Episode Transcript
All right, I should take God's precious word and turn to Proverbs chapter 11.
God willing, we'll be expounding verse 6 tonight.
Proverbs chapter 11 and verse 6, the title of the message tonight is "Taken by Naughtiness."
Taken by Naughtiness.
And verse 5 last week we learned that the righteousness of a perfect person or a person with a perfect heart, it directs their way.
We learned what that word direct means.
It means to straighten the quickest, shortest point or shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
And we learned the word perfect means whole, at least in that context it means whole as in someone serving God with their whole heart.
And if we serve God with our whole heart then it will straighten our walk with God.
And it will expedite His will in our lives, not be like the children of Israel wandering around for 40 years because they did not serve God with their whole heart.
They were split between going to Egypt and going to the Promised Land.
And we don't want that delay in our lives.
We learned that disobedience brings delay in our walk with God because it takes us out of the way that God has for us to go.
But obedience, righteousness directs our way causing us to walk as God wants us to walk and go where God wants us to go.
Now continuing verse 6 tonight as we move forward, Solomon draws our attention to, if you look now in verse 6, the righteousness not of the perfect but the righteousness of the upright.
And the two are not the same, the righteousness of the upright.
There is a nuance, they're close to being the same, but there is a nuance and we're going to look at the difference here.
In verse 5 it was the righteousness of the perfect and verse 6 is the righteousness of the upright and the subtle difference is worth mentioning, it's worth us paying attention to because it was worth Solomon repeating and wording it a little bit differently here.
And interestingly enough, the word upright, remember the word direct means to straighten in the previous verse and interestingly enough the word upright means straight.
What a coincidence, no there's no coincidence here.
In this case to stand upright or to be upright, so if you have a slouchy teenager and the parent tells that teenager what, stand up straight.
That teenager wants a slouch especially if you tell them to go do something, go clean your room, oh man they drag like that.
And they say stand up straight and so to be upright means to stand up straight.
But in this case it means to stand up straight in a moral sense, not in a sense of stature, physical stature, but in the sense of moral stature to not be slouching in an immoral sense but to be standing upright to have your stand with God, your walk with God straight as his word directs your path.
And so we're looking here at the righteousness of the upright and in the Hebrew the root word that this word upright is taken from here, it is a fascinating word.
Listen to how it's used in Isaiah 40 verse 3.
You may have heard this somewhere before, Isaiah 40 verse 3.
It's where the prophet foretells of John the Baptist saying Isaiah 43, "The voice of him that cryeth in the wilderness, prepare you the way the Lord makes straight."
Same Hebrew root word as upright here, "make straight in the desert a highway for our God."
So there is a kinship here in the words, there is a definite relationship here and in verse 5 it emphasized the wholeheartedness of a righteous person that straightens their way while in verse 6 it emphasizes a righteous person's strict adherence to God's word doing what is right therefore being called upright.
Now the righteousness we're talking about here tonight is a practical righteousness.
A lot of people get really confused when they're reading about righteousness in the Bible because they don't know how to differentiate between practical righteousness and what's the other kind of righteousness.
Anyone want to get a shot at it?
Huh?
Imputed righteousness.
Did you miss it?
Did you get it?
Very good.
Did you get it before brother Sheppard got it?
You did, okay.
But there's a difference between practical righteousness and imputed righteousness.
If I do what's right, is that righteousness?
Sure it is.
If you're doing what's right, that is righteous.
Now can we be right all the time?
No.
So when we're comparing ourselves to the law as a whole, we are all unrighteous because we all come short of a complete obedience to that law.
But when we look at us adhering to God's word, God says to Abraham, "Leave your country and go to the place I tell you."
Well when Abraham obeyed God, was that righteous of Abraham?
Sure it was.
Sure it was.
And so tonight when we're looking at the righteousness of the upright, we're looking at a practical righteousness.
Not necessarily an imputed righteousness.
