What Are You Chasing

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All right, welcome back. Last week we talked about cosigning, about carrying weight that was never ours to carry, and how to tell the difference between being a neighbor and trying to be somebody's savior. This week, Solomon takes that same idea and turns it into a different direction. He's not talking about debt anymore. He is talking about what you actually are building on your life. And by the end of today, I think you're going to see that these verses ask a question none of us can dodge. What are you actually spending your one life chasing? I'm going to be up front with you. Today gets personal again. I'm going to tell you about an acquaintance very close to me who has more money than almost anyone I know and less peace than almost anyone I know. And I'm going to tell you about a conversation with one of my daughters that stopped me cold this morning and made me rethink something I have believed about fatherhood for thirty plus years. So let's get into it.

Honor Versus Riches In Proverbs

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The verses are going to be about honor versus riches. Proverbs eleven sixteen through seventeen says a gracious woman attains honor, a violent man attain riches. The merciful man does himself good, but the cruel man does himself harm. When I first read verse sixteen, the thought or the word violence stopped me. I thought hmm, this can't be right. Scripture does not reward violence. So I went and looked into it deeper, and the Hebrew word there is arbit. It does not mean violent the way we picture it, fist to swingin', is closer to forceful, ruthless, relentlessly driven. Somebody who will do whatever it takes. Step over whoever is in the way and grind until they get what they want. That makes a lot more sense when you read the rest of the verse. Solomon is not saying God blesses blesses violent men. He is being honest about something else entirely. Ruthlessness, aggressive people often do end up with a pile of money. That is just how this world works. But look at what they do not get. They do not get honor. So what does graciousness actually mean? The word for gracious in verse sixteen is chin, favor, charm, good will. But it's not talking about being polite. No, it is a woman who carries moral excellence, who builds up people instead of stepping on them to get ahead. She does not have to force her way into a room. People actually desire her to be there. Cross reference Proverbs thirty one twenty eight, the passage about the excellent wife. It says her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praises her. That is the honor Proverbs eleven sixteen is describing. Not a trophy, not a title, but people, her own family, genuinely respecting her, wanting to be near her, speaking well of her well of her when she is not even in the room. That is a kind of wealth you cannot buy. And look at Proverbs thirty eight through nine, the prayer that says give me neither poverty nor riches, least I be fool and deny you, or at least I be poor and still. That is a man who already understands what chapter eleven is teaching. He is not asking God for a pile of money. He is asking God to keep his heart in a place where he does not need to be gracious just for show or cruel for gain. That is the same spirit as the gracious woman. Her honor is not loud. It's not a headline. It is weight, substance. People trust her. Now let's flip it. Violet men attain riches. A ruthless, hyper aggressive person absolutely can climb the ladder in this world. I bet you know somebody like this. I know somebody like this. They will out hustle everybody, fool those relationships, burn bridges without blinking, and a lot of time they end up rich. Scripture is not pretending that does that this does not happen. It is being honest about it. You probably don't need me to describe this person for you. You already have a face in your head. Maybe it's somebody at your job who got the promotion because they threw a co worker under the bus. Maybe it's somebody in an extended family who is loaded, but every holiday gathering, it's a landmine because everybody is tiptoeing around their tipper. That is the Hebrew word for a ritz of Proverbs eleven sixteen, walking around in modern clothes. They're not robbing banks. They have just decided that people are obstacles, not neighbors, and they are willing to burn through as many of them as it takes to win. But notice a contrast Solomon draws. She gets honor, he gets riches. That's it. That's all he gets. And I want you to sit with that because I think that is the whole point of the verse. What are you actually spending your one life chasing? A legacy of honor, love, and trust or a pile of gold that showed up because you were willing to do whatever it took to get it. Let's look at the deeper principle.

