(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Proverbs chapter 18, verse number one, through desire, a man having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom. Now this is actually one of my favorite verses in the book of Proverbs. There's so much great truth packed into this one verse, but I love the fact it starts out with the desire because really this is where everything in the Christian life starts is with the desire to love God, the desire to seek wisdom, the desire to follow Christ. It's the one thing, as I was saying on Sunday, it's the one thing that I can't give you, right? It's the one thing that you have to get on your own. You know, the pastor can get up and preach to you and give you all kinds of information and try to inspire you, but at the end of the day, you have to supply the desire, right? You have to want to learn. You have to want to serve God. And so the Bible says, through desire, a man having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom. You know, the Bible talks a lot about us being separated unto the Lord, right? Paul said that he was separated unto the gospel of Christ. Paul said that the Lord separated him from his mother's womb. And so all throughout the Bible, we have these statements like come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord and touch not the unclean thing. See, broad is the way that leads to destruction. And most people out there today are not on a quest for wisdom. They're not out there seeking the truth, trying to get knowledge and wisdom and understanding. They're just going through life, not caring, maybe even willingly choosing lies. And so we have to be different, right? We have to separate ourselves. We have to cut some things loose in our life, maybe cut some people loose and get on that path where we seek an inner metal with all wisdom. So it starts with a desire to have wisdom, to learn the Bible, to follow God. And then there's a separation that has to take place where we basically cut loose some dead weight out of our life and obviously choose to be different than the people around us and be different than the mainstream. And then we seek an inner metal with all wisdom. Now, it's kind of funny to look this verse up in other Bible versions. Okay. And it seems like some of the verses that I like the most are some of my favorite verses seem to be the most butchered in modern versions. Sometimes, in fact, when I'm just trying to look for discrepancies in modern versions, I just start looking up my favorite verses. And they're typically the ones that have been tampered with. This one is translated so differently in these other versions. You can't even believe it. Let me just give you a little sampling here of some of these. Okay. Here's the ASV. He that separated himself seeketh his own desire and rageth against all sound wisdom. We've got the ESV. Whosoever or whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire. He breaks out against all sound judgment. Let's see here. The Holman Christian Standard Bible. One who isolates himself pursues selfish desires. He rebels against all sound judgment. Here's the message. Loners who care only for themselves spit on the common good. New American Standard. One who separates himself seeks his own desire. He quarrels against all sound wisdom. NCV. I don't know what that is, but unfriendly people are selfish and hate all good sense. NIV. An unfriendly person pursues selfish ends and against all sound judgment starts quarrels. The New Living Translation. Unfriendly people care only about themselves. They lash out at common sense. The NRSVA. The one who lives alone is self-indulgent, showing contempt for all who have sound judgment. Well, that's something to say about people who live alone. Wow. Anybody live alone out there tonight? Oh, here's the O.J.B. This is like the Judaizer Bible. A man who separates himself seeks his own tawah. He defies all tushiyyah. They just like throw in Hebrew words that they don't translate. Oh, man. Yeah, these are just all over the place. A man who isolates himself pursues selfishness and defies all sound judgment. So you can see that basically most of them say the exact opposite of what the King James Bible says. But, you know, who cares what version you use, right? It doesn't matter which one, okay? One of them condemns you for living alone or not being friendly enough. But the Bible here, the King James Version, the traditional text in English says that through desire, a man having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom. Now, it is true that sometimes in the Bible separating yourself can be negative. But there are plenty of times when separating yourself is positive. A lot of the time, you know, come out from among them and be separate, separated unto God, separating ourselves under the gospel and so forth. And so, you know, obviously the King James is correct here. These other versions are way off on this and totally changing the meaning. And I'm glad I'm not preaching from one of those and having to get on people for being too isolated or living by themselves or whatever. But through desire, a man having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom. The Bible says in verse two, a fool hath no delight in understanding. See, he's the opposite of the guy in verse one. So he doesn't have the desire. He doesn't delight in understanding. And this again goes to show how the King James Bible is correct here because you get this contrast between verse one and verse two, where it's like in the first verse, this guy has the desire. He goes after wisdom. Whereas the guy in the second verse, he has no delight in understanding. He doesn't have that desire. All that he cares about is that his heart may discover itself. And the word discover here actually in our monomaniacular would mean uncover. Like his heart discovering itself means that he wants to just basically let everybody know what's inside his heart. So he just likes to hear himself talk and just wants to get his ideas out there, whether right or wrong. He's not interested in just kind of being quiet and listening to what other people have to say, people who actually know what they're talking about. He just kind of pipes up without knowing what he's talking about and just wants his