Recap And Today’s Aim

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Well, welcome back. Last week we looked at verses eighteen and nineteen. How a wicked man's paycheck is really a lie, but a good man's reward is the real thing. We talked about listening to God instead of just trusting our own brain and how that idea shows up everywhere in Proverbs. Solomon's not done yet. Verses twenty and twenty one keep going, but he takes us somewhere I didn't see coming, right into the heart of God. Here's where we're headed today. I used to read the word blameless in this verse and just shut down. Nobody's blameless. I know my own thoughts too well to claim that. But the more I sat with verse twenty this week, the more I saw I'd gotten it wrong. Now what I found instead might be the most encouraging thing we've hit in this whole study. Because verse twenty isn't a scorecard, it's about a father who delights in you. And verse twenty one, which sounds like Solomon's switches subjects, is actually him finishing the same thought, showing you exactly what the delight guarantees. So let's dig in.

Hebrew Words That Change Everything

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Proverbs eleven twenty. The perverse in heart are an abomination to the Lord, but the blameless in their walk are his delight. Let me break down a few of the original Hebrew words real quick as an example. Perverse is a word which means crooked, bent, twisted out of shape. Blamus is a word Hebrew for taman, and here's the big one. It does not mean flawless or perfect. It means whole, sound, someone with real integrity, not a perfect record, a solid heart. Delight is ratsworth, which means real, genuine pleasure, not a grudging, okay fine attitude. And abomination is a strong word, and it's something God's nature just recoils from the second he sees it. Now in verse twenty-one says, Assuredly. The evil man will not go unpunished, but the descendants of the righteous will be delivered. That opening is literally hand to hand in Hebrew, like an old handshake deal, you can count on, bet on it. And delivered is the word for an animal slipping free from a trap, not just avoiding trouble, actually getting rescued out of something that had you stuck.

The Father Who Delights In You

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So blameless really means direction, not perfection, which brings up the real question, what does God actually think of me while I'm still stumbling around down here? David gives us the answer, and it's some of the tenderness language in the whole Bible. Proverbs one hundred o three thirteen through fourteen says, Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him, for he himself knows our frame. He is mindful that we are but dust. He knows what we're made of. He remembers we're dust. He just didn't just discover that, he built us that way. A dad who chooses to raise a kid made of clay isn't going to stand over that kid to maniac like he's made of steel. God planned for our dust before he even gave us breath. Then Psalm thirty seven hit me hard. Verse twenty three through twenty four says The steps of a man are established by the Lord, and his delights in his way. When he falls he will not be hurled headlong, because the Lord is the one who holds his hand. You see that order again? God delights in the man's path first. And then almost like an afterthought it mentioned he falls. The falling doesn't cancel the delight. It doesn't even seem to catch God off guard. He's already holding your hand. And Zephaniah takes it even further. This isn't God just putting up with us. It says in chapter three verse seventeen, The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior. He will exalt over you with joy, he will quiet you with his love, and he will rejoice over you with shouts of joy. Shouts of joy singing over you. That's the picture behind Solomon's words. The blameless in their walk are God's delight, not a father gritting his teeth waiting for you to get it together. A father who already thrilled with you, because your direction was what he was watching for the whole time. Now here's why this matters, not just a nice feeling, like but for real. If blameless meant sinless and perfect, then David's out, Solomon's out. Every hero in the Bible is out, and so am I. But listen to how David uses this exact word about himself near the end of his life, giving everything he'd gathered for the temple he had never got to build. He says in first Chronicles twenty nine, seventeen, I know also, my God, that you test the heart and have pleasure in uprightness. As for me and the uprightness of my heart, I have willingly offered all these things. David, the guy who slept with another man's wife and had that man killed to cover it up, calls his own heart upright before God. And God doesn't correct him. Why? Because David's life had a direction. He sinned bad, and he turned back just as hard. His heart kept coming back to God. Psalms one hundred nineteen verse one says, Blessed are those whose ways is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. Way, walk. That's movement, not a snapshot of one moment. Solomon isn't asking if you arrived, he's asking which way your feet are pointed. He says almost the same thing again a few chapters later, just so we don't miss it. In Proverbs thirteen verse six, it says righteousness guards those whose way is blameless, but wickedness subverts the sinner. Notice, righteousness doesn't guard a perfect record. It guards a walk, an ongoing path. It's a guardrail, not a finish line. It's there to keep a stumble from turning into a permanent wrong turn. Kind of like how cars now have that feature that gently nudges you back when you start drifting out of your lane.

