Please turn with me, if you would, to Proverbs chapter 13. Once again, we'll be reading the entire chapter together, but then we'll just spend our time focusing on a handful of verses that sort of topically belong together from this chapter. And as we read Proverbs 13, I want us to look specifically for references to the desires or the appetites of people. What does this chapter have to say about our cravings, our wishes, our hopes?
What does it have to say about the gratification or lack thereof of those cravings? Proverbs 13 will read the chapter in its entirety. A wise son hears his father's instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke. From the fruit of his mouth, a man eats what is good, but the desire of the treacherous is for violence. Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life. He opens wide his lips, comes to ruin.
He who opens wide his lips comes to ruin. The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied. The righteous hates falsehood, but the wicked bring shame and disgrace. Righteousness guards him whose way is blameless, but sin overthrows the wicked. One pretends to be rich, yet has nothing.
Another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth. The ransom of a man's life is his wealth, but a poor man hears no threat. The light of the righteous rejoices, but the lamp of the wicked will be put out. By insolence comes nothing but strife, but with those who take advice is wisdom. Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. Whoever despises the word brings destruction on himself, but he who reveres the commandment will be rewarded. The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life that one may turn away from the snares of death. Good sense wins favor, but the way of the treacherous is their ruin.
Every prudent man acts with knowledge, but a fool flaunts his folly. A wicked messenger falls into trouble, but a faithful envoy brings healing. Poverty and disgrace come to him who ignores instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is honored. A desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul, but to turn away from evil is an abomination to fools.
Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. Disaster pursues sinners, but the righteous are rewarded with good. A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous. The fallow ground of the poor would yield much food, but it is swept away through injustice.
Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. The righteous has enough to satisfy his appetite, but the belly of the wicked suffers want. Let's pray. Lord, would you now open our eyes to behold wonderful things from your word.
I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, our consideration of the Proverbs is growing increasingly topical in nature, and we sort of expected this. We noticed that from chapter 10 onward, the Proverbs take on a different structure in which each verse, each sentence, essentially stands alone. The nature of Proverbs is that they don't give extended explanation of a topic or theme. They just kind of give a brief pointed blast of truth, and we're intended to stop and think about each sentence.
We're supposed to read the Proverbs like we would perhaps look at a work of art in an art gallery. You've got to sit down on the bench in front of the artwork and contemplate what you're looking at. It's not like watching a linear movie with a starting point, a plot, a climax, a resolution. No, it's more like hitting pause and studying in great detail one frame of a movie. We're probably not accustomed to reading this way, but there is great value in slowing down and contemplating.
C.S. Lewis in his Letters to Malcolm says, in reading the Bible, we must chew and digest it, not gulp it down like sweet meat. We're not consumers of the text. We're actually patients of the text. The Bible is a doctor who's fixing our broken souls, and we need to learn to stay on the operating table for however long it takes for the Word to do its work.
Now, this doesn't mean that we are passive in the process. No, we need to be actively engaged in hearing what God has to say in his Word and active in stirring our souls to believe what he says and obey what he requires. So much, in fact, is said, even here in chapter 13, but also throughout the book of Proverbs, about the teachability of the wise person.
A wise person listens to instruction. They aren't deaf to the voice of reproof. They don't run away or get into a defensive posture when their beliefs and behavior are called into question. And because of that teachability, because of that active reception of God's instruction, they benefit from what God has to say. Let's be that kind of person. Let's be the kind of person who sits down on the bench in front of this magnificent work of art that we call the Word of God and let it change how we think about ourselves, how we think about the world. Let's let it change the values we have held and the behaviors we have engaged in that are at odds with God's declaration of what is righteous and true. Let's let this living, powerful Word cut to the soul and change the very thoughts and intentions of our hearts.
