In the sermon titled 'Two Requisite Responses When Sinners Entice,' Peter Allison explores Proverbs 1, emphasizing two critical responses to sinful enticements: do not consent and do not walk with sinners. Sin is often alluring, presented with promises of enlightenment, security, and wealth, but these promises mask deeper consequences. The sermon uses the analogy of a small line being shot between ships to illustrate how consent to sin begins with a single thought, which can lead to a larger commitment to sin. Allison identifies three components of sin: living by the wrong standard, for the wrong goal, and with the wrong motive, emphasizing the importance of adhering to God's word. The sermon warns against being enticed by sinners who live contrary to God's commands, pursue wealth over godliness, and are motivated by greed. Through biblical and historical examples, it illustrates that sinners often fall into their own traps, highlighting the self-destructive nature of sin. The sermon concludes by urging believers to trust in God's moral order and to engage in productive, godly endeavors.

Proverbs 1, our scripture reading begins verse 10. Here are the words of the Lord, My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. If they say, Come with us, let us lie in wait to shed blood. Let us lurk secretly for the innocent, without cause. Let us swallow them alive like sheol, and whole like those who go down to the pit.

We shall find all kinds of precious possessions. We shall fill our houses with spoil. Cast in your lot among us. Let us all have one purse. My son, Do not walk in the way with them.

Keep your foot from their path, for their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed blood. Surely, in vain, the net is spread in the sight of any bird, but they lie in wait for their own blood. They lurk secretly for their own lives. So are the waves of everyone who is greedy for gain. It takes away the life of its owners.

The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Almighty Father, please teach us, instruct us through your Word and by your Spirit this morning. You have done this, You have chosen a vessel of clay that the glory may belong to you. Father, we look expectantly to you this morning to be fed. In Jesus name we pray amen.

We get a lot of phone calls that are seeking to sell something or persuade us one way or the other. So many that my wife just turned off the phone recently. But I have never answered one of those calls and heard, Hi Mr. Allison, this is a sinner and we'd like to entice you. No I never have heard a call like that.

And I don't really ever expect to get one. The Bible says, my son, if sinners entice you, these enticements are never plainly stated like that. They rarely entice you, or they rarely come to us with the evil that they plan to do. Sinners entice us with the fun they plan to have. They entice us with the riches they plan to acquire.

They entice us with the benefits that they want to give, they want to offer. Sin is made alluring. Sin is made exciting. Sin is made enlightening. The enlightened person.

Wouldn't you like to be enlightened? Wouldn't you like to leave the unenlightened things that your parents taught you, that you learned in Sunday school, and learn about new and improved and better ways of doing things. Things that are more exciting than the life you know at home. I actually did come across articles like that, not written in this age, but written in two generations ago. Brock Chisholm, the first Secretary of the World Health Organization of the UN, wrote an article much like that, believe it or not.

But not today. You won't find anybody writing something like that today. No, if we're going to identify the enticement of sinners, we need to look beyond the immediate and the apparent. And we need to consider the consequences upon the objects of our actions. Henry Hazlett in his book, Economics in One Lesson, doesn't say one easy lesson, but it's one lesson, to give us the story of the urchin who breaks a window in the store.

If you've ever read the book, you know this story because it's the basis of the whole book. But he gives the story of this urchin who breaks the window of a bakery. And a crowd gathers around this vandalism, this excitement, And they begin to talk to one another and think, And initially, they think, oh, what a scoundrel. Who would do such a thing like this? How terrible.

But then somebody suggests, well, this will provide some work for the glazier, for the window man. He's going to have a job now. He's going to get a call, can you come fix my window? It's business for him. This opportunity, this event is business for the window man.

And if it's business for the window man, then it's going to be business for the glass makers and the factory that makes the glass. They're going to have more glass to sell. They've increased the demand for glass. And Isn't demand for goods and services what makes our economy strong? People start thinking, yeah, that's right.

There's going to be some more money being spent in town. That's going to be good for our economy. Well, maybe this guy isn't so bad after all. Maybe it's a stimulus to our economy. Now, it's absurd to think of it like that.

