Welcome And Verse Setup

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All right, welcome back. Today we're going to be in Proverbs chapter eleven, verse twenty three. And this one I'm going to title What survives when they leave the room? Desire, expectation, and the spirit that's in the room. Last week we sat with a gold ring in the pig snout. Beauty, discretion, and the question wisdom always asks before the flesh does, can I or should I? Solomon's wasn't done with us yet. Today we move on verse two eleven twenty three. And Solomon takes the exact same idea what's going on inside a person and points it somewhere new. Last week was about what you desire. This week is about what you expect. And I got something to bring into this one that happened to me. A conversation with somebody close to me that I walked away from more than once, feeling completely convinced of something I don't actually believe. I used to chalk it up to them just being persuasive. I don't think that's the whole story anymore. I think there's a spirit behind it, and I think scripture actually names it. So let's dig in.

Desire And Expectation In Hebrew

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Proverbs chapter eleven, verse twenty three says The desire of the righteous is only good, but the expectation of the wicked is wrath. So some quick Hebrew words explain. Desire ta Aba is a craving, a longing, what you find yourself wanting when nobody's watching. Expectation is the same Hebrew word that got translated to mean hope a few verses back in Proverbs chapter ten, verse twenty eight. And wrath is Evra, which literally carries the idea of an overflow, something that builds up and spills over the top. Watch what Solomon is doing. He's using the same word expectation for both the righteous and the wicked back in chapter ten. Look, Proverbs ten, verse twenty eight says The hope of the righteous is gladness, but the expectation of the wicked perishes. Same word, completely different destination. Chapter ten tells you where each road ends. Chapter eleven tells you what's fueling the trip. Here's the chain I want you to

The Seed That Grows Your Outlook

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see. Desire is the seed. Expectation is what grows out of it. What you crave, long for, and dwell on eventually becomes what you expect out of life and out of people. If your heart generally desires good for yourself and for the people around you, you start walking into rooms expecting good. Not naively, just open. But your heart has been marin but if your heart has been marinating in suspicion, bitterness, self-interest, those desires don't stay quietly off to the side. No. Eventually they start narrating your whole world. You start you stop being able to picture anything ending well, because nothing good is what you have been feeding on.

Prudence Versus Living In Dread

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I want to head off a wrong turn but go before we go further, this verse is not condemning caution, for Proverbs chapter twenty two, verse three says The prudent sees the evil and hides himself, but thy naive go on and are punished for it. Solomon praises a person who sees danger coming and takes it seriously. That's not what verse twenty three is warning against. The wicked man's problem isn't that he's ever prepared for something bad, is that bad is where he lives. Something bad could happen, saw wisely prepare, is its decision you make and then set down. Something bad is always about to happen, everybody's got an angle, it's all falling apart, is an address where you never leave. Preparation is something you do, expectation is somewhere you live. Solomon says the wicked man's expectation is wrath, that overflow we were talking about. Paul picks up the thread centuries later and shows you where the road actually ends. In Romans chapter two, verse eight and nine, it says, But to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath, and indignation, there will be tribulation and distress for every soul of a man who does evil. Proverbs shows you the mindset. Romans shows you where the mindset finally arrives. I think that's part of why the wicked man's expectation is wrath in the first place. He's not gloomy by coincidence. Somewhere deep down a self seeking heart knows it hasn't been dealing honestly, and it's bracing for the bill to come due. Guilt has a way of projecting itself outward. If I know I can't be trusted, it's a short step to assuming nobody else can be either. We tend to expect from other people whatever's already living inside us. A dishonest man assumes everybody's angling for something, because that's the only game he knows how to play. A bitter person can take a completely neutral sentence and hear an accusation buried in it, because accusation is what he's used to handing out. None of them are lying to you exactly, they're reporting what they see. The instrument doing the reporting has already been calibrated by what's living inside of us. Someone whose heart gently desires good tends to walk through life a little more willing to believe good is possible, not blind to evil. They're just not living there. Here's what I really want to dig into today because it's the part I've

When Someone Else Resets Your Mind

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never heard anybody explain clearly, and I think scripture actually gives us more than we're usually giving it credit for. Look, I know somebody close to me whose whole outlook runs on exp expecting the worst. Everybody's got an agenda. The country's going to hell in a handbasket. Everything is unraveling right now, today, and I need to rearrange my whole life. And here's the part that used to confuse me when I'm sitting across from them listening. It doesn't sound like fear mongering. It sounds true. My whole nervous system starts agreeing before my mind even weighs. I start thinking, I need to rearrange every desire, every focus I've got to match what they just said. Then they leave, and a day later my own spirit of goodness comes back online and I think, wait a minute, no, that's not actually how I see the world. For a long time I described that as them just being persuasive. I don't think that's accurate anymore. I don't think it's just psychology either. I believe there's a spirit operating in it, and I believe Paul names it directly. In Second Timothy one seven, he says, For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline. That word timidity is also translated fear. It's the same spirit. Paul isn't speaking in metaphor here. He draws a straight line between a spirit of fear and a spirit of power, love and sound judgment. Is that the two different sources you could be operating under at any given moment? When my nervous system starts

The Spirit Of Fear Named

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screaming that everything is collapsing and I have to reorganize my life around it right now, that's not discernment. That's the spirit of fear doing exactly what it does. And Paul says plainly it did not come from God. Now here's the part I really want you to hear, because I don't think Solomon or Paul are describing a vague feeling in the room.

