In his sermon, Peter Allison discusses the concept of the law as a blessing, emphasizing its reflection of God's character. He illustrates how love and law are interconnected, teaching us to respect others' property, health, and character. The sermon contrasts the righteous, who follow the law, with the wicked, who do not, highlighting the importance of integrity over wealth. Allison warns against the negative influence of corrupt companions and underscores the significance of choosing godly companionship. He stresses that the law provides wisdom, guiding believers in the right path and underscoring the importance of scripture as the ultimate authority. He also addresses the preservation of God's word, rejecting external authorities that question its authenticity. The sermon concludes with a call to uphold integrity, seek godly companionship, and trust in Jesus Christ and His Word.

Our scripture reading is Proverbs 28. I'd like to read the first 12 verses. The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion. Because of the transgression of a land, many are its princes, but by a man of understanding and knowledge right will be prolonged. A poor man who oppresses the poor is like a driving rain which leaves no food.

Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but such as keep the law contend with them. Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand all. Better is the poor who walks in his integrity, then one perverse in his ways, though he be rich. Whoever keeps the law is a discerning son, but a companion of glutton's shames his father. One who increases his possessions by usury and extortion gathers it for him who will pity the poor.

One who turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. Whoever causes the upright to go astray in an evil way will himself fall into his own pit but the blameless will inherit good. The rich man is wise in his own eyes, but the poor who has understanding searches him out. When the righteous rejoice, there is great glory, but when the wicked arise, men hide themselves." Thus far the reading of God's Word. May the Lord grant faith to believe his commandments and teach us good judgment and knowledge.

Heavenly Father, thank and knowledge. Heavenly Father, thank you for preserving your word and giving it to us. Thank you for the many who have gone before us, who have explained and opened to us your Word, upon whom we can learn from and benefit. But we ask Lord this morning that you might speak to us and that this word that we have heard might be mixed with faith within us. And I ask Lord that you would sanctify my sinful lips to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Amen. These last couple weeks we have been looking at how the scriptures speak of the law as a blessing and for those that weren't here last week for whatever reason, I'll just give you a brief summary of some of the high points of what we looked at. We saw that the scriptures both define and honor the law as a reflection of the very character of God. It means that the law conveys, the Word of God conveys who God is. God is holy.

He is just. He is truth. He is love. These are all parts of the excellencies or attributes of God and we saw that His Word says the same things about the Word of God, about the law of God that comes out of his mouth. We saw that the law is a definition even of love.

God is love and the law is the definition of what love is. How do we love our neighbor? We respect their property. We respect their chastity. We respect their health and their life and their good name and their character.

That's how we love them. And we saw then that, in that sense, love and law are not two things that are opposites. They don't Love doesn't require us to do one thing and law another thing. But that law and love, when rightly understood, teach us the same thing and point us and direct us to do the same thing. And there's a number of scriptures we looked at that explained that.

If you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture then you love your neighbor as yourself and you do well. For all the laws fulfilled in one word even this love your neighbor as yourself and so on. So we tend to, so this law is good then. We tend to think of the law as condemning sinners and that the opposite of the law is to love them, but Jesus who is loved saves sinners from the condemnation of the law. And so the law in condemning us is simply saying that we aren't loving God, and we're not loving our neighbor.

So, confession then, to confess that we have broken the laws, to simply come into agreement with God and His definition of love, of truth, of justice, of what is good, and to acknowledge that our ideas and our standards and what we think is just, loving, and good is not actually that. So we saw then in earlier parts of this chapter how widespread obedience brings cultural stability, how law breaking even by the poor, by the powerless brings famines and food shortages, how observance of the law produces resistance to evil, and how the knowledge of the law produces justice. And so we come this morning then to verse 6 And we see that obedience sanctifies poverty. Better is the poor who walks in his integrity than one perverse in his ways though he be rich. Now perverse means something that is twisted, something that is crooked, something that isn't straight and true.

