Well, tonight for a time in God's word, many of our passages will come from Proverbs 24. So if you wanna open the word of God there. I'll read for us from verses 10 down through verse 20. Proverbs 24. If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.
Rescue those who are being taken away to death. Hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, behold, we didn't know this, doesn't he who weighs the heart perceive it? Doesn't he who keeps watch over your soul know it and will repay a man according to his work? My son, eat honey for it is good, and the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste.
Know that wisdom is such to your soul. If you find it, there will be a future, and your hope will not be cut off. Lie not and wait as a wicked man against the dwelling of the righteous. Do not do violence to his home, for the righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumbles in time of calamity. Don't rejoice when your enemy falls.
Don't let your heart be glad when he stumbles, lest Yahweh see it and be displeased. Turn away his anger from him. Fret not yourself because of evildoers, and be not envious of the wicked. For the evil man has no future, and the lamp of the wicked will be put out. There are a dozen proverbs or so that are about kindness.
Look at all of them tonight. And the book of Proverbs often pairs virtues with each other. For example, wisdom is paired with folly. Work is paired with with laziness. Teachability is paired with stubbornness.
Humility is paired with pride. Proverbs often pairs a virtue with a vice. Do you know what vice is paired with kindness? And the answer is in the text we just read, violence. Violence is the one that is often paired with kindness.
And that, is surprising to me as I started taking out the verses in Proverbs that had to relate to kindness. It surprised me how many of them were in contrast with violence. I perhaps would have thought that kindness might be paired with selfishness or with with greed or something like that, but Solomon pairs kindness with violence. Kindness is soft. Violence is hard.
Kindness is generous, and violence is exacting and brutal. And we certainly live in a brutal and selfish and violent world. And I was a youth pastor to high school football players at two schools that had students in our youth group, got in a fight at a party. They were from rival schools. One of the guys had more friends with them than the other.
The guy who was the underdog, so to speak, ran out of the house, got in his car. A guy with more players ran after him, punched through the driver's side window. Somebody in the back seat got out a gun, shot the dude in the chest, killing him. The other guy got arrested. Ultimately, the district attorney said there's nobody to prosecute and dropped all charges.
Both schools canceled their remaining games for the rest of the year. Both families, in a sense, said goodbye to their hopes of an athletic future for their kids. One said goodbye to their kid forever. Barely made it barely made a blip in the news in Albuquerque. That was a thing that happened and then it went on.
In Los Angeles, in our college ministry that Diedre and I were serving out, we had one of our students get murdered. He was grabbed somewhere. Perhaps he was with the wrong people. He was abused. His body was dumped in the middle of Downtown LA, found.
He didn't even know what car he was dumped out of. Diedre and I went to his funeral and it was gripping to see his parents, you know, weeping for him, questioning God. And they were not questioning God from hearts of disbelief, like they weren't how can God be good if this is happening. Although, I don't think anybody would blame him if they were. The questions they said from the lecture and when they spoke, which they did, were more along the lines of just how how could their kid have changed so much?
How could God have allowed their kid I even remember him saying, like, when our kid was small, he was the kind of baby that didn't wanna leave the center of the bed. He didn't want to roll to the side of the bed. He just wanted to stay there. And then, you know, he grows up to be more of an adventurous or promiscuous or even sinful college student pushing the boundaries until eventually he's murdered. I mean, no, but that that didn't even make the news.
I googled his name for a while just seeing if there was ever even a news story about it. No. There's no arrests. Nothing like that. That's just the worlds that we live in.
And this is why people often question the goodness of God. They'll say, how can God be good when there's that kind of evil in the world? I'm sure you all have your own stories that are more, you know, more wicked than that even. But that's the way people will question. How can God be good when there's that kind of evil in the world?
Sin destroys people's lives and people lash out when that happens not at the sinners because often the sinners are unknown. Violent people go to and fro. They do their thing and they disappear into the shadows. And so people that are left to pick up the pieces lash out at God. But God is not violent.
