Episode Transcript
Proverbs 12, verse 21.
Proverbs 12, verse 21.
The title of the message tonight is "See No Evil."
See no evil.
When I was growing up, I remember seeing those three monkeys.
It seemed like everybody had them.
One with the hands over the ears, one over the eyes, and one over the mouth.
Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil.
Well, evil is something that we all unfortunately have to deal with in life.
And sometimes we come up upon scriptures that seem to be on their face incorrect.
On their face, just absolutely we know better.
Why does the Bible say this when we all know better?
And when we come upon those things, a lot of times, if not every time, the devil, unless you're seasoned in Bible study, if you're seasoned over many years in Bible study, you get used to running into scriptures like that, then you get excited when you see them.
But if not, then you run into scriptures like what we're looking at tonight, and then you think, "Ah, I know that's wrong.
God help me.
I want to believe, but I mean, this is obviously wrong.
What do we do with this?"
And this is one of these verses that can be misinterpreted if we're not careful students of God's Word.
And this is one of the benefits of teaching verse by verse.
And by the way, by God's grace, we'll always teach verse by verse.
There's a song I grew up with, "Every promise in the book is mine."
Every chapter, every verse, every line.
And every single verse in the Bible, we should unashamedly teach, and without hesitation, obey.
And so I love coming up on verses like this because they're the kind of verses that force us to study the hard verses, and to teach people how to study those difficult, tricky verses, and not to panic when they come across them, but to trust.
But this verse can be misinterpreted if we're not careful students of God's Word.
Let's look at the first part of it, "There shall no evil happen to the just."
"There shall no evil happen to the just."
Now, the contemporary English standard, I'm sorry, the contemporary English version of the Bible words it this way, "Good people never have trouble."
Now, can you imagine having a modern translation of the Bible, and turn to Proverbs chapter 12, 21, especially if you're one of those people, and you're having a terrible time, I mean, you're going through a terrible time, you think, "You know what, it's been years since I've read the Bible.
God, I'm so sorry, I'm going to go to your Word tonight and see what you have to teach me."
You just close your eyes, open it up, put your finger on there, and then you read, "There shall no evil," I'm sorry, "Good people never have trouble."
Boy, can you imagine what that would do to somebody?
They would want to close that Bible up and never read it again.
"Lord, I'm having trouble.
I guess I'm no good."
Maybe they're not, but you know what?
We all know good people do have trouble, don't we?
We all know good people, or just people, happen to have evil things happen to them.
And I believe we can all imagine some charismatic preacher getting on television and misapplying a verse like this in really confusing a lot of people.
Good people never have trouble?
No, good people do have trouble.
And this is why we have to study God's Word carefully to make sure we understand it correctly.
Now, if you would, look back in verse 20 with me tonight.
We'll go back one verse backward, Proverbs 12, verse 20.
Look what it says, "Deceit is in the heart of them that imagine," what?
"Evil, but to the counselors of peace is joy."
Now, that's the verse we studied last week.
But what we want to understand is, and in fact, if you have that, if you have your Bible open and a pen in your hand, you might want to underscore that word "evil" in verse 20, and then go down to verse 21 and underscore the word "evil" again in verse 21.
And the Hebrew word that's translated "evil" in verse 20 is a different word than the Hebrew word that's translated "evil" in verse 21.
Same English word, different Hebrew word, because there's different meanings, there's different shades of evil that we're looking at here.
So, the Hebrew word in verse 20, if you're taking notes in the margin of your Bible, it means adversity, calamity, affliction, distress.
You can pick one of those words and put in there.
Let's pick distress.
How about distress?
We know all godly people suffer distress, don't they?
They have distress, they suffer affliction.
Jesus said, "In the world you'll have tribulation."
Now, is tribulation adversity?
Yes, it is.
Is tribulation affliction?
Yes, it is.
John the Baptist got his head cut off.
Is that adversity?
You better believe it is.
Was John the Baptist a good?
Was he a just man?
Jesus said he was.
Now, the Hebrew word translated "evil" in verse 21, it means something different.
It has the idea of a wasted effort.
A wasted effort.
It has the idea of living in vain.
Now, that's quite a bit different word there, isn't it?
And so, when you're looking at adversity, when you're looking at affliction, and we all suffer affliction.
Again, "Yea, all that are godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution," the Scripture says.