And the reason I'm wanting to make sure and differentiate between the two here is because some people say, "Well, I just don't feel that I'm righteous as I should be, or I don't feel I meet up to this standard or what have you."
And if we look and we see someone falling short of righteousness and getting punished for it, we don't want people to be confused and think, "Well how can we get punished if we have Christ's righteousness imputed to us?"
So when we stand before God and we're judged by God on the basis of whether or not we will be accepted by Him, we're judged based on the imputed righteousness of Christ.
When we stand before God and we have given account for every deed we've done, we're judged upon our practical righteousness that will not be in the sense, the imputed righteousness of God, it swings open the gate to the kingdom of God and we're accepted our sins atone for.
Our practical righteousness then decides whether or not we're going to have a loss or gain of reward, or what we're going to reap or sow here on this earth or in the life to come.
So there's both.
So it's not the righteousness that justifies us before God that we're talking about tonight, it's the righteousness of imperfect people who are trying to walk the perfect way that God has for us.
The righteousness of imperfect people who are trying to walk the perfect walk that God has for us.
Here's the kingdom of truth for you tonight.
We can't walk perfectly, but we can imperfectly walk God's perfect way.
We can't walk perfectly, but we can imperfectly walk God's perfect way.
There were a lot of people who followed Jesus.
There were 12 men who followed Jesus, 11 of them stuck with them all the way.
They were disciples.
Were disciple means follower.
Now if you're following Jesus, you are literally following the way of God because he is the way.
Now the whole time Peter and Matthew and the whole time these disciples of the time, the whole time they're following Jesus, they're walking the way of God.
They're going the direction God wants them to go.
They're walking the king's highway, following the king.
But you know what else they're doing while they're doing that?
They're arguing with each other.
Who's going to be greatest in the kingdom?
Who's going to be this?
Who's going to be that?
They're trying to figure out how come they can't cast devils out and they're doubting Jesus when he says, "Well, let's feed all these people.
How are we going to do this?"
So they were walking imperfectly in a perfect way or down the perfect way.
They were walking a perfect way imperfectly however you want to put that.
So we can't walk perfectly.
The disciples proved that to us, but we can imperfectly walk God's perfect way.
And I thank God that he's allowed us to have the life stories of those disciples and other men who walked imperfectly in God's perfect way.
Now an upright person is someone who judges their actions.
We're talking about the upright, the person who morally stands upright.
They don't walk perfectly down God's perfect way, but they're walking God's perfect way imperfectly, which means the way they're choosing to go in life means they are judging their actions.
They're making their decisions based on what God's word says.
If God's word says, "I need to do this," this is what I'm going to do.
They take a step forward down God's way.
God's word says, "I don't need to do this.
I need to do the other."
They take this direction here, going God's way.
And so this is someone who is an upright person.
I don't know about you, but I want to be on the right side of God's word every time.
That's the goal.
I do not want to be on the wrong side of God's word.
I don't want to follow his word with a half heart.
But I want to follow it with a whole heart and take my steps based on what the Scriptures tell me.
And the righteousness of the upright person, Solomon, says, look back in your text, "shall deliver them."
Deliver them.
This is not the first time that we've seen this word deliver here in the Proverbs.
In fact, we saw it a few weeks ago in verse four.
And we learned that it means to snatch away, to snatch away.
So as a whole, we get delivered when we're snatched up by the rapture.
Praise God.
But in the practical day-to-day righteousness, you know, we can get snatched away from danger too.
When Abel was little, I've shared this with you all before, a long time ago.
But when he was little, he was running around the backyard.
His foot slipped down in a hole.
And he was scared and he looked up and said, "Daddy," and I ran over and swooped him up and I pulled him and I held him close to me to make sure he didn't fall any further down that hole that was in my backyard.
And I capped that off that day so that it wouldn't happen again.
And that's a snatching away.
I snatched him away from danger.
