In his sermon titled 'Taking Out the Trash,' Peter Allison explores Proverbs 25, focusing on the necessity of removing the non-useful elements from our lives, both in a spiritual and societal context. He draws a parallel between the refining of silver, where impurities must be removed for the metal to be useful, and the removal of wickedness for a kingdom to thrive. Allison emphasizes the role of civil leaders in upholding righteousness by eliminating wicked influences, and cites historical examples of societies that suffered due to the rejection of God's law. He extends this principle to the church, advocating for spiritual discipline and the purging of sinful behaviors. On a personal level, Allison encourages individuals to rid themselves of negative influences and unbiblical thinking, advocating for a life aligned with God's teachings. He concludes by underscoring the importance of faith-filled thoughts and actions, urging believers to replace faithless thinking with biblical truths to live a life blessed by God.

Proverbs chapter 25. I'd like to read verses. I'd like to read the first five verses. We'll be looking at verses four and five. These are the Proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied.

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings to search out a matter. As the heavens for height and the earth for depth, so the heart of kings is unsearchable. Take away the dross from silver and it will go to the silversmith for jewelry. Take away the wicked from before the king and His throne will be established in righteousness. May Jehovah's merciful kindness comfort us according to His word to His servants.

Almighty Heavenly Father, thank You for preserving Your Word through thousands of years. Your providence is amazing to us. And thank you for bringing it to us this morning. May our hearing be mixed with faith. May you sanctify these sinful lips, that they may proclaim what is holy, what is true, and what is beautiful, about you our Savior.

In Jesus' name, Amen. Take away the dross from the silver and it will go to the silversmith for jewelry. Take away the wicked from before the king and his throne will be established in righteousness. This is a, this last couplet, this last parable or proverb completes a little section here dealing with the civil magistrate. But really this whole section, this last part of the book, focuses on the civil magistrate and civil kings and rulers.

And so this is establishing here a principle that Non-useful material, non-useful things have to be separated from the useful material for the useful material to be useful. Non-useful material has to be separated from the useful material for the useful material to be useful. That's maybe a tongue twister. But we could think of it in a simple way. We might call this the taking out the trash principle.

We can all understand that. Taking out the trash principle. We all know we have to take out the trash. What happens if we don't take out the trash? And if we don't do it frequently?

That thing in our kitchen just overflows onto the floor and it just very quickly gets to be quite a mess. We have to take out the trash. And that's the principle here. It's developed, it's illustrated, from the refining of precious metals. You have to take away the trash from the silver for the silver to be useful.

For it to be useful as an ornament, for it to be useful as something of beauty, for it to be useful as a medium of exchange. God, I think, has ordained silver and gold to be those metals that are perfectly designed, perfectly, their qualities are perfectly suited to being used as metal and in fact are being used as money and in fact in The history of the world gold and silver have been used as money now man Recently has tried to use other things as money, but doesn't look like it's succeeding very well. But for these things, for gold and silver to be useful as money, you have to take out the trash of the silver. You have to purge it, you have to purify it, you have to refine it, and remove the non-useful material. Silver doesn't just exist as a big lump of silver in the ground, you know that probably.

It exists combined with other things like sulfur, or arsenic, or intiminy, or chlorine. And we have to take this stuff out of the ground, this ore that we call it, it may be alloyed with other metals like copper or lead and we have to refine it. We have to take all this other stuff out in order for it to be useful to us. In fact, It's even more significant with gold. There might only be one or two or three or four, a few grams of gold in a whole ton of dirt.

And that's a lot of removal, a ton, thousands of pounds, to get a couple grams of gold. That's a lot of work, and that's a lot of the cost that goes into refining. It's all taking away this non-useful material so that we can have, as the text says, you can have something that you can give to the silversmith so that he can make an object of beauty. God is the one who has created beauty, even in the tabernacle days. God instructed Moses that the tabernacle was to be made with gold and silver.

In fact, gold was even woven into the threads, into the garments of the priests. Now why? Well, it was for glory and for beauty. You don't need to have gold in your clothes so that they cover you or so that they last long. The purpose of the gold in the clothes was for glory and for beauty.

The purpose of giving silver to a silversmith is to make beautiful ornaments, is to craft fine instruments. And for beauty, God has created beauty. But in order to have that beauty we have to have the trash removed from the silver. And so this principle, having established this principle in something that we obviously understand, this silver, he then applies this principle to kings and to governments. And we want to apply it in a few more places as well.