God is not evil. When God reveals Himself to Moses in Exodus, remember, He says, Exodus thirty four six, Yahweh Yahweh, God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love to thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression. And he goes on to say in Exodus thirty four seven that God will by no means clear the guilty. Of course, God won't let guilty people get away with it. Ultimately, the wicked and the violent may prosper for a moment, but they will be caught by the Lord.
But God enters this description by saying that He is merciful and kind, compassionate, gracious. Even the word that he introduces, which becomes just about the most common word God uses to describe himself in the Old Testament, hesed, covenant love, or loving kindness. Some translations, I think the NAS even often does loving kindness as plural. It's just the overwhelming character of God, that He is so kind and generous. Often His kindness is funneled through covenant, but often it's just ubiquitous.
Often God is omnibenevolence, just generous to everybody. That's the kindness of God. He's merciful or kind. And so how do you pair the kindness of God with the violence of the world? That's probably what's in Solomon's mind as he pairs these virtues in vices.
Violence is the extreme end of a lack of kindness. It almost sounds even trivializing to say it, doesn't it, that violence is the end of lack of kindness? In our in our world in our English culture, kindness is so trivial, so small, petty almost. Also as a kid, you remember the blockbuster videos, Be Kind, Please Rewind. Do you remember that?
Like, that was kindness. You don't want somebody putting in, you know, a die hard and having to wait two minutes to rewind it. Be kind. Please rewind. And so that's what kindnesses does.
Something small you do to other people. So it seems odd that it would be paired with bloodthirsty people that lurk about taking lives, and yet there's a sense in which kindness so exposes the disposition of God. There's not one attribute of God that is over and against the others. We talked about that earlier tonight even. All of God's attributes in a sense are all, you know, are all one.
God is one. He's not divisible. His attributes aren't in competition. If you chase His mercy down, you get to His love. If you chase His kindness down, you get to His love.
If you chase His holiness down, you get to His love. Things go back to His love. He's self giving to Himself out of love for Himself. So you could make an argument that love is His chief attribute, but when you push on love, how much do you push on love before you get to His kindness, or before you get back to His mercy, or before you get back to his righteousness or any of his other attributes that are all in a sense one because God is one? And yet kindness is a word that God often uses to describe himself to us.
So there's, in a sense, nothing more godlike than kindness, and there's nothing more sinful and depraved than violence. I mean, this was the the first sin that enters after that Adam and Eve are kicked out of the garden. Cain murders Abel, and God warned Cain. Cain was jealous of his brother. He was antagonistic towards his brother.
His brother seemed to have a functional relationship with the Lord. He had the sacrifices that were commanded. His brother offered them. Cain didn't want to offer those kind of sacrifices. The Lord had made it clear without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins, and Cain didn't wanna play by those rules.
He was content to just offer grain and hope that that could atone for sin, and God told him no. Remember, God even takes him aside and says there is a sin offering for you. Go get it. Master it. It's not hard.
And Cain instead went out and murdered his brother. God, meanwhile, is kind. God walks into the garden after Adam and Eve and sinned. Do you remember what He did? He killed an animal to cover them.
They were wearing fig leaves, and God covered them with proper clothing. God is so kind. Kindness is defined, quote, as a virtue characterized by acts of generosity, consideration or concern for others. That's an English definition from an English dictionary, a virtue characterized by acts of generosity, consideration, or concern for others. The Greek dictionary for the word that's normally translated kindness gives a definition that's almost exactly the same.
A disposition in your heart of empathy, compassion, and concern for those in need. It's kindness. That word in the New Testament is sometimes translated gentle. Jesus, of course, is gentle and lowly. He's said to be lowly in heart, gentle towards those in need.
It's the quality in the New Testament. The second definition in the Greek, New Testament, BDAG, is that kindness is the quality of being helpful or beneficial to others. That's kind of a cool definition, that you just want to be helpful. That's kind. And, of course, that's the backbone of how God acts towards us.
God acts towards human beings with kindness. Ephesians two verse seven. There are the immeasurable riches of God's grace displayed in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. So God displays all of His grace through being kind. The best verse about kindness, at least my favorite, is Titus three four.