And yet that's exactly the way we look at many things. And, Hazel's point with that story is that we have to look at the hidden consequences, not the apparent consequences. You have to look behind the whitewash to see what's behind. You have to scrape it away and look at what's underneath. You have to look at the unintended consequences.

What about the baker, who now has to spend a hundred dollars he didn't intend to spend. That was a hundred dollars that he was going to buy a new suit with. And now the tailor is out business that he was going to get. And so on. And you see that there is just as big of consequences that are obscured, that are hidden.

Negative consequences that completely cancel out all the supposed benefits and on top of that at the end of the day is the most obvious benefit that the baker after he spent his hundred dollars does not have his suit anymore. He only has what he started with at the beginning of the day, which is a fixed window. He's now $100 shorter. You see, we must, if we're going to identify the sinners as they entice us, we need to look at the consequences to the objects of their actions. And those consequences are given to us in three ways.

They are the three components, the three legs to the Sin stool You know about three-legged milk stool. Well, there are three legs to the sin stool And the first is these sinners live by the wrong standard. They live contrary to the Word of God. What they want to do is contrary to what God has commanded us to do. They live by the wrong standard.

If they say, come With us, let us lie in wait to shed blood, let us lurk secretly for the innocent without cause. Let us swallow them alive like sheol and whole, like those who go down to the pit. This is an enticement to do what God has forbidden. It's contrary to the standard, which is the law of God. Now they don't come and say it in these bold-faced words, but if we look at the consequences of the objects of their actions, then this is what we find.

Violation of the law of God. Sinners entice by making it alluring. They come to us and say, now wouldn't you like to be secure in your old age? Wouldn't you like to have provisions for food? Wouldn't you like not to be dependent upon your children?

Or wouldn't you like not to have to care for mom and dad when they're old and can't care for themselves? Well, we can do that for you. It's called social security. And if you Give us a little money now, not a lot, just a little bit, then we'll take care of that for you. And you won't have to be bothered with your parents, your mom and dad when they get old.

We'll take care of that. You give us a little money, we'll take care of that problem for you. And you can be free to live a pleasurable life unencumbered by that burden doesn't that sound alluring but look at the consequences on the objects of that action. Mom and dad now die in a hospital away from the presence of their family Mom and Dad Grandma and Grandpa aren't are in the home of their grandchildren They're in a nursing home And all of the wisdom that grandma and grandpa have is lost to the next generation. They're out doing their thing.

Dance lessons, soccer. Where did soccer moms come from? Keeping the kids busy. The children lose out on an opportunity to serve. They lose out on opportunity to provide care, on a sanctifying experience.

The Bible commands grandparents to teach their grandchildren. It commands us to care for our parents. It commands parents to leave an inheritance for their children, their children's children. Not to give it to the government to ensure their social security. But you see, that was the message that came to our parents, our grandparents, my grandparents, maybe your great-grandparents.

The enticement of sinners. And look at the horrific consequences that it's had on subsequent generations. And look at the blight that it's caused on families today. The wealth that's stolen away, never to be seen again. Because now we're being told that this whole institution is about ready to collapse, that it can't fulfill the enticing promise that it made two generations ago, and really never has ever fulfilled.

Who's ever done very well living on Social Security? We could go on and on and on all the rest of today talking about the many and varied enticements of sinners to sin. But I give that as just one of many, many, many examples that could be offered of the way sinners come to us to entice us to do evil, to entice us away from following the Word of God. To package it in such a way that the sin is whitewashed over. And to suggest, just like that crowd did at the urchin that threw the window, through the baker, that maybe that was really what was in fact an act of vandalism, of theft, was in fact a stimulus to the economy.