A perverse person is someone who follows a crooked path. And The law of God of course is what defines the straight path. The way of the Lord is straight. The way of the sinner is crooked and distorted, perverted. When God sent his prophets to proclaim about his coming and he sent John the Baptist, he said, they were to prepare the way of the Lord, they were to make the crooked places straight, the valleys exalted and the mountains brought low.

Preparing the way of the Lord, make the way straight. Hebrews exhorts us to make straight paths for our feet, that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather healed. Make straight paths. Follow the word of the Lord. Follow the Lord's ways.

That is the definition of a straight way. The word of the Lord then defines what is straight and what is not straight. And it's better to be poor and walk in the straight ways of the Lord than to be rich, but crooked, twisted, and distorted in our walk. Now, this is not saying that it's better to be poor than rich. Sometimes we shorten these kinds of proverbs into, Well, poverty is better than wealth.

But it isn't. It isn't. All else being equal, it's better to have wealth. If it actually was better to be poor than to have great wealth, the whole contrast of this verse would be lost. The contrast of this verse has an underlying assumption that it is better to be wealthy than to be poor.

If that's not the case, this verse doesn't really... It loses its punch. But what this passage is saying is, it's assuming it's better to be wealthy than poor, but it's saying it's better to be poor and walk in the straight ways of the Lord than to have wealth and be crooked. It's in our walk. In other words, godly character is more important than wealth.

Character trumps wealth. Obedience redeems poverty. It's not a sin or a disgrace for an upright man to be poor. Unless of course that poverty is due to laziness or to indolence or to loving sleep or the Bible says that those who love pleasure won't be rich. If you love wine and oil, you'll be poor.

But poverty simply among those who are upright and men of good character, it's not disgraceful. It's better, the Bible says. It's better to be poor and upright than to be rich but perverse or crooked. It's better to lose money and keep your integrity than to save money, a little bit of money or a lot of money, and compromise your integrity. So what does that look like?

What's that look like? Well, maybe you're in a store and you break an item and no one sees it. You could just put the item back on the shelf and walk away. Forget about it. Or you could own up to it and pay for the damaged item.

Well, we all know that one's an easy one, right? I think even the littlest children among us this morning would know the right answer. That we would take responsibility for what we did and we've damaged somebody's property and we should pay for it, doesn't matter whether anybody happened to see it or not but what if you're a blogger and you're asked to promote some luggage or maybe some knives or maybe it's a tool or some other item. But you actually don't use that brand or that item because you think there are better items or other items that you use that are better, higher quality. Do you promote the product and say this is this is great, use it in order to get the commission?

Or you decline or do you decline to use and recommend that item? Now that's a little more, that's a little more difficult, but I think most of us could probably understand it's a little more difficult in the sense that not everything is always either or. There's a lot of different nuances to things. Sometimes there are alternatives. Maybe you use this product because it's good and it's the best.

But maybe there's another product that's a lot cheaper, half the cost, not as good, but it's good value for the money. So maybe you can promote it as, hey, it's not the one I use, but it's really good value for the money. And if you don't need all these things over here, this is a good alternative. There's a way that you could promote that other product. But that's an example.

Do you compromise your integrity for the sake of money and wealth, Or do you keep your integrity and give up the money? The principle is the same. What if you're paid to do a study? To show some process or some product is better than the status quo. And when you analyze all the data and go through all the work, maybe it's a year of work, maybe it's a lot of involved collection of data and testing and so on.

What if when you do all that work it doesn't show what your client was hoping it would show? What if it shows that their product isn't any better than anything else? Or their process didn't save any money? Or maybe it's even not as good. Then what do you do?

Do you torture the data? To somehow make it say what you want it to say? Do you drop the data that's not convenient in order to get a paycheck? In order to satisfy your client and get some business from them again. In order to sell a drug in the United States, it has to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

And they use panels of doctors to review all the clinical trial data and determine if the drug is safe to use and effective to use. Does it do what it's advertised to do? Even if it's safe, if it's useless, that wouldn't be right to approve a drug that claims to heal people that doesn't do anything at all, even if it doesn't hurt them. And the law says, and of course the Bible would say as well, it's a good law, the law says that the doctors who make these rulings, the people who make these rulings can't have contracts with the companies that make the drugs they are evaluating. Makes sense?

