Episode Transcript
All right, if you take God's precious Word and turn to Proverbs 12, verse 2.
Proverbs 12, verse 2.
"Tilte of the message is good men in a bad world."
Did we have... did your mom make notes on this one?
I was curious how the picture would be on this had there been one.
"Good men in a bad world."
So if we'll look here now in Proverbs 12 too, it starts off with the words, "a good man."
And just those three words, if you know much about your Bible, should cause you to pause a little bit.
Because the Bible has a lot to say about a good man, doesn't it?
And the Hebrew word translated "good" here is "tob," and that's the same Hebrew word that we have studied many times and from which we have gained a wealth of insight into God's Word.
So Solomon is talking about a "tobe" man.
And remember we first learned about this word "tobe" in the book of Genesis when God was creating everything here on earth.
And every time that God created something, he would look at it and he would see that it was "tobe."
God saw that it was "good."
And so "tobe" or "good," we learn immediately in Genesis, is the product of God.
It's the work of God.
Anything that's good is the work of God.
Everything that's good is the work of God.
So we learned that.
And so "tobe" means to be according to God's design, part of God's work, his craftsmanship, and to be according to the way that God created us to be.
Of course, none of us because of sin are born according to God's design.
The Bible says all we like sheep have gone astray.
What's more, Jesus said in the New Testament that there is no man that's good.
And this is why I said when you saw these first three words here, "a good man," that should cause you to pause if you know much about your Bible.
Matthew chapter 19, verses 16 through 17, we read, "And behold, one came and said unto him, 'Good, master, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?'
And he said unto him, 'Why, callest thou me good?'
There is none good but one that is God.
But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments."
So Jesus said there is no one good but God.
Jesus asked that man, "Why are you calling me good?"
There's no one good but God.
And yet Solomon here in the book of Proverbs is talking about a good man.
So how do we reconcile these seemingly two conflicting statements?
Has anyone came up on this and thought about this before and wondered about that before?
I'm just curious.
I have.
So I'm just curious if anyone else has.
But through the prophet Solomon, the Holy Spirit speaks about a good man.
And then through the prophet Jesus, because Jesus was a prophet, the Holy Spirit says there's none good but God.
So is there a contradiction here in the Bible between what Solomon is saying in the Old Testament and what Jesus is saying in the New Testament?
Is there contradiction?
No.
Even if you don't understand what one means and the other means and the differences between the two, there's never a contradiction in God's Word.
Always remember that if you come up on something and they seem to contradict each other, just remember there are no contradictions in God's Word.
And I've been studying the Bible for a long time.
Brother Shepherd's been studying the Bible for a long time.
I guarantee you I don't have to ask him, but in his personal Bible study, he's came up on things before that seem to contradict with something else the Bible says.
Am I right, Brother Shepherd?
If you study the Bible long, it's just going to happen.
And sometimes you can go, oh no.
Oh boy.
Lord, I trust you.
Help me, Lord.
And I don't want to find a contradiction, Lord.
I want to trust your Word.
But the more you study and the more you resolve those contradictions and the more God teaches you and the more you go, that makes perfect sense now.
After a while, you come up on what seems to be a contradiction.
You get a little excited about it.
So I wonder what God's going to teach me now.
But you don't fret over it anymore.
And it's a wonderful place to be.
And so I want to pass that down to you.
Don't fret over it, because we've come up on many what we'll call seeming contradictions, seemingly contradicting each other.
But they don't.
And so when you come to a place in the Bible that seems to contradict another place in the Bible, don't panic and don't fear that the Bible is contradicting itself because it's not.
Here's what you do.
Pray for God to give you understanding.
Before you ask me or ask Brother Shepherd, ask God first.
That's my suggestion to you.
Ask God first, because it's a wonderful relationship.
Of course, God gives us pastors and teachers to answer questions like that.
But it's a wonderful relationship you can forge with God when you trust him and you're willing to wait for the answer because the answer doesn't always come immediately.
Sometimes it may come days, weeks, months, years later.
But if you trust him and you seek his face, I believe he will give you the answer either directly to your conscience by giving you the enlightenment you need or through one of his gifts to the church, which is a pastor or a teacher.
So just pray and ask God to give you understanding.
Meditate on both passages and wait on the Lord to clarify his word to you.