The Federal Reserve is another example of a program that was sold to the American people as a way to ensure the stability of the economy when it was nothing more than a way to steal back the wealth of the people in a way in a form in a manner that that one man said not one man in a million can understand or diagnose And yet today we are quite free, or quite oblivious, to the theft on which those notes in our wallet are based, and the fraud that it perpetrates upon us as we use them. Secondly, we know sinners because they live by the wrong standard, contrary to the Word of God. We know sinners also because they live for the wrong goal. Verse 13, we shall find, come with us they say. We shall find all kinds of precious possessions.

We shall fill our houses with spoil. Cast your lot among us. Let us all have one purse. Sinners live for the wrong goal, the accumulation of wealth and a life of ease. Sinners live for the wrong goal.

Our goal should be the glory of God. It should be the advancement of His Kingdom. Our goal in our life should be that His will is done on earth even as it is being done on heaven. It should be that His name gets the glory that is due to it. That he is acknowledged as the Lord, as the King, as the Creator, as the Sovereign, as the Ruler, and that his word is followed in the family, in the church, as well as in the civil government.

That should be the goal of our work, of our life. And of course, for those that are married, and that's God's call ordinarily for most people. That begins with our family. It begins with the mundane things of having children, changing diapers, washing clothes, feeding. If you have children in a family, you need to feed them.

It begins with doing those things and doing them well. It begins certainly with teaching our children the Word of God. Not just reading it to them once a day or twice a day, but teaching them the Word of God by our own actions, by our own example. As we live with our wife, our husband, as we live with our business partners, as we organize and prioritize our life, we're teaching our children. But then it extends beyond that as well, to everything that we do.

Paul said whether you eat or drink, even these seemingly little mundane things, do all to the glory of God. That's a question that we need to be asking the sinners though are saying asking the opposite how can we increase our wealth How can we live a life of ease? How can we improve our lot? The Lord promises to provide for our needs. And we certainly labor for that, and we certainly need to plan and prepare.

But our goal in Doing these things is not that we become wealthy. Our goal in doing these things is that we obey the Lord. Godliness with contentment is great gain, Paul told Timothy. And having food and clothes, we should be content. But those who desire to be rich, fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition." Where did all that come from?

The desire to be rich. The desire to be rich. That's what these sinners are expressing here. Let us find all kinds of precious possessions. We will Fill our houses with spoil of the people whose lives they have taken.

Cast your lot in among us. This is the offer to provide a family. Come with us. Let's have one purse. That's a family.

They're alluring here with the offer of camaraderie, with the offer of a certain community that extends to finances. But the purpose of it all is our own wealth. Let us fill our houses with spoil. The goal of our life is the possessions in our home, the power that we're able to exercise over other people. The ability to steal the wealth, or do it, steal it in a way that's morally or culturally acceptable.

Sinners like to make sin culturally acceptable and in every age there have been these culturally acceptable forms to sin. In one time, in this country, It was culturally acceptable to kill people, to murder them in cold blood. As long as you made it fair and you challenged them to a duel, and you did it at 25 paces, then you could murder people. And the law would let you get away with it. It didn't make it right.

But it was culturally acceptable. It's culturally acceptable today to kill your unborn baby. It doesn't make it right. It's still murder in the sight of God, but it's culturally acceptable. It's culturally acceptable today to steal in many different ways.

It doesn't make it right. But it has the appearance of acceptability. If you, you can take government money to eat by. That is money that was taken at gunpoint from people. Taxes are taken at gunpoint.

Stop paying them and you'll see what I mean. If you stop paying your property tax, the sheriff will show up at your house with a gun and sell your property and take the money. If you don't pay your income tax, the IRS thugs will show up at your house with a gun and take your property and sell it and take the money. Taxes are taken at gunpoint. If you use taxes for your to live, you are using money that has been stolen.

But it's wrong, but it's culturally acceptable. The Federal Reserve is based entirely upon theft. It creates money out of nothing. Well, you know, you can't do that. It's a way to get the wealth of other people, get the economic output of other people, without work.

A bank can make a loan without any money, and then they get the interest without working by the sweat of their brow for it. That's theft. The Federal Reserve lives that way. The federal debt is money that was created out of nothing, on which interest is paid. That's theft.