heart to discover itself, meaning to uncover itself. It says in verse three, when the wicked cometh, then cometh also contempt and with ignominy reproach. And then we get into this long list of verses here that all have to do with the tongue. Okay. And so one of the major themes in the book of Proverbs is about the tongue. And when it comes to wisdom and foolishness, a lot of this can be gauged by what comes out of people's mouths, right? And so the fool is known by the multitude of his words and foolish people pour foolishness out of their mouth. And so the Bible is constantly warning us to control our tongue. We should not be the kind of people who just say whatever comes to our mind, but we need to be very careful that our tongue and the words that we say are pleasing to God, meaning that we're not a slanderer, we're not a backbiter, we're not a tail bearer, and that we don't have filthy communication or corrupt communication coming out of our mouth. So that would be along the lines of telling dirty jokes or talking graphically about sinful things, obviously lying, just talking about dirty, filthy, smutty things. We need to keep our communication clean and pure and righteous. And so there's a lot here about the tongue. Now I'm going to kind of tie this in, all these verses about the tongue with verse three. Okay. Because verse three says, when the wicked cometh, then cometh also contempt and with ignominy reproach. Now, what does that mean? It's easy to kind of read over a verse like that without stopping to think about what it actually means. Okay. Well, what is contempt first of all? Well, if I have contempt for something, it means that I'm disgusted by it, or it means that I just hate it, or it just means that I don't have proper respect for it, right? So if I am in court and I get hit with contempt of court, it basically means that I don't have respect for that court. I'm disgusted by the court. I'm acting hatefully toward the court so that that's why I'm not being respectful. I'm talking out of turn or whatever. And so then they'll hit you with contempt of court, right? To have someone in contempt means that you don't respect them, but that rather you maybe even hate them or disgusted by them or whatever. And so the Bible says when the wicked cometh, then cometh also contempt. And what that means is that wicked people are going to be held in contempt by society, by other people. When a wicked person comes, the people around them will have contempt for them. They're not going to be respected and loved and appreciated by the people around them. Does that make sense? Wicked people are not going to be honored and respected and loved by the people around them. They're going to be held in contempt. And then the Bible says with ignominy, reproach. Now this is a word, again, it's a difficult word that we don't really use very much today. Ignominy. What does that mean? Well, you might've heard a similar word, ignoble, right? And it has that same I G N thing going on at the beginning, that I G prefix before word that starts with an N. And it's basically like a negating prefix, right? So you have noble and ignoble, right? That's basically the etymology of that word. And so this is kind of functioning the same way, but the nominee part is basically from a root word that means name. Okay. So you think of like English words like nominative or something for those of you grammar geeks out there, but ignominy is basically something that is, I guess you could say of ill repute or something, right? It's like something that is looked down upon by society or something. Ignominy, it's like something despicable or something that people would look at it and say like, that's terrible. Okay. It's something that's of an ill name or ill repute, right? Ignominy. And so the Bible says with ignominy comes reproach. And what is reproach? You know, it's kind of a lot of difficult words packed into one verse here, but reproach is when someone criticizes you or speaks evil of you, or just looks down upon you or something, right? That's called reproach. Like when Jesus Christ is on the cross and you've got people shooting out the lip at him and shaking their head at him and saying all kinds of rude things. And Jesus said, you know, the reproaches of them that reproach thee fell on me. Jesus Christ bore shame and reproach on the cross because people are looking down on him. They're criticizing him. They're attacking him verbally. That's what reproach is. And so what the Bible is saying is that wicked people are going to be objects of contempt and people who engage in some kind of a ignominy, you know, people who do something of ill repute, people who do something that's unseemly, people who do something that other people would look down on because it's something bad. They are going to become the objects of reproach. People are going to say bad things about them. They did something wicked and now they're the object of scorn. They're the object of derision and so forth. These are difficult words in the chapter. Most of the time the King James Bible, you know, has a little bit of difficult vocabulary mixed in, but every once in a while you get kind of a clump of several hard words in a row and this is one of those verses like that. But what's the Bible saying? You know, the Bible is saying that if you do wicked things, if you commit sinful acts, if you do shameful deeds, don't be surprised when people talk bad about you, when people point that out, when people speak ill of you. Now, it's not necessarily right, but it's still going to happen. You can say all day long, well, I don't think people should be gossiping about me or I don't think people should be saying this about me or whatever. And depending on the situation, you might be right. Maybe it is wrong in that situation for people to be saying anything or talking about something. But what we need to understand is that this is the reality of the world that we live in, that when you commit sinful acts or do something shameful or ignominious or whatever, then basically people are going to say stuff and you're going to kind of reap what you've sown in that sense that if you do something wicked, then, you know, you're going to be probably put to shame at some point. Unfortunately, sometimes it's