And that's the kind of fatherly, loving, rescuing, deliverance that this word snatch away is talking about.
This Hebrew word translated "deliver" here.
And this gives us some great insight into God's Word when we understand that we're thinking about the righteousness of the upright.
What is actually doing the snatching away?
What's actually coming by and scooping up the child of God from harm's way?
It doesn't say God will deliver, even though we know it's God, but that's not what it says.
It says the righteousness of the upright will snatch him away.
So now we get some great insight into God's Word because the only way to have that practical righteousness is by doing what's right.
And the only way to do what's right is to follow what God said in His Word.
And so now we see that God wrote the Bible for us, and He's given the Bible to us as a means to come and scoop up the child of God and snatch us away from harm.
That's the Scriptures.
So when we follow God's Word, when we adhere to the Scriptures, the Scriptures themselves, by our adherence, by our righteousness to them, us walking in the upright way of God's Word, that Scripture, God's direction, His Word to us, snatches us from danger.
What a way to view the Bible.
Hey, how nice would it have been had Eve viewed God's Word that way.
We wouldn't have been the mess we're in right now had Adam and Eve viewed the Word of God that way.
Obedience to God's Word makes us upright.
The righteousness of the upright delivers them.
The Bible is God's way of lovingly, fatherly, snatching us from harm's way.
It was written by our heavenly Father for the purpose of snatching us up in His arms and rescuing us from danger.
When God's Word tells us to be obedient to the Scriptures, God's doing it because He loves us.
When we disobey God's Word, we do it foolishly to our own hurt.
There's an itinerant preacher I know named Tim Lee.
Brother Shepard knows him too.
Brother Lee lost his legs in the Vietnam War.
He was on a special detail where he cleared land mines.
He was the sergeant over that detail.
Being the leader that he was, he didn't lead from behind.
He got out in front and was trying to help clear a path.
He put himself out front so if anyone got hurt it would be him.
He was trying to clear a path for soldiers sweeping for mines and unfortunately he stepped on one.
He lost both his legs.
He came back and became an itinerant preacher.
The path that God's laid out for us in His Word, it's already swept the mines in life for us.
Really when you think of the Scriptures, you have to think of them that way.
God has already foreseen everything that could possibly come our way in life.
He knows.
In His wisdom and His foreknowledge and His love and His grace, the Scriptures have already gone before us and cleared a path for us where there's no land mines.
None.
If you're walking down God's path and your foot slips in the hole, it's a hole God put there for you so God could strengthen you and draw you closer to Him.
But it's not a hole that the enemy, it's not a mine the enemy put there for you.
It's going to damage you.
It's going to strengthen you.
You get off of God's path, you step on a mine, it's going to damage you.
You step on something on God's path, it's going to strengthen you and that's the difference.
But man, in God's Word we already have a roadmap, a path cleared out for us.
It will only be wise enough to take it.
It's been cleared of every snare, every bag of tricks the devil has so we can walk safely and confidently with every step when we're stepping the Bible way.
Our adherence to God's Word snatches us up from the snares that Satan lays for us.
Praise God.
Look back in your text, "But transgressors, what about them?
They don't walk the way of God."
Foolishly they don't walk the safe path that God's cleared for them with His Word and all this goes back to how people view their Creator.
Once again, if I view God's Word as the instrument by which God scoops me up and snatches me from danger, if I view God's Word as a loving Father's arms that are there to lead me and if I come something to snatch me away from it, if the devil comes to warn me, he snatches me away with his Word and says, "No, don't go that way.
Come over here."
Again Abel, he was always the one going off.
Man, I called poison control twice on that boy.
He was always getting into something, drinking something, whatever, eating furniture, polished.
But anyway, as he runs out into the road one day and then again there I am as a loving Father and he can't go out in that road.
He's going to get hit.
I run over there and I snatch him back.
The road looks so playful I guess.
There's no bumps, there's no grasps.