I want to follow Jesus' example in Luke and in Matthew. In Luke, Jesus applies the very next proverb, verses 6 and 7. Jesus applies that proverb about standing in the presence of a king. He applies it to a wedding feast. And so following Christ's example and how to apply these proverbs, we want to apply this principle of taking out the trash in several other areas as well, besides the civil realm.

But the text first of all applies this to the civil realm. Take away the wicked from before the king and the throne will be established in righteousness. The parallel is obvious, isn't it? Just like you have to take the trash away from the silver, for the silver to be useful, you have to take the trash away from a kingdom in order for a kingdom to be established. You have to take the wicked.

You have to remove the wicked from before the presence of a king. It is the duty, it's the God-ordained duty of the civil magistrate to remove the wicked from the land, to bring God's wrath on those who do evil and remove them. Because if the wicked are not removed from the land by the king, God will do it. The land, the Bible says, will vomit out the wicked inhabitants if the king does not remove them. A wise king proverb says, sifts out the wicked and brings the threshing wheel over them.

In our country, there was a very deliberate rejection of the law of God, which is the standard of truth. It's the standard of righteousness. How do we define who is wicked that needs to be removed out of the land versus the people that are good? How do we define good and evil? Well, I hope every one of us knows, from the smallest of us, that that is defined by the Word of God, the law of God, and the law of God alone is the standard.

And so in our land, that law of God was removed. Our laws were changed to remove the law of God from being the standard in them. And what do you suppose happened starting in the 1960s, starting in the early 1960s, as that was done across this country, as God's law was ignored, rejected, written out of our codes and statutes, justified by wicked science. They're called scientific research of Kinsey, which was in itself not only wicked but criminal. Well, but just what you would expect.

We saw the ascendancy of violent crime in this country. You can Google it. It's a very obvious known fact. Crime tripled. The rate of crime, not the number of crimes, but the rate, the number of crimes per people.

So I'm talking about, that means the numbers went up even faster. The rate of crime went up by a factor of Three. Three times more crime. So that in just 20 years, between the late 60s and the 1980s, crime went up by a factor of three. The right of free speech, the First Amendment in our Constitution, which was intended to be a chain, binding down the civil magistrate from exercising authority that he didn't have, That is, stopping people from saying things critical of the civil magistrate.

That's the purpose of the First Amendment. That and the right to speak the truth of God's word, the free exercise of religion. That right was used to allow all manner of wicked speech. Well, that's protected. You can't stop me from saying that.

Well, That's not what that constitutional amendment was there for. It's not there to allow all manner of criminal speech, wicked speech. And lawyers know that, right? They'll all say, well, The First Amendment doesn't mean you can go into a crowded theater and shout fire. You don't have free speech to do that.

Why? Because that's wrong. That's wicked speech. But they redefined what's wicked and what's evil to allow all manner of other kinds of wicked speech to be said. Things that ought to have been treated like shouting fire in a crowded theater.

Wicked speech like that was allowed in other areas. And what happens? The wicked are emboldened to begin acting out the things that they are saying. The Fourth Amendment was used to restrict the ability of law enforcement to remove violent criminals. The right to be free from warrantless searches and seizures was used to tie the hands of police in legitimate circumstances.

And so criminals were set free and allowed to go free. That should have been removed. And so the obvious result of that is a rise in crime. In fact, the court at one point held, and you've probably heard the word Miranda rights, that's a trial, that's a case that went to the Supreme Court, where some criminal claimed that because the police didn't tell him he had a right to remain silent, therefore, All the evidence that they collected from him was invalid evidence. Well, that's absurd.

It's baloney. Just because the police don't tell you that you have the right to remain silent, doesn't mean that everything that they collect from you is therefore invalid evidence. And yet many criminals were released and were not removed under the guise of protecting their rights, the Miranda rights. So you've probably heard that in any of the television shows, repeat these Miranda rights, you have the right to remain silent and so on. And so that caused the police to be put in an extremely precarious position.

They were supposed to be removing the wicked from society, but they were hamstrung by judges and people from doing so. And so, predictably, a dramatic rise in crime, due to not removing the wicked from the land. Public outcry occurs. People can't walk down the street without being attacked, without being robbed or raped or murdered. So people start owning guns to defend themselves.

The police started becoming militarized, right? Because people are crying out for protection, protect us. So the police respond, they become militarized, they become tyrannical in seeking to enforce the law against increasingly wicked people. Peace is only possible among a righteous people. And where you have people that have no self-government, to rule over their own passions and their own bodies, then that law has to be imposed externally upon them.

