Hello, and welcome to Keeping It Young podcast, conversations about marriage, family, and ministry life. I'm Dave. And I'm Beth Lee. And we are the Youngs. We are so glad you've joined us today. We are beginning summer. It's not the first day of summer yet, but. But here in Florida, it feels like it, doesn't it? Yes, always. It starts feeling like summer, and I would say the end of April.
Sure, we were home during May, and the Pensacola Christian College isn't far from us, and graduation week was so humid. And it just made me think about all the people that'll wear a suit and tie to go to graduation. Right. All of our Yankee friends that came down here to be a part of that are like melting in the heat. Moving their children out of the residence halls. Oh my goodness, that's very warm. But summertime is a special time.
I love summertime, first of all, because we do not homeschool year round. Yay! We homeschool during a regular school year, so homeschool is out for the summer, and we get to travel with Dave and do summer camps, teen camps, family conferences. I don't know what all we're doing this summer. My goodness, our summer has a ton going on. We're gonna be at a family conference in New Jersey. We have a family camp in North Carolina. That's at a local church, but they're calling it a family camp.
And then we have a couples event in Washington State. Yes. And then we have a camp in South Dakota, and a camp in New Hampshire, and a camp in Colorado. And then I'm coming home for a few days. Breathe! Yes, and then we have a camp in Michigan. Yes. And then we have a youth event in Missouri. Yay! So our summer is full. We are so excited. Many, many miles of travel. So, so excited about summer, and we hope you are too.
We hope you have some special things planned with your family coming into the summer, and remember that Father's Day is coming up. It's always in June. So ladies, get together with your kids, and find something special you can do for that special man in your household. That sounds like a great idea. I love it. So here's what we're doing, brothers and sisters, and friends. We are talking about how to have a happy life, and a happy family. Yes, we are. How to succeed in life and family.
Yes. And we're not talking about it as much as Solomon is. And Solomon gives us chapters 10 through chapter 31, and it is loaded with just information after information after information. And of course, we told you last week that the plan is we're just gonna talk about the things he's challenging us to emphasize, and we're gonna do that in our family. And our verse was, a wise son makes a glad father, and a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.
That's Proverbs chapter 10. And so today we're jumping right in. We're gonna go back to chapter 10 again, and begin, the question is, how do we get there? If it's Solomon's telling us that we need to pursue happiness and success, especially in our families, how do we get there? Right. And so the first thing we've learned as we've been reading through Proverbs is simply this, we have to emphasize righteousness. Well, sometimes that doesn't sound very happy, does it?
You think of people who never do anything fun, and they're just so careful about everything. That just, I don't know. We might have some listeners that are like, oh, well, that doesn't sound like a happy family. But from a biblical perspective, righteousness being emphasized in your home, meaning the truths of the word of God being emphasized in your home, that will definitely bring about blessings in your life and lead to a happy family. Absolutely.
So we emphasize righteousness, and chapter 10 is a great place to do that. Because in chapter 10, listen to all of the verses, where he talks about righteousness. Let's start with verses two and three. Treasures of wickedness profit nothing, but righteousness delivereth from death. The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish, but he casteth away the substance of the wicked. He talks about it again in verses six through seven.
Blessings are upon the head of the just, but violence covereth the mouth of the wicked. The memory of the just is blessed, but the name of the wicked shall rot. And the word just there is the idea of righteousness. Yes, same word. Yep, verse 11. The mouth of a righteous man is a well of life, but violence covereth the mouth of the wicked. And again in verse 16. Verse 16 says the labor of the righteous tendeth to life, the fruit of the wicked to sin. And then verses 19, 20, and 21.
In the multitude of words, there wanteth not sin, but he that refraineth his lips is wise. The tongue of the just is as choice silver. The heart of the wicked is little worth. The lips of the righteous feed many, but fools die for want of wisdom. Yes, and 24 and 25. The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him, but the desire of the righteous shall be granted. As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more, but the righteous is an everlasting foundation.