Ruthlessness In Real Life

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Mercy is self care, cruelty is self sabotage. Verse seventeen takes us from the outside to the inside. The merciful man does himself good, but the cruel man does himself harm. Verse sixteen shows you what people see honor versus riches. Verse seventeen shows you what is happening in your own soul. And Solomon says something that sounds almost backwards to how we normally think about mercy. We think of mercy as something you hand out to somebody else. Solomon says no, when you are merciful, the first person that mercy heals is you. When you are cruel, the first person that cruelty wounds is you got it, you Excuse me. Jesus says the same thing in Matthew five, seven. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. That is not a trade you make with other people. That is a spiritual law, kind of like sowing and reaping. Live with a soft, merciful heart, and it keeps you soft and free. Live cruel, constantly stepping on people to get your way, and the cruelty does not stay contained whoever you stepped on. It gets into you. It poisons you and your own peace. And Matthew twenty five, thirty four through thirty six shows what mercilely actually looks like in practice. It says I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. Mercy there is not passive. It is not just don't be mean, it's active, going out of your way to notice somebody in need and doing something about it. I have felt both sides of this personally, in small ways, in the middle of an ordinary week. There have been times somebody wronged me in business, and my gut reaction was to go handle it. Make a call, apply pressure when whatever it takes win this argument. Every single time I let the Lord talk me down off that and responded with mercy instead. Even when I did not feel like it, I would like to say I have never once regretted it afterwards, but I have. But the real thing is that I did the Lord's will. So I don't want you to think that if you apply mercy, your flesh all of a sudden says, Oh, that was wonderful. Let me give you an example. Once a tenant of mine was selling his boat to me, or at least I thought it was his boat. I was going over to make the final payment and bring her home, only to find the boat gone. And the tenant, inside with all the lights off, smoking a cigarette in the dark. He gave me some stupid story like his wife left him, well that part was true. But on the way out, he also said she took an axe and chopped the boat up. Now this is a twenty three foot fiberglass boat, so I was thinking, yeah, right. I was angry. So the next day I was driving up to not only settle matters but to kick him out because he was behind in rent. And the Lord rode me the whole way to forgive him. I was like, what? You gotta be kidding. But he kept on, telling me how much I have been forgiven, which is true. So by the time I got there, I submitted to the Lord, forgave him in my heart and the money he owed me. That was years ago. This is a situation where, like I always tell people, I will be standing in front of the Lord one day, and in my heart I need to know I did the best I could of with what I believe he asked me. That to me is more important than anything, especially money. So I have peace in my heart and hope that that's this gentleman felt the grace of God through me and maybe led to a salvation. And ironically, he passed away not long after that, so I guess I'll never know. But I could not tell you the same about the times I let my anger lead. Those are the moments I still think about at two in the morning sometimes, wishing I had handled it differently. That is Proverbs eleven seventeen playing out in one of my regular weeks. Now cruelty is not always fist fighting either. In scripture the word often points to callous disregard, treating people as objects to be used, stepped on, or discarded to get what you want. You can be cruel with a raised voice, or you can be cruel with cold silence, with control, with a temper that everyone around you has learned to manage rather than confront. Either way, Solomon says the same thing happens on the inside. You do yourself harm.

Mercy Heals You First

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Let's talk about someone who has everything but peace. I want to get personal here again, because this is not theory. Over the years I have watched this exact pattern up close, not in just one person, but in a few different men and women. I have known well at different seasons of my life, and they all kind of end up the same. I'm going to blend their stories together on purpose out of respect for all of them, but I think you'll get the picture. Picture this kind of person, very driven, very forceful, very wealthy. Money was never his problem. But here's what I have watched more than once. Anytime somebody so much as looks at them wrong or gently tries to correct something, they explode. And afterward, they're always the victim in their own mind. Everybody else is a problem. I have heard a man like this say more than once, hands on his head, almost in agony, I just want peace, they cry out. And it breaks my heart because everything they are doing is the exact opposite of making peace. They think every person who pushes back on them is working for the devil, and every dollar that comes in is God patting them on the back. Now step back and look at the fruit of a life like that. They're isolated, relationships don't last, kids keep their distance from them. Friends who are not really friends, more like people on the payroll who show up because they're paid to do it. All that force, all that money, at the end of the day, a person like that is alone in a very expensive room, still telling himself God is blessing them because the number in the bank account keeps going up. I am not saying this to be cruel about anybody. I say it with real grief because I have loved people like this. I'm saying it because it is such a clear, real life picture of Proverbs chapter eleven verse sixteen to seventeen. Riches without honor is an empty house. And I'll be honest with you too, I am not naturally the gracious one in my own story either. My wife is a natural merciful one. It's just who she is, always has been, since the day I met her. Me? Well, when the Lord moves on me to show grace, to hold my tongue instead of handling something with force, I do it because I know it's right and because I know it is him working on me. It does not come naturally. I have to be shaped into this kind of person.