Why not run out there?
It's smooth.
But the devil does that and when we follow God's Word, God says, "No, that may look good to you.
It may be inviting to you, but I'm telling you no."
When we obey it, that righteousness of obedience to God saying no, it snatches us out of the road.
It's a wonderful thing.
But if we view the voice of God in a perverted way, in a way that's skewed, that's flawed, that we don't see the Scriptures as those loving arms of our Father pulling us out of the road, pulling us up out of the hole.
From the very beginning that's what Satan's done.
That's been his method of operation.
He works tirelessly to slander the name of God and then turn the hearts of men against him.
To make them think some way different of God other than he actually is.
He wants to vilify God and that's what he did to Eve.
He vilified God to Eve.
He made her think that God was being selfish.
Oh, he's the only one that wants to be a God.
Why you eat from that fruit?
He knows you'll be a God like him.
He didn't want to share the wealth.
Trying to hold you back, Eve.
Trying to hold something good from you and I'm here to tell you about it.
Listen to me.
You can really go somewhere in life if you'll go eat that fruit.
Do you know what he was doing?
Satan was dressing up a land mine.
That's all he was doing.
He was going over there and putting decorations on it and spraying a little perfume on it and giving a sales pitch on that land mine.
When God told our parents to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he was guiding our parents around the land mine that would destroy them and us.
But Satan came afterward, gave a whole different picture of that forbidden fruit.
He essentially told Eve that stepping on that land mine, even though he didn't call it that, he called it the fruit of opportunity.
He said, "Man, that'll really make you an Adam something.
That'll be your big chance to make something out of yourselves.
Don't be stuck here in this garden.
There's a whole big world out there.
You can be so much more than what God's allowing you to be if you'll just take that fruit."
By the time the devil got through describing that land mine, Eve was ready to run straight to it.
And she did, eagerly.
Eve saw God's word as being prohibitive rather than being protective.
She saw God as being unfair rather than being gracious and loving like he really is.
Additionally, he convinced Eve that not only would the fruit be good for her, but that nothing bad would happen to her if she disobeyed God's word.
That, hey, you can disobey God's word and you can get away with it.
And that's what the word transgressor here has the idea of.
If you'll remember, we looked at the word transgressor in the past week and I told you then it had the idea of someone committing a crime with a mask on.
Remember me telling you that?
We used the illustration of a stagecoach robber with that mask on.
So it has the idea of I can commit this offense against God and get away with it.
That's what people think.
So not only can I get something by disobeying God's word that I wouldn't have gotten had I not disobeyed God's word, but I can get away with the consequences of that disobedience.
So here's the devil's twofold age old tactic to get you to disobey God's word.
Number one, convince you that you won't be wrong.
He's going to justify it in your mind.
Convent you that you won't be wrong.
What did he tell you?
You shall be as God's.
Well, who wouldn't want to be like God?
That's almost religious, isn't it?
Almost a holy experience.
A religious experience.
He's selling Eve here.
You'll be as God's.
You won't be wrong if you take that fruit.
Number two, convince you that you won't be wrong.
Number two, convince you that you won't get in trouble.
You shall be as God's.
You won't be wrong.
You shall not surely die.
You won't get in trouble.
That's the twofold age old tactic.
The devil does.
He'll convince you that disobeying God's word will not be wrong in the particular circumstance you're in.
Now in, uh, in this situation, in this case here, you'll be fine.
You'll be right if you don't follow the scripture here and there's a bonus here.
You won't get in any trouble for it.
You'll be okay.
That's a transgressor, but the Bible says transgressors.
If you look back in your text now, transgressors what shall be taken.
They shall be taken.
Now taken here has to have a little context has to have a little, uh, description of this definition here in the Hebrew.
It's not taken in the sense of, Oh, I'll take that are taken the sense of one will be taken.
The other will be left.
It's nothing to do with that in the old Testament.
