain your children or your grandchildren,
you are teaching them that they come before God.
I would never tell my children that. You did it by your actions.
Everybody knows actions speak louder than words.
I would be at church, but you're here tonight.
I hate it when someone says,
Brother Fulton, we're not going to be able to church today.
My daughters come in from out of town.
Or my grandchild come over to visit me,
and they're going to be spending the night tonight.
They're going to stay home and watch a chick flick together or something.
I don't know what you do when you do that,
but never do that because you're teaching that they come before God.
If they follow your example,
then they will continue to put themselves before God
and never learn that they need to follow him and have him out in front of them.
If you pass foolishness down to your children,
then your children will pass heaviness back up to you.
But if a parent passes down wisdom to their children,
then those children pass foolishness back up in return,
which often happens.
Sometimes they pass down foolishness,
and thank God the children pass wisdom and gladness back up to the parent.
A lot of times the parent thinks,
Thank God it didn't turn out like I did.
Thank God he had mercy.
Other times the parent never gets it.
They just never get it.
But if you pass down wisdom to your children,
they pass foolishness and heaviness back up to you in return,
God will hold those children accountable
for repaying evil for the good that they received.
Now in the next verse, verse 2,
Solomon brings another topic up.
Boy, we could end tonight, but I think I can close this out.
In verse 2 it says,
Treasures of wickedness profit nothing.
Treasures of wickedness profit nothing.
Treasures of wickedness,
that's the, and Brother Shepherd has been teaching about vain persons
in his Sunday school.
I listened to him this morning, or this afternoon rather.
In treasures of wickedness,
they're the vain treasures of this life
that are gained in disobedience to God's Word.
For example, let's say a person spends their life
seeking earthly wealth over godly wealth.
Their life's ambition is storing up earthly treasures
rather than pleasing God and storing up heavenly treasures and serving him.
In that case, the earthly treasures that the person accumulates,
that's their treasures of wickedness that they put before God.
Or perhaps a person wants nothing more than to relish the pleasures
of their godly life.
I'm sorry, their godless life.
They just want to relish living sensually.
If they live their life in the godless pleasures of this world
rather than the Word of God, then that's their treasures of wickedness.
I was told of a man once who took pleasure
in seeing how many women he could cheat on his wife with.
That's his treasures of wickedness.
Whatever you consider in life,
whatever you take pleasure in in life,
and you're heaping up to yourself in life
that does not come by way of obedience to our Lord,
that's your treasures of wickedness.
And Solomon said these treasures profit nothing.
You see, life's treasures are not calculated on their gross gain.
They're calculated on their net gain.
Isn't that how you do something in a business?
Ms. Elizabeth, she's got a business.
You've got a little business.
Do you calculate your gain on your gross or your net?
Do you know the difference?
I'll teach it to you.
If you make $100 in a month from selling aprons,
someone pays you $100 for that month in aprons.
You don't charge $100 a piece, do you?
Okay, because I've got one on order for her.
So they pay you $100 in aprons for that month.
And you've got $50 of material that you spent to make those aprons.
The $100 is your gross. That's how much you took in.
The $50 is your net, you see?
That's how much you actually made profit, okay?
And so when it comes to life's treasures,
we always figure our profit on the net, not on the gross.
And here's the thing.
Taxes have to be figured in to your net, don't they?
And everybody will pay death taxes when they leave this world.
They'll pay death taxes on all their treasures.
Death is going to tax everything when we die,
and the only profit we'll gain is what's left over after we die.
That's it. Everything else is gross.
But death taxes it.
And if you had $100 that you took in from people,
and you spent $100 in material,
you end up making nothing.
If you heap up all the treasures of this life,
and then death comes along and taxes you for it,
and you can't take anything that you had in this life with you
on the other side of the grave, you profit nothing.
That's the treasures of this world.
Here's the kingdom truth.
Lasting treasure is profit for all.
Lost treasure is no profit at all.
If you lose your treasure, you've lost your profit.
If I gave Abigail a big fat $100 tip
on top of a $200 luxury apron, which I'll never do either,
but if I did, and she got $300 from me,
put it in her pocket here at church,
somewhere between here and their house
in the outskirts of Kauffman,
she lost at $300.
How much profit would you have?
Lost treasure is no profit at all.
Lasting treasure is profit for all.
The book of James, chapter 5, verse 1,
through 3, says this,
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl
for your miseries that shall come upon you.
Your riches are corrupted,
and your garments are moth-eaten.
It means you've got riches, but they're corrupted.
They break down. They get rust.
You've got all these nice clothes,
and the moths come along and eat them.
Nobody digs up somebody from the ancient world,
pulls their burial clothes out and says,
Oh, how nice. This is just my size.
Nobody does that.
Because the riches of this world are corruptible.
He says in verse 3,
Your gold and silver is cankered,
and the rust of them shall be a witness against you
and shall eat your flesh as it were fire.
Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
So the corruption of your metal
and your moth-eaten clothes
are going to testify against you at the last day
that you heaped up treasures
that you couldn't take with you out of this world.
What comes from this world
perishes with this world.
That's why we're born from above.
We shall not perish but have everlasting life.
He says there'll be a testimony against you,
and they'll eat up your flesh.
What does that mean?
That means you invested in this world,
and now your investments in return,
you invested in a corrupted world,
and now in return what you invested in
is going to corrupt you.
You're going to die and rot
and be eaten by the worms
and turn right back into that corruptible earth
just like you invested in.
You have heaped treasure together for the last days.
In other words, everything that you heap together,
everything you heap together,
you're heaping for the last days.
Every bit of treasure you're heaping together,
you're heaping together for the last days
whether you realize it or not,
because you are going to enter the last days
but your treasure may not enter with you.
And what good will your worldly treasure be
when this fallen world comes to an end?
You have heaped treasure together for the last days.
A simple person stores up for the future.
I like storing up for the future,
but a wise person stores up for eternity.
We all have a future,
and we all have an eternity,
and I'd rather my treasures go with me into eternity.
Whatever treasure you have
will have to be deposited into the first kingdom bank of heaven,
and God's bank doesn't accept earthly currency.
It accepts kingdom cash.
Treasures of wickedness, therefore, are no profit.
Look back in your text as we begin to close,
but righteousness deliverest from death.
How about that?
All the earthly treasures in the world
can't bow your way out of the grave.
All the wealth of this world can't extend your life
one minute beyond what the sovereignty of God extends you.
But righteousness delivers from death,
which makes it the most valuable treasure of all.
And the righteousness that delivers you from death
comes only by Jesus Christ,
who has fulfilled God's law,
His righteous law, on your behalf.
Romans chapter 10, we'll close with this verse, verse 4.
For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone that believes.
I thank God that we have that righteousness in Him
that delivers from death.
And now if we live in that righteousness,
that He's imputed to our account,
that we'll heap up treasures for the last days,
that will not testify against us,
but will testify to the mighty grace of God
and enter with us into eternity.
Father, we thank You so much for Your precious Word.
We thank You for Your wisdom.
Lord, You always shoot straight with us.
You speak plainly to us.
Lord, a lot of times parents want to brag on their children
when they're not worth bragging about.
A lot of times, dear Lord God,
we want to brag on our treasures when they're not worth bragging about.
And You come right along, Father,
and You point out the gladness and the heaviness.
You point out the corruptible treasures that have no profit
and the incorruptible treasures that give us life from the death.
And we thank You, Father, for being so plain spoken
and showing us the difference between what is good and what is evil.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