But now, when we're looking at verse 21, the word "evil," it means wasted effort.
It means living in vain.
So, rather than the word "evil," let's do something different here.
Rather than the word "evil," this word is most often translated in the Bible as either "iniquity" or "vanity."
Iniquity or vanity.
It's usually not translated "evil" in the Bible, but "iniquity" or "vanity."
Now, how does iniquity and vanity go hand in hand?
How could one word be translated as "iniquity" and also be translated as "vanity"?
Well, it's simple.
Iniquity is a godless life.
Iniquity is godless.
And a life without God, godless, is what?
It's vain.
So, you see how that word would mean both vanity, worthless, and also iniquity.
Okay?
Godless.
Godless, worthless.
Without God, it's worth nothing.
So, let's take the word "vanity" here, and instead of having the word "evil," let's substitute the word "vanity" because it is a definition of that Hebrew word as well.
And more often times, it's vanity than it is evil.
So, let's read that verse again and supply that word.
"There shall no vanity happen to the just."
"There shall no vanity happen to the just."
This is a promise in God's Word.
Remember that song?
"The promise in the book is mine, every chapter, every verse, every line."
This is a promise in God's Word that all that are just can hang on to tonight.
Those who are just, those who are justified by faith in Christ can hang on to this promise that there shall no vanity happen to them.
In Galatians chapter 2, verse 21, Galatians chapter 2, verse 21, the apostle Paul said, "I do not frustrate the grace of God, for if righteousness come by the law," that is, if you could be saved by obeying the law, "then Christ died in vain."
He died in vain.
But we know that Christ did not die in vain.
Nothing Jesus does is in vain.
Nothing God does is in vain.
It can't be in vain because God is God, so He's not Godless, so He's not useless.
Everything He does is the opposite of vanity.
Nothing Jesus does is in vain.
Christ did not die in vain, for it is His death and His resurrection from the dead, not the law, that redeems God's fallen creation.
Looking at the world in Jesus' time, if you could put yourself back during that time and watching people trying to stone Jesus, watching people reject Jesus, watching Jesus being betrayed by His own follower, His one of His own twelve, and watching Him being betrayed by the priesthood that God had established under the law, watching Him be betrayed by the Roman nation and then nailed to a cross, you would think, "Surely this man came in vain."
The Bible says, "He came unto His own, but His own received Him not."
Now you would think if Jesus came for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and the lost sheep of the house of Israel rejected their shepherd, He came in vain.
But our verse tonight says, "There shall no evil, there shall no vanity, happen to the just."
And that means what happened to Jesus did not end the purpose of His coming, rather it advanced the purpose of His coming.
Listen to what Jesus said through the prophet Isaiah.
Man, you all ready for a blessing?
Listen to what Jesus said through the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 49, verses 1-4.
"Listen, O Isles, unto Me, and hearken ye people from far."
Now you know who He's talking to, right?
When He's saying, "Listen, Isles, to Me, hearken people from far," He's talking to all of us.
He's talking to red and yellow, black and white, for all are precious in His sight.
And so He says, "Listen to Me from far, the Lord hath called Me from the womb."
Here is Jesus saying, "The Lord Jehovah God has called Me from the womb, from the bowels of My mother hath He made mention of My name, and He hath made My mouth like a sharp sword."
The Bible says in the book of Revelation, out of His mouth goes a two-edged sword.
And Jesus says, "From the womb Jehovah God has called Me, He has made My mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of His hand hath He hid Me, and made Me a polished shaft, in His quiver hath He hid Me."
Like an arrow, and now He's in the quiver, polished, ready to go.
Watch now, "And said unto Me," listen to what God said to Jesus, "Thou art My servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified."
You see now, Brother Richard, he's speaking to Israel here, the nation, not the man.
It is impossible to prophetically address Israel in the glorified sense, without addressing Jesus in the personal sense.
It is impossible.
The same way that God told Abraham in "Thee," Abraham, "shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."
And all those nations are the ones Jesus is talking to here in the book of Isaiah, where He says, "Listen to Me, ye Isles and those from far."
Those are the nations that God said He would bless through Abraham.
But when God is addressing Abraham, saying the nations are going to be blessed through him, He's speaking about Jesus who comes from him.
When God is speaking to Israel here and saying, "You're My servant in whom I will be glorified," He is speaking to the promised seed of Israel in whom God will be glorified, because God will not be glorified in Israel as a nation, apart from Jesus as their Redeemer.