And the final couple of verses, 30 through 32. The righteous shall never be removed, but the wicked shall not inhabit the earth. The mouth of the just bringeth forth wisdom, but the froward tongue shall be cut out. The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable, but the mouth of the wicked speaketh frowardness. Now, this is an interesting word because the word can refer to God's character.
The righteousness of God is that God is pure and God is right and God will do right and you can trust God to do right. So the word righteousness is God's character, but when Solomon writes about it, what he's primarily talking about is Christian morality and Christian ethics. Well, he actually speaks about it as a characteristic of a person. He actually calls people the righteous. The righteous use words that are good words or wise words, things like that.
So he actually refers to Christianity or people who are following Christ. He calls them the righteous. That is correct. And so it deals with things like what is right and wrong. And what a thing we have to train our children in that. This is right, this is wrong. You can't do that because that's wrong. Nope, we're gonna do this because this is right. So this is the word righteous. It's about what is pleasing to God and pleasing to his word.
And all of you Christian parents listening to us, that's something we have to over and over and over and over emphasize. You pastors listening to us, if we're not careful, we fail to emphasize righteousness in our preaching. As in, this pleases God. The Bible is clear right here. You have to live like this to please God. This is what the Bible says. You have to live like this to emphasize the Bible, to live the Bible, to learn the Bible, to know the Bible.
And you'll find the word frequently used throughout all the pages of God's word. Especially like Genesis 30 and verse 33, when Jacob, he's married, he's working for Laban, his father-in-law, and Laban has done him wrong and changed his wages and so forth and so forth. And in Genesis 30 and verse 33, Jacob says, my righteousness shall answer for me in time to come. And what he says is, there will come a day you will see that what I've done here is right. I've done the right thing.
I've honored you. And it's interesting to me because you said at the beginning here, that righteousness doesn't sound like a happy, fun word. And you're right, because what Jacob is saying in that text is, he's going through a great challenge. His father-in-law has been treating him incorrectly, treating him wrong. He's been deceived. He's been lied to. And yet in the midst of it, he said, I'm gonna do what's right. And there will come a day you're gonna know that I did what was right.
And I'm putting all of this publicly so that in the years to come, you will know. You know what? Jacob was a righteous man. And so he did point out there that my righteousness shall answer for me in time to come. Deuteronomy 6 is one we preach from a lot. Deuteronomy 6, of course, is the passage, the Mount Everest passage about the family in the Old Testament.
And in Deuteronomy 6, he talks about how that we have to fear the Lord and know the Lord and we have to live in such a way that things are well in our lives, in our children's lives and in our grandchildren's lives. That's a massive order of time. That's about, what, 30, 40 years of time.
So he says there at the end of the chapter, he's talking to, the son comes in at the end of the chapter and says, well, what is all this that we can't do and have to do and this rule and this law and God said this and God said, don't do that. Deuteronomy 6 and verse 25 says these words, and it shall be our righteousness if we observe to do all these commandments before the face of our God as he has commanded us.
So what Solomon is talking about here is we have to emphasize right and wrong, show our children what's right and we have to do what's right. It's not enough just to say our kids, right? It's gotta be, I've gotta be right in my life. Righteousness starts with dad, you dads. It matters how you live your life. If you're a dishonest businessman, your children will know it. You will damage their righteousness and yours. And what does the Bible teach about that?
The result is the foolishness in a son's heart is heavy. It is heaviness in the years to come. So righteousness in this 10th chapter is connected to a variety of things. The first one is righteousness is connected to our treasures. That's all back in verse two again. Right. And he talks there about the treasures that we embrace. In fact, read that again to us just to get the idea and remind our audience. Righteousness in our treasures.