These Sinners entice us. We recognize it because they live by the wrong standard. They live by the wrong goal, that of accumulation of wealth. They do it by offering us the allurement of community, of acceptance in their gang of thieves you can be one of us will accept you maybe your parents don't accept you maybe your church doesn't accept you we will you come with us you give you make us one purse with us, and we'll accept you. That's alluring.

Solomon says, My son, do not consent. Sinners entice in one other, or the enticement of sinners is identified in one other way. And that is that they live by the wrong motive. They live by the wrong motive. Verse 19, So are the ways of everyone who is greedy for gain.

Greedy for gain. That's their motive, greed. Forgain, that's their motive greed Wisdom Has a different motive The wise live by a different motive. Those who fear the Lord, and remember that is the beginning of wisdom, walk in love as Christ also has loved us and given himself for us. That's the opposite of greed.

That's the opposite of a desire to, a motivation to accumulate ease and money. Walk in love as Christ has loved us and given Himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling aroma. Instead of greed, love means that we offer ourselves, our bodies, as living sacrifices. That we give of ourselves for the good of others, even as Christ loved us and gave himself for us that means our wealth is for to help others and If the Lord has blessed us as he has and and he does it's Isaac says that he Planted and reaped a hundredfold in one year. That was a blessing of the Lord.

The Lord poured out wealth upon him. What do you do with it when the Lord pours out his wealth upon you? We're to be motivated by love to God, which is to offer our bodies, to offer what we have as a living sacrifice. When sinners entice you, we need to look behind the surface allurement, the surface sheen, the pleasures, and to see what is beneath there. Are they living by the right standard?

Are they living for the right goal? And Are they living by the right standard? Are they living for the right goal? And are they living by the right motive? And when we find that sinners are enticing us, we are not to consent.

How do you go from a young man, a young woman, standing, having grown up in a path of righteousness to the house of sinners? How does that happen? Well, it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen because they call up and say, hey, would you like to come sin with us? It starts with thoughts.

Consent is the fruit, the result, of thinking something over and making a decision in your mind. That's consent. If this begins with a thought. It's a little like this. And thoughts as they are mature produce consent.

And Consent then goes on to produce sinfulness, consent to sin. It's a little like this. You have a big canyon with two mountains on either side. How do you get something across? How do you get a bridge across?

We had this situation in the Navy When you want to replenish a ship that's underway. Now it's a long trip to go back to port and take on fuel and food and supplies. Particularly fuel. How do you do it at sea? Well The Navy came up with a way of replenishing a ship underway while they're at sea, on the sea.

And so these two ships come alongside. Now how are you going to get the fuel line over? You know, the waves are high. You're not going to, and this line is heavy, you're not going to put somebody in there and swim of course. It starts by shooting a little line out of a gun.

Just a little fine line, a piece of very small rope. Shoot it across from one ship to the other. Now you've got a little line. And then when you have that little line, you tie a bigger rope onto that line, and you can then pull it back to the first ship. Now you have a rope between the ships.

Now that you have the big rope, now you can tie the heavy fuel lines and drag them back over to the second ship. And now you've got a connection, A big heavy fuel line between the two ships. And now you can start pumping fuel. And that's a little bit like how consent works. Consent is that thought.

That's the line that gets shot over first when you consent to sin. Matthew says that out of the heart proceed evil thoughts. Thoughts out of the heart. Jesus said, the things that go in don't defile us, they go in the stomach and are eliminated. Those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart and they defile a man for out of the heart proceed evil thoughts.

Those evil thoughts then become murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man. It's out of the heart. When sinners come to entice, do not consent. Do not think about it and ponder it and mull it over in your mind and consider the allurements and the pleasentries of what they are suggesting.

Sin begins in the heart when we consent to it. We're told not even to consent to sin when it's offered by our closest relatives. In Deuteronomy, Moses told the people of Israel talking about false prophets that arise in the land, saying they should be put to death. And he says in verse 6, if your brother, the son of your mother, your son or your daughter, the wife of your bosom or your friend who is as your own soul, secretly entices you, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which you have not known, neither you nor your fathers, of the gods or the people who are around you, near to you, or far off from you, from one of the earth to the other, you shall not consent to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him or conceal him, but you will surely kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people." That's how we have to handle the enticement to sin.