One Direction Versus Two Souls

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So if blameless doesn't mean flawless, what actually separates the blameless man from the crooked one? Because I still have bad thoughts sometimes, so where's the real line? And I think James draws it out for us in James chapter one, verse six and eight. He says, But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind, being a double minded man, unstable in all his ways. The word behind double minded is dipsuchos. It literally means two souled, a guy trying to walk two directions on one pair of legs. That's real different from the other word, the crooked heart in our verse. It's not never has a bad thought versus has a bad thought. No, it's a temptation you fight off and reject versus a second agenda you quietly made peace with and decided to keep around. One's just friction on the road. The other is a whole second road you left open on purpose. The blameless man isn't a guy with a spotless life. He's a single minded man, one soul, one direction, even on the days he has to repent and turn back around. Think of it this way A stray thought that shows up uninvited gets shown the door. That's just friction. You notice it, push back and move on. But a thought you make room for, that you plan around and protect, that's a second soul moving in. James isn't talking about a guy who struggles. He's talking about a guy who stopped being bothered by the struggle because he decided that he can live with one foot on each road.

The Prodigal Son And The Older Brother

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There's no better picture of this in the parable Jesus told about a father with two sons. The younger son takes his inheritance early, wastes it, and ends up feeding pigs. He rehearses a speech the whole way home, a slave speech. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants. He's decided the only door left open to him is servitude, not sonship, but servitude. But look at what actually happens on the road. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. The father didn't wait for the apology. He doesn't wait for the boy to clean up, cross a property line, or finish the speech. He's scanning the horizon before the sun ever gets there. And the moment he sees him walking, just walking in the right direction, he runs. Now I want to be careful here because it's not that the walking alone earned anything. Luke tells us the son had already come to his senses, already resolved in his heart to return and confess. The walking was the evidence of a heart that had already turned. But here's the beautiful part. The father didn't need to hear the confession to know the heart had changed. He saw it in the walk from a long way off before a single word was spoken. That's the Hebrew word for Taman that we have been talking about. That's Proverbs eleven twenty in a parable. Not a flawless son, a son whose direction had changed, and whose father read that direction before he even read his speech. And when the son does try to deliver his rehearsed speech, the father cuts it off before he can finish asking to be made a servant. No broom, no wages, but instead a robe, a ring, sandals, the full restoration of a son, not the demotion to hired help. That older brother, by the way, is worth a second look too. Outwardly his walk never wandered. He stayed on the farm, did the work, followed the rules, but when his father throws a party for the brother who came home, the older son won't go in. His feet were blameless, but his heart was crooked with resentment and self righteousness the whole time. Solomon would tell you, God is watching your heart, and sometimes people with a crooked heart are standing in a field with a perfect attendance record. I think you get my drift. This is why the whole picture only makes sense inside a family, not a workplace. Jesus prays that the Father would love us with the same love he has for his own son. That the love which you have loved me may be in them. That's in John seventeen twenty six. Paul tells the Ephesians to walk as beloved children in Ephesians five one. Sonship, not employment. A hired hand can be fired for a bad walk. A son can wander and still be a son the whole time he's gone, because the relationship was never a wage in the first place.

Delight Guaranteed By Justice

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So now, verse twenty one isn't a subject change, it's Solomon's closing the loop. Verse twenty tells you God's attitude. He delights in the one whose heart and walk are turned toward him. Verse twenty one tells you where the attitude leads, deliverance. Not eventually, not in theory, but guaranteed hand to hand. Solomon says you can count on this the way you count on a handshake. The wicked can join forces, pull their power, stack every advantage money and influence can buy, and it changes nothing. You cannot outvoke God's justice. Now this is important. The second half isn't about the righteous man individually. It's his seed, his household, his legacy. That's the difference between a servant's wage and a son's inheritance. A hired hand gets paid for the day and goes home with nothing to pass down. A son inherits a comforting that extends past himself. This is where I think the whole passage comes together. Verse twenty is God's delight. Verse twenty one is God's justice. And the reason both verses sit side by side is that God in God they were never in competition. Paul lands on the same tension of Romans, describing the cross as a place where God is shown to be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus Christ. God didn't relax. His justice to make room for his delight, he satisfied just completely in Christ, so that delight could be poured out on people like us, without cutting a single corner on what's true and right. That's why John can say flatly, God is love. That's John one four verse eight. Not God performs loving acts when we behave. Love is what he is, and love by its nature doesn't just tolerate the beloved, it delights in the beloved. Verse twenty's delight and verse twenty one's deliverance are both just love, doing what love does from two