Well, it says treasures of wickedness profit nothing, but righteousness delivereth from death. Well, that's an interesting, interesting phraseology, isn't it? Yes. Because if you are getting ahead by wickedness, you're dishonest, you're deceitful, you're unwise and you're, if you're getting ahead because you're doing wrong, what he's saying right there is it's not worth it. True. It doesn't matter how much money you're worth, it's not worth it. Because it will bypass God's blessings.
It will bypass God's favor. And literally in the point he's making in chapter 10, it will bypass joy, happiness and rejoicing and result in great heaviness down the road. But there's a better way to live and that is righteousness. So we have to teach our children that getting ahead by doing right brings great blessings. That's the whole point, isn't it? Right. We've got to get ahead by doing right. How do you do that? What does it even look like?
Well, you have to remember that the blessing of God is far more than financial gain. And it is not that if you have financial gain in your life and the Lord has blessed you in that way, or if you have a head for that, a head for business and you know how to, you have an entrepreneurial spirit, I don't even know if I said that right, and you are making money and that is a way God has gifted you, there's certainly nothing wrong with that.
But if, as David said, you're going about it underhandedly, if you're cutting corners, if you're not being honest in your business dealings, but you're still making money, that's not, in the end, going to bring you blessings. It also could be that you, as a family, you're just gonna do right. You're gonna do what God has called you to do and you're gonna make money the way God told you to make money, your job.
Maybe it's not like you're making hand over fist all this money and putting all this money in the bank, but you're doing what God has called you to do. There will be blessings in that and there are blessings that are far greater than financial. You may not be able to take the big vacations that the family down the street can take, you may not be able to wear the latest fashions, you may not eat out all the time, but you will have a great blessing in your household.
Absolutely, and yet the point he's making there is that it is connected to our revenue, to getting our gain, if you will. And so, remember, we've gotta be training, we've gotta be living our lives by righteousness. What is the right thing to do? Are we honest? Are we dependable? Are we cutting corners? Are we doing right? And if we are, righteousness brings great blessings is what the Bible is trying to say there. So we emphasize that, righteousness in our treasures.
In verses 11 and 12, we have to make sure that there's righteousness in how we deal with other people. And that's a big one, isn't it? Because one of the things everybody in life has to handle is other people. Whether that's your friends, your mom, your dad, your sons, your daughters, your coworkers, your bosses, your employees, the list just never ends. It's true. We are bombarded with how we have to deal with people.
Well, and we live in a culture, I think even ever since the pandemic shut down where we all had to isolate, there were people who have come out of that and there's even joking on social media about how that we just really don't like to be around people anymore and we get to work from home.
Some people get to work from home and they never have to go out and about and they'll even joke in Instagram reels about, well, why can't we just schedule times at the grocery store where no one else is there and I can just be all by myself and I don't have to deal with people, but that's not reality.
We know that we always will deal with people and specifically as we're in this series, we're talking about our family, you're gonna have people right there in your house with you that you have to talk to all the time.
And unfortunately, there are people who, even Christians who have the idea of, well, as long as I maintain a happy countenance and testimony out there among other people, maybe when I'm at church or I'm at the grocery store, but when I'm home, these people just have to love me no matter what. So I can just treat them any way I want to. I can say the words I wanna say to them. I can be harsh. Well, so what if I got up on the wrong side of the bed?
My husband should understand that or different things like that. But the Bible tells us that we need to be righteous in the way that we're dealing with them. So that would indicate that we would have to bring forth some of the fruit of the spirit, I think, in our words and how we're dealing with other people. Absolutely. So righteousness is part of how we deal with people.
And what Solomon is saying in the verses is that when we are righteous, we edify, we bless, we're an encouragement to others. And that when we are not, we destroy and damage others. And it's so easy to live our lives with a self-righteous or a self-focused or a me first idea. And we've gotta be training ourselves and our children to embrace righteousness. It matters how we speak to each other. It does. It matters whether I build you, whether I encourage you, whether I bless you, it matters.