right, sometimes it's not right depending on the situation. So let's just keep that in mind as we read through these verses. So the Bible says in verse five, it's not good to accept the person of the wicked to overthrow the righteous in judgment. A fool's lips enter into contention and his mouth calleth for strokes. Now, what does this mean in verse six? The fool basically gets involved in stuff that doesn't regard him, that doesn't pertain to him, right? He enters into contention. A fool's lips enter into contention. You know, the Bible talks about us passing by and meddling with strife not belonging to us, right? And then that's like taking a dog by the ears. We shouldn't get involved in conflicts and fights that are not our business. The fool kind of just walks by and just jumps in and just gets involved with whatever strife or conflict is going on. He just kind of gets into it even though it's none of his business. The fool's lips enter into contention. So there's contention going on that doesn't pertain to him and he just kind of jumps in and picks aside or just wants to stir the pot a little bit. And his mouth calleth for strokes. Now, what are strokes? Well, stroke is the noun for the verb strike, right? And what does it mean to strike someone? It means to hit someone. So basically, two people are arguing, maybe verbally. The fool gets in there and tries to escalate it into a physical fist fight, right? He calls for strokes. He says, hey man, kick his whatever, you know, and he gets in there and calls for strokes. He enters into contention and he calls for, we need to just not meddle with strife not belonging to us. And the last thing we want to do is escalate people's arguments or their disagreements into a physical fight, a physical altercation. We should be the exact opposite, where we should be a peacemaker, where we are like Moses, where Moses, he sees two people fighting and he tried to set them at one again, right? We should be one who tries to make peace and resolve conflicts, not be calling for strokes, like, yeah, go ahead, hit him, you know, and trying to escalate things into a fight. You know, I remember when I was a kid in school, and you probably remember this too, if you grew up in public school or probably Christian school, any school, where there'll be a couple of kids that are pretty mad at each other and everybody just wants them to fight so bad. Who knows what I'm talking about? And so everybody's doing what? They're calling for strokes. Yeah, they go fight, fight, fight, fight, everybody gets in a circle, fight, fight, fight. And everybody tries to egg them on, and then sometimes what'll happen is you'll have two guys and they're kind of squared off with one another, kind of talking trash and maybe a little bit of shoving is going on, or maybe they're just kind of getting in each other's face, and then someone will always come behind one of them and like push them into the other one, just to try to kind of light the fuse on that thing and just try to get that powder keg to blow up into a fight, because you're just so bored at school, you just want something to happen. And so, you know, if it's a fight, it's at least something's happening. Now, why are kids like that? I'll tell you why, because foolishness is bound in the heart of a child. That's what the Bible says, foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive apart from him. So of course, when you put a bunch of kids together in a building all day for seven, eight hours a day, that's the kind of stuff they're going to get up to because children are foolish by nature. They have to be taught wisdom. They have to mature and grow up and things. So here's the thing, those of us who are adults, we should be beyond that, beyond just wanting to watch people fight for sheer entertainment value, right? We should be grown up and desire peace and hate violence and want people to get along with one another and be a peacemaker and be called the children of God, as peacemakers, as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. And so obviously children are children, but you need to grow up. And those of you teenagers, if you want to be more mature, since teenagers love to think of themselves as totally grown up and adult, well then, you know, one way that you can act like an adult is being a peacemaker, not one who tries to escalate confrontations into maybe even physical violence. And so the fool's lips enter into contention and his mouth called for strokes. Verse seven, a fool's mouth is his destruction and his lips are the snare of his soul. You know, very many people have messed up their lives or gotten themselves into big trouble just from blowing off their mouth and saying something stupid. So you've got to control your mouth and think before you speak. The Bible says be slow to speak, right? Swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. So don't just get angry at the moment's notice and don't just say the first thing that comes to your mind. You've got to learn to control your tongue and not just let everything come out that's in your heart. The fool utters all his mind, but the wise man keeps it until afterward. Okay. And so a fool's mouth is his destruction. You know, you could probably mouth off to a lot of people and nothing's going to happen, but one day you young guys, you're going to mouth off to the wrong person and they're going to beat the fire out of you or maybe even injure you or kill you. And so, you know, you just go out, just blowing off your mouth, saying stuff. One day you're going to mess with the wrong person. So just control your mouth, a soft answer, turn it the way wrath. Don't be arrogant and haughty and don't be a loud mouth because one day you're going to mouth off to the wrong person. A fool's mouth is his destruction and his lips are the snare of his soul. And then continuing on with the tongue, the words of a tale bearer are as wounds and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly saying, look, you can do a lot of damage as a tale bearer, as a gossip, as somebody who is backbiting and talking bad about people behind their back. You can really hurt people. You can cause serious wounds that go down into the innermost parts of the belly. So here's the thing, you know, if someone commits