In fact, this is where I'd like for us to focus our attention this morning, the thoughts and intentions of the heart. We might call it the desires of our hearts. Hopefully you noticed as we read the chapter how frequently Proverbs 13 refers to desire and appetite, those deepest parts of us that drive us, that reside deep in our souls. Those desires can be righteous or they can be wicked. And the point that Proverbs makes over and over again is that an appetite for good things leads to satisfaction, gratification.
But an appetite for evil leads inevitably and every time to hunger. Do you want to be fulfilled? Do you want to be happily satisfied with your life? Of course you do.
We all want that. Well, let's see then how Solomon instructs us with regard to desire and fulfillment. So we're walking through an art gallery of biblical Proverbs and we're going to sit down this morning in front of five different Proverbs, each of which have something to say about human desires.
And we're going to contemplate what they're saying. The first is in verse 2. And if we were to describe what this piece of artwork is saying, perhaps we might state it like this, we pursue what we desire.
We pursue what we desire. Verse 2, from the fruits of his mouth a man eats what is good, but the desire or literally the craving of the treacherous is for violence. Now we've been learning how to read the Proverbs and we've observed how most of them contain two parallel statements.
And as we begin to compare and contrast these two statements, we begin to uncover less than obvious assertions, sometimes with double meanings or hidden truths. In the case of verse 2, we expect the second statement to mirror the first statement. The first statement says, from the fruit of his mouth a man eats what is good. So essentially this asserts that good speech yields good consequences.
If you use your words righteously, wisely, morally, then you can expect good things, delightful things to come from the words that you speak. And so we move on to the next statement and we expect it to say kind of the opposite of the first statement, something along the lines of, from the poison of his mouth a man eats what is bad, which is true, but it doesn't say that, does it? Instead of focusing on the consequences of one's speech, like the first statement did, the second statement focuses on the desire driving one's speech, the desire behind someone's speech. In the case of the fool, his craving for evil.
And so through this asymmetrical parallelism, we discover that there is a connection between the appetites or the cravings, the desires of a person and the ultimate consequences that come from those appetites. A good man craves what is good and thus he uses his faculties, such as his speech, for good. And as a result, his life bears good fruit, good consequence. On the other hand, the fool or the treacherous man, as he is called here, produces violence because that is exactly what is in his heart, that's what he craves. And so his desire for violence and treachery lead him to do violent, treacherous things.
As a result, the end of his life, the consequence of these violent cravings is violence. The point is that which we desire, we will inevitably pursue. So be careful what you desire. Make sure you desire what is good and true and beautiful, what is righteous before God because whatever desires you harbor and nurture and entertain will erupt into your life.
They will manifest themselves in your speech, in your choices, in your friend preferences, in who you choose to marry, in how you conduct yourself in your vocation, in how you behave in private, in how you behave in public. Desires drive us to be who we are and do what we do. Take care then which desires you entertain. Now someone might say, but how can a person change their desires? If that's who I am at my very core, how can I choose something different?
Is it even possible to alter what I by nature desire? And I want to answer that question and we will in a moment, but for now just put a pin in that question. Let's continue our tour of the art gallery because these proverbs have more to say about desire. Look with me at verse 2. The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied. Verse 4 tells us that pursuing godly satisfaction requires effort. Pursuing godly satisfaction requires effort.
It's not something the individual is passive in. No, it's going to involve effort and determination and hard work. The opposite of the wise person in this proverb is the sluggard, the lazy man who won't even roast the game he catches or repair the fence in his yard or get out of bed in the morning or go out his front door for fear there might be some threat lurking out there. The sluggard won't take risks or do anything of difficulty because well he loves ease, he loves comfort, he loves the path of least resistance.
Now notice that the sluggard still desires the good things of life. Verse 4 says he craves those things, he just never attains what he craves because he won't pursue them. One pastor said the sluggard desires the gain of diligence without the diligence that gains.
The diligent person on the other hand is the opposite of lazy and as a result he's richly supplied because he works hard for it. You say but Eugene we're Presbyterians, we're Calvinists, we believe in salvation by grace not by works. Well yes, we believe in salvation by grace not works but there is a common and destructive misunderstanding of the doctrine of grace that would have us believe that obedience doesn't matter. That sanctification is an entirely passive process in which Christians just let go and let God.
