Episode Transcript
Proverbs chapter 14, verse 35.
Proverbs chapter 14, verse 35.
Today, the message tonight is seeking the king's favor.
Seeking the king's favor.
And our proverb tonight deals with the relationship of a servant with the king he serves.
And it begins by saying the king's favor.
Now, the Hebrew word that's translated king, it comes from a root word that means to reign, to reign.
Now if you look a little bit further down in this sentence, you're going to see the word servant.
See that?
And the root word for this word servant means to work.
So now look what we're getting.
We're getting two classes of people here in this proverb: to reign.
To work.
What do we have?
We have the ruling class, we have the working class, right here in the book of Proverbs.
And everybody, Fits pretty much into that category.
Some people fit into the good for nothing class.
They don't do anything.
But by and large, We fit into the ruling class or the working class.
But what we have to understand tonight is this, is that this proverb isn't limited to a servant and a king.
It's addressing the ruling class and the working class.
It's addressing the relationship between the person in charge.
In the person who's carrying out that charge.
So, what we have to understand is, and I've learned this in my study of God's Word throughout the years.
I found it a grand truth that I've discovered.
And it's that what's true in the Bible when you're reading the scripture.
And you come across what you perceive to be a solid doctrine, a truth.
If it is true, if it is indeed true, then what's true at the level you're looking at?
It will be true at the highest level.
It will be true at the lowest level below what you're looking at.
So, what's true at the highest level of application of that truth that you believe that you've learned, it's also going to be true at the lowest level of application.
In other words, if what you learned in the Bible can be applied to a king and a servant, They can also be applied to a queen and her servant, to a judge and his servant, all the way down to a supervisor at work.
And the guy that follows the orders at all levels of application.
Truth remains true at all levels and at any time.
If you're increasing that truth to a higher level or decreasing it, and it begins to not be logical anymore, it's not true.
By and large, I'm sure there's going to be some example somewhere, perhaps, some exception.
But by and large, that's what I found.
So if this is the case, we're going to look at and see what Solomon said about the king's favor.
Now remember, Solomon was a king when he wrote this.
So he's writing this from a first-hand perspective.
But he's writing it to people who aren't kings.
So his first-hand perspective doesn't mean it's limited to his perspective.
It should be applied to ours as well.
So it says here that the king has favor.
It's talking about the king's favor.
And the word favor here literally means the king's pleasure.
His pleasure.
The king is well pleased.
And he shows that pleasure Is toward what?
Look back in your text, is toward a wise servant.
He said, The king's favor is toward a wise servant.
So the king shows.
His pleasure toward a wise servant, not just toward his servants. but toward those who are wise.
And the reason this is stated is because there's plenty of servants who are foolish servants.
I'd probably say there are more foolish servants than there are wise servants, just because there's more foolish people than there are wise people.
So I believe that would apply as well.
Now a wise servant here in the Hebrew is literally someone who is circumspect.
In circumspect, if you look at my glasses, they're spectacles.
Circum means around, like a circumference.
So circumspect, when you put the two together, means someone who's looking around like this.
You ever seen someone, they're about to do something bad, well they do the look that way, they look that way.
They're being circumspect, you see?
In a bad sense, but they're being circumspect.
But see, we should be that way in a good sense.
A good sense.
Here in the news lately, we had the The case where the young man stabbed the other young man.
And then in Athens, I believe it was last night in Athens.
I don't know if y'all saw it.
We had a man stab a man in the head at a gas station there in Athens and poked a, and went all the way down to his brain there in little old Athens, Texas.
And one of the things I heard the other night was, well, this was in the heat of passion, you know.
Well, I'll tell you what.
The heat of passion works a little bit.
There's sometimes when there'd be a heat of passion.
If I caught someone hurting my wife, there would be a heat of passion.
And it would probably come out the best that I could.
But there's something else when we're looking at circumspection, and that is there's some decisions.
That I've already made.
So if I go to a gas station, I have no plans on stabbing someone in the head.
In this particular case in Athens, the man had loaned this other fella a tool.
And he never did return it.
So he saw him at the gas station, told him he wanted his tool back that he had loaned to him.
In turn, he got stabbed in the head for asking for his tool back.
Now, by God's grace, I'm never going to do that in the heat of passion.
Why?
Because my mind is already made up.
That if I have something that belongs to somebody, I'm going to give it back to them.
You see?
And that's part of being circumspect.
It means we live our lives.
Not just looking down like this.
Y'all ever seen those videos?
I love these videos.