When the goodness and kindness of God, our savior, appeared, He saved us, not out of works that we have done in righteousness, but according to His own mercy. So God's goodness and God's kindness paired together, and His kindness is what motivates Him to save us. There's a disposition in God of kindness. It's the heart of God to be lowly, and lowly can even be a negative translation. There's negative implications to that that I don't think are meant when Matthew describes in Matthew 11 Jesus' heart as lowly.
It doesn't have the negative implications. It has the implication of kindness, that God has a desire in his heart to do good things for his creation. That's from the the heart of God. This is why I often say that God is a savior by nature. And I've had people push back on me when I've said that.
If God is a savior by nature, that means that there's some deficiency inside of God's own nature that he would have to save from is the general argument. But that's not what's meant by that at all. When we say God's a savior by nature, what we mean is that there's something in the very being of God that desires to do good, that desires to reveal himself and show himself. That's the omnibenevolence of God, which is a great word. God is so kind towards people.
And it's his kindness, Romans two four says, that leads us to repentance. Romans two four, it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. That's why Romans eleven twenty two, at the end of that first section of the book of Romans, before he gets to the imperatives, Paul, after all of his argument about election kindness and severity of God, severity towards those who have fallen, but kindness towards you provided you continue in His kindness. Otherwise, you too will be cut off, Paul says. The whole development of the plan of salvation is designed to show you God's severity towards the violence, God's severity towards the sinners, and yet His kindness towards the sinners that come to Him in faith.
That pits kindness against the violence of this world. This is why two Corinthians six verse six, God's servants should commend themselves in kindness, Paul says. That's in the passage where he's talking about I was shipwrecked, I did this, I did that, and then he says, but I'm excelling in kindness. Galatians five twenty two, obviously, kindness is a fruit of the spirit. Colossians three verse 12, we are said Paul calls us as God's chosen one to put on kindness, to gird ourselves together in love and robe ourselves in kindness.
And our heart is love and our external actions, our robe, is kindness. And earlier in Proverbs three three, which may be what Paul even had in mind, in Proverbs three three, Solomon says to put on kindness like a necklace, to wear it, something external that faces outward. That's the kindness of the Lord. It's a disposition towards those around you. So Proverbs has a lot to say about kindness.
I'm gonna start with what's maybe one of the oddest verses on kindness in Proverbs. I'll just get it out of the way at the beginning. Proverbs 12 verse 10. Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel. Whoever is righteous has regard for the lives of the animals.
And I say this is an odd verse because normally you associate kindness. I mean, after all that introduction, kindness is God's attitude towards us that saves sinners, and the violent are taking people's lives. But Proverbs, after what it says in chapter three, enters the discussion of kindness in a sense. There's a verse or two in chapter 11 as well, but with this idea that the righteous person has regard for the life of his beast. This is a powerful passage to expose what kindness is because kindness is an attitude in your heart to something inferior to you or in need around you, and yet your attitude towards it is to do good to it, not to harm it.
How you treat something that can't defend itself shows a lot about your disposition towards kindness. No less than John Locke, the English philosopher, wrote about this verse in his book on education that I'm sure many of you have been forced to read. I wouldn't trust John Locke's theology farther than I could throw him. However, and I can't throw him very far. However, he has a couple comments in this verse that are pretty insightful.
I'll just give you one. He writes, quote, they who delight in the sufferings and destruction of inferior creatures will not be apt to be very compassionate to those of their own kind. That's perception. And it'll, you know, treatise on why teachers should teach their kids not to, you know, needlessly kill animals. This passage, Proverbs twelve ten, gets misappropriated by people all the time.
They argue for vegetarianism or they argue for, you know, whatever kind of thing. And, of course, it's not an argument for vegetarianism. Solomon was not a vegetarian. But it is an argument that your heart and your disposition towards everything around you should be compassionate and kind. In our family, we navigate this proverb, but we have a rule.
We don't kill insects or even snakes that are outside of our house. Inside of our house, it's open season. Your attitude towards creatures that are less than you reveals the disposition in your heart towards kindness because that's the way God is towards us. God views us as creatures less than Him. He's not a creature.
He's the creator. We're creatures. We are less than Him, and His attitude and disposition towards us is one of regard. This is Psalm eight. What is man that you are mindful of us?