It's a confusion of what happens in justification versus what happens in sanctification. Yes, salvation is all of grace even the sanctifying part of it but that does not mean that our will and effort and perseverance are not involved. God's grace is so comprehensive and thorough that it even changes the will and the behavior of sinners. That's how Paul can say with no contradiction that we are to work out our own salvation while at the same time it is God who works in us both to will and to work for his good pleasure. It's how Paul can also say with full sincerity that we are saved by grace through faith and at the same time that we are saved for the performing of good works which God prepared beforehand. There is no contradiction between the active obedience of a Christian and the sovereign grace of God to bring that obedience about. God's grace pardons a sinner's sin and that same grace enables the sinner turned saint to pursue obedience with diligence and effort and perseverance.
Don't ever pit one doctrine in the Bible against another doctrine in the Bible. Don't hide your disobedience or apathy behind a doctrine like the sovereignty of God. It's a misunderstanding of the sovereignty of God and it will prove to be a craving that gets nothing. If you want the sweet satisfaction of godliness it will involve effort. It will involve a diligent use of the means God has sovereignly and graciously provided for his children. Well this brings us then to verse 12 in which we discover that delayed fulfillment leaves a mark.
Delayed fulfillment leaves a mark. Verse 12, hope deferred makes the heart sick but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. This verse is a wake up call for the believer. It's also an attention getter for the unbeliever. The fact of the matter is life is full of disappointments and although we can sincerely affirm that ultimately the desires of the righteous will be gratified we live in a fallen world in which even the righteous desires of righteous people often go unfulfilled and delayed. The effect of this postponement can be great frustration, sometimes even great depression. I think of the countless missionary stories I've heard all my life of faithful Christian men and women who had great sacrifice to themselves poured out their lives to some indigenous people group who had never heard the gospel.
Only to have those same people mock them or ignore them or at times even kill them. Jim Elliot, William Carey, Hudson Taylor, Adoniram Judson, righteous men who gave their all with little immediate fruit to show for it. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. You've probably felt this sickness of heart when you've labored tirelessly to mortify some sin or repair some relationship or accomplish some great feat for the kingdom of God only to watch your efforts end in failure or regression only to have matters made worse not better. And it makes you question what's the point? This is too hard.
This yields too little fruit. We begin to despise the day of small things and start wishing we were back in Egypt where we think we had it better. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. And let's be honest there's a lot of deferred hope in the Christian life. I think the lesson we need to take away from verse 12 is first of all about the importance of being honest and realistic about how fallen this fallen world is. It is a broken place in which we live. So broken in fact that we could live faithfully for years and see very little tangible fruit from that faithfulness. Let's not pretend that this isn't just really disheartening.
It is. And we ought to grieve over the brokenness of this world. Jesus himself grieved. Jesus wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus.
He wept over the city of Jerusalem at their refusal to repent and the centuries of pain and destruction that that caused. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. But Christian we don't need to stay in that place of grief and heart sickness.
Hope deferred is not the same thing as hope denied. There will come a day when God rights all wrongs, when hope will be satisfied, when faith will become sight. That tree of life in verse 12 is coming. So don't grieve as those who have no hope. I love the title of that sermon from a generation ago.
It's Friday but Sunday's coming. We may be weeping at the crucifixion today, but in three days we'll be shouting for joy at the tomb of our resurrected Christ. Well we come then to verse 19.
Sometimes in an art gallery you'll come across a group of paintings that tell the same story from different perspectives or different parts of the same story. Verse 19 and verse 2 are sort of like that. They're a pair, they're a set in that they make the same point and that shared point is again the fact that we pursue what we desire. Verse 19 says a desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul, but to turn away from evil is an abomination to fools. Now let's look at this proverb a little more closely. The first statement, a desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul, kind of states the obvious, doesn't it? When we get what we desire we like it, it's sweet to the soul.