If he doesn't clarify it soon, then trust him anyway, knowing that his word is without error.
I've had to do this many times in my life and I'll tell you, God has never let me down.
So Jesus said there is none good but one that is God.
But then in the New Testament, you go to the book of Acts 11, verse 24a.
And speaking of Barnabas, the Bible says he was a good man and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.
But the Bible says he was a good man.
So how can the Holy Spirit, speaking through Solomon, talk about a good man and that same Holy Spirit through Jesus say there is no one good but God.
And then in the Old Testament and also in the New Testament with the apostle Paul quoting the Old Testament, the Bible says there is none that does good, no, not one.
But then you get over here to the book of Acts and the Holy Spirit says that Barnabas was a good man.
So how can a man be good?
And at the same time, no person be good but God.
Well, look closely with me back in Acts 11, 24 again.
Should still be up here on our screen.
And I believe this will help us understand.
For he was a good man and full of the Holy Ghost.
That's what solves the problem, therefore.
You see, there's none good but whom?
God.
Who's the Holy Spirit?
He's God.
So he was full of the Holy Ghost.
God is good.
Jesus said there is none good but God.
Barnabas was filled with the Holy Ghost who is God.
So Barnabas was filled with God, therefore Barnabas was filled with good.
Barnabas was a good man.
Why?
Because he yielded himself to the only one that is good and that's God.
God is the only goodness there is.
We've spoken about this with several of God's attributes.
For example, love.
God is love.
There is no love apart from God.
We would know no love apart from God.
Because all love comes from God.
God is life.
There would be absolutely no life whatsoever in any form.
Vegetation, animation, inspiration, all the things we talk about in the Genesis and Jesus class.
There would be no life in any form on earth whatsoever if it was not from God.
So while I'm alive, your life belongs to God.
Your life is given to you by God.
It's something that God has loaned to us in a sense.
It's something that we carry around, that life is foreign to us.
It comes from outside of us.
Just like knowledge and wisdom, it all belongs to God.
In the same way, all goodness belongs to God.
God is the only goodness there is.
So we aren't good, but God is good in us.
Talking about life again.
God is life.
God is light.
God is love.
Are we life?
No.
Are we living?
Yes.
That's the difference.
God is good in the sense that he is goodness.
We are good in the sense that we experience God's goodness in us.
Not that we innately are good because only God is good.
So God made everything how?
Tobes.
God saw that it was Tobes.
At first, the earth was without form and it was without void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And interestingly, in the book of Genesis, when the Bible says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep."
The Bible doesn't say, "And God saw the unformliness and the darkness, and God saw that it was good."
It doesn't say that.
It doesn't say anything about God saying anything being Tobes until God started his organization.
Separating water from water, separating water from land, separating light from darkness.
Pulling up vegetation out of the earth, forming man from the ground, breathing into his nostrils a breath of life.
Out of all those creative works, God saw that it was good.
But it was all God's work that made it good.
So God made everything good.
All the goodness in the earth comes from God, is the product of God.
So any goodness in man comes from God.
It all comes from God.
We can no more claim goodness as our own than we can claim the creation as our own.
And goodness is the product of his creativity.
So we can't claim to be good any more than we can claim to be the creator.
At the same time, God saw man that he was good because he was the creation of God.
So a man who yields himself to our God is good.
Not because he is good, but because God is good in him.
Now, and the person who yields himself to our God, what does it say here?
Look back in your text.
"Shall obtain favor of the Lord."
"Shall obtain favor of the Lord."
Now, the Hebrew word translated favor here means delight.
It means desire.
He'll obtain delight from the Lord.
He'll obtain desire from the Lord.
So a good man, that is one who yields himself to the good or the tobe will of his creator, shall obtain delight.
He shall obtain desire.
So when we yield to God's good word, the desires of our heart will be satisfied.
You see what that's saying?
This week, a famous rock singer passed away.
In fact, he passed away yesterday from the 1980s.
And after becoming rich and famous, he had to quit his rock band because he had a severe addiction to cocaine, and he couldn't keep up with his duties as the singer of this rock band.
And they were touring all the time and making money, and he just wasn't physically and mentally fit to do it because all he could think about 24/7 is, "I want more cocaine."
You see, the drug wasn't satisfying him.
It was destroying him.
It destroyed his career, which wasn't worth having anyway.
