“The Lord’s blessing enriches, and he adds no painful effort to it. As shameful conduct is pleasure for a fool, so wisdom is for a person of understanding. What the wicked dreads will come to him, but what the righteous desire will be given to them. When the whirlwind passes, the wicked are no more, but the righteous are secure forever. Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so the slacker is to the one who sends him on an errand. The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked are cut short.” (Proverbs 10:22-27 CSB – Read the chapter)
When the first man and his wife ate fruit from the tree God told them not to eat from, thus introducing sin into the world, God took some time after their disobedience was revealed to tell them about exactly what they had unleashed on themselves. One of the things He said specifically to the man was that sin was going to bring futility to his work. He would spend his life working the ground by painful effort. What was once a purely joyful activity was going to become hard for the sake of being hard. Now, anytime work is experienced as the joyful effort God created it to be is a blessing. Solomon reminds us of that here at the beginning of this next batch of proverbs. Let’s talk about that and some others today.
“The Lord’s blessing enriches, and he adds no painful effort to it.” Good things require hard work to get the most out of. This is to the glory of God as well. God made us in the beginning to work and work hard just like He did and does. Simply being handed something good is convenient, but we don’t appreciate those things nearly as much as the ones we gain by a long and concerted effort. When we can come back to the same challenge over and over again, we feel enormously accomplished when we finally master it.
If all of that is the case, then why does Solomon say here that the Lord’s blessing enriches without the need for painful effort? Because there’s a difference between painful effort and hard work. Sometimes working hard will cause us inconvenience of even some measure of pain. When you work out at the gym – especially if you haven’t been doing it much lately – your body tells you loudly and clearly the next day that it didn’t appreciate what you did to it. But that’s a good soreness in pursuit of a worthwhile goal.
Work that is futile, though, is not good. That was part of the curse of sin. Sin invades what God created to be good and makes it over into the least productive, least fulfilling, most dispiriting version of itself. In the case of work, something that God created to invigorate us and glorify Him became the myth of Sisyphus – doing a pointless and difficult task every day only to have it come to absolutely nothing, and then having to start over and do it again the next day. God’s blessings may come by hard work, but they are futility free. When you are pursuing something God-honoring and to His glory, He will bless those efforts by taking away the futility that otherwise might be a miserable part of the task.
“As shameful conduct is pleasure for a fool, so wisdom is for a person of understanding.” I love old Steve Martin movies. His particular style of comedy was always especially hilarious to me. One of my favorites is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Martin plays a conman who is working his way through Europe, finding dumb, rich American women to scam out of huge amounts of money. Personally, though, he is a classless rube who just blows the money he steals on a variety of carnal pleasures. Then he meets Michael Caine’s Lawrence Jamieson. Caine is a conman as well, but he lives in opulent luxury. He has an enormous mansion filled with high-end, high-class pleasure and amenities.
The two begin as rivals, both working to con the same woman out of her fortune. Caine uses the advantages of his own wealth and position in the Italian city where it all takes place to keep outmaneuvering Martin. Finally, Caine takes Martin under his wing to teach him how to have culture and class. Along the way, he teaches him how to enjoy the finer things in life. Rather than relishing in low-brow entertainment that has no real lasting value or cultural impact, Caine invites Martin into a world of delights that take time to both appreciate and enjoy like fine wine, art, and music.
The fool who can’t see past the end of his own desires is easily pleased, but his pleasure never lasts. He does foolish, silly, and shameful things in order to get a short-term rise. Then he has to be on to the next one. He leaves a wake of garbage and collateral everywhere he goes as he uses and tosses one thing (or person!) after another. But the one who is wise understands the worth of taking time to enjoy things that have a true and lasting good. Sometimes doing this takes hard work and intentionality, but we already know God adds no painful effort to it. Learning to appreciate things with a value that has stood the test of time isn’t easy, but it is of great worth and wisdom if we will do it.