It will become tyrannical. There's no other way around it. So now the police become militarized and tyrannical in their enforcement. And of course that results in the backlash that we are seeing today then. From police who have been put in an impossible position who respond by becoming militarized and tyrannical, now the people are upset at the tyranny of the police.

And there is a lot of tyranny. But we have to remember, we're the ones who made it happen. Proverbs 29-12 says, if a ruler pays attention to lies, all of his servants become wicked. Wicked rulers reproduce themselves. Wicked leaders reproduce themselves.

We just have to look at Deuteronomy 28. I know I mentioned in a lot of thought it would take a minute to just glance through a few of the things that it talks about. It starts in verse 15, It shall come to pass, if you don't obey the voice of the Lord. We don't obey the voice of the Lord. We ignore His commandments and His precepts, and the wicked are not removed from the land, then the land is not established.

The kingdom is not established. God says to them, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all his commandments and his statutes, which I command you today, that these curses will come upon you." And then it begins to list a number of curses. Cursed will you be in the city and in the country. Curse will be your basket and your kneading bowl. Your food supply will be contaminated.

What do we see today with a contaminated food supply? First it was pesticides, now it's genetically modified things. There's a big outcry against that. There's concerns about the contamination of our food supply. Curse will be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle.

The Lord will send on you confusion and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do until you are destroyed. The Lord will make plagues to cling to you until you are consumed from the land. The Lord will strike you with inflammation, with severe burning fever, with consumption, with mildew, and these shall pursue you until you perish. Your heavens, the heavens which are over you will be bronze. The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies.

You will go out one way and against them and flee seven ways before them and you will become troublesome to the kingdoms of the earth. Your carcasses will be food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth and no one shall frighten them away. The Lord will strike you with boils of Egypt, with tumors, with scab, with itch, from which you cannot be healed. The Lord will strike you with madness, and blindness, and confusion of heart. And you will grope at Noonday as a blind man gropes, and you won't prosper in your ways.

You will be plundered continually and no one will save you." And it's just getting started. This goes on and on at great length. Your sons And your daughters shall be given to another people, and your eyes will look and fail with longing for them all the day, because there is no strength. The nation that you have not known shall eat the fruit of your land and the produce of your labor, and you will be oppressed and crushed continually. The Lord will bring you and the king whom you set over you to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known.

You will carry much seed to the field but gather little in. You will plant vineyards but you won't eat of them. The alien who is among you will rise higher and higher and higher above you, and you should come down lower and lower. He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He will be the head, and you will be the tail.

Moreover, all these curses will come upon you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded today. Because you did not serve the Lord with joy and gladness of heart for the abundance of everything, therefore you will serve your enemies, whom the Lord will send against you in hunger and thirst and nakedness. And He will put a yoke of iron on your neck until He has destroyed you. They will besiege you at your gates. You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy will distress you.

The sensitive and the very refined man among you will be hostile toward his brother, toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the rest of his children whom he leaves behind, so that he will not give them any of the flesh of his children whom he will eat, because he has Nothing left in the siege and the desperate straits at your gates. The tender and delicate woman among you who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her delicateness and sensitivity, will refuse to the husband of her bosom and to her son and to her daughter that which comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears, for she will eat them secretly for lack of everything in the siege and the desperate straits which your enemy shall distress you at all your gates." That's what the Lord says happens to those who do not remove the wicked from their midst. Thankfully We haven't seen the extent of the judgment that is described there, but we see many of the things beginning. The answer is to turn back to the Lord and to begin to proclaim His crown rights as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

That it's His law is the only standard of truth and righteousness. We as the church and as Christians have to cease being ashamed of the commandments of God's law. The ones that seem extreme to us are there for our own good, because they too all reflect the character of our loving God and Heavenly Father. Now this principle of taking out the trash, removing the wicked from the land from before the king so that the throne is established in righteousness, it applies in the church as well. Paul told the Corinthian church a little leaven leavens the whole lump.

A little leaven leavens the whole lump. Therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump since you are truly unleavened he told that he said that to the Quintian Church in the midst of their allowing a wicked person to continue living in their midst Somebody who was living with his father's wife, whether it was his mother or not, doesn't matter. This was a wrong thing. And apparently the church knew about it and the church did nothing to stop it. Paul said, your glorying isn't good.

Don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? That there is a necessity for church discipline to remove and cast out those who scoff, those who mock at the law of God, those who are eleven that would lead God's people astray. Israel in the Old Testament did not complete or take the conquest of Canaan because they didn't believe God's promises. They didn't obey his voice. Instead, they listened to the ten negative voices of the spies that didn't believe God's word.