a wicked sin, well, if that person is unrepentant and open about their sin, well then, you know, if people call it out and talk about it, well then that's just par for the course, right? But let's say someone commits some kind of a wicked sin and they repent. They're sorry. They change their ways. You know, it's something that they've got behind them now, right? Maybe they committed fornication, but you know what? They've repented of that. They're not going to do it again. They're done with it. They're sorry. They move on. Let's say someone stole something and they've stolen, but they made it right and they're done stealing and they're living an honest life now. We could go down the list, you know, even very serious sins like adultery or murder even, right? You know, if people have committed serious sins, but if they're sorry and they've repented and they're going a different direction now in their life, then we need to forgive that person and let them live it down and not hang that sin over their head for the rest of their life. We need to forgive and forget and move on and give people another chance and never should we bring up people's past sins that they've repented of. Now, if someone's just still openly living in unrepentant sin, well then obviously, yeah, you know, we have every right to call that out and say, hey, wait a minute, you know, this person's living openly in fornication. You know, this person is a heretic, an unrepentant heretic and false teacher or whatever. But when people, let's say someone taught a false doctrine in the past, but then they said, hey, I'm sorry I was wrong about that and now I'm teaching it right. Hey, remember that dumb thing you used to teach? Why would you bring that up, right? If it was a mistake that's been acknowledged and repented of, then drop it. Okay. And you know, if you stole something 10 years ago, I don't care. You know, if you committed fornication or adultery in the past, you know, those are wicked sins, but you know what? If that's not who you are now, if that's not what you're engaging in now, then you know what? Let's let it go. Let's forget about it. Let's not talk about it. There's no reason to bring it out and rehash it all the time. But you know, some people, they just delight in that kind of scuttlebutt. And so they repeat these kinds of things and they want to tell people, hey, do you know so-and-so's background? Or hey, you know, did you hear about what happened several years ago or whatever? Even though it's just totally over and it's water under the bridge. So here's the bottom line kind of tying all this together is that, you know, if you commit major sin, people are going to talk about it unfortunately. It doesn't make it right. We as Christians should leave it alone, forgive and forget, not be a tailbearer, not be a backbiter, not be one who's a whisperer saying all these things. But at the same time, the reality of life is that some people are going to disobey the Bible and they're going to not forgive and they're going to keep talking about it and they're going to gossip and be a tailbearer. So I as the pastor, you know, I can get up here and say, hey, forget about it. Let people live it down. Do the Christian thing and forgive as Christ has forgiven us. We need to forgive other people. But let me ask you this. Do you think everybody's going to obey that teaching? No. And so all I can do is get up and teach and tell people, hey, drop it, forget it, quit talking about it. But the truth of the matter is people sometimes do talk about it and it's because they're sinning by, you know, failing to forgive and by being a tailbearer. But it doesn't change the fact that it's life, you know. I mean, it's like if the police, you know, do some search on your vehicle that's not constitutional, you can tell them, hey, this isn't constitutional, but they're probably still going to do it anyway. And then you go to court and it's like, yep, that was unconstitutional. But at the time, the cop kind of just doesn't care. He's just going to do it anyway. Right. You can say, hey, there's a Supreme Court case that says that we can be out here soul winning. You know, the Jehovah's Witnesses already went to the Supreme Court about this and we're allowed to go door to door. There's a landmark decision in the early 20th century. You know, we can show them, we used to have a little printout of the landmark Supreme Court decisions throughout the 20th century that protect our right to door to door evangelize and that say we're not trespassing by going door to door evangelizing because it's already been litigated all the way up to the Supreme Court and it was ruled in favor of what we're doing, going door to door evangelizing. And yet you could show that to a policeman. Does that mean he's just going to go like, well, oh, well, excuse me, sir. You know, as you were. No, because, because here's the thing. People don't always do what's right, do they? Cops don't always follow the law. They don't always follow the constitution. They don't always uphold our individual civil liberties, do they? No, they, they basically, uh, do what they want to do sometimes or what their boss is telling them to do or what the department has as their little protocol, whether it's legal or not, whether it's right or not. Well, guess what? That's just the way human beings are. You know, God's got all these laws. The church has all these protocols and way that we do things, but does that mean that everybody's going to follow it all the time? No. So the reality is that if you go out and commit fornication, if you go out and commit adultery, you go out and get drunk or get high or whatever, you're probably going to end up being the object of gossip. It's not my fault. I'm not saying I'm not going to be the one gossiping about you. I'm not going to go around telling people I'm not going to participate in it. And I'm going to get up and preach that people shouldn't talk about it and the people should drop it and the people should forgive and the people should let it go. But is everything I preach across this pulpit just automatically carried out by the church members? No more so than every cop is following the constitution. It's just life, my friend. So you can say, people aren't supposed to be talking about