They're supposed to be impartial. And Deuteronomy 16 says that for a bribe, and that's basically a gift of money, that a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous. There we're back to that crookedness again, right? Twisting. Instead of straight path, the ways of the Lord are straight, a bribe, twists the words of the righteous so that they are now perverse, the perverted, they're not straight.

But in these panels, very often the people making these decisions are getting huge sums of money from the drug manufacturers for all sorts of contracts for all sorts of work that they do for them. In one video recording of these proceedings that I saw, The committee chair listed the name of everyone on the panel that was doing the evaluating and the amount of their contracts with the companies whose drugs they were evaluating. That was required. They were disclosing these contracts. And they were a lot of them.

And they covered most, many of the people on the panel. And they just went through and they would list Dr. So-and-so and this amount of money he's getting from this company, but it's not deemed to influence his judgment. And Dr. So-and-so and this amount of money he's getting from this company, but it's not deemed to influence his judgment.

And Dr. So-and-so, and this amount of money he's getting from this company, but it's not deemed to influence his judgment in this matter." And this is what they went through. It was a farce. It was a complete farce. Of course that money is influencing their judgment.

The Bible says that's what it does. Then we wonder what's wrong with our drugs. What if one of those persons voted not to approve that drug? Do you suppose they're going to get their contract renewed the next time it comes up? See the Word of God is what defines what is crooked and what is straight.

And it gives us the wisdom to know what is right and what is not. So the Law of God is then a great blessing. It's a great blessing to His people. Because it gives us this information. It teaches us about our God and about our Savior Jesus Christ.

It enables us to answer that question, what would Jesus do? That's a really good question. To always ask yourself, what would Jesus do? Just make sure you answer it according to the word of God and not according to your own imagination. For then we'd be worshipping our own vain imagination.

Wealth can embolden us and money can embolden us to compromise our integrity and sin against God in order to either keep or to get wealth. Proverbs here says it's better to be poor than to do that. It's better to be poor than to compromise your integrity. Of course, we could multiply example after example for the rest of the day. But I think you get the point.

Now, the next verse speaks about companionship and the influence that it has, especially on the next generation. But companionship can influence all of us. Whoever keeps the law is a discerning son, but a companion of glutton shames his father." The idea of gluttony probably needs just a bit of explanation. The word in Hebrew means to make light of, to be lavish with, to squander something. It means just to waste it, to not appreciate any value in it and waste it.

Or to make light of it, is to not treat it with very much importance. Now in English we tend to limit the word glutton to food. And someone, and a glutton is someone then who eats too much food or squanders food, but in reality it could apply to anything. To anything. Making light of or squandering anything.

This word is used in Deuteronomy 21 to describe the rebellious son who was to be stoned. If they have done everything that they can to train their son, they've chastened them every way that they know, and they've tried to teach him and he still doesn't listen, then The father and the mother, both, because it takes two witnesses, always need two witnesses to establish a fact. That's a biblical principle. Two witnesses establish facts. Two or three.

So the father and the mother were to bring their rebellious son to the elders of this city and say, this son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voices. He is a glutton and a drunkard." Now they're not just saying, he eats too much. He's fat. That's not a capital crime.

It's more than that. It's getting at something else. This is someone who has no restraint. This is someone who's not governed by the word of God. So they spend their time eating and drinking when they should be doing other productive activities.

In fact, gluttony is listed in the Westminster Larger Catechism as a sin under the seventh commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery, because it's dealing with the same essence a lack of restraint a lack of self-discipline of being governed by the word of God of doing what we want to do. Whoever keeps the laws a discerning son but a companion of glutton's shames his father. Now it's interesting this verse doesn't say whoever keeps the law is a discerning son, but a glutton shames his father. Well, that Proverbs has said that sort of thing many times. No, it's a son that is a companion of glutton, that shames his father.