But at least it made him money.
It destroyed his career, destroyed his body, and it left him always needing more rather than going, you know, Tammy asked me if I wanted dessert tonight after 8/8 so much.
She said, "Do you want dessert?"
And I said, "No, I am full."
And people with cocaine and things like that with those types of addictions, they'd go, "Oh, I've had enough.
No more please for me."
Because they can't get satisfied off of it.
So he was filled with fame and earthly goods, but like so many others, he had no joy.
The desires of his heart were not met.
He was empty, and that's why so many people who fill their lives with earthly goods like him, and like so many others, they have no joy.
That's why so many people who fill themselves with the things of this world end up checking themselves into rehab later on in life.
They're miserable.
When God created man, he saw that everything he made was very good.
Man was created good, and only God's goodness can meet man's desires.
You see how that works?
God saw that man was very good, it says, I believe in chapter 2 of Genesis.
God saw that man was very good, and after seeing the goodness of man, after seeing him, we have to understand that if man was created good, then only God's goodness can meet his desires.
If he was made to be good, then only the goodness of God can satisfy the good design of man.
It's the only way.
It's like God putting a shape in your heart, and you're having different shapes of things.
The world has a certain shape, and you try to force it inside that heart and fill that void in that heart.
It's not going to fill it.
But the goodness of God will fit into the good design of man, his grace, and it will perfectly fit that heart and perfectly satisfy man.
That's why we have joy unspeakable and full of glory.
That's why the psalmist said, "My cup runs over."
What was he saying?
Man, I'm completely full.
I'm so full, I can't even contain all of it.
And I've been like that before.
I feel like I'm that way now.
So Psalm 145 verse 16.
Psalm 145 verse 16.
Listen to what the Bible says about God.
"Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing."
So in God's hand is everything that a man could ever dream of, everything that a man could ever desire.
And God opens up that hand, and he satisfies the desire of every living thing.
The Bible talks about God feeding the animals, even.
They open their mouth up for him to fill.
They may not do it conscientiously, but God created the desires for little birds to be filled, and when they're filled, God meets those desires.
When God created us, when he created us good, inside of us, he put good desires in us, Tobh desires.
And so what God does is when we have a Tobh desire, when we have a good desire, desire that's according to God's design, God opens that hand up and he satisfies the desire that he put in us, the desire that he created in us.
Satisfies the desire of every living thing.
Here's the kingdom truth for tonight.
Desires created by God are satisfied by God.
Desires created by God are satisfied by God.
Now a man that's living outside of God's goodness is not going to be satisfied by God's grace.
So if you're living outside of God's goodness, you're not going according to God's design.
The way you're living is not Tobh.
God's not going to open his hand up to satisfy your wicked desire.
Not going to do it.
But he will satisfy your good desire, the desire that he designed and put in you.
If it's a biblical desire, you're going to have biblical grace to satisfy it.
All there is to it.
Hence a good man shall obtain favor of the Lord.
Your needs, your God-given needs will be met.
They will be satisfied.
Wait on the Lord.
He will satisfy your God-given needs.
Here's another thing real quick, for we leave that for conscience sake.
If you have a biblical desire, it's not wrong for that desire to be fulfilled.
It's right for it to.
And somehow the devil puts in people's heads this need to suffer, this need to do without biblical things.
So if God puts the desire in you, and again, I'm not talking about the lust of your flesh.
You can't say, "Well, I really, really, really desire this.
I'm married to this man over here, and he's been faithful to me all these years, but this model over here that's 20 years younger, I mean, I really desire that man."
So maybe God will meet that desire.
That's not how it works.
That's wickedness.
God never enables wickedness.
He never donates to the wrong cause.
But if it's a biblical desire, then that biblical desire was put in you by God, and it's good to meet that desire.
There was a family that used to go around singing in these independent Baptist churches, and the daughter and the son, they were better singers and instrumentalists than the mom and dad were.
And so whenever they would go sing somewhere, the daughter and the son, well, that was their bread and butter.
The son grew up, and he wanted to go into law enforcement.
Boy, dad was furious.
If the son went to law enforcement, how's he going to make him money singing and playing the guitar?
Well, and then what happens when the daughter grows up and she wants to be married?
If she goes off and gets married, what's going to happen to them?