It's not possible.
All Israel does is flunk.
But in Christ, Israel's representative, Israel's champion, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the one who sits on King David's throne and rules, Israel's great high priest, Jesus solves it all.
And in Jesus Christ, God will be glorified in Israel.
Now look at Jesus' response in verse 4.
"Then said I, 'I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for naught; I worked hard for nothing; I labored in vain.'"
Now, no vanity happens to the just.
Listen to this discourse, this amazing discourse between Jehovah God and Christ, whom God had called from the womb.
"I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for naught, and in vain; yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God."
So He's not telling you two different things here.
There's the natural side of it, where surely He comes and He worked, in some sense, spending His strength for nothing.
He looks at Israel and He says, "O Israel, O Israel, how often would I have gathered you under my wings like a hen gathers her chicks and you wouldn't."
He goes and He preaches till He's worn out and no one listens to Him.
And so He spent His strength.
He dies for people who will end up going to hell anyway.
He labors for people.
He healed people of leprosy and only what?
One returned?
So in a sense, He labored for nothing.
Yet, He says, the work He did is what?
Look back here.
"Surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God."
So it may appear that it's in vain.
It may be in vain in some sense to those who do not believe on Him.
But His work is not in vain.
It has a temporary effect of worthlessness to the earthly eye.
It has an eternal effect of glorification where God is glorified in His work.
Do you ever feel like you've labored in vain for God?
I think we all have before.
I think it's so common that people who want to serve God and try to serve God, when they don't see fruit of their labor, and they don't have that gratification of seeing something come out of it, they feel that they're laboring in vain.
I know that I have gone to the Genesis to Jesus course.
I've taught that many, many times now, thank God, which was a direct answer to my prayer years ago that I prayed.
And I've taught that with all the passion, praying for people, and putting my heart into it, only to watch it dwindle down sometimes, maybe to one or two people.
I've done that before.
It's like, "Oh, I just wasted my effort."
You feel like a piece of you is going with them, because you invested so much of your emotion, your energy, your prayers, your affection, your labor, your physical labor, and your time into those people, only to watch them walk away.
Brother Doug told me the other day that he sometimes gets discouraged in the nursing home ministry, because he doesn't see fruit from people that he thinks are going to be saved, or they say, "We're going to come, you know, I want you to come by my room and speak with me," and they want that personal attention.
He says, "We're going to come to church Sunday, next Sunday when you come."
And they don't come.
And they're just right down the hall.
They don't even have to drive, so I'm going to just push them there if they want to.
And they don't come.
But you know what?
I believe every preacher of the gospel has felt that way.
I believe if we had every seat and every pew in here tonight, and they were all filled up with gospel preachers, and I said, "Do you ever feel discouraged in the ministry?"
I believe every single hand would go up.
And I believe every person here tonight that's ever tried to serve God, and do something for the Lord, that you feel, as Jesus described here, "Surely I have worked in vain."
And surely I worked in vain for those people.
I bestowed labor on them and it came to nothing, yet, surely, my judgment is with the Lord.
God will say, "Well done, you good and faithful servant."
Right?
And not only that, but my work is also with the Lord.
The work that I did in the end will not be in vain.
It won't be.
There are going to be angels, the Bible says, in the book of Revelation, flying in heaven and telling people to not take the mark of the beast.
You know what?
There'll be a bunch of people who do it anyway.
Is their labor in vain?
In some sense.
Is their labor in vain?
No way.
They did exactly what God told them to do.
And even though people do not respond to the gospel message when you pour your heart out to them, that labor is in vain as far as they're concerned, it's not in vain as far as God's concerned.
The Bible says that those people would be held to a higher standard.
And when they stand before God, they will be without excuse.
Because God is going to hold them accountable, and I believe God's going to say, "Remember when this servant of mine told you my word and you rejected it?"
To them it will be to their damnation and vanity, because the word fell upon deaf ears.
But to God it will be to glorification, because when they are judged for rejecting His word, God will be glorified in that.
It appeared that Jesus had labored in vain and spent His strength for nothing, but He said, "Surely my judgment is with the Lord and my work with my God."
Listen now to how God the Father responded back to God the Son in the next two verses.
Look with me in Isaiah 49 verses 5 and 6, which is coming up on the screen now.