See, the contrast here is between a son who is obedient to the law and a son who is not obedient to the law. Who is a companion of those who are not obedient to the law. That's the contrast. That's what this verse is getting at. The principle here is that evil company corrupts good morals.

Someone who is a companion of people who don't keep the law will soon not regard the Word of God Himself. That's what this verse is saying. Who we surround ourselves with shapes us. It does affect us. One of the most common and frequent tragedies in our culture today is those who have surrounded themselves with teachers who have corrupted the history of the Bible and how it has been transmitted to us.

In so many cases, those who are companions of these people, those who put themselves in their company, who pay attention to their words, who listen to them, they soon renounce the faith. It's again and again and again and again. If you just start looking at the testimonies of people who have renounced the faith, inevitably it often comes down to something related to they were a companion of someone who had corrupted the history of the Bible and how it has been transmitted to us. Because after all it's this word of God that is our foundation. And if you corrupt that, you've corrupted everything.

And the people who are honest renounce the faith. Honest with themselves, not honest with the truth. And one of the places this happens most frequently is college and seminary. There are people, Bart Ehrman is a classic example of a man who went to Christian college after Christian college after Christian college and came out an agnostic who did not believe the Bible. He went to, I'm going to name him, He went to Moody, then he went to Wheaton, and then he went to seminary, Princeton.

And he came out not believing the Bible anymore because of what he learned there in college and seminary. It's not college that's the problem per se, it's the companions of those in the form of teachers that are the problem. These unfaithful companions have taught that what books are in the Bible and what books are not in the Bible was decided by some men in robes that met in a council years ago and long after the Bible was written. How did these people decide what books were in the Bible and what books weren't. How do we know that they got it right?

After all, they're fallible people. Maybe they got it wrong. That's what unfaithful companions who corrupt the history of the Bible say. These people surround themselves with companions who say that since we don't have the original autographs of the word of God, then we have to determine what words God spoke from a bunch of manuscripts that all disagree with each other. And these companions that say these things are very learned in all the ancient and original languages.

And they believe things like that the scribes who copied the manuscripts made unintentional errors and that they made intentional errors and added things to the text or to clarify it, to make it more understandable, or even to make the text say something slightly different because They didn't think it was quite right. They corrected the text. They amended it. Maybe they wanted to add something to what was there, or minimize something that they didn't like. These people surround themselves with companions who say that the manuscripts of which we have the most copies are not old they're not the oldest and therefore because of course the scribes are going to alter the text These more new manuscripts are not as reliable.

And it's these old manuscripts that are more reliable. And those are the ones that we need to use, not the more recent ones, because they've all been corrupted. But see, all this is unbiblical thinking. But when you surround yourself with this unbiblical thinking, what do you suppose happens? People renounce the faith.

If you start with thinking that is contrary to the scriptures, you will never get to the truth. If you start With a false premise, your conclusion is going to be false. We have to start with true presuppositions in order to reach true conclusions. And Where do we get true presuppositions? We have to get them out of the only source of truth there is, which is the Word of God.

So we first need to recognize that the Bible contains all of the divine words that are needed to know how to glorify God in every area of faith and life. Every area. No exceptions. No exceptions. Nothing beyond the Bible can be used to settle doctrine or to speak authoritatively to how we can glorify God in faith and in life.

Now that doesn't mean we can't read other books, but we're reading them to understand and better understand what the Bible says. But ultimately the Bible is the only authority. And God is true even if that makes every man a liar. The Bible is sufficient to thoroughly equip us for every situation. It contains all that we need to know to answer any question about right or wrong, truth and error, good and evil.

How do we know this? The Bible tells us so. Since the Bible then is the only is the ultimate authority and the only authority about everything, then only God can identify His Word. So we must look to the infallible Word of God to learn what God has put into his word and what he has not. Now, you might be thinking, wasn't that circular reasoning?

Isn't that circular reasoning? No, it isn't. First, it's not circular reasoning because any ultimate authority is circular in nature. If it wasn't, it would cease to be the ultimate authority. Think about that a minute.