If you'll think back to the wording in the old Testament, when there would be wars between two cities and if one city conquered another city, the Bible will describe it as they took that city that ring a bell to you.
That's the idea here.
You have a city and the devil wants to conquer your city.
There is a true real life war going on over the battle of men's souls.
There's a true war going on over each and every individual.
The devil wants to capture your city.
Listen to how this word is used in Joshua chapter 10 verse 42, Joshua chapter 10 verse 42.
And all these Kings in their land did Joshua take at one time because the Lord God of Israel fought for Israel.
So we're looking at, at, at the transgressor being taken.
There's two elements we have to think of here.
Number one, he, Joshua took the city.
Why?
Because God fought.
That means if something is taken is the result of a victorious battle.
There was a fight that took place.
God fought for Joshua.
God was the superior power and in the battle God won.
So Joshua took the city.
Now, when we step out of God's word and we're disobeying God's word, God's not going to fight for us to promote our disobedience.
So as we step out of God's word, we're fighting on our own.
We're fighting a superior power because we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principles and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world and these high places.
And so what happens is when we decide, you know what?
I'm not going to get caught.
I'm not going to get in trouble.
In this case, this is right that I'm doing this.
I'm just going to do this this time here.
And I step out of God's word as I go over here.
You know what?
In this battle, I want to lose.
And if I am a transgressor in heart in the sense that you know what?
I'm going to disobey God's word completely.
I'm going to reject the word of God.
I'm going to reject the son of God.
I'm going to reject God's word completely.
Guess what happens?
That city gets taken.
The battle over that person's soul is won by the enemy and their city's taken.
They become a territory to the devil.
How do you think those people in the New Testament that were possessed by devils got possessed by devils?
They got taken.
Their city got conquered by superior foe until God came and fought for them.
And the strong man of the house had to be bound and kicked out by a stronger man.
That's what we're looking at here.
So there's a fight going on.
When we're looking here in the Proverbs, Solomon is letting us know when he says, "The transgressor shall be taken."
He's letting us know here.
There is a battle going on each and every day.
I thank God since I can't walk God's perfect way perfectly, I do win some, I do lose some battles.
I win some battles in the grace of Jesus, but praise God because of Jesus I won the war.
But for the people who reject God's word completely, the transgressor, they reject the Lord Jesus Christ, they lose the war.
They lose the war.
Their city's taken.
For us, our city can't be taken.
It can't be taken because our city has a king that fights our battle.
But it shall be taken.
So understand there's a real battle being waged against you.
So as long as you're on the king's highway, you get the king's protection.
Don't lose the battles.
Praise God as a believer we can't lose the war.
I don't want to lose the battles either.
But when you depart from God's word, your city becomes vulnerable.
It can be robbed.
It can be spoiled.
Just like Israel's was.
Israel, Jerusalem, the Jewish nation, it will always endure.
But man has it suffered some losses in the meantime.
And we can too.
The only time Christians are defeated in this world is when they depart from God's word.
Hands down, that's the only time.
And they are taken, the Bible says, the transgressors are taken how?
Look back in the text, in their own naughtiness.
In their own naughtiness.
Now I want you to think of naughtiness tonight because we think of all naughty, naughty, naughty.
But this isn't a silly word.
This Hebrew word translated naughtiness here, it's a fascinating word.
It has the idea of eagerly coveting something.
It literally means to breathe, to eagerly covet something and to rush upon it.
That's what Eve did.
She eagerly coveted that fruit and rushed after it.
Naughtiness is when we get a false but glamorous view of something evil.
We get a false but glamorous view of something evil.
Then we set our hearts on it, eagerly coveting it and we rush after it that we may have it.
And we repeat that again.
Naughtiness is when we get a false but glamorous view of something evil.
And then we set our hearts on it.
We eagerly covet what we have that false but glamorous view of and then we run after it that we may have it.