“What the wicked dreads will come to him, but what the righteous desire will be given to them.” When someone is walking a path of wickedness, they never sleep soundly. They are always fearing the other shoe’s dropping when they least expect it. The guilt of their sin creates a permanent cloud that hangs over their heads everywhere they go and no matter what they do. Maybe you’ve lived this particular experience before. And the thing is, that sense of impending doom is correct. If you keep walking that path, the trap will eventually spring, and all the terrible things you imagine are coming your way, will dutifully arrive on your doorstep.
But when you are walking the path of righteousness, you will eventually see all of your deepest and richest desires brought to fulfillment. Don’t let your mind go here to various carnal desires, though. That is the thinking of wickedness still working itself out through you. Being good in order to more successfully get bad things for yourself is a losing proposition. When you are walking the path of righteousness, and are allowing God’s Spirit to gradually change your desires to better reflect His own, you will indeed see your desires fulfilled. He will be glad to give you the good things He already has planned to give you.
“When the whirlwind passes, the wicked are no more, but the righteous are secure forever.” You’ve perhaps heard the phrase “like a tornado in a trailer park.” Growing up in the Midwest, I have seen the aftermath of just that. I’ve had seared into my memory bank pictures of the utter destruction that causes. There are days when it seems like those who do terrible things in this life are going to get off scot-free. Yet those days won’t last. There is a judgment coming on Christ’s return, and all people will be assessed and rewarded according to their deeds. Those with wicked deeds will be utterly destroyed in that day, while the righteous will stand like trees with deep roots that refuse to move no matter how strong the storms become.
The real tension point here is that all of us have a long record of wicked deeds. There is no one righteous, not even one, the psalmist declares and the apostle Paul echoes in Romans 3. Before the goodness and holiness and righteousness of God our best deeds are like filthy rags because even our motives are poisoned by the influence of sin. Our only hope is to throw ourselves on the mercy of Christ, placing our faith in His sacrifice, death, and resurrection. When we do this, receiving Him to be our Lord, He covers us with His own blanket of righteousness so that when the judgment of God comes, He will only see the good and righteous deeds of His beloved Son, and will grant us entrance into His eternal kingdom.
“Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so the slacker is to the one who sends him on an errand.” I love proverbs like this that just tell us how it is. I hate smoke. It gets in my eyes and burns them. It is supremely irritating. And I hate the taste of vinegar. Some people like that sour, acrid flavor. They put it in barbecue sauce around here. Personally, I prefer rich, bold, and sweet flavors to dumping acid on well-cooked meat. I find it absolutely revolting.
When someone asks you to do something for them, and you fail to accomplish it for reasons of laziness, forgetfulness, inattention, or something else along these lines, you’re just like vinegar and smoke. You are a source of irritation at best. Don’t be a source of somebody else’s irritation and frustration. When you are asked to do something and you agree to do it, make sure you get it done well and on time.
“The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked are cut short.” This is another of those proverbs that seems to be undercut by reality. There have been plenty of evil people who lived a very long time, perpetuating their misdeeds long past when it seems like God should have cut them off by cutting them down. At the same time, there have been too many good and righteous people who died long before their impact had the chance to reach its full and obviously enormous potential. So then, why would Solomon write this?
Because proverbs are not promises. They describe how the world works, all things being equal. Those who fear the Lord are more likely to make the kind of wise and good decisions that will generally lead them to have and enjoy longer, happier lives than those who don’t. When someone is committed to a path of wickedness, while sometimes they manage to position themselves in a place where they will have access to the kinds of resources that will lengthen their life, more often, they put themselves on a short path to a premature end.
Do things always work out like this? In a world broken by sin, no they do not. But they often do. And more than that, in an ultimate sense, those who fear the Lord will dwell forever in His eternal kingdom while the wicked will be separated from Him entirely and eternally. Godly wisdom always proves itself right in the end. It is better to put yourself firmly on that path even in spite of the short-term challenges it brings than any of the readily available alternatives. You’ll have to learn to tell yourself no in order to walk it, but that’ll be worthwhile in every sense. I hope you will.