They allowed this leaven to remain in their midst, And because of their word, they lost faith. And they were unable then to go into the promised land. God made them wander in the wilderness for forty years, so that they would learn to believe His word and not the word of people who didn't believe the Lord. But it also applies in our own life as well. This principle of taking out the trash.

Just like in our homes, we have to take the trash out of our kitchens, and our bathrooms, and our garages, or they become overwhelmed. We have to have that same principle. It's true in our own lives. Sins can become bosom sins. We can't expect to live in the power of the Holy Spirit if we allow these bosom sins to remain with us, these besetting sins.

If we do not put them off, put them to death, and push them out of our life. The Proverb says, can a man take fire to his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be seared? Those are obviously rhetorical questions. Of course not.

Well, in the same principle then, we can't allow these sins, these bosom sins, these besetting sins to continue on in our life and not be ruined because of them. Or friends. Paul told the Corinthians as well, do not be deceived. You know, the Corinthian church in some ways was in a culture like ours today. It was a very immoral culture.

It was actually probably far worse than our culture today. But Paul was teaching the Corinthian church, instructing them how to live in such a culture. Do not be deceived, he told them. Evil company corrupts good habits. If we allow this evil company in our lives, it will corrupt us.

That doesn't mean we don't witness to those, or don't associate with those that we deem beneath us, it's talking about taking them into our life and being friends with people that are evil. Evil company corrupts good habits. Not talking about where we go to witness where we go as light and salt, but it's speaking about those that we allow into our lives as friends, as people that we trust and spend time with. Especially for children in their younger years, this is especially important. Evil company corrupts good habits.

Do not be deceived, Paul said. Take away the wicked from before the king and the throne will be established in righteousness. If it's not, if we don't, it's destroyed. Also, entertainment, the music, the books, the movies, these things, if we don't remove that which is trash, that which is contrary to the Word of God, that which is against the law of God. We cannot expect our life to be established.

We cannot expect the Lord to bless what we are doing, to bless our families, to prosper the work of our hands if we aren't removing the wickedness out of our lives in these areas. But One of the biggest areas where I think this principle applies that we need to take away the dross is in our thinking. You see, unbiblical thinking kills faith, and it draws us to failure. Because unbiblical thinking will work its way into not only our words, but also what we do. And so we have to be very vigilant to remove from us, to take away unbiblical thinking.

The thoughts of the righteous are right, the proverb says. The tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly, but the mouth of fools pours forth foolishness. And that foolishness that's pouring forth is coming from thoughts that have been allowed to dwell in our minds, just like trash that's allowed to dwell in the kitchen and not be removed. Job said, the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me. Proverbs 10 says, the fear of the wicked will come upon him, and the desire of the righteous will be granted.

See, the Fear of the wicked, the things that they are thinking about will come upon them. Job said, the thing that I thought about, the thing that I was most afraid of has come upon me. God told the Israelites, you have feared the sword and I will bring a sword upon you, says the Lord God." See, foolish speaking, which is the opposite of speaking the wisdom of God's word, yields a foolish life. Faithless thoughts result in faithless speech, and faithless speech leads to faithless action. What do I mean by bad thinking?

Well, in the Navy we had something called The 50-50-90 rule. That if there was a 50% chance of being right or wrong, if you could do A or B, there's a 50% chance of being right or wrong, then 90% of the time you will pick the wrong choice. I called that the 50-50-90 rule. Well, that's an example of bad thinking. That's a corollary to Murphy's Law that says if something can go wrong, it will.

That's an example of really bad thinking. It's faithless thinking. If something can go wrong, it will. I know I've thought that at times too. And you think, well, you're wise because you have this knowledge and if it goes wrong, you knew it would go wrong, because that's Murphy's Law.

It's not good thinking. It's trash thinking. It's unbiblical thinking. We need to say instead that our God is an amazing God. And He can make the sun stand still if that's what He needs to do.

If that's what his people need. He can keep people from getting burned in the fire. A fire that's so hot it burns up anybody that comes near it. People can walk around in that fire and not be burned by the power of God. We need to recognize that everything that happens happens by the decree of God.

Everything that happens, everything that comes to pass, comes to pass because God has ordained it. And if all the wheels are falling off our chariots, maybe we need to look to the Lord. Instead of saying, well, if something can go wrong at will, Maybe we need to ask the Lord, Lord, what's going wrong here? Where am I missing Your precepts? Where have I strayed from the path of wisdom?