Do not consent to it. Do not think about it and meditate about it and ponder it. This is so important. This is the start of descent into sin, that consent. And that consent is the fruit of having thought about it.

Having just, even if you put it away, you take it off the shelf again, you think about it some more. You think, wouldn't it be nice? It's not really so bad. And we find all sorts of ways to justify the enticement of sin until we consent to it. Till we consent to it.

Solomon says, do not consent when sinners entice you. But he gives a second response as well. Do not consent to it and do not walk with sinners. Verse 15, my son, do not walk with them. So you notice the two commands here, the two things to remember from today's message, both prefaced by my son.

My son, do not consent when sinners entice, and My son, do not walk in the way with them. I often hear people say, well, the Bible never says you can't send your children to a government school. If you ever hear that, you can remember this verse right here. My son, do not walk in the way with them. Now what is it to send your children to walk all day with people who deny that God exists, who deny that God is the Creator, who ban the mention of His name except in vain, who teach all manner of immorality.

I mean, seriously, Is that not walking in the way of those who do evil? Is this not a command here? Do not walk in the way with them. See the evil doers think that people that do wrong just need education. They just need to be taught.

They just don't know. If we just tell them, then they'll do what's right. That's what Plato thought, but it's not what the Bible says. The Bible says that we are born speaking lies. That we go astray from the womb.

The gray from the womb, the poison of asps is under our lips. We don't just need education. We don't just need education. We need to not walk with sinners. This is the whole message of Psalm 1 that we sang this morning.

This uses the same word that's used in our text for sinner. It says, Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful. Don't walk with them. You see, sinners like a crowd. Because if they have a crowd of people all saying the same thing, it's easier to convince themselves That what they're doing is okay.

Sinners need other people to ease their guilt. If you get a crowd all saying something, it's a lot harder to resist. If the crowd is walking that way and you're with the crowd, you're going to walk that way. It takes a lot of courage to stand in the midst of a crowd and walk the other way. So if you have consented to go with sinners who entice, the Bible says don't walk with them.

Walk with him. Don't walk with him. Proverbs 16. A violent man entices his neighbor and leads him in a way that is not good. See the sinful want you to join them.

They're not content to do it by themselves. They want you with them and they will entice their neighbor. The violent entices his neighbor. And we are not to go with them, because bad company corrupts good morals. Bad company, evil company corrupts good morals.

It doesn't say that Good company converts bad morals. Does it? You don't read that anywhere. But you do read that bad company corrupts good morals. People who otherwise wouldn't have walked, stooped, committed evil, in the company of bad people, will do so.

And the more they do so, the more hardened they become in it. The Solomon gives us a very powerful motivation, not to consent to evil or to walk in the way with sinners. And that is to consider the consequences to ourselves if we do. Or to consider the consequences of our actions upon others or the objects of our actions in understanding and discerning what is evil. But in warning us away from evil, Solomon urges us to consider the consequences of that evil upon ourselves.

Because sin is very self-delusive. Sin is deceiving. Sin is deceiving. Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of a bird. What does that mean?

You can't set a trap for an animal right in front of them and expect them to fall for it. You can't go up and set that pen up in front of the pigs and expect them to fall for it. You have to set it in secret. You have to set the trap when they're not there and they can't see it. Or they will wisely avoid it.

In fact, sometimes they even avoid it when we think we set it in secret. But the sinner is different, Solomon says. The sinner is stupid. He's deceived. And unlike that bird that won't fall into the net if you spread it in front of the bird, the sinner lies in wait for their own blood and secretly lurks for their own life.

The sinner does not recognize the self-destructive consequences of their evil because sinners are deceived, they're stupid, they're deluded. The Bible is very clear that what a man sows, that will he reap. And the wicked do in fact dig their own grave. And that in going and consenting and walking with sinners, you're really consenting and walking to your own destruction. You think You're lying in wait for the blood of others.