Any ultimate authority is by its very nature of being ultimate, Circular in nature. Circular in nature. If you appeal to something other than the ultimate authority, to prove your ultimate authority is the ultimate authority, you have just disproved your ultimate authority. Because whatever authority you appealed to over here to prove what you're trying to prove, that becomes then the ultimate authority. If you appeal to something outside the Scriptures to prove that the Scriptures are the ultimate authority, then whatever outside standard over here you're looking to, to prove the Scriptures, then you're putting that authority over the Scriptures.

And therefore the Scriptures cease to be the ultimate authority. When God made a promise to Abraham In Hebrews 6.13 it says that because God could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself. So that by two immutable things, this fact might be established. Secondly, if we appeal to an authority outside of the scriptures, then we no longer have a consistent circle of truth. And by that I mean with a true and coherent system, you should be able to argue in a logically consistent way and get back to where you started from.

If you start somewhere and you argue in a logically consistent way and end up somewhere else that contradicts where you started, then you don't have a coherent system of truth. And see, if you start with the Bible and you wanna prove that the Bible is the ultimate authority and you go over here to somewhere else, then that becomes the ultimate authority. But let's say you successfully proved the Bible using this other thing. Well, the Bible says it's the ultimate authority. So now you have an inconsistency.

You started here and you got somewhere else. There's a problem with your system. It's not true. If you have a true system, you can reason logically and get back to where you started. Now, also, logic is not appealing to an outside authority because logic is taught in the scriptures.

Where do we learn logic? In the scriptures. How do we know all these different logical fallacies? Because they're taught in the scriptures. So we go to the scriptures and embedded in the scriptures everywhere we look is logic.

Where do we get the axioms for math? Out of the Bible. Every single one. Because the Bible is the foundation for all authority. So, if we come back to the history of the Scriptures, how do we know what books are in the canon and what books are not?

Well, we look to the Scriptures. And we find that God canonizes the Scriptures the moment they are written. And there are examples of this throughout the Bible. If we have to look to some group of men over here and ask them, well, what books are in the Bible? Or If we have to look to some group of men over here and ask them, well, what books are in the Bible?

Or if we have to look to the church to determine what is in the Bible and what isn't, then we've elevated that group of men or the church over the Word of God. Arbitrary rules like, well, a book has to be from antiquity or it has to be written by an apostle, these aren't based on scripture and they ultimately fail. What about the scribes? The Bible says that they are they going to make errors and amend God's Word? Well some of them did but the Bible says that God will preserve His Word.

Not even one jot or one tittle will in no wise pass away. God will preserve his word. That's what the scriptures say. So when we approach the history of the Bible and how it's transmitted to us, that's what we must start with, that pre-subposition that God will preserve his word. That not one jot or tittle will pass away and so that we have God's Word without one jot or tittle having passed from it God knew about You know we don't we don't have to guess God knew about Fallible scribes who make mistakes and he knew about nefarious scribes who changed the word of God intentionally.

They're not an obstacle to God preserving His word any more than the walls of Jericho or the Red Sea or the Egyptian army were an obstacle to God delivering the children of Israel. That's what it means to say God is the Almighty God. What about the readings from the majority of manuscripts that aren't as old? Are these newer manuscripts true or not? These majority manuscripts?

Well, actually it turns out one of the corruptions of these companions of the history of the Bible is that these majority, so-called majority text readings are attested to from the very earliest times. See the church fathers would write and they would quote scripture. And sometimes they quoted from memory so they didn't quote it exactly, but we can look through their writings all the way back and we can find that they are using majority text readings. We can look at different church fathers and see that. So obviously the majority text readings existed back there, even if we don't have copies from back then.