A Story About Quitting Performance

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different angles. I want to tell you something from my own life that still amazes me, because it's not the kind of story you usually hear in church, but it's exactly what this passage is about. When I was twenty nine years old, really searching for God for the first time in my life, before that I've been smoking marijuana pretty much every day for years. Something got hungry in me, and I ended up out in a Christian retreat in the middle of nowhere with one goal. I wanted to actually hear his voice and be filled with his spirit, the way the book of Acts describes it. I went at it hard, strictly. I told myself I was going to do everything right. I stayed sober, I followed every rule, whatever it took to see if this Christianity was really real. I had people pray over me. I prayed over myself, week after week, nothing. A month and a half of silence. Finally, I gave up. Figured I did my all, and I quit the perfect performance. So I had a friend send me some more weed because I was done white knuckling my way to some spiritual breakthrough I couldn't manufacture no matter how disciplined I was. And it was right then, not during my best behavior, but after I gone back to the exact thing I thought disqualified me, that God filled me with his Holy Spirit, I started speaking in tongues for the first time in my life, just like scripture describes. I want to be careful here because I'm not telling you the story to say that marijuana had anything to do with what happened, like there was some trick to it. That is not the point, and please don't hear it that way. The point is the opposite. God didn't wait for me to get my life in order first. He didn't reward my strict month of trying hard, and he didn't wait for me to prove I could stay clean before he'd move. He filled me on his own timing, by his own initiative, completely apart from anything I'd earned or failed to earn. That wrecked every category I'd grown up with. I was raised believing God was watching, keeping score, ready to get you the moment you stepped out of line. And here he was, meeting me, not in my most disciplined moment, but in the moment I quietly stopped performing altogether, showing me that living by strict rules was never really the goal. He is pure love, not love with an asterisk. Not love once I qualify. He just plain loves me. I had my own version of that younger son's slave speech. I'll do everything right, and then you'll accept me. God cut it off before I ever finished proving myself. The same way the father in Luke 15 cut off his son's midsense. That's the blameless walk Solomon is describing in verse twenty. Not a perfect record, but a heart turned towards him. He was already delighting in me while I was still figuring out which direction I was even facing. I've carried that day with me for decades now, and it still reshapes how I read a passage like this one. So, whatever your version of a I'll be perfect looks like to you, maybe it's not a drug substance at all. Maybe it's just years of trying to pray hard enough, read enough, behave well enough to feel like you finally earn a seat at the table. I want you to hear what I had to learn the hard way. You don't get the father's delight by finally performing your way into it. You already have it the moment your heart turns toward him. The performance was never the price of admission. It was just something I was hiding behind me because I didn't yet believe love could be free. I think first John four ten says the same thing. And this is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the appropriation for our sins. And Romans eight, thirty eight through nine says, Neither death, life, angels, rulers, things presents, things to come. Nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So let's bring verse twenty and twenty one home together. Blameless was never a synonymon for flawless. It's a heart and a walk pointed toward God, all your wobbles included. The crooked heart isn't the one that has a bad thought. It's the one that's made peace with walking in two directions at once. And God delights in your direction isn't sentimental. It's backed by his justice, guaranteed by his justice, satisfied at the cross so that the light can be poured out on people like you and I without cutting a single corner of what's

Two Questions And A Way Home

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true. Wow, isn't that awesome? Here are two questions I want to leave with you today. First, is there an area of your life right now where you're rehearsing a servant speech, trying to earn your way back into good standing with God instead of simply turning your feet back toward him? And second, are you measuring your walk against perfection this week or are you letting yourself believe that God actually delights in the direction you're walking? Wobble and all. Here's also the sense I want ringing in your ears from this whole episode. God isn't standing on the porch with his arms crossed waiting for an explanation. He's already running down the road to meet you. So you've been carrying around a servant's mindset with God, dealing with him according to the law and works. Bring it to him today. He's not looking for a flawless record. He's looking for a heart headed home. Well, we'll pick up next time and keep moving through this chapter. And remember, if you haven't been able to hear his voice yet, my book is still on Amazon. God, why won't you talk to me? It'll really help you. Until then, stay in the Word, keep walking, and let Him delight in the direction you're going. Amen.