What is a son of man that You would have compassion on us, that You would pay attention to us? That's what David asked. People are so low compared to God, so low, and yet God takes concern for us. It's incredible. That's kindness.
Well, the main point of Proverbs about kindness is that kindness is rewarded. God rewards kindness. Now this is not a do good and get a candy kind of thing here. We're not dogs being trained. But remember the point of wisdom in the book of Proverbs is this idea that you're getting your mind around the way God made the world.
And God made the world in such a way that when you are kind, things tend to go well for you. That's what I mean by kindness is rewarded. He says it this way in Proverbs 11, verse 17. A man who is kind benefits himself, but a cruel man hurts himself. When you're kind, you're being kind to others, that this is the boomerang effect.
That will end up being kind to you. You're kind to other people, then when you're in need, your neighbors will be kind to you. The cruel person ends up hurting himself. The cruel person, when he has a need, he's not helped out. I made the the joke this morning of, you know, hey.
Your neighbor needs help. His house is on fire. And the normal disposition is gonna be, well, which neighbor? The kind neighbor? Oh, I'll go help.
That neighbor? Which, of course, is not a very kind response, but that is the way the world works. And that's Solomon's point. A kind man ends up benefiting himself. What's earth shattering about Christian kindness is that it defies the cruelty of the world.
Now how is kindness rewarded? It's rewarded a few ways. First of all, it's rewarded with honor. The first way kindness is rewarded is it is actually rewarded with honor. Proverbs eleven sixteen, a gracious woman gets honor.
Meanwhile, violent men get riches, and honor is to be prized above riches. You know this. Riches perish. But a gracious woman gets honor. At one level, that verse is just claiming the reality that a beautiful woman is adorned by her kindness more than her dress or her jewelry or her external appearance.
And this is repeated by Paul in the New Testament. It's repeated by Peter. This is almost axiomatic, that a woman who is truly beautiful, you don't see it in her external presentation of dress and external beauty. You see it in her internal disposition that radiates to the outside based on how she treats people. It's the attitude of the heart.
True feminine beauty is internal with an external expression towards a disposition and kindness. External beauty fades. That's first Timothy two. Not me. I would never say that.
But first Timothy two. External beauty fades. You think of the ladies in the Bible who are listed and described as having beauty, are worthy to be honored, in other words. The women of the Bible that are worthy to be honored are not those that are externally beautiful. Ruth is honored because her beauty is seen as she interacts with kindness.
People are kind to her and she's kind towards others. Deborah was known as a mother in all of Israel. What an interesting phrase. Deborah the Warrior was known as a mother in all of Israel. You see her kindness and her disposition in that.
Sarah was the obedient wife who called Abraham Lord. Hannah is the mother who prayed. Dorcas is the woman who served the church. And, I mean, on and on. The women who are noted in the Bible for their beauty, it's not external beauty who are worthy of honor.
It is not external beauty that gets them honored. It is their kind disposition, prayer, service. And that is not uniquely feminine as Solomon's point in Proverbs. It goes beyond merely femininity. Proverbs eleven twenty five, whoever brings blessings will be enriched.
One who waters will himself be watered. Kind of a cool turn of phrase, isn't it? You give do you do you want somebody to say to ask you how you're doing? You ask them how they're doing. That's this proverb.
How come nobody says hi to me? Did have you said hi to anybody? No. That's why nobody says hi to you. I've been coming to this church for three months, and nobody has said hi.
Have you said hi to anybody? No. I think I've figured it out. Whoever brings blessings to people will be self enriched. Those that are kind will have people who treat them kindly.
One commentator said, it's something that made me laugh. The preacher can be encouraged by his own message. Amen. That's beyond just the preacher. Every time a person serves the church, they're strengthening themselves.
You know, you go to the gym, you're working out your own body, and you're enriching yourself. You go to soccer practice, you're training, you're strengthening your team. Just by your presence there, you're strengthening your team. You go to church and you're serving, you're strengthening your own body, not your physical body, but your spiritual body of which you're part. That's this verse.
You serve the church with kindness. You're strengthening yourself. So kindness is honored. Second, kindness is rewarded, and it's rewarded with deliverance. It's rewarded with honor, and it's rewarded with deliverance.
