Proverbs 22
McGeeCHAPTER 22Solomon, who had all that money could buy, puts material wealth in true perspective.
Proverbs 22:1
“Good” in most Bibles is italicized, which means that it was supplied by the translators. “A name is rather to be chosen"the proverb is not speaking of the name you were called by your parents when you were born, but the name you earn by the kind of person you are. We know that David had a group of men known as his mighty men. And they were great men. They had made a name for themselves. For example, we are told about Benaiah, “And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the son of a valiant man, of Kabzeel, who had done many acts, he slew two lionlike men of Moab: he went down also and slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow” (2Sa_23:20). A lot of people won’t even go to church when it snows, but this man slew a lion in the time of snow! We are told, “These things did Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and had the name among three mighty men” (2Sa_23:22). He was up there in a class with the top three of the highest echelon of David’s mighty men. He had a name. “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.”
Proverbs 22:2
This means that before God all men are on the same plane. If you want to talk about a universal brotherhood of man, be very careful what you say. The Bible doesn’t teach that. The Bible does teach that we are all members of the human family and that we all have a depraved nature, a nature that is alienated from God. We even need to protect ourselves from each other, because we cannot be trusted. The Bible does say that He “…hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth …” (Act_17:26), and we all stand equal before Him on that basis.
But we become the sons of Godnot just because we are human beingsbut by faith in Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus said to the religious rulers of His day, “Ye are of your father the devil …” (Joh_8:44). So actually there are two families in the world: children of God and children of the devil. Obviously, the universal fatherhood of God does not exist. Now notice that the proverb says: “The LORD is the maker of them all.” We are all His by creation. God is the Creator of all but not the Father of all.
Proverbs 22:3
Do you want to be a smart man? Then make arrangements for the future. There are many men today who will help you make arrangements for the future. There are all kinds of insurance companies and agencies. There are people willing to make arrangements for your old age, for the care of your children, and all that sort of thing. But I’m thinking of the next step. What about that? What about your eternal future? The Scripture calls a man a fool who has not made preparation for eternity. When I was a young man in Nashville, Tennessee, I was very far from the Lord for awhile. I remember a fine young couple, who belonged to rich families. At a dance one night they announced their engagement, and then later they were married. Of course they made the society page of the newspaper. They had bought a very lovely southern home with those white columns out in front. They had searched everywhere for antiques, and they furnished that home beautifully.
On their wedding trip they went to the Great Smokies in East Tennessee and North Carolina. Going up into the mountains, they went around a curve and were hit and knocked off the highway down a precipice. The car caught fire, and they were both killed. The parents of the couple simply locked the door to their lovely home and left it unoccupied. For years after I was saved, I would go by that house and reflect on all the preparation they had put into that house; yet they had not lived in it for one hour. And they went into eternity totally unprepared. Oh, how important it is for us to be making preparation for eternity!
Proverbs 22:6
We are to train up a child concerning the way he should go. What he is saying is that God has a way He wants him to go, and parents are to find out that way. They are not to bring up a child in the way they think he should go, but in the way God wants him to go.
Proverbs 22:13
Here we have the lazy man again. This verse has its humor in it, too. Believe me, the lazy man is full of excuses. It’s too cold outside so he cannot go out to plow. Here is his new excuse: “There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets.” I think he was lyin’ about the lion!
Proverbs 22:15
These instructions for child rearing are repeated for emphasis. Children need discipline. Proper discipline will not provoke the child to anger. Neither will it be simply the venting of our own anger. Proper discipline will help the child overcome his foolishness.
Proverbs 22:28
When God brought the children of Israel from Egypt, He gave them a land. Sometimes we forget that He also gave to each tribe a particular section of that land. And He gave to each family in each tribe a particular parcel of that land. Each family was to put up boundary markers for their own parcel of land. These boundary markers were generally piles of stones. Down in front of my house in the sidewalk there is a little brass circle at one end of my lot and another little brass circle at the other end of my lot, marking where my lot begins and where it ends. This whole area used to be an avocado grove, and I have a notion that the markers were put in when it was converted into a subdivision. It was done to make sure that I stay within my own lot. God gave Israel definite rules regarding their markers: “Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it” (Deu_19:14). These markers went from generation to generation and were very important. When a man got old and feeble and his eyesight began to fail him, his neighbor might want to slip over and move the marker a couple of feet to increase his own parcel of land. God said that kind of thing was forbidden. It would be totally dishonest, of course. Now I am going to make a spiritual application of this. You may think I am square when I say this, but I believe that today we have seen the landmarks of the Christian faith removed. They have been removed by what was first called modernism, and now is called liberalism. These folk with a liberal viewpoint say, “This old landmark, this doctrine that was taught in the days of the apostle Paul, is no longer relevant. We have learned so much that we don’t need the doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures. We can do away with that.
And we can do away with the doctrine of the deity of Christ.” These distinguishing doctrines of the Christian faith have been pretty well washed out by a great many of the old line denominations on the basis that we must come up to date. Now I want to say this: Instead of moving forward and removing landmarks, we need to start moving backward to get back to many of the ancient landmarks. Those ancient landmarks made this nation great. The landmarks of moral values, the spiritual truths, the biblical basisall have been removed. We look around us today and hear everyone telling what he thinks the solution is, and it is always a sociological or psychological solution. I haven’t heard any of our leaders suggesting a biblical solution. I say that we need to get back to the good old landmarks which our nation had at the beginning. This chapter concludes with a word of commendation for the man who is diligent.
Proverbs 22:29
God says that He intends to reward the diligent man. You remember that the Lord Jesus said that in eternity His commendation would be: “…Well done, thou good and faithful servant …” (Mat_25:21). His commendation will not be based on the amount of work you have done, or on the number of people to whom you have witnessed, or how hard you have worked, but on how faithful you have been to the task He has given you. He may have given you the task of being a mother to a little one in the home. Moses’ mother was faithful in that way, and her name is recorded in the Word of God. The reward will be for faithfulness. The apostle Paul put it like this in Rom_12:10-11 (and I’ll give you a little more meaningful translation of my own): “As to brotherly love, have family affection one to another; for your code of honor, deferring to one another. Never flag in zeal, be aglow (fervent) with the Spirit, serving the Lord.” It all adds up to being faithful to Godand that is what we should be.