"And now, saith the Lord, that form me from the womb to be His servant."
You ready?
"Now, saith the Lord, that form me from the womb to be His servant, to bring Jacob again to Him."
Now only Jesus can do that.
We know this is Jesus here.
"To bring Jacob again to Him."
Now, listen to what God the Father says, "Though Israel be not gathered."
You listen to that?
"Though Israel be not gathered."
So in that sense, Israel, through the preaching of the gospel when Jesus came, though they weren't gathered together then, and in that sense, the work was spent in vain in that sense toward them.
He says, "Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord."
This is what Jesus says.
"And my God shall be my strength."
And He said, listen to what God the Father says, "It is a light thing, or a small thing, that thou, Jesus, shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel, I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth."
Wow!
Was Jesus' work in vain?
Not a chance.
Not a chance.
The end of the earth, that's us.
Jesus was rejected by His own people, yet it was not in vain.
God, through that same work that was rejected, gave Him for a light to the Gentiles, that He might be God's salvation to the end of the earth.
The fact that we accepted His salvation meant the labor He spent was not in vain.
"There shall no evil happen to the just."
Nobody was more just than Jesus.
Yet nobody suffered more evil than Jesus.
But now nobody is more exalted than Jesus.
There's no vanity there.
So while evil may be the experience of just people, it is not the end of just people, and that's what counts.
You understand?
Evil may be your experience as a child of God, but evil will not be your end as the child of God.
In 1 Peter 1, verse 9, the Apostle Peter described the finality of the believer's life as receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.
Not the beginning of your faith, but we will receive the end of our faith.
And it's not evil.
It's not vanity.
It's not destruction.
The Bible says, "God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."
If we live our entire life only to perish in the end, that life would be in vain.
But those who believe in Christ will receive the end of their faith, and that, the end of faith, is salvation of our soul.
So we may experience evil in the beginning, but we, the just, shall not receive it in the end.
Charles Spurgeon said, "It is impossible that any ill should happen to the man who is beloved of the Lord.
The most crushing calamities can only shorten his journey and hasten him to his reward.
Ill to him is no ill, but only good in a mysterious form.
Losses enrich him, sickness is his medicine, reproach is his honor, death is his gain.
There shall no evil happen to the just."
In Romans chapter 8, verse 28, the Apostle Paul said, "And we know that all things work together for good."
Good.
Now there's two things in the Garden of Eden.
Good and what?
Evil.
And the Apostle Paul did not say, "And we know that all things work together for evil."
To them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.
No, he said, "We know that all things work together for good."
In the end, that's all we're going to know is good.
We won't know evil anymore.
Why?
No evil happens to the just.
They may experience it.
It may be their experience, it won't be their end.
"We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.
For the just, even the evil we experience, works together for good, so no evil shall happen to the children of God.
But," look back in your text, "the wicked shall be filled with mischief."
And so now we see mischief as sort of a synonym of evil in the first part of the verse.
They'll be filled with mischief, they'll be filled with ruin, bad, destruction, the result of evil, calamity.
You see Romans chapter 8 verse 28 is a two-edged sword.
It's got to have one or the other.
Every person ends with one or the other.
In the garden they began with good and evil.
In the end, you end with good or evil.
Right now, everybody knows good and evil.
In the end, we will know good or evil.
"All things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to His purpose.
But all things work together for evil, for mischief, for destruction to them that don't love God and are not called according to His purpose."
Peter said, "At the end of our faith, we receive the end of our faith, even the salvation of our souls."
So, receiving the end of our faith is the salvation of our souls.
But receiving the end of our unbelief is the damnation of our souls.
"No evil, therefore, shall happen to the just, and no good shall happen to the wicked."
With that, we'll go ahead and close.
Father, we thank you so much for your precious word.
Oh God, how righteous and pure and true and instructive are your words.
Thank you, Father, for shining them like a bright light.
Thank you, Father God, for the eloquent words of Brother Spurgeon.
Thank you, Father God, for the purity of the words of your Spirit, Father.
Thank you, Father, for the corresponding text from the prophet Isaiah and the apostles Paul and Peter.
Thank you, Father, for putting together, Father God, such a marvelous piece of encouragement for those who have been justified by faith in Christ.
For the end of our faith is the salvation of our souls where no evil can exist.
We thank you so much for the good that Jesus has done.
Surely it was not in vain.
In his name we pray, amen.