They don't sound too good when they sing.
So what do you do?
They tried to try to keep the son at home, and it was very bitter between him and his son.
But you know what?
There's two ways of looking at that.
That young man could say, you know, I shouldn't be so selfish.
I should stay here and keep singing for daddy until daddy goes on and passes away, and then I'll look out for myself.
Would that be the right way to think?
Would it be wrong for that man to go out and pursue a career as a young man and leave his mom and dad like that to fend for themselves?
Is he selfish to try to fulfill that desire?
Well, let me ask you this.
Is it a God-given desire for a young man to want to get out and work and make his own way?
That is, God put Adam in the garden to dress it and to keep it.
And when Adam's boys grew up, they went out and built cities and everything else and did their own thing.
Any man, any young man that is half normal is going to want to make his own way.
I understand some people have special needs, and they can't do that.
I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about people who have all of their mental and physical faculties in check.
They should have that desire to go out and make their own way.
And so that young man, if you apply this right here, that God opens up his hands and he satisfies.
You apply what we have here in Proverbs, a good man receives favor of the Lord.
That means he receives his desires.
Then you can sit here and say, "No, this is a biblical desire, and if God meets that desire, then I want to give him thanks for it.
I want to give him thanks for it."
So, "A good man shall obtain favor of the Lord."
Look back here, Texas, we begin to close.
"But a man of wicked devices will he condemn."
Now, devices here doesn't mean electronic devices.
It doesn't mean tools.
It doesn't mean equipment.
It actually means plans.
For example, he devised a plan.
That's how this word "device" is being used here.
A man of wicked plans.
A man of wicked plans doesn't plan to be Tob.
When God created man and he created everything good, he created everything with a plan.
God put man in the garden to dress it and to keep it.
He put a tree of life in the garden for man to eat it.
He made a law for him not to eat the other tree because that wasn't in his plan.
He would know Tob, and I forgot the other word now, but he would know both.
And God says, "No, it's not what I want.
I want Tob for you, and that's all I want you to know."
And a man who is of wicked devices is someone who schemes his life, charts his way in opposition to God's way.
He's someone who says, "I'm going to be that sheep that goes astray.
I want to do my own thing."
Did you know that someone asked me this in Sunday School last week about the Church of Satan, which there is no such thing.
But the church means to be called out, and Satan, you're not calling people out of this world.
But there are a bunch of foolish people who don't understand.
They're trying to use some of our wordings and everything.
But he said he read about the Church of Satan and how most of them don't believe in God and don't even believe in the devil.
And I said, "That's correct.
A lot of them don't."
Well, then how can they worship Satan?
I said, "Well, they really don't so much--some of them do, but they really--these people don't worship Satan, but they worship the idea of being a rebel.
The idea of saying, 'No, that may be the right way, but I'm going to go this way.
I'm going to do my own thing.
I will, I will.'"
I was listening to Brother Shepherd Sunday School.
He's talking about the pronouns of Sinacra, wasn't I right?
"Me and I."
And that's the same pronouns of the devil, "me and I."
And that's the way these people do.
"Lord, not your will, but mine be done."
And that kind of man is a man of wicked devices, someone who is devising and scheming something contrary to the will of God, where Jesus said, "Lord, not my will, but yours be done."
And a man of wicked devices, the Bible says, he will condemn.
In the word condemn here, it means to pronounce wrong, to pronounce him as wrong.
God created the man good, but he's not interested in being good.
And as a result, God's not going to satisfy that man's desires, but he will judicially condemn him.
He will judicially declare that man to be wrong.
And I used that analogy the other day that calls the Hebrew word that's talking about wrong, has the idea of something going not according to how it was designed.
And I used the idea of swallowing and it going down the windpipe rather than down the esophagus.
That's wrong.
So wrong is not just doing something someone doesn't want you to do.
Wrong is doing something according to different than how you were designed to do, what you were created to do.
This was designed to function a certain way.
You and I were designed to function a certain way.
And a man of wicked devices is saying, "No, I'm going to go down the windpipe."
And God says, "Okay, I'm not going to satisfy your desires.
I'm not going to grant you my gracious favor.
I am going to label you as wrong."
That would be the same as having an assembly line and you have an inspector out here and all the products are going down here and you got someone, they have a reject and they stamp it reject.