And by the end of the third century, these majority text readings are actually the dominant ones. And actually it turns out that these, if your Bible ever has a note that says the oldest and best manuscripts, that generally, you can cross that out. It's generally talking about these old manuscripts that are kind of there was about five favorite manuscripts that are Considered to be the oldest and best and they're anything but oldest anything but best they are old But it's any they're anything but best I Can't we can't go into all the specifics here this morning It's There's way too many numbers and it's too tedious and I would get confused myself trying to read them to you. But just a couple quick examples. Two of these five favorite manuscripts that are what's referred to in your Bibles as the oldest and best, whatever it is that they want to say about them.

Two of those manuscripts are called Codex B and Aleph. Well, these two manuscripts disagree with themselves over 3, 000 times just in the Gospels. That means that every single verse there's a discrepancy between these two manuscripts. They're not the best manuscripts with that many errors in them. Copy Codex B has numerous copy errors.

Even our unfaithful companions who have corrupted the history of the Bible have acknowledged that the scribe of Codex quote reached by no means a high standard of accuracy. They're even saying it's not very accurate. What are they just saying? It's not a very good manuscript. A good manuscript would have very few errors.

If you're in your handwriting class and you have an assignment to write out, to transcribe a paragraph, and you make an error in every sentence is that do you get an a Or an F. You get an F Because you didn't you want a very good copyist you made a lot of errors If you're trying to get hired as a secretary and they give you a typing test and you make a lot of errors, like one error every verse, that's not a very good copyist, right? So these manuscripts, they're not very good. They're not the best. They're the worst, actually.

Maybe they're still existing only because nobody used them because they were so bad and they just happened to be existing in dry desert sands where they were preserved. The ones that were good were the ones that people used, and they got worn out, and they made new ones. Maybe that's what happened. Who are you listening to? Who are you listening to?

We need to be very careful of companions who would undermine our faith in the Word of God by teaching a false history about the Scriptures and leading us to making false presuppositions about the Scriptures. We need to have Jesus as our companion, as our friend. Jesus said he is a friend of his disciples, that he speaks to his disciples about his plans, about what he's going to do. And we are able to speak to Him in prayer. Is Jesus Christ your companion?

Do you spend time with Him? Do you spend time listening to Him? Do you spend time talking to Him? That's what you do with friends. You listen to them and you talk with them.

Is he in your company? Is he the one to whom you pour out your heart? He is a faithful friend. He's our elder brother. He's also the captain of our salvation.

And He is able, He is able to preserve us and to keep us from stumbling. We also need other companions. We need our companions that are here this morning. The brothers and sisters in the Lord. We're very important in each other's lives as companions.

When we are walking in that straight path, we can encourage others. And when we stumble, we can be encouraged and helped up by other of our brothers and sisters who are walking by the grace of God in that straight path. We need good companionship, faithful companions who will admonish us, who will encourage us, who will comfort us, who will counsel us. And that's what God has ordained through His church, through His bride. That we are nourished as one body jointly fit together by what every joint and ligament supplies.

That we are companions, one to another. Faithful companions, not gluttonous ones. You know, when we do wander off into those things, it's not just us that we wound, we wound, we wound the whole body. So may God grant us grace to be his companion, to listen to him, to speak with him, and to be companions one with another and encourage each other to faithfulness in that straight and narrow way. Let us pray.

Almighty Heavenly Father, we thank you for your church, for your bride, that you are perfecting. We thank you for the gifts that you have given to each in in this body. Gifts that are unique and different one to another. And we ask that we may use those gifts with faithfulness according to the grace that is given to us. Whether it's in showing mercy that we do it with cheerfulness, whether it is in ruling doing it with diligence, whether it is loving without duplicity, but freely.

In the many other gifts, Lord, that you have given, We ask for your grace to use them, to grow them, to develop them. And the ones that we are weaker in, or even lack, Lord, may we begin to develop those as well that we might be those who add to our faith virtue and to virtue knowledge and to knowledge self-control and self-control perseverance, and godliness, and brotherly kindness and love. We ask, Father, that you would sanctify us as individuals and that you would sanctify and strengthen and build us corporately as your church, as your bride. And give to us a greater love for each other, a greater connection together. We ask all this Father in your Son's name.

Amen.