But then the second statement elaborates on the obvious truth of the first statement. It says but to turn away from evil, in other words to turn away from seeking evil, from seeking what a fool desires is an abomination to fools. When we get what we want we like it, it's sweet to the soul, therefore it stands to reason that we will relentlessly pursue that which we want. And to not pursue that which we want is unthinkable.
It's unnatural, it's counterintuitive. One might even say it's an abomination to not pursue what you desire. In the case of the fool it's an abomination not to pursue evil. In the case of the righteous it's an abomination not to pursue righteousness. We will pursue for good or for bad that which we desire.
The million dollar question then is am I desiring the right thing? If not I'll spend my life pursuing the wrong things and getting nowhere. If I'm desiring the right things I'll spend my life pursuing those right things and will in the end experience the sweetness of a satisfied soul. The last proverbial work of art that we'll stop and consider today is found in verse 25. And it makes the point that righteous desires will be satisfied but wicked desires will never satisfy. Verse 25, the righteous has enough to satisfy his appetite but the belly of the wicked suffers once. What we've seen in all of these proverbs is that everyone craves something. Deep desires and longings of the heart are common to all people. The wise, the fool, the sluggard, the diligent, the righteous, the wicked, they all desire something.
But verse 25 preaches the sobering reality that not everyone will get what they want. Only righteous desires will bring satisfaction. Wicked desires will only ever bring frustration and emptiness and unfulfilled craving for that which you will never have. Have you ever experienced a burning desire for something? You just had to have it. Maybe it was a toy when you were a child.
Maybe it was a relationship in your youth. Maybe it was a job or a house or a car or a position of authority and influence. But whatever it was, you just knew you had to have that thing. And if you didn't have that thing, you wouldn't be happy or content or fulfilled.
Maybe there came a moment in your life when you got that thing, when your parent bought you the toy or the girl said yes or the employer made the hire and your heart leapt with excitement at how good life was going to be now. Now to be sure, there are temporal and material blessings in this life that are gracious gifts from God and we should rejoice over those gifts. We should get excited when God answers a prayer or alleviates a stress or heals a disease or gives us an abundance of nice things and good friends and a happy marriage and a beautiful home. But how many times have we foolishly thought that something, some circumstance, some person would bring satisfaction to us only to discover that it was an empty hope, that what we thought would gratify could really only stoke our desire and make us more hungry than we were before but could never satisfy our appetite? How many times have we foolishly turned what was perhaps a good desire into an idol to be worshipped and served and enslaved to only to find out after we've committed ourselves wholly to that idol that it was slowly destroying our souls from the inside out?
Psalm 106 15 describes it in terms of God giving us what we want but sending leanness to our souls. Wicked desires will never satisfy. Righteous desires, though sometimes deferred for a time, will always satisfy. If that's the case, then how do I ensure that my desires are righteous and not wicked? Can I even control what I desire? Can I change my desires so that I'm not hurling down a path that ends in frustrated lack?
Well, friends, the answer to that question is a resounding yes. The Gospel tells us that wicked desires can be replaced with righteous desires. And it all begins with a miracle that God performs. It's the miracle of regeneration.
Only God can perform this miracle, but when he does, everything changes. Paul describes it like this in 2 Corinthians 5 17. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. In dying for our sins, Christ did so much more than merely remove the punishment that we deserve. He actually gave us his righteousness. He gives us the understanding and the awareness and the abilities and the desires that go with righteousness.
He gives us a new nature. If you have spiritually died with Christ, you have died to sin's enslaving power. Your sin nature is lying crumpled on the floor.
You don't have to serve it anymore. You're a new creation in Christ. The way then to change your desires is by coming to Christ. He'll give you a new heart. He'll give you a capacity to understand what you couldn't quite grasp before. He'll give you a heart that wants what it ought to want. He'll give you the kind of desires that will one day be satisfied. It begins by acknowledging that you are wicked on your own and you are in desperate need of Jesus Christ to save you from that wickedness. And he will save you. He will not cast aside any who come to him in faith. It begins with a miracle.