me. Yeah, but they're going to. So here's the moral. And I'm not saying they should. They shouldn't. But here's the moral of the story. Don't do the ignominy. Here's the moral of the story. Don't commit fornication. Don't get drunk. Don't get high. Don't commit adultery, because if you do, people are going to talk crap about you for the rest of your life. I'm not saying good people are going to talk crap about you. I'm not saying that, you know, godly, forgiving Christians are going to talk crap about you, but somebody will, because there's always that tail bearer. There's always that whisper, that gossip who will never let you live it down. Even five years later, 10 years later, 15 years later, they're just going to keep talking about it. And so the Bible is kind of giving us both sides here. He's saying, look, you know, this is the way life works. When ignominy comes, reproach comes. Okay. But obviously we shouldn't be that tail bearer, but the tail bearer exists. So that's just life. So the Bible says in verse number nine, kind of changing gears here, it says, he also that is slothful in his work, his brother, to him that is a great waster. And man, truer words were never spoken. People that are lazy about work are wasteful people. People who work hard are not wasteful. You know, I bet you that in a lot of homes today, the person who's not wasting is dad, because he's got to go out and work hard and make the money, right? Mom's working hard, taking care of the house, and she's probably not doing the wasting. It's probably the children that are doing the wasting who are working the least. And we all remember what it was like when our dad would constantly tell us, turn that light off, turn that faucet off, shut that door, right? Why is the thermostat so low? He didn't want to waste. You know, clean your plate. If you don't eat that, pack that up for later. Why is dad worried about that? Because dad's a hard worker, so he's not into waste. Okay? People who have everything handed to them are more wasteful. That's why children need to be taught to work hard and not to waste. But you know who the biggest wasters are in the city of Phoenix tonight are homeless people. Because here's what you'll find about homeless people if you actually walk around the city on foot, as I often do, or ride around on a bicycle, as I often do. Because when you just drive by in a car, sometimes you don't see things because you're moving too fast. But if you slow down and actually walk around the city, what you'll find is that where the bums are stationed is a lot of half-eaten food. And it's the kind of waste that I would never want to see in my home. And here's what's interesting. You know, in our home, we have plenty of food all the time. We've never been like that woman in the Bible where she had that barrel of meal that just had like one portion. I've never been like, okay, this is our last meal, guys, and then we're going to have to figure out what to do next. My entire life, both when I lived with my parents and when I lived on my own, every day of my 41-year-long life, my cupboards and fridge have been full of food. I don't know what it's like to open a fridge and not have it just packed with food. I don't know what it's like to open a cupboard and not have it just packed with food. Who would say, Pastor Anderson, I've pretty much had the same experience my entire life. I really don't know what it is to have an empty fridge or an empty cupboard, okay? Yeah, a lot of people are the same way. You know, you grow up in America, there's just such abundance. Even when I was poor, even when I was just living paycheck to paycheck, scraping by, and my wife and I had no money to go out to eat or to do anything special or fancy. And the only time we ever went out to eat was when my parents took us out to eat because they were buying. And we only just had barely enough to get by. You know what? We always had cupboards full of food and a fridge full of food. Even if it wasn't maybe our favorite food, there was always food. So here we are with all this abundance, all this food in the fridge, in the cupboard. I've never one time felt even close to being in danger of starving ever in my life. And yet, why am I so worried about not wasting food? And I'm looking at my kids' plates, I'm like, are you going to finish that? Hey, you better finish that. And you know, people, even people who go out to eat with me know that sometimes I'm kind of like, hey, you're going to finish that? You know, I don't like waste. Isn't that interesting? That even though I've never, you'd expect me to have maybe experienced some kind of famine or, oh, you know, grandma so-and-so, she lived through the Great Depression and that's why she doesn't want you to waste any food, you know, because she knows. No, I've never experienced anything like that. Why do I hate waste? Why don't I want to waste things? Because I'm not lazy, because I'm not slothful in my work, because the slothful in their work is brother to him that is a great waster. Those two things go hand in hand. Okay, so what about the homeless people out there? Let me ask you this. Do they have a fridge full of food? Do they have a cupboard full of food? Do they just wake up every morning to the cornucopia that I have in my kitchen? I mean, I wake up in the morning. I walk downstairs. There are all kinds of baked goods and things in Ziploc baggies that I could tap into. There are all kinds of boxes of cereal. There are all kinds of eggs and oatmeal packets. There's all kinds of stuff that we could do. And I've got all of these females just ready to cook for me. I got my wife. I got my three older daughters. And now even the younger boys are starting to cook stuff. It's just like there's so much cooking going on in my house. My head is spinning. But let me ask you this. Do those bums out there, do they wake up to that kind of abundance? Do they wake up and just like, oh, so what are we going to have today? Is it crepe suzettes or is it huevos rancheros? What are we going to do, French toast perhaps? No. In fact, I'll bet you that there are times that they skip meals because they don't have anything to eat. And I'll bet you that they go for hours and hours without any food. When I'm just here, I am just, oh, time for breakfast, time