The kind person is going to be the one who's delivered. Now notice the contrast here with the violence. Proverbs twelve six, the words of the wicked lie in wait for blood, but the mouth of the upright delivers them. The wicked person is lying in wait to ambush somebody, to take their life. The kind person is working to free the person from ambush.
You see the ambush. You warn somebody. You don't see the ambush and think, oh, I hope the next person sees it also. No. You see the ambush.
You warn the people of the ambush coming. This is biblical warrant to flash your your lights at speed traps right here. The kind person warns people walking into the ambush. Meanwhile, the wicked person lies and waits. The wicked prowl, but the righteous warn.
Notice how the kind person rescues people with his mouth. Do you know it is kind to evangelize? And it is selfish to refuse to evangelize. It is kind to open your mouth and to warn somebody. I mean, how is your how is your coworker gonna know about the gospel unless the Christian in his life tells him?
That's the idea. It's kind to deliver somebody from danger. Meanwhile, the bloodthirsty lead people into ambush. Judas lied to betray Christ. Kindness is connected to deliverance.
And finally, kindness is connected to God's pleasure. God delights in kindness. And you see that in an antithetical way here, the antithesis of it in Proverbs 24, verse seventeen and eighteen. It's open in front of you. We read it earlier, but I'll put it on the screen as well.
Don't rejoice when your enemy falls. Don't let your heart be glad when he stumbles, which you would think would be a very natural reaction. Your enemy falls, and you cheer. I watched I didn't watch the hockey game last night, but I watched the highlights of the hockey game last night. Oh, man.
God bless America is all I have to say about that. Those of you who didn't watch it, the Canadian fans booed the American national anthem. So the Americans responded by, in the first, what, five seconds, three fights. The puck drops, the gloves off, brawl. Boom.
And when that Canadian went down face first in the ice, there was part of my American heart that was like, yeah. Watching on YouTube the highlights. Don't rejoice when your enemy falls. Don't let your heart be glad when he stumbles. There's something natural in your heart to be glad when your enemy suffers.
And I recognize, like athletics, your real enemy is not your opposing hockey team. Like, I get that. But the point is there's something in your heart that delights. But this is why Solomon says don't do that. Because if Yahweh sees you rejoicing your enemy's struggles, he will turn away his anger from him.
So that's a pretty you have to map this thing out in your mind. This dude over here is my enemy, and I'm watching him. Here's my enemy going doing his things. And then something bad happens to him. You know, he trips and falls and breaks his leg or whatever.
Well, this this is the Lord sovereignly and providentially orchestrating that. I'm not saying the Lord actively tripped him. Of course not. The Lord uses means, but he's your enemy. And for for whatever reason, assuming that you're being virtuous and he's your enemy because he's a villain, something bad is happening to him, likely, providentially a result of his villainy.
And you see him rolling around the ground, and you're like, yeah. And God sees you cheering and will relent on his suffering. Do you follow that? I teach this principle to soccer players when in a soccer game. If if the ref is, you know, bad and the other team starts yelling at him, just stay quiet the rest of the game.
Let him be mad and make all the bad calls against the other team because they're yelling. Don't you open your mouth. Let him just keep because the moment you open your mouth, now his wrath will turn back to you. That's the proverb here. You let people who are suffering because they're of their own sin suffer, and you don't rejoice Because if you rejoice, the Lord might relent.
In fact, you're called to do more than just stay there quietly in Proverbs 24. You're called to go beyond that and to actually love your enemies, Proverbs 25. And there's much more I'll say about this in a few more weeks when we talk about principles for leadership and how you love your enemies. But for now, I'll look at Proverbs twenty five twenty one. If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat.
If he's thirsty, give him water to drink. For you will heap burning coals on his head, and Yahweh will reward you. So you're not just supposed to see him suffering and be quiet. You're supposed to actually help him. If your enemy's ox wanders away, you have to bring it back, not just pretend you didn't see it.
You have to actually help. Now I love the practical nature of Proverbs' wisdom here because we would spiritualize this. If we were writing Proverbs, we would spiritualize this. Solomon was writing it on the keyboard right there. I just noticed.