But having experienced this miracle of new life, the path toward changing our desires from wicked pursuits to righteous pursuits involves a command, a mandate. Our old nature dies, but it dies hard. It's like the coyote that's messing with the farmer's livestock. The farmer shoots him and the coyote is as good as dead, but it can still yelp with his remaining breath.
He can still bite if one gets too close. Our old sin nature has been crucified with Christ, but sometimes we forget that we don't have to serve that old man of sin anymore. We fall back into the habits and the thought patterns of our old selves, forgetting that that self is as good as dead. And so God gives us a mandate to not go back to those old patterns and habits. He commands us to reckon ourselves, to consider ourselves, to be dead to the influence and pull of our former sin nature. Paul states the mandate plainly in Galatians 5 16 when he says, Walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. He alludes to it again in Colossians 3 10, Put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. And Paul indicates in Romans 7 that the keeping of this mandate is going to involve a fight.
It's a war. Paul says, I find that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand, for I delight in the law of God, but I see in my members another law, waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members, wretched man that I am. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. But just as Proverbs 13 promises, our righteous desires are satisfied in the end, and Paul confesses, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So desires are changed from wicked to righteous, first through the miracle of regeneration, and secondly by following the mandate given to us by God to fight sin and walk in the Spirit, not in the flesh. Lastly, we are given the means, the means to use in this fight against sin. This fight against wicked desires is won through the persistent use of God's means.
What are some of those means? Well, for starters, we need to know and believe the truth. Romans 6 says, Consider yourselves. Know this, that you are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions, for sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under the law but under grace. Isn't that such a wonderful promise?
Isn't it such a gracious command? Just know the truth that sin is dead and you don't have to be its slave anymore. We need to know and believe God's truth. Secondly, starve your evil desires. Starve your evil desires. Romans 13, 14 says, Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.
If you stop feeding your cat, it will either die or it will go to the neighbor's house. If you stop feeding wicked desires, they will die. Temptation will diminish, the devil will flee.
Starve your evil desires. Thirdly, think about hell. Think about hell. Contemplating the end game for evil doers is a biblical deterrent from sin. 1 Corinthians 10, 6 says, Now these things, and that's referring to Israel's rebellion in the wilderness, these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did. Jude 7 says that Sodom and Gomorrah, by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire, serve as an example for us.
We need to think about the end game of evil doers. It's a deterrent from sin. Lastly, obey God and not self. Obey God and not self. And I would love to just stop and preach a whole sermon on this one point alone.
Let me try to briefly summarize it this way. We live in an age that makes such a disproportionate big deal about being true to self, about being authentic, sincere, genuine. It's as if the ultimate vice is denying yourself something that you really want. We make idols out of our inward desires instead of demanding of ourselves that those desires submit themselves to God. The New Testament, however, doesn't much bother with authenticity to self. It focuses instead on conforming oneself to God's objective standard. The world says, Alter God's word to accommodate your desires. God says, Alter your desires to accommodate my word. God's word simply commands obedience. Colossians 3, Put to death what is earthly in you.
Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry, and put on positively compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and so on. James 1 describes the alluring deception of evil desires and then concludes with the simple command to be doers of the word. 1 John 2 acknowledges that in this world we fight the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life, but then again it simply demands obedience to God. John says, Whoever does the will of God abides forever.
Is that crass? Is that legalism? If you think obedience is legalism, then go back to step one, the miracle. If God has made you a new creation in Christ, it is not legalism to act in accordance with that new nature. In fact, it is the height of disdain toward God to act in any other way.
Obedience is never legalism. Church, an appetite for good things leads to satisfaction, but an appetite for evil leads to hunger. Let's acquire then a taste for that which truly satisfies. Let's taste and see that the Lord is good. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the clear and convincing instruction of your word. Now would you please do in us what your commands require of us? Let us pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