A Deceiving Spirit In The Mouth

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Scripture actually shows a spirit operating directly in someone's spoken's words, not just influencing their mood, but shaping the very sentencing coming out of their mouth. Let's look at first Kings chapter twenty two verse nineteen through twenty three. We're up in heaven here, so watch what happens. Then Mekiah said, Therefore hear the word of the Lord, and I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the hosts of heaven standing by him on his right and on his left. And the Lord said, Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramath Gilead? And one said this while another said that. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord and said, I'll entice him, and the sword how? And the Lord said how? He said, I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. Then the Lord said, You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so. Now therefore, behold, the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these prophets. Read that again. Four hundred prophets stood in a room, and every one of them with total confidence told the king exactly what the deceiving spirit put in their mouths to say. Nobody in that room felt deceived. It felt like four hundred voices confirming the same obvious truth. It took one man, Mikeaiah, hearing directly from God to say no, that's not what's actually happening here. Everybody else was under the fog. He was the only one who stepped outside it. That's the closest thing I found in scripture to what I'm experiencing in that room. It's not that the person is lying to me on purpose. It's that a spirit can genuinely operate in what someone says, and it can make a room full of reasonable people nod along with something that isn't true. Paul tells us what that fog is so hard to spot from the inside. He says in Second Corinthians chapter eleven verse fourteen, no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Deception doesn't announce itself. It doesn't sound crazy or cruel or obviously wrong. It sounds caring. It sounds like somebody's looking out for you. It sounds like the truth, which is exactly why you don't catch it in the room. You catch it later, once the light inside you comes back on. And Paul tells Timothy, this isn't rare or hypothetical. It's something believers should expect to run into. Look, in first Timothy chapter four, verse one it says, but the spirit is explicitly says that in the later times some will fall away from the faith. Paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons. Deceitful spirits. That's not my language, that's Paul's. Scripture isn't shy about naming this, so when I say I believe there's a spirit riding on somebody's words, putting a fog over my thinking until I start feeling and believing things that aren't true. I'm not reaching for a dramatic explanation. I'm using that exact category of words that the Bible already has given us. Now I want to be careful how I say this because Paul is careful too. In Ephesians 6 12 he says, For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Look, the struggle isn't against the person sitting across from me and you. No. It's against what's using the moment, a spirit of fear, writing in on their words, trying to get you and I to agree with it the same way it got them. I don't have to retreat that person as the enemy, I can love them. Stay in a relationship with them, and still refuse to let their fog become the address where I want to live.

How To Test What You Hear

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So what do you actually do with this? John gives us a direct command, not just a warning. Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. Because many false prophets have gone out into the world. Test it. Not assume it's fine because it felt convincing. Test it. And the test isn't complicated. It's the same one James already gave us. In James chapter three, verse seventeen, it is written, but the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle and reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering and without hypocrisy. Galatians chapter five twenty through twenty three even expands it more. It says, But the fruit of the Spirit is what? Love and joy and peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against such things there is no law. Does what we just heard grow peace in us or does it grow dread? Does it produce love and sound judgment or does it produce a spirit of fear? I have to fight my way back out of later. That's the test. Not how convincing it sounded while you're in the room. What it actually grew in us once the room was empty. I planned on a simple sentence for myself true should survive after the person leaves the room. If it only holds up while they're standing in front of me, it wasn't truth. It was the fog talking. I want to say clearly this isn't about writing anybody off, because this is somebody close to us. But loving somebody and adopting the spirit that's operating through them are two different things, and God isn't asking us to do the second one to prove I'm doing the first. So here's Proverbs 11, 23 in one sentence. What you desire becomes what you expect, and what you expect is either goodness or it's wrath. And sometimes what you're expecting isn't even fully yours. Sometimes it's a spirit of fear that walked in through somebody else's words and tried to move into your house. Guard it. Guard your desires, because they're quietly writing your expectations. And test what you hear, because not every convincing voice is a true one.

Questions To Carry Home

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So here are two questions I want to leave with you today. First, when you picture how people are going to treat you, is your default expectation good or is it wrath? And where do you think that expectation actually came from? Second, is there a voice in your life right now that makes perfect sense while you're in the room with them? But doesn't survive the drive home? And have you ever considered that what you were agreeing with wasn't a person, but a spirit of fear speaking through 'em? And here's the sense I want ringing in your ears from this whole episode. Truth should survive after the person leaves a room. Again, that's why I keep saying you got to personally hear the voice of God for yourself. And if you're still struggling with it, get my book. God, why won't you talk to me? Moving it around here. All right. We'll pick up next time and keep moving through this chapter. Until then, stay in the Word. Guard what you desire and test every spirit before you let it move in. God bless.