If we were writing Proverbs, we would have spiritualized this and said, if your enemy is suffering, help him so that his heart will be softened towards the gospel, and he'll learn to repent and be drawn towards faith. That's what we would probably write to spiritualize it. That's not what Solomon says. Solomon says, if your enemy is suffering, help him because it'll just make it worse. When I was single, I had a roommate.
Lots of roommates were all single youth pastors living together, and one of them had a girlfriend that broke up with him. And then about six months later was dating somebody else who was visiting from out of town and asked, can he spend the night at your guy's house? And, of course, we said, yes. Why not? Of course, he can spend the night at your house.
So there he was sleeping on our couch, the boyfriend of somebody who one of my roommates liked, but now he's sleeping on our couch. And what did my friend do? He left him a bagel and a note with this verse on it. It was incredible. It was incredible.
By the way, he ended up marrying her. Not the not the loser on the couch, but the other guy ended up marrying her. So Proverbs 25, it worked its magic right there. Yahweh will reward you. He named it.
He claimed it. Got married. Anyway, god delights in kindness. This is a contrast with violence. Violence is punished.
Violence is punished by God. A man of violence, God sees it, knows about it, and will punish it. You see this in Proverbs sixteen twenty nine. A man of violence entices his neighbor and leads him in a way that's not good. This is showing you how opposite violence is from kindness.
Remember, the heart of kindness wants to do good to somebody. You see somebody suffering, you want to help. That's kindness. The heart of violence sees people as something to be exploited. They're almost like a a commodity.
What can you get from them? And violence exacts them. Kindness wants what is good and helpful. Violence wants what is wicked. It's just the way Solomon says it here.
It's not good. It is the opposite of kindness. The violent man doesn't help but plunders. Destruction and misery is the path of violence. And the violence, the consequence of violence is isolation.
Violence is punished while kindness is rewarded. Violence produces isolation in someone's life. Whereas kindness produces honor, these are all gonna be paired with each other. Kindness gets you honored. The violent person finds himself isolated.
Proverbs twenty eight seventeen, if one is burdened with the blood of another, he'll be a fugitive until death. No one's gonna help him. This is even in a couple examples of this in the Old Testament. First of all, Cain. Remember, Cain murders Abel, and God didn't had not installed government yet, had not installed capital punishment yet.
There was no government to bear the sword. There was no penalty for murder yet. This is why the earth was filled with violence before the flood. People were killing each other every which way. So what are you gonna do with Cain?
What's the worst punishment for Cain? Cain's gonna be banished, of course. He's gonna have to go away. And Cain appeals to God and says somebody else is gonna avenge. I mean, in in the image of God, human beings, even Cain, knew that the right punishment for for murder is losing your life.
But God had not set up the means for that yet, and so Cain is afraid of it. So somebody is gonna get revenge. And so God marks Cain, which Cain maybe initially receives as an act of mercy, doesn't he? Oh, nobody will kill me now. But how long until that becomes his own condemnation?
It's a walking death. He wanders the earth. He's a fugitive, the Bible says, until death. Even if you accidentally took somebody's life or the American language of manslaughter, You're not innocent, but you you weren't culpable of murder. You're supposed to flee and find a city of refuge and plead your case to the judge at the gate and pretend the judge accepts you and says, yes.
We're not gonna execute you for murder. You're welcome to stay here. Now you're stuck there. And remember what the Old Testament says? If you ever step out of that city and the avenger of blood sees you, he can kill you.
So you're isolated the rest of your life. To destroy the image of God is treason against God himself. It results in isolation. Proverbs twenty eight ten. Whoever misleads the upright into an evil way will fall into his own pit.
But the blameless will have an inheritance. The kind person is going to have people around him honoring him and receiving him. He's going to have things to pass down to his family and to his kids, but not the wicked person, not the violent person. He's going to fall into his own pit. I mean, the person is going to die by his own design.
How long until it backfires on him? Solomon says this earlier in Proverbs eight, you know, or, I mean, Proverbs seven, the person who has an affair. I mean, how soon until he's murdered? You know, how soon until your violence comes back on your own head? You mislead the upright, you're gonna fall into your own pit.