It's not going to make it down to the assembly line.
It's not going to be the end product and use as it was designed to be done.
What's going to happen?
It's going to same thing that happens where Abel works.
They make stints for kidneys.
Well, that's kind of important if you like your kidneys.
And so they have to make them right and then they have to be inspected.
And you know what happens if it is not perfect?
Scrapped.
Done.
And that's what God's talking about here.
I'm not going to bless that person.
I want to label them as wrong, as rejects.
And so, thus, verse 3, "A man shall not be established by wickedness."
It's impossible to have a wrong plan to devise wickedness and then expect to be established therein.
God established the heaven and the earth.
God established the creation.
God established mankind.
And only those things that go God's way is God going to continue down the assembly line.
Everything else is going to get rejected, condemned, and put into a lake of fire.
Scrapped.
Absolute rejected.
A man of wickedness is not going to be established.
His plans aren't going to succeed.
His life's not going to be sustained.
His hopes and his accomplishments.
His dreams.
Everything he's ever done in life.
All the legacy that he left behind when he died is going to come to nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
God only blesses what is good.
So, if someone does wrong, then their way is not going to be blessed.
It's not going to be established.
It's going to fail in the end.
So, "A man shall not be established by wickedness."
Look back in your text.
"But the root of the righteous shall never be moved."
"The Tobeman has a root of righteousness."
And he's going to receive God's favor.
You see, God's goodness will never be moved.
God's creation will never be overcome.
God's plans will never be overthrown.
When Adam sent in the Garden of Eden, God didn't change his plan.
Man changed his direction.
If you ever go down the road and you see a detour, and you detour around, then you finally get back on the road.
Say they've got construction or a traffic accident, and you get detoured around, you may take the long way around, but you follow that detour.
It's going to get you back on the same road.
That's what the gospel does.
God didn't change his plan.
He took man who went astray and through the cross of Jesus Christ detoured him back to his original plan.
That's what's so beautiful about all of this.
You ever seen these heavy rainstorms when the wind comes and that rain falls, makes that tree fall, and the roots just pop up out of the grass?
Kind of looks like carpet.
And the roots can't hold, but the righteous are rooted in the Lord Jesus Christ.
They're rooted in God's plan.
And when Jesus returns, he's going to reestablish Tobes.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is going to finish the detour and turn this world back to Tobes again.
And when this happens, the earth will forever be blessed in God's goodness.
God once again will see everything that he has remade, and he'll see that it's very good.
It'll never be moved by sin again.
Speaking of that day, the Bible says in Psalm 96.10, "Say among the heathen," I like that, "Announce among the Gentiles."
"Announce among all the nations outside the Jews as well."
"Say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth."
Can you imagine the day when Jesus reigns November 5th as Election Day?
Now, Tammy and I plan on voting tomorrow early.
God willing.
No, but it's election season right now.
We'll never pray about an election again.
The Lord reigneth.
The world also shall be established.
Now, the wicked, a man can't be established in wickedness, but it says right here when the Lord reigns, what's going to happen?
The world will be established that it shall not be moved.
Why?
He shall judge the people righteously.
He's going to reestablish Tobes.
All the rebels with the wicked devices, they're going to be cast out.
Those who chose God's plan to be justified by grace in Jesus and then to be made righteous like Jesus when He comes again, then they're going to be forever established in God's eternal plan for us in Jesus Christ.
In the end, goodness will be established in wickedness.
Shall forever be put away.
With that, we'll go ahead and stop tonight.
Father, we thank you so much for your precious word.
We love you so much.
Lord, Father, we thank you that you have given us your word, Lord, that we can think through it, follow its course, come to the conclusion, Lord, that you're giving us, Lord.
We thank you, Father, Lord, that you create good desires.
And then after creating those good desires in us, Lord, you then open up your hand, Father, to satisfy them.
Lord, the Bible says for us to delight ourself in you, then you would give us the desires of our hearts.
And so, Lord, help us to delight ourselves in you.
Help us to delight ourselves in that which is good so you will open your hand and satisfy those good desires.
Help us to not go astray because any time we go astray, the things that we did, Father, in unfaithfulness will not be established in that wickedness.
Lord, God, we pray for your wisdom, your mercy, and we pray for your Son to return, Father, to make all things new.
In His precious name we pray.
Amen.