When someone's walking through a mall or something, they're looking down at their phone, they fall into the fountain.
They run into something.
Y'all ever see those?
And that's not circumspect.
Some people drive that way, too.
But when I was taught to drive, especially in DPS, all the driving stuff we had to do, they taught us to constantly be shifting our eyes and looking around.
So we could understand everything from all angles coming at us, constantly look in the rear view mirror, so we can know 360 circumference, what all is going on around us.
That's removed when you're concentrating on a cell phone.
So that's why we need to always look around us.
Well, it's that way in life as a Christian.
We need to live our lives so that spiritually, conscientiously, we're always looking around us, not literally. but spiritually, conscientiously, always thinking about all the different angles That we could get in trouble in.
All the different ways that if we were to make a certain decision, the devil could find it. place a weak spot in our armor and hurt us.
That's walking circumspect.
That's walking carefully.
I'll tell you what, I told my wife the other day that there was something I had thought about doing, and I said, but you know what I did?
I made the adult decision not to.
When I was young, I was so gung-ho.
I was so full of fire and salt and vinegar and all that stuff.
I'd say stuff I shouldn't say.
I do stuff I shouldn't do.
And now, do you know what I do?
Because of what I've gone through in the past.
Now I try to look around and think, if I say this, what damage could I do?
If I do this, what damage could end up coming from it?
I'm looking around, trying to watch.
Before I make my turn in a car, so to speak, before I take a step, I'm looking around where I'm stepping.
Now, that is the type of servant.
That the king is pleased with.
That's the type of servant that the king shows his pleasure, his favor toward.
So let's go ahead, now that we have that down, let's enlarge a little bit upon that, a wise servant.
Now, in the In the Bible, we have all types of servants, and we have servants of households, servants of kings.
We have slaves, all kinds of servants, and all of us, at one time in our life or another, have been a servant to another person.
All of us today, right now, are servants to somebody because we should all be servants to God, shouldn't we?
And we'll get into that here in just a moment.
And so this applies to every one of us.
And we want to be a wise servant because we want the king's pleasure.
When I work for the state, I wanted my boss to be pleased with me.
I wanted him to be happy with me.
I enjoyed being the type of boss I had, or being the type of servant.
I had my supervisor tell me one time.
He said, Richard, I don't even worry about you.
I don't even think about what you're doing, because I know you're always out there working, putting a good day's work.
And by God's grace, my office was in Athens, and my closest supervision was in Garland.
And they didn't know what I did.
Until I turned a weekly report in at the end of the week.
And it was wonderful working without any direct oversight like that, but to be able to provide a good work product.
For my employer.
It was wonderful.
And we should do that.
But there are some servants who simply don't care about the outcome of their actions.
Because they know somebody else is going to have to deal with the problems they create.
There's a lot of workers like that.
There have been times in my life, and I'm sure times in your life too, there's been times in my life when I have dealt with employees of certain businesses.
That caused me to never do business at that place again.
Have y'all ever dealt with someone with an employee and you never went back because of that employee?
Now, was it the owner you dealt with or was it just an employee?
Huh?
Employee.
But look what happened.
Because of the servant, you didn't go back and patronize the owner.
And that's why the owner, the king, the ruling class, is pleased with a servant that looks circumspectly.
Someone, in other words, who's looking out for their good, looking out for their welfare.
So the the employee, unfortunately, they they do they care if they lose a valuable customer?
No, they don't care.
All that employee cares about is getting a paycheck.
That's all they care about at the end of the week.
They don't care about the business's reputation.
They don't care about whether or not the business is successful or not, because if the business fails, there's no skin off their nose.
They're just going to work somewhere else.
You know, when I look at a business going in now, I look at it entirely different than I used to.
At my age, having been trying to save for retirement and Knowing something about fiscal accountability, fiscal responsibility.
And I look at a business going in.
And when I see the owners, you know what I see?
I don't see an entrepreneur.
I don't see a rich person. 90% of the time, do you know what they are?
They're folks like me and you who are taking a big risk.
They're taking a big chance on whether or not their business succeeds.
In Athens, A couple years ago, I guess now, it hasn't been that long, they bulldozed down a bunch of beautiful homes on Tyler Street and they replaced them with burger restaurants. in different things, but a lot of burger restaurants.
When they put them in, I told my wife, I said, Tammy, I don't know how Athens can sustain that many burger restaurants.
I don't know if there's that big of a demand for hamburgers.
I mean, people like them, but I mean, there were hamburgers everywhere.