What a contrast with kindness again. Kindness produces salvation. Violence produces isolation. Secondly, violence produces suffering, whereas kindness produces deliverance, an end of suffering, help in suffering, not violence. Violence prolongs suffering.
Proverbs twenty one seven, the violence of the wicked will sweep them away because they refuse to do what is just. They're gonna get carried away by their own violence. The violent person has violent friends. How soon until their life ends violently? Proverbs twenty four fifteen through 16.
Lie not and wait as a wicked man against the dwelling of the righteous. Don't do violence to his home. The righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked falls in times of calamity. Remember, the kind person has all kinds of people that wanna rescue him. The kind person has a flat tire and all of his neighbors help.
The violent person, man, there's nobody to help him. Calamity comes and it's over for him. He has no help or deliverance. The violent person ends with judgment. Whereas kindness ends with God's pleasure, the violent person ends with God's judgment.
Proverbs twenty four nineteen through 20. Fret not yourself because the evildoers don't be envious of the wicked, for the evil man has no future. The lamp of the wicked will be put out. This is talking about eternal. The righteous person will be judged by the Lord.
The righteous and the wicked are both gonna die. The kind person is not I mean, providentially, he'll expand his life because there's gonna be fewer people looking to kill him. But the kind person is still going to die. And so Solomon concludes, serve God while you're alive. Delight in the wife of your youth.
Enjoy your life. Be kind to people. Enjoy your life and meet your Maker. But the the violent person, his life will be short. Don't envy them.
And it's so easy to envy the violent person because they remember earlier, the the kind woman gets honored, the violent man gets riches. It's so easy to honor that and say, that person is is brutal. He's mean. It's the schoolyard bully. It's the middle school schoolyard bully.
You know? He's got all the friends, and he has all the lunches that he wants. And it's so easy to envy that kind of person, but it doesn't it doesn't last. It ends very, very poorly, of course. It's that little microcosm expanded onto a grown up scale.
Don't envy the evil person. Yes. You think he's getting away with it now. He has an affair now and gets away with it. He has money now and, you know, from his own oppression and exploitation and dishonesty.
You know, he cheats on his taxes, and you think I should cheat on my taxes too. You envy the person. The psalmist says don't don't envy him. He has zero future. The psalmist says I've seen the future.
He doesn't have it. When he stands before God for judgment, it is over. The lamp of the wicked will be extinguished. And we put out, Paul says it this way in the New Testament, first Corinthians six verse nine, the unrighteous person will not inherit the kingdom of God, will not inherit the kingdom of God. This is the lesson of kindness, that God shows us mercy because He is kind towards us.
That is the basic fountain of God. His heart is kind. You receive His kindness through Jesus Christ. That transforms your heart to be kind towards others. The violent person rejects the kindness of God, goes upstream against the way God made the world.
Things go hard for him, so he's even more forceful against the world to try to insist on his own way. He gets belligerent with his wife. He gets belligerent with his kids. He starts fighting against the world. He maybe doesn't start out violent, but he doesn't like God, and he doesn't like the way God made the world, and he doesn't like his family, and he doesn't like life.
And so he becomes violent against it, lashes out at his family and his wife and his kids and his work, and he turns into an angry, bitter person fighting against the kindness of God. And you think all he needs to do is repent and recognize God is kind. Quit fighting against that. Receive the kindness of the Lord and let it transform your heart. God, we're grateful that You are kind, and through Your kindness You have showered us with kindness.
It is indeed your kindness that leads us to repentance. It is your goodness that satisfies our hungry souls. Pray for everyone here tonight. Pray that their hearts would be kind towards each other. Lord, put to death the bitterness that's in our hearts, the bitterness that robs us of spiritual joy, the bitterness of Esau that even though he saw repentance, he saw it too late, and he saw it with tears, and it was over.
Instead, help us be kind, not bitter, not violent, not envious, but kind towards each other because you have been kind towards us above everything else. You have been kind towards us. You didn't squash us like the bug, but you rescued us like the savior that you are. We're thankful for that redemption. We give you thanks for it in Jesus' name.
Amen.