And so righteousness is not just our treasures, it's also dealing with people and it's also related to our work. And these are all kind of combining together. But listen to verse 16 again because he's talking about our work. Well, can I go back to the words one more time? It does say in verse number 11 that the mouth of the righteous is a well of life. And moms, can I just say to you, speak life, speak life to your husband, speak life to your children.
And you're thinking, well, what does that even mean? It just means that there should be more blessing that comes out of your mouth, more grace that comes out of your mouth, more kindness that comes out of your mouth. Those are all life-giving words than words that are harsh and tearing down and unkind. So now we can move on. Well, that's a good point. Let's just pause and think about that because you addressed the moms there. But dads, it is amazing how powerful your words are.
And righteousness and how you deal with people is vital and especially with your children. You have to learn as a dad to not allow anger and frustration to be the primary focus of your words. That's not pleasing to God. Well, and even in these verses, it indicates that it's a righteous person, a person who is following hard after God. That's what a righteous person is. We that are Christians, we stand righteous before God, not because of our righteousness.
We already know that, we're all sinners. We accept Jesus' righteousness to cover us and therefore we are saved. But then we pursue his righteousness as we are pursuing after him, as we are reading the word of God. So that's what the word of God means when it talks about a righteous person. So it's not saying, oh, it's your personality. There are people who are just kind by personality. They're more sweet by personality. And so we could be like, well, that's not really me.
But the word of God here is saying, well, it's a righteous person who speaks life to other people. It's not just your personality. Right, and if you're not careful, you can go the other side of that too, because some of you by personality are brutal. And by personality have a tendency to be condescending and so forth. But what we are to do, we are to, in all of our dealings with people, we are to embrace righteousness and learn righteousness.
And so we've got to learn to edify, to bless, to encourage. And then that spills over into the 16th verse that we were trying to get to a moment ago. I'm so sorry. Righteousness in our work. Listen to verse 16 again. The labor of the righteous tendeth to life. The fruit of the wicked is sin. Moms and dads, what we're trying to say here, and for all of you that are listening, we are, if we're going to lead a happy life, remember the main point.
If we're going to lead a successful and happy life, we have to embrace righteousness. That's in relation to our treasures. That's in relation to dealing with people. That is in relation to work. And he makes that very clear there, doesn't he? Work is essential and doing right in work is essential. Yes, so that a righteous person will be diligent in their work. Yes. Is that what we're trying to say? Absolutely, and it goes even beyond that because the result of it is the point.
It's by doing right in our work that we build a life. Rather than we're always plagued by, we are lacking the blessings and favor of God. When we're not righteous in our work, we miss just that special thing about life in which God is blessing us. We're reaping what we're sowing. We are blessed on the job. We are available for promotions. And if we're not careful, we also bypass the idea of contentment.
When all is well and I'm being a righteous person and I know that I'm doing right and I'm working hard and you can depend on me and I'll be there on time and I'm gonna do my job right, what we find out right there is that that brings an enjoyable, incredible, blessed contentment to a life. Right. And contentment is lacking in our generation. We are not a happy generation if you're thinking contentment.
Well, we have been taught when it comes to work that you're supposed to avoid it as much as possible. You know, even joking reels on Instagram about, man, I've been at work for two hours already. I think it's time for me to go home. But I think our culture is embracing that to some extent. Instead of having the character, could we say the righteousness to say, this is what I've been hired to do and I'm gonna do it with everything in me and I'm gonna do it cheerfully.
And then getting that contentment, that blessing at the end of the day of a job well done instead of there's so much discontent of, okay, yeah, well, maybe I left work early and then I went home and all I did was scroll through Instagram or watch Netflix and I ate too much and then I don't feel good about myself. And I mean, it just is like this spiral instead of knowing that there is great blessing in a righteous person who knows how to do their work well.