They put in three new hamburger restaurants.
One here, one here, one here, when there was already one right here, and down there, and then down there.
All on the same highway.
And sure enough, shortly after they were put in, two of them went out of business.
And I remember watching the owners of one of those restaurants.
In the Christmas parade in Athens, the business was just about to open.
Me and my mom and dad, and Miss Tammy, we were sitting in my dad's pickup and we were watching the parade go by there in Athens.
And they had This big sign in their hand, a big banner.
They were proudly marching and holding that banner.
Highway 55 Burgers and Fries.
It's vacant now.
Now the reason I'm saying that is not to give a lesson on good business.
I'm saying it because those were middle-aged people who took their life savings, probably got a big loan out, and said, we're going to go all in and take a risk.
And when I see people put in a business like that, I see people taking a big risk.
And if I were to go work for a place like that now, I would be thinking to myself, I need to do what I can.
This is their life's income.
If they fail, they may never be able to retire.
They may be working until they're old if this business isn't successful.
And a wise servant is someone who circumspectly is looking out for the interest of the person they're working for.
I bought some oil at a new car parts place there in Athens a few years back.
And after I changed the oil in my car, If you don't know, you can take the old oil back to where you bought the new oil and they will recycle it for you.
And so I took it back to make sure it was properly disposed of.
And the used oil container was in the back property of the auto part store.
And I saw the container.
But I'd never been there before to do this, and I wanted to make sure before I poured oil in a container, I wanted to make sure I wasn't messing something up and that that wasn't designated for something else.
So I said, is this where I pour the used oil, sir?
Asked an employee that.
He was a young man.
And that employee looked at me real arrogant-like.
Very condescendingly, like he said, no, you poured out on the concrete.
Like I was stupid.
And God knows my heart.
I imagine me pouring it out in the concrete.
And his boss want to know why I poured this used oil out on that new concrete, Missan, sir.
That's where he told me to put it.
But of course I didn't do that.
But boy, in the flesh, I thought about that, Miss Anne.
I went ahead and I poured it out.
I didn't smart back at them.
I just poured it out.
I got back in the vehicle and I told Miss Tammy, I said, I won't be going back there again.
I never have.
And what we have to understand is that young man's response would have brought shame to the business owner had he known about it.
Unless he was the owner's son, he probably would have been fired if the owner knew what happened.
The owner's pleasure would not have been toward that servant.
And listen, when you work for someone, you need to understand that you become the face of the person you're working for.
When you work for someone, you become the voice, the personality, the product, and the service of the company, the king that you represent.
Now remember, truth remains true at all levels.
Not only does the relationship between a king and his servant apply at the lowest level of an employee and a boss.
But it also applies to the highest level, the highest relationship between God and angels, because angels are God's servants.
It also applies to the relationship between God and man.
Those are the highest relationships in heaven and earth, right?
Now, Lucifer was one of those foolish servants.
He didn't care about the damage that his sin caused in heaven.
He made a mess that someone else has to clean up.
That's one thing about the devil.
Foolish servant.
He made a mess in heaven and he made a mess on earth that God has to clean up.
It's as simple as that.
He didn't care that he maligned the name of God to Adam and Eve.
He didn't care that a large amount of angels and men are going to now be condemned to die.
He doesn't care that God's beautiful creation is damaged.
And people today, they don't care either.
When they misrepresent the God in whose image they were created, they don't care.
A king's delight in a wise servant And God is our king.
And he delights in us when we are careful to represent his kingdom properly to the world.
When we walk circumspectly as the Bible tells us to.
Every preacher should enter the pulpit each Sunday.
With careful steps to ensure that they rightly represent God's truth and love to His people.
I tell you why, there's been so many preachers who have damaged The reputation of God in the world's eyes.
They have harmed and maligned the name of God.
We should be careful to not damage or confuse people that Jesus died for.
And not only preachers, but every Christian, every one of you, must remember that we are the servants.
Of God our King, and we all should be careful to do the task that He's called us to do, and to never ever bring shame to the name of Jesus.
For the king's pleasure is toward a wise servant.
Look back in your text.
But his wrath, his wrath is against him that causeth shame.
We don't want to bring God shame.
You know what we need to bring God?
We need to bring God glory.
We're going to learn a little bit about that before we close.
This word shame here in the Hebrew, it literally means to pale, P-A-L-E, to pale.
And we don't use that word pale very often, but it can be an adjective, but here it's a verb.
To pale.
And to pale means to make something become dim.
For example, If you were to go outside in the daytime, you look up at the sun, then there is the bright light of the sun.