for lunch, time for dinner, like a clock. So then riddle me this. Why is it that they're constantly wasting their food? You'd think that, oh, they would just have so much appreciation for their food and it's so precious unto them that they're going to finish that burrito or whatever. But they don't. You see them constantly, I mean, food that you think would be easy to eat, like there'll just be like a pizza, a full pizza, and there's a few pizzas missing and the rest is just laying there just rotting. Just half a sandwich rotting, just all kinds of snacks, some stuff that's not even like really perishable, just like chips, cookies, stuff that could be easily packaged up and saved for later or whatever. But it's gross. It's disgusting. You go by where these people are standing on the corner asking for a free handout and you go over there and you look behind them, behind the scenes, they usually tuck it away a little bit so that it's not visible from the road because then people would be so disgusted they wouldn't want to donate. But you look behind the little wall and there's just piles of rotting food and rotting garbage and it's all just thrown there lazily, sloppily, slovenly thrown down, just take a bite, throw it on like a toddler would do or something. Why? Because he that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster. You say, well, I don't think that all of these homeless people out there are just lazy. I think they're just down on their luck. I know every single company is hiring right now and I know unemployment's at an all-time low and I know that if you have a pulse, you're pretty much qualified for a lot of jobs now. But I just think that these people, it's not that they don't want to work, they're just down on their luck. Okay, well, let me tell you something though. When you see them wasting food though, that tells you that they're bogus, that they're not legit because if they were legitimately just down on their luck, you know what they'd be doing? They'd be squirreling away everything that they can and they'd be conserving and rationing and taking care of what they have. Because look, if I were homeless, I'd be squirreling everything away. I'd get the sandwich. Because look, there have been times when I was hungry and I didn't have access to a lot of food. I'm talking about like on a trip or something, never at home obviously. But sometimes you'll be traveling, right? And there's not really a lot of food. Maybe I didn't get a chance to eat and I had to hop on an airplane and I was in a hurry and didn't get a chance to eat. And then they'll come by and bring you a snack or maybe you can buy a meal on the plane or something. And I mean, when I get food on the airplane, I eat everything. I just consume everything. I'm even like figuring out how to make every condiment, jam, butter, just make sure it all gets put on so that everything is consumed. I'm like the fire that comes down from Mount Carmel on Elijah's sacrifice where it licks up the dust. That's how I am with that airplane food. I'll eat the parsley. Everything's gone. Just everything's consumed. If I like it, if I don't like it, it's just like I'm going to eat all those precious calories because I'm starving and I didn't get a chance to eat and I'm stuck on this airplane and I'm eating everything. I eat all of it. But that's not what you see them doing. Why? Because when you don't work for things, you don't have any appreciation for things. That's why. When you paid for it with your own money, you don't just eat half. I mean, look how much food costs now. The food costs are through the roof. What's a chipotle burrito now? It's like 10, 12 bucks or something. If you get all the add-ons, all the accessories, you got to get the guacamole. I mean, come on. But if I shell out 10, 12, 15 bucks for a chipotle burrito, you think I'm just going to eat half of it and throw it in the trash? No way. And if I knew that I could only eat half of it, if I knew I could only eat half of it and I have no way to refrigerate it, I would sit there and figure out, okay, what can I order that's not going to go bad? And I'd get some kind of a vegetarian burrito or something that I know I can eat this in seven hours or whatever, and it's still going to be edible. Because sometimes I'll do that at places where I know I'm going to be out for a long time. Hey, I want to be able to eat the other half of this later or whatever. That's the way we think in here. That's why we're not out there on the corner asking for free money, because we don't think that way, because that's a lazy person. Not only are they too lazy to go get a job and work like a normal person, but also they're too lazy to even eat their food. The Bible says that the slothful man, it even grieves him to lift his hand up to his mouth to put the food in his mouth. That's what the book of Proverbs says. It grieves him. He's just like, oh, this is so tiring to just spoon this food in my mouth. It's too much work to eat. So he just takes a few bites of a sandwich. It's not really tickling my taste bud right now or whatever. I don't know. Maybe when you take that many drugs, maybe you lose your appetite anyway. I don't know. I've never taken drugs, but I've heard that sometimes I think people can go days without eating because they're just on drugs or something. So then a lot of the food goes to waste. But the Bible says he that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster. Now let me just give you one caveat here. The Bible says he also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster. Everybody's going to waste a little bit from time to time. It's always going to be a little bit of waste. That's just the way life works. But what we don't want to be is a great waster. A great waster is eat half the sandwich, throw the other half away. Eat half the burrito, throw that. That's a great waste. But there's going to be a little waste here and there. I get it. But don't be a great waster. So the Bible says in verse 10, the name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe. The rich man's wealth is his strong city and as an high wall. And then there's these important words at the end in his own conceit. That's what he thinks because obviously wealth isn't everything and God can