It's your own blood, Solomon says, you're lying in wait for. You think you're plundering the estate of others. Solomon says it's your own estate that you're plundering. It's your own wealth that you're destroying. And there are just a number, a plethora of passages that provide this message.

The wicked brings forth iniquity, yes he conceives trouble and brings forth falsehood. He made a pit and dug it out and has fallen into the ditch which he made. His trouble shall return on his own head, " David says in Psalm 7. David says the same thing in Psalm 9. And Proverbs says the same thing in many places as well.

For the ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his paths. His own iniquities entrap the wicked man, and he is caught in the cords of his sin. He shall die for lack of instruction, and in the greatness of his folly he will go astray." But there's a whole book actually in the Bible that teaches this same message. You remember the story of Haman? The Persian prince who plotted the destruction of Mordecai, but he wasn't satisfied just with Mordecai.

He built a gallows, an immense gallows, 75 cubits high. Immense, very, very high. And he went to the king to ask for the life of Mordecai. And would you know, that very same night that he chose to go to the king had been a sleepless night, and Mordecai had called for the records and of the minutes, if you will, of the king's council. And he had them read to him in the hopes that he would fall asleep.

But what does he learn? That there was a plot against his life that was foiled by Mordecai. And he says, well, did anybody ever do anything for this guy? They said no. And so he's thinking there, and as he's thinking about this, lo and behold, Haman is at his door wanting to ask for the life of Mordecai.

But lo and behold, before he can ask his question, the king says, what should I do to honor a man? And Mordecai, thinking it would be him that he wants to honor lists all these things that he would love to have done to himself. And the king then says, go and do that to Mordecai. What a turn of events. And yet that's just the beginning of the pit that Haman dug into which he fell.

Because he had also been plotting for the destruction of the entire race of Jews. He wasn't satisfied just taking Mordecai's life. He wanted to kill them all and get their money. And he had already set that in motion. And Esther has planned a banquet because she wants to ask the king for her life.

And lo and behold, at the very days on which she has planned the banquet are the days that Haman has to walk a donkey, a horse, through the streets with Mordecai on its back, shouting, Thus it shall be done to the man whom the king delights to honor. And just as he gets home from this day of honoring the person he wanted to kill, he's reminded of this feast that he's invited to at the king's palace. Just him and the queen. And he thought he was something special. But it was at this feast, or the third one, that the king is told about his plot to destroy the Queen's people.

But he didn't realize that the Queen was one of the people he was seeking to destroy. And so when the Queen lays out this plot to destroy her people and herself, the king is furious that anyone would dare to want to destroy his queen and When he asked who who is plotting this evil? She simply points to Haman And at that point it was all over The king is so angry he storms out of the room and paces about his garden. And when he comes back in, he finds Haman hung over Esther, pleading for his life, and he's even more enraged. And then somebody suggests that maybe they could hang him on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai.

That is a graphic illustration of what Solomon is saying right here. The sinners, they make haste to shed blood. Their feet run to evil. But they're really lying in wait for their own blood, and they lurk secretly for their own lives. This enticement to sin.

When we consent and when we walk in that way, it's our own life that we're taking. It's our own wealth that we're destroying. It's our own destruction for which we're lying in wait. The same thing happened to Ahab. He thought that he could get Naboth's vineyard by killing him and taking it.

His wife did at least. And he enjoyed the fruit of her treachery. But God met him as he walked in that vineyard and said, just as the dogs have licked Naboth's blood, the dogs will lick your blood. And they did. He was killed by an archer who drew a bow at random and just shot it up into the air without any idea of where it was going.

It just happened to hit Ahab right between the joints of his armor. And he died. And they washed his chariot out and the dogs licked the blood. But for his wife, the one who plotted all that treachery against Naboth, the one who wrote the letters who had them get false witnesses against Naboth, it was even more gruesome. Jehu rode up to her castle and called up to the second floor where she was looking out the window with her painted face and said, Who is on my side?