The Tenant Story And Forgiveness

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Now, here's where this gets personal again. I want to share something again about how my day actually started, because I think it connects to everything we've been talking about in a way I did not expect. I was reading through verse sixteen and seventeen with my coffee, thinking about that kind of man, thinking about how riches without honor is an empty house. And I felt the Lord turn the mirror around on me, not toward anybody else, toward myself personally, and towards how I've been raising my daughters. I have three daughters, all adults now, late twenties, early thirties, wildly different from each other, generally three complete different personalities, three complete different paths. But every one of them shares the same thread. They are compassionate, tender, gracious to a fault, in my opinion. They are extremely kind, extremely sweet, and work in fields where you would think you need to be a shark to survive. My instinct, more times than I want to count, has been to look at that and think you need to toughen up, get in there and fight for what's yours. Do not let people walk on you. I have said that version of that to them over the years, because that is how I built what I've built. I come having to be a conqueror. That instinct served me, so I assumed it would serve them too. But my daughters, all of them lawyers, by the way, and I have watched them in rooms with judges, opposing counsel, in high pressure situations, and they're not getting run over, they're winning, while staying remarkably kind. People keep telling me how much they respect these young women, and I sat with the Lord this morning thinking they have accomplished more in their twenties than I had by my late fifties. And they did it without becoming hard, without becoming ruthless, without becoming the kind of man I just told you about. That is when it hit me this morning. Maybe I have had it backwards. Maybe I've been quietly trying to sand off the exact thing God is using to bless them. There's this innocence in them, softness, and every time I nudge them toward toughen up, go crush the competition, I think what I was actually doing was trying to crush a flower God planted on purpose. I remember one conversation where one of my girls looked at me with confusion in her voice and eyes. I've been giving her the whole speech again, and she just looked at me, and I felt in my spirit, first, that she had nothing in her from God that agreed with what I was saying. And second, the spirit showed me I could easily destroy what God wants in her life and her inner peace. That struck me. It stung a little too because my first thought was I suck. But then God in his goodness showed me how much he loves me and loves my family relationships, and that I was blessed to even be shown this so I could correct myself.

Rich Without Peace Is Empty

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This ties right into Proverbs twenty two six. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Most of us have heard this and think it means raise them right and they'll turn out right. But there's another layer in the original language worth knowing. And the way he should go can also be understood as according to his bent. According to how that child is uniquely wired, not the way I think they should go, the way God already bent them to go. That is a completely different job description for a parent. Not mold this child into a copy of yourself, but pay attention to how God already built this one and help them grow. There is a companion verse to this in Ephesians six four, which says Fathers do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. I find it interesting that Paul does not tell fathers to train their children. He warns them first not to crush them. Sometimes the father can accidentally communicate who you are is not enough until you are more like me. But God has already planted gifts in that person. Our job is to help those gifts mature, not to sand them down until they look more familiar to us. My wife and I did this from the very beginning, even before I could put words to it like I'm doing right now. We watched our girls and we let them go after things that, if I'm honest, sometimes looked a little crazy to me. Nothing nothing like anything my wife or I would have chosen. But they weren't doing sinful things. They were not rebellious. It was just who they were. So we held on tight to the things that actually mattered honesty, integrity, compassion, loving God, and we held loose to everything else. Now the three are in completely different fields, three completely different personalities, but that same caring, tender, virtuous spirit runs through every one of them. Same root, different flowers. And honestly, I trace a lot of that straight back to their mother. Who has been naturally gracious since the day I met her? I think the girls watching her taught my daughters more about Proverbs eleven, sixteen and seventeen than anything I ever said out loud.

Parenting Without Crushing Tenderness

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If you are a parent listening to this, let me ask you the question the Lord asked me this morning. Is there something in your kid, some tenderness, some gentleness, some way they move through the world that is different from you that you have been quietly trying to toughen up or fix? Well maybe God put it in there on purpose. Maybe the goal was never to make them more like you, maybe it is to help them become more like Christ, in whatever shape he already built them to take. Let me put this together. Proverbs eleven, sixteen and seventeen start with a simple contrast honor versus riches, mercy versus cruelty. But underneath it is a question every one of us has to answer. What are you actually building? And who is paying the price for how you are building it? And if you're not a parent, this still lands on you too, because we all know somebody like this. Maybe it is a family member for you, maybe it's a boss, a co worker, somebody in your life who is chasing riches with both fists and calling every obstacle the devil. Watch that life closely. It is not actually a success story. It's a warning label. Rich is without honor, force without mercy, does not end in peace, no matter how many zeros are in the bank account. Force will get you paid, it will not get you loved. Cruelty will get you your way, but it will not give you peace. And if you are a parent, there may be something tender in your child that God put there on purpose, and your job is not to toughen it, but to protect it.

Two Questions And A Final Charge

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Before we close, I want to leave you with two questions. First, think Lord, is there a tenderness in someone I love that I've been trying to toughen instead of protect? And the second thought is this, Lord, am I chasing riches with force when you are offering me honor through grace? If you actually listen for the answer, he will give it to you. And here is a sentence I want to leave with you also. The one I think captures verse sixteen and seventeen together. Force will get you what you want. Grace will get you who you were made to be. And in conclusion, if you haven't picked up the book, God Why Won't You Talk to Me by Edward L. Carpenter. It'll help you. Love y'all, and until next time, God bless.