Maybe the Lord is seeking to teach us patience or perseverance, or maybe He will show to us where we have strayed, and that what we are experiencing isn't just Murphy's Law, if it can go wrong, it will, but rather the fruit of our own unwise actions that we maybe ignorantly didn't realize were wrong. We might say all manner of things like we might think, well, I'm incompetent. Or I'm mistake prone. That's why mistakes happen. I'm just mistake prone.

That's not biblical thinking. It's the Lord that can teach our fingers to do whatever it is that they need to do. And so instead of saying, well, I'm just a mistake prone or I'm incompetent, we need to say, Lord, teach me. Teach my fingers to hold things. Teach my mind to have discernment, grant to me a perseverance to try again to learn to do something.

Or we might think, well, it's just the way I am. Instead of thanking the Lord that He has made us new creatures in Jesus Christ, and that His mercies are new to us, new every day. We might think that we are just depressed, Instead of saying that, no, the Lord has defeated Satan. The Lord has overcome this world. And in this world we will have tribulation, but be of good cheer.

Jesus said, I have overcome the world. We might excuse ourselves by saying, I'm too shy, or I'm too weak, or I'm too timid. Instead of thinking biblically that God says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Moses had that thought, That I'm too timid, I'm too shy. I can't do what you're calling me to do.

And what was God's answer to him? I made the mouth. I made your mouth. I can give your mouth the ability to do what I'm calling you to do. But see, negative thinking, faithless thinking, trash thinking is that I can't, I'm too incompetent, I'm too un-eloquent, I'm too timid.

I'm too timid. Sometimes we might want to blame the way we are on family, on inheritance, on our genetic disposition. That's just the way I am, don't you know it? Italians are this, or Germans are that, or Irish are this. Instead of remembering that, we've been crucified in Christ.

And it is no longer we who live, but Christ lives in us. And the life which we now live in the flesh, We live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us. There is no more Jew nor Gentile in that sense. There is no more of that old nature in us either, not in Christ. And not when we affirm by faith what God has said is true about us, that we are new creatures in Christ.

We have a new heart. We might think that nobody loves us. Instead of remembering what God has told us is that I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. That He has said, I love you with an everlasting love.

God has said to us, I love you as my people with an everlasting love. And isn't His love worth far more than anyone else? Isn't His love worth more than what all the world might hate us. We might think that we can't figure something out, that it's beyond our ability, or that we don't have any wisdom. But that would be, again, trash thinking, unfaithful thinking.

Because God says, God tells us in the book of James that if anyone asks wisdom, let them ask of God, And God gives to all liberally, without uprating, without reproach. You might think that we can't manage everything that God has put in our laps. Sometimes I find myself thinking that, I can't do all this. We forget. I forget at that moment what Paul told the Philippians.

I can do all things. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So we need to learn, I think, as the people of God, to remove, to push away, to remove from our thinking this faithless and unbiblical thinking, and to replace it with faithful thinking, to replace it with thoughts that are true, with thoughts that are from the Word of God. And to... Because out of those thoughts, out of thinking that's faithful to the Word of God, will flow words that praise God, words that affirm what is right and good.

And out of that heart then will flow in abundance a river of living water that will flow out of us as we continue to remove what is wrong and unbiblical and unfaithful in our thinking, and to fill our minds and our thinking by the truth of the Word of God, out of us will flow a river of living water. May it be so. Heavenly Father, we thank you that we do not need the psychologists of our day to tell us that we are, they're okay and we're okay. We thank you Lord that You have given to us the truth of Your Word that says that we are not okay, but that You have made us in Christ new creatures. That You have loved us with an everlasting love.

That You are with us. That You are able to provide for our every need. You are able to make deaf ears hear and dumb mouths speak and blind eyes see and ignorant hearts have wisdom. And you are able to make the lame jump and leap. And you are able to justify and beautify those who were once wicked and once your enemies.

Lord, we thank you that you have done this, that you have washed us. We thank you that you know us. We thank you for your Holy Spirit that teaches us, that leads us. And we want, Lord, with all of our heart, with all of our soul, mind, and strength, to know You, to have fellowship and communion with You, to walk with you, to be led by you, to choose according as your spirit would lead us. Father, thank you for the great riches that are ours through Christ.

Thank you that all things are possible with you. We thank you that despite our faithfulness that you love us, and thank you for your work not only in us but also through us. That we who are imperfect are able by your grace to do works that will endure for eternity because it is not us but you that is working in us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.