Who is on the Lord's side? And when two men said they were, he said, Throw her out. And they threw her out. And he drove over her and went in to eat lunch. And when he came out to bury her body, there was nothing left there but the hands.

She was lying in wait for Naboth's blood and she thought she was getting it but she was really, the Bible says, lying in wait for her own blood. You remember Madeline Mary O'Hare? Madeline Mary O'Hare was the lady who in 1963 sued the government in Maryland because they were praying. And she brought the suit in the name of her son Bill O'Hare and she won and prayer was banned from the government schools just as Dabney predicted. Fast forward the clock.

This is a lady who moved to Austin and set up an atheist organization for which she received millions of dollars. She was the hero of the atheists in her day. She was the one who took on the government schools and won, and removed prayer from them. Just to give you an idea of how corrupt this lady was, she deliberately corrupted her son Bill, and forced him to, as a teenager, to sleep in the same bedroom with his girlfriend. She was a wicked woman.

She was so vile that nobody could last in employment in her organization except ex-convicts. This is the only people that would even be willing to work with her. Her mouth was so vile. She was so corrupt. She got lots of money, plenty of money, year by year, year over year.

She was just a loud, rude, obnoxious, vile person. And one day, she wasn't there. Nobody really knew what happened, and nobody really paid any attention to the fact that she wasn't there. She just wasn't there. And time went on and she never showed up.

But this person didn't have any children who cared about her. They didn't have anybody who came and knocked on the door to bring her supper, to give her a Mother's Day card. I think it's Mother's Day, isn't it? To do anything for her. She had rejected all those things.

She didn't even have friends that cared about her. The only people that she had near her life was a daughter, one daughter, and the convicts, the murderers who could stand working for her for for a few months There was when she disappeared there was no fanfare in the newspaper There was no mention of her in the news. There was nothing. Nothing. Nobody knew it happened.

Years later, what happened was figured out When some hands, some hands, hand bones, were found in a barrel on a farm in Texas. That's it. That's all that's left of her. She was butchered by the convicts that worked for her for the gold that she had accumulated. And she literally disappeared from the earth without a trace, without a word of remembrance, without even a newspaper article or a mention on the evening news.

The wicked lie in wait for their own blood. They lurk secretly for their own lives. Think about that. The next time you are enticed to evil, you are lying in wait for your own blood. It doesn't always appear that the moral order of the universe is working correctly.

You need to have faith in God, that God is suffering, and that He is upholding the moral order of the universe that He has made, even if you don't see it. If you looked at Madeline Murray O'Hare, just Think about all the people who for 30 years looked at her and said, wow, look at that, look at all the money she gets. People mailed her money just because of what she had done. And they died never seeing her latter end. God's word is true.

God does uphold the moral order of His universe. Do not trust in oppression or vainly hope in robbery. If riches increase, do not set your heart on them. God has spoken once. Twice I have heard this.

Power belongs to God, And to you, O Lord, belongs mercy, for you render to each one according to his work. Do not ever think as sinners come to entice you. Do not ever think for a moment that God will not render to you according to your work." Power belongs to God, and God is sovereign, and His Word is true. Next week we will talk about what to do. This was about what not to do.

We have to engage in productive endeavors that benefit people. We have to pay attention to the godly structures of family of state in church we have to associate with edifying edifying company let us pray Let us pray. Almighty Father in heaven, We thank you for your word. It is our guide, our lamp to our feet, a light to our path. Without it we are in darkness.

Without it we are... We have no guide. Grant to us, Father, the faith to believe your word and what it says, to be wise, to fear you, to know that your promises are yea and amen in Jesus Christ and that your pronouncements of judgment are certain. Teach us to apply our hearts to wisdom, to fear you, and to keep your commandments. Because we love you, because you have loved us and given yourself for us and redeemed us to be a royal priesthood, a chosen nation, a people who are zealous for your glory and for good works.

May that describe us by Jesus' power. In His name we pray, Amen.