Yeah, and speaking of work, we do live in a culture that the goal of our culture is not to work. And our young people have that goal. I don't want a job. I don't wanna work. I don't like to work. I wanna sleep in. I wanna be on Netflix. I wanna scroll Instagram. And you older folks, retirement is the goal of our culture. And if we're not careful, we can think of retirement as praise God, I have to do it. There's just, I don't have to work. I don't have to.
And yet the Bible emphasizes here that work is a very important part of life. And so don't allow your older years, I say this often in our meetings, don't allow your older years to be your colder years because you retire and all you ever do is you sit and watch TV all day. Maybe play a round of golf. Maybe go to a club with some friends and have a meal. Don't bypass the fact that the older years of your life can be great years of great blessing. And we can emphasize those years.
We can invest those years. We can serve in those years. We can encourage in those years. We can teach Sunday school. We can disciple. We can be soul winners. We can go to the mission field. There's all kinds of work that can be done. And if we're not careful, we look down on work in our culture. Yes. And we should not because righteousness and work go together. We live, many of you know, we live in Florida and there are a lot of advertisements for retirement communities and it's 55 and older.
And David and I are just on the cusp of that. We are just, we are both 54 years old. And I saw an advertisement for it the other day when we were in the airport and we had just landed and David ran to get the car. And I was looking at this advertisement and I was thinking that that would be next year. We would be 55 years old. And obviously being in the ministry that we're in and everything, we are nowhere near financially able to retire.
But I can't even imagine wanting that to go to a place where, and I'm not saying that it's wrong if you have gotten to a place in your finances and in your business that you can just retire and hand it off to someone else and maybe just handle a few things from a retirement place. That's awesome. And I'm sure that you're still busy about whatever God would have you to do. But I cannot imagine David and I next year being like, okay, well, we're done.
We're just gonna go play for the rest of our lives. I don't know how long God has us the rest of our lives on this earth and what he has us to do. And I'm not even saying that we're gonna do the same ministry we do for the rest of our lives. But I cannot imagine being done, just like, oh, let's just go play for the next however many years the Lord gives us. So I do know though that that's what our culture thinks of. Oh, you've put in 30 years of work. Well then maybe you need to be done.
Yeah, and so here's what Matthew Henry says. Matthew Henry says that verse 16, talking about righteousness in our work, is a reminder that God uses righteousness in work to build a life, to build contentment, and to enable us to be a blessing to others. So yes, we're to build a life and don't allow your retirement years to cause you to fail to build a life.
And don't allow your retirement years to lead you to a place of discontentment, but don't allow them to cause you to fail to be a blessing to others. And you that are training children, we've got to train our children to do what's right in their work. That's a part of I'm working and I'm dependable and I'm gonna do the work. There's one more word here before we run out of one more section. We're talking about, we have to emphasize righteousness if we're gonna live a happy, successful life.
And so Solomon talks about righteousness is connected to our treasures, connected to how we deal with people, connected to our work, but it's also connected to our words. When our words are in righteousness, we are valuable and useful. But when our words are unrighteous, as Solomon is making the case, we have no value. There's no value in unrighteous words, but there's great value and usefulness in words that are righteous. So righteousness is an important area.
And of course, we could probably talk about it all day. How do you incorporate righteousness in your life? And you do that by learning to think in terms of, well, what is right? What does the Bible say? What would be the right response in this situation? What is the right step to take? How do we handle this in the right way? So it's a very practical, the word sounds so theological. Right, righteousness, yes. But it's a very practical one.
So a couple of questions here to kind of wind things up today. What steps can a parent take to help their children embrace righteousness? Any thoughts off the top of your head, my love? Well, I would say that, first of all, you do need to think that there is a definite right and there is a definite wrong. And we have embraced so much in this culture, even in Christianity, to an extent of, well, there's no right or wrong way that way.
