“Every wise woman builds her house, but a foolish one tears it down with her own hands. Whoever lives with integrity fears the LORD, but the one who is devious in his ways despises him. The proud speech of a fool brings a rod of discipline, but the lips of the wise protect them. Where there are no oxen, the feeding trough is empty, but an abundant harvest comes through the strength of an ox. An honest witness does not deceive, but a dishonest witness utters lies.” (Proverbs‬ ‭14‬:‭1‬-‭5‬ ‭CSB‬‬ – Read the chapter)

Christians are known for all kinds of things. Some of them are pretty good things. Others…not so much. In fact, culturally speaking, thanks to our own foolish efforts combined with the work of an enemy who works overtime to discredit us, we’re probably known more for the not so good things than the good ones. This is not what Jesus envisioned for His followers. He gave us one thing and one thing only that should be our primary identifier: love. This was a revolutionary idea, but it wasn’t necessarily a new one in terms of the reputation God intended for His people to have. Let’s talk about that and some other ideas as we get into the first set of proverbs in chapter 14 today.

The ancient world was a male-dominated place. It doesn’t really do us any good to judge them for that. The hard truth is that we follow in their footsteps in a variety of ways. That being said, while almost every example and illustration we find in the Scriptures uses a man as the object, almost implies that not all of them do. When we find the very occasional one that uses a woman, we should give it a bit of extra attention.

“Every wise woman builds her house, but a foolish one tears it down with her own hands.” Ladies, if you are building a home – and I’m not talking about a physical building here because Solomon wasn’t either – you need to pay attention to the kinds of choices you are making. The choices you make will either build it up, or they will tear it down. There are so many different ways in which you set the tone for not only what happens there, but how it happens. If you are wise, you will make the kinds of decisions that will intentionally create a climate of love and respect, of humility and graciousness, of gentleness and compassion. If you make foolish and selfish choices the standard, though, you’ll be sowing the seeds of your own destruction. Don’t do that. You won’t like the outcome. And if you find yourself stuck in a pattern of making those kinds of choices, get the help you need to flip the script.

“Whoever lives with integrity fears the Lord, but the one who is devious in his ways despises him.” Jesus said that we can tell what kind of a tree we are looking at by the fruit that it produces. An apple tree is only ever going to produce apples. If you go to a tree you think might be an apple tree and discover it is filled with pears, the right conclusion is not that you have the only apple tree in the world that produces pears, but rather that you in fact have a pear tree.

The person who fears the Lord is going to live a life that proclaims such a mindset. When you not only believe that God exists but respect Him deeply for who He is, that respect is going to come with the acknowledgment that He is God, and you are not. He is sovereign, and you are not. He is the Creator who rightly calls the shots for His creation, while you are a creature whose job is to obey the commands of your Creator. That fear translates into a lifestyle of integrity. There is a consistency between your words and your actions. The people around you can tell who you are and what you believe by observing how you live.

On the other hand, when someone is devious and underhanded in what he does, that is an indicator that he does not fear the Lord. It is actually an indicator that he rejects and despises the Lord. He may proclaim something different than that, but the fruit of his lifestyle reveals what the real state of his heart is. You can lie to people, but you can only hide the actual truth from them for so long before the fruit of your life starts to come to bear and reveals what you really are. Do the work now to make sure that fruit is sweet, Gospel fruit. Those efforts will always be worthwhile.

“The proud speech of a fool brings a rod of discipline, but the lips of the wise protect them.” When you boast emptily, there will eventually be consequences for that boasting. When you declare you can do more than you can actually do, someone will eventually come and ask for the receipts. If you can’t produce them, there will be reckoning for that. But if you are more discerning with your words, refusing to oversell, and even erring in the direction of underselling yourself, you will be protected from such retribution.

“Where there are no oxen, the feed trough is empty, but an abundant harvest comes through the strength of an ox.” This is one of those proverbs that takes a couple of reads before it really starts to click. We have left the world of character building to the world of business and investment here. To understand this one, we have to ask ourselves what an ox represented in the ancient world. An ox was the equivalent of a tractor today. Everybody farmed in an agrarian society like Israel had. One person trying to plow a field by himself wasn’t going to produce very much. But with an ox, you could do many times more work. An ox could pull a heavy plow much further and much faster than a single person could.

An ox allowed you to farm more land more effectively than was possible without it. But there was a tradeoff. When you didn’t have an ox, you couldn’t farm as much land, but you also got to keep everything you harvested for yourself. An ox was an expensive investment for a family to make. Once you had it, you had to care for it which included feeding it. While an ox might help you produce a much larger harvest, a sizable amount of that larger harvest had to go to feeding the ox. You produced more, but you didn’t get as much of your harvest as you did before. In order to grow your operation, though, this was a necessary tradeoff to make.

If you want to grow a business, you have to invest in it. You have to purchase better equipment than you have now. You have to hire more workers than you have now. You have to get outside help to do the things you can’t do yourself. Every time you do that, you are giving away some of your potential profits. You wind up with less initially. But when you get good equipment and train your new workers to use it well, you are going to generate more business and more business income than you could by yourself. So, while there is an initial cost, when the cost is paid wisely, the return on that investment will more than make up for what you put into it at the beginning.

The Scriptures aren’t just about character building and moral commands. They offer us good counsel for a whole variety of areas of life.

“An honest witness does not deceive, but a dishonest witness utters lies.” After the last proverb, this one is a cinch. Solomon here pretty much means what he says. Someone who is honest, tells the truth. Check. It’s better to be honest than not, all things considered. If you have the chance, always tell the truth. That isn’t always easy to do, but it will make your life much simpler, and it will create better outcomes for you in the long run.