If you were to go out at night and you were to look up at the moon, there is the pale light of the moon.
Have you ever heard it called the pale light of the moon?
That's because it pales in comparison to the light of the sun.
Now here's the thing: it's the same light.
The light you see from the sun, the light you see from the moon, is the same light.
It both comes from the sun.
But one pales in comparison To the other.
Now we were created to bear the glory of God.
Now, the word glory means brightness.
If you were looked at up in your Hebrew, Greek dictionaries, the word glory means brightness.
And so we were created to bear the brightness of God.
And that's why we were made in His image.
And that's why God describes our sin as coming short of His what?
Glory.
All have sinned and come short of the brightness of God.
You know what that means?
When we sin, We pale the glory of God.
We dim it in the eyes of the people.
Years ago, there was a preacher in Athens.
That came to my dad's business to have his vehicle repaired.
And the people at my dad's business knew that he was a local preacher.
But while performing the requested maintenance on his vehicle, the mechanic found a pornographic magazine in his vehicle.
So while people were looking to that man for spiritual direction in their lives, he apparently was looking at something else.
In being a representative of God, he brought shame to the name of Christ.
And God's wrath is against him that causes shame.
Meaning, God will deal with the man or the woman who dims his glory in the eyes of the world.
Had it been a carpenter's vehicle, a plumber's vehicle, had it been a lawyer's vehicle, just your average citizen's vehicle.
Nobody would have thought anything of it.
But because it was a preacher's vehicle, it was told to everyone, and the people mocked.
I wasn't there when that happened.
But had it been another person's vehicle, I probably would have never heard the story.
Do y'all agree with that?
Probably never heard the story.
But you know what?
2,000 years ago, there was a man who came to earth who did not dim the brightness of heaven's king.
Instead, he was the brightness of heaven's king.
He was the very light, and he shined it brightly.
Speaking of Jesus in the Gospel of John chapter 1 verse 14, the Bible says, and the word was made flesh.
And dwelt among us, and we beheld this is important.
It's important to God, which is why He mentions it here.
And it ties directly in with our text tonight.
We beheld his set with me, glory.
We beheld his brightness, the glory or the brightness as of the only begotten the Father, full of grace and truth.
All has sinned and come short of God's glory.
But when they saw Jesus, they saw the fullness of God's glory.
We beheld his glory.
One day we're going to be like Jesus.
That means one day we're going to be filled with the glory of God too.
God's glory, when man is looked at, his glory will be dimmed no more.
The Bible says we won't even need the sun or the moon in that day because the Lamb of God is going to be the light thereof.
There'll be no dimming.
There'll be no pale light.
There's only going to be the light of God's Son shining in all of its glory.
Unrestricted, we'll bask in it for all eternity.
And when you're thinking about the glory of God, we're not thinking about brightness in the sense of knitting sunglasses.
It's not that kind of brightness.
We're talking about brightness in the sense of luster.
Brightness in the sense of God's character.
When you think of glory and you're thinking of brightness, think of having a new car.
And when a person takes that new car, Let's say it's got a coat of dust on it.
They washed that dust off.
The dust was covering the color and the luster of that car.
And then you take it and you wash it and you put a coat of that wax or ceramic or whatever you're going to put on there.
And what do you want it to do when you get through?
You want it to what?
Shine.
Why does a person want their car to shine?
Why is that so important to them?
Because it is the beauty of that car, and the shining is it being the beauty being manifested to the observers.
And when you're looking and you're thinking about God's glory, God's glory doesn't just come in the form of a color on metal.
It comes in the form of love.
It comes in the form of intelligence.
It comes in the form of mercy.
It comes in the form of creativity.
And diversity.
It comes in the form of all kinds of wonderful goodness of the grace of God.
In God's glory is when his people experience God for who he is.
That's what sin cuts us off from.
It cuts us off from God's goodness, from His glory.
God manifesting His kindness and His love and His goodness and His joy and everything that we can enjoy about God, it cuts it off.
But one day God's glory will be dimmed no more.
By his grace we will be full of grace and truth.
But in the meantime, Let us be wise servants and be careful to represent our God, our King, and our masters at all level well.
Bringing no shame to anyone to the glory of the God we serve.
Father, thank you so much for your precious word and for this wonderful instruction, Lord, that you give us from this proverb.
Thank you, Lord, and may we be to the praise of the glory of your grace, as the Apostle Paul words it, in all that we say and do.
In Jesus' wonderful name, Amen.