take you down anytime he wants to, no matter how much money you have. The Bible says in verse 12, before destruction, the heart of man is haughty and before honor is humility. He that answereth a matter before he heareth it is folly and shame unto him. The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can bear. That's a verse that I think about a lot. Verse 14, the spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity. Meaning that you can go through all kinds of physical hardships like hunger, thirst, hot, cold, tiredness, sleeplessness, whatever. And it's your spirit keeps you going. You know, you can push through those things through spiritual strength, right? But you know, a wounded spirit is a lot harder to deal with, isn't it? You'd rather deal with hunger, cold, thirst, nakedness. You'd rather deal with those things than to have to deal with, you know, real spiritual or emotional trauma, right? A wounded spirit who can bear. And so the Bible says in verse number 15, the heart of the prudent getteth knowledge and the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge. A man's gift maketh room for him and bringeth him before great men. He that is first in his own cause seemeth just, but his neighbor cometh and searcheth him. The lot causeth contentions to cease and parteth between the mighty. A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city and their contentions are like the bars of a castle. You know, this kind of goes back to the thing about the tongue. Sometimes you can say something that could really offend someone to the point where you can never fix that relationship, right? The Bible says a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city. So again, if you blow off your mouth, if you're being a tailbearer, whisperer, backbiter, you say something stupid, you could burn somebody to the point where the relationship is permanently ruined. So think about that before you talk. Their contentions are like the bars of a castle. The Bible says a man's belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth and with the increase of his lips shall he be filled. Death and life are in the power of the tongue and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. Again, it's just so important what we say and we should not be a person whose tongue just goes wherever and that we just say whatever comes to our mind. Stop and think before you talk. Make sure that you're speaking kind words, edifying words, right words, wise words, not foolish, stupid, or dirty things, or inappropriate things. Make sure you think before you talk. So find it the wife, find it the good thing. By the way, also, you know, getting your mouth under control may help you find a wife because if you say the wrong thing to women, they get offended and their contentions are like the bars of a castle, okay? Because women are not as good at forgetting as men are. One of the talents that we as men possess is the gift of forgetfulness. It's true. Now we could word this another way. We could say that women have a better memory than men, but I'm going to word it as, you know, men are just better at forgetting. We are talented at being forgetful. We forget stuff all the time. We're constantly forgetting things. Now you say, what in the world? Why is that a virtue? Well, sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. It's not always a virtue. I'm joking, obviously, but you know what? Our brains are designed by God to forget stuff. It's true. I mean, we're supposed to forget stuff. You say, oh man, I wish I could have the superpower where I just remember everything. I wish I could be one of those people that just memorize the phone book and just, and I'm just photographic memory. Not me. Our brains are designed to forget because here's the thing. If you have that superpower where you just remember everything, think about how miserable you'd be. Cause think about all the bad stuff that happens to you in your life and all the bad stuff that you've said or done or heard or seen or experienced. How would you like that stuff to just always be with you all the time? No, it's great to just be able to forget negative things, right? Something bad happens, just block it out, forget about it. And you know, that's part of forgiveness is forgetting, right? Forgive and forget. And so I'm glad that God said about our sins. You say, well, God forgave our sins, right? Yeah, but it says their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. That's forgiveness. Okay. And so men though, tend to forget things a little bit more easily than women do. Women tend to have a little harder time with this. You know, men and women are different. It's not that men are better than women or that women are better than men. We're just different. You know, there are certain sins that men struggle with more than women. Let's face it, right? Lust of the eyes. Who do you think struggles more with that? Men or women? Okay. What about this thing of forgetting or failing to forget? Women tend to hold a grudge a little bit more than men do, you know? So this is a sin where maybe women struggle a little more than men, right? So we could, you know, we can bring up sins that men struggle with more. Men probably struggle more with pride and ego, right? You know, and then women struggle more with sometimes being a tale bearer, not forgetting things. And so, you know, we're just different. It's not that one's better than the other. We, we all have our sins that we deal with and, and we're, we're just different from one another. But ladies, this is not an excuse for you to hold a grudge. You know, you need to forget. Okay. You need to let things go and drop things and not be bitter about things that happened in the past. You know, bring enough stuff that your husband did six months ago or six years ago. You need to let that go. You know, God's mercies are new every morning. And so, you know, men could be the same way. Men can be bitter and hold a grudge too, of course. But I'm just saying women tend to not forget. And so therefore you better be careful what you say to women, because if you offend them, you know, you may never live it down. So if you want to find that good thing, who's so fine to the wife, find it the good thing. You better figure out how to get