And while that may be true when it comes to some methods of parenting, whether you, let's say, how you're going to feed your baby when your baby first comes. Are you going to be a nursing mother? Are you gonna be a bottle mother? There is no right or wrong way there. You just have to do what practically works for your family. But there are things, when it comes to the truths of the word of God, that definitely would be right or wrong.
So first of all, I would say you have to embrace, yes, there is a right way for us to lead our family. And then you need to get into the word of God and see what that is, and then embrace it yourself and then teach it to your children. I was thinking about our family as well. That's really good, love. What steps did we take that helped make a difference in our children, especially now that they're adults? And I thought of at least three things. Do you agree with these?
We did a lot of talking in which we would say, that's not right. See that right there? And we would do that even like in a movie. We would do that in a TV program. We may laugh at something, but follow it up. And our kids, even our adult kids, will laugh at this sometimes now and joke about the fact that, well, way to mess up a movie because Belta and I are pretty quick to say, now, wait a minute, that's not right. That's not how you should live.
That couple are making out and they're not even married. And look at how that person's dressed. That's not modest. So we're continually talking about, this is right, this is wrong. This is wrong, this is right. We talk about, we illustrate it. We always look for that. And you know, when your kids are younger, part of the things about previous generations and the lessons we would read and the things we would teach our children, you know, like the fables.
Sometimes a fable was about lessons of right and wrong. And in learning those, you know, teaching our children a story that had a lesson to it is far more valuable than laughing our head off at an Instagram reel that has no point other than to get likes for a person who's making money from their Instagram reel or to make us just simply be entertained. So we did talk about it. We did illustrate it and we pointed out righteousness.
We looked for opportunities to say, see how they're living, see the results of how they lived. Well, and we did that with like with my mom and dad because my mom and dad, you know, are not wealthy people, but my goodness, they have had a wonderful, valuable life by doing what's right and working diligently and working hard. And we would do the same with your parents. Look at how Papa and Nana have lived their lives. So we looked for illustrations.
We pointed out, but we talked about it all the time to say, this is what's right. And in our busy culture, we don't do that. In our busy culture, we, you know, just run along, you know, oh, that was funny. Oh, that's hilarious. Our kids talk to us while we're looking at a screen and they're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, but we're not really listening. And what a lesson for all of us.
If you're going to have a happy life, a successful life, a happy family, a successful family, Solomon is saying, here's where you start. You have to emphasize righteousness. So he's covered three areas so far, wisdom and purity and righteousness. And we're out of time for the day. Any further thoughts before we sign off today and join next week for the next thought?
I was just gonna say, as you're having those discussions with your children, especially as they're growing through those teen years and maybe college years, there will be times that they will take a different approach than you do.
They may see it a little bit differently, but parents don't be afraid of that and welcome those conversations because you are there to point them to righteousness, to remind them of what the truths of the word of God says and to encourage them that there is a difference between right and wrong and that there are steps of righteousness that might be better that they could be taking and then don't shy away from the conversation and don't be scared of it and always be loving
through it and then take that responsibility very seriously because we are hopefully examples of righteousness to our children and teachers of righteousness.
Yes, and I would just add to that, moms and dads, it's okay to say to your children, well, I understand that you may do this differently when you're an adult, but right now you're in my home and this is what you have to do now and I find it interesting that sometimes our children are like, you know, well, I don't agree with that, I don't see that, but I have observed over and over again as our children reach maturity in adulthood, many, many times they look back and go, you know what?
I think you were right and I'm gonna do it this way, but don't let those teen years be the years in which you give in and say, well, you go ahead and decide. You are still the parent, you decide what's righteous, they have the privilege someday to be on their own, but when they are under your responsibility, emphasize righteousness, it works. Well, we're out of time, thanks so much for listening today.
We hope you've enjoyed this beginning of this kind of new idea of how we're teaching the book of Proverbs. Joining us next week and we will continue talking about how to have a happy family and a happy life. In the meantime, remember to serve the Lord with gladness. The Keeping It Young podcast is a BACS 5 media production.