And when we take the forbidden thing we coveted, we are taken by it.
The transgressor is taken by their own naughtiness.
When we eagerly rush to take what's forbidden, we are then taken by it, by taking it.
Again, that's what Eve did.
She rushed, she got a false view of that fruit, got a glamorized view of something forbidden.
She set her heart on it, she eagerly coveted it, went and took after it and by taking it it took her.
It took Adam.
That's what Lot did with the grazing land near Sodom.
He said, "Look at that beautiful land, that grass.
Yeah, it's close to Sodom, but man, just look what that city can do.
We'll have infrastructure there and we can trade and everything, have our cows here.
Man, we'll be all set up over there."
He got a false but glamorous view of that city.
He set his heart on it.
He went after it and by taking it, it ended up taking him.
He lost his family.
What a sad thing.
That's what happened with Samson and Delilah.
He got to looking at Delilah.
God said no, parents said no and he just, looking at Delilah.
"Boy, isn't she pretty.
She's the one I want from her.
Get me that woman."
He went after her, he took her and by taking her, she took him.
That's what King David did with Bathsheba.
That's what King Ahab did with Naboth's vineyard.
That's what Judas did with the silver.
That's what Satan did with his own prideful ambitions.
As we begin to close tonight, I was listening to a real life account that a man gave once that he wrote.
He wasn't alive to give it.
It was a long time ago, but he wrote about it and I was listening to his account that he wrote about in his own life.
Many years ago, he said when he was a young man, he was married and he was a married young man.
He began to think about being with someone different than his wife.
A little excitement in his life and the more he thought about it, the stronger that urge got.
You see what was happening?
He got a glamorous view, a false but glamorous view of something evil.
The more he thought of it, the stronger it got.
He started eagerly coveting it.
That's naughtiness.
He began eagerly coveting an adulterous relationship with a strange woman.
The excitement that he imagined was so powerful that he rushed to commit that sin one day.
He said he was in the river one day.
He was swimming in the river and he looked down in the distance down that river and he saw a young woman alone bathing in the river.
His heart started pumping.
He thought, "This is it.
This is it right here."
He said, he thought, "You know, I've got money and that looks like a poor woman.
She's probably from this little community over here.
I've got money.
I'm wealthy.
I know that she'll have a relationship with me, adulterous relationship with me, if I pay her."
He thought, "That's what I want to do."
I swim over to her.
I'll hit her up, offer to pay her and he said, "I'm sure of it.
This is going to happen."
He was so certain in his mind.
He started swimming toward her.
He said the closer he got to her, the faster he swam.
The more excited he got with each stroke.
As his lust grew stronger and stronger, the closer he got.
Finally, he came up to the woman, swam up to her, intending to solicit the affair.
When he raised his head up out of the water to look at her, she screamed with fear.
He saw that she was a leper.
She had leprosy and she was out washing her infected body.
That's the essence of every naughty sin that we covet after.
We get a false but glamorous view of something evil.
Then we set our hearts on it.
Then we eagerly covet it in, rushing to take that forbidden fruit.
The fruit takes us and we find out that it's rotten.
Whether it's that man or Samson or Judas is silver or the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or something that you and I have ran after because we set our hearts on it in our lives, it's the same pattern and the same discovery every time.
Father, we thank you so much for your precious word.
Thank you for the warning of naughtiness in your word that we're taken by it.
Our city is destroyed by it.
Sadly, Lord, it's our own pursuit of the naughtiness that takes us.
When we pursue in naughtiness, Lord, we're pursuing our own lives, our own city.
God help us, Lord, to see and avoid the landmines with your word because they really describe the landmines as they are.
And not listen, Father, to the false word that paints the false but glamorous view of them.
May we not rush headlong to our destruction to suffer our city damage.
But, Lord, I pray we'll walk uprightly and let your word be that which snatches us away from the forbidden rotten fruit.
In Jesus' wonderful name, amen.