your tongue under control so that you don't say stupid things on the first date and screw up everything. So who's so fine to the wife, find it the good thing and obtain a favor of the Lord. The poor use it than treaties, but the rich answer with roughly a man has friends must show himself friendly. And there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Verse 24 is obviously a very famous verse and it has a couple different meanings. The main meaning on the surface here is that sometimes your friends can actually be closer to you than your flesh and blood family members. Right? Sometimes your friends, people at your church, just brothers and sisters in Christ, but they're not physical family. They can actually stick closer than a brother. Sometimes they can be closer than family. And then also you could think of this as also, you know, prophetic because everything in the Bible is ultimately pointing us to Jesus. And so we could say Jesus is the friend that sticks to us closer than any brother ever would. Right? And so Jesus Christ is the friend that sits closer than a brother. What a friend we have in Jesus. But also I think that this verse is just a general statement as well, that there is such thing as a friend, even in this life, that sticks closer than a brother. So it says a man that has friends must show himself friendly. Okay. So what the Bible is saying is that instead of thinking about having friends or thinking about what friends can do for you, you need to think about what it means to be a friend. If you have friends, you have to show yourself friendly, meaning that you are a friend unto others. People who have a lot of friends are people who do things for other people and care about other people and think about it. You say, Oh, I don't have any friends. You know, you're probably self-centered, self-absorbed, and you're just looking inward. If you started worrying about other people, helping other people, reaching out to other people, seeing what you can do for other people, then you'll have friends. A man that had friends must show himself friendly. And there is a friend that's sticking closer than a brother. And again, kind of tying this in with, you know, finding a wife as well is that, you know, when it comes to finding a wife, what kind of person are you young man? Are you one who basically just has a list of attributes that you're looking for, of what she can do for you? Are you approaching this thing from a selfish perspective of, well, I want to find a wife that's going to check all these boxes to make me happy. Or you should think about what you could do as a husband to love your wife and someone that you want to share life with and someone that you want to be a blessing to, you know, thinking about what kind of a good husband you could be to some young lady, as opposed to just constantly thinking about what she is. How about what you are? How about how you are? And so it's interesting when you talk to young people sometimes about this subject and they just tell you like, well, here's what I'm looking for, you know, and they just have all this list of this unicorn that they're looking for. You know, well, you know, I'm not going to marry anybody unless they're this, this, this, this, this, you know, and they better be this because I don't want to deal with that. I don't want to deal with it, you know, here's what I want to deal with. I want, you know, I want, I want it to be out of the box, you know, the way I want. But that's not really what love is. That's not what marriage is. That's not what it's about, right? Just that this now, now there is one box that needs to be checked, obviously. Saved, right? Loves the Lord. Okay. So yeah, couple boxes, but I'm talking about just all the selfish things that you want her or him to be able to do for you. You know, that's not really the right way to approach this. And you know, if you have that attitude, you may be perpetually single because people are going to get that vibe from you and they're going to realize that you're not a very loving person and that you're kind of in love with yourself and that you're a user and that you're not really trying to put something into the relationship. You're just trying to see what you can get out of it, right? When reality, you know, marriage is about giving, right? And being a friend is about showing yourself friendly. And marriage is obviously a friendship in many ways. It's more than a friendship, but it is also a friendship. And so a man that had friends must show himself friendly. The man who finds a wife, you know, he must show himself husbandly, right? He's got to be a guy who is husband material and that he's thinking about what he can bring to the table and what he can do and not just selfishly trying to get someone to tick the boxes, you know. You know, eventually, you know, you find someone that you want to spend the rest of your life with. You find someone that you want to be your companion and they're not going to be perfect. They're never going to be perfect. They're never going to check all the boxes. But yet you love that person anyway in spite of their faults and you pour your life and effort and energy into that relationship. And that's what actually works because you're never going to find that perfect person. And newsflash, you're not a perfect person. And so if you did find the perfect person, they're not going to give you the time of day because you're you, okay? Let's pray. All right, dear Lord, thank you so much for this chapter. And Lord God, I pray that we would just take the wise things that we've learned in this chapter, Lord, and put them into practice. Help us to have the desire for wisdom and the desire to learn, Lord, and to separate ourselves and seek an inner mettle with all the wisdom. And Lord God, please just help us to control our mouths and control our tongues so that we don't end up saying something stupid. Help us not to dishonor you with what we say by talking about filthy things or spreading rumors or slandering or even just being a tale bearer and talking about people who've already repented and should have been forgiven, Lord. Help us to control our mouths and be godly spouses and friends and brothers and sisters, Lord. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.