When I was younger, I had a really hard time with Proverbs.
I was not a fan of the book of Proverbs when I was new to Christianity.
I think that’s true for a lot of people.
Proverbs gets kind of a bad rap.
A lot of people think about the Proverbs and they think of it as harsh.
They think of it as stern.
Some people literally find the Proverbs hurtful or critical or judgmental.
But the reality is that nothing could be further from the truth.
The Proverbs are not there to judge you or look down on you.
The Proverbs are there to bless you.
And lift you up.
And help you turn your life around.
I think the best way to put it is that the Proverbs are God’s fatherly advice for how to survive and thrive in this fallen and broken world.
When we open up the Proverbs, we are getting God’s fatherly wisdom for how to overcome the struggles of this life, avoid the pitfalls and the traps and the stumbling blocks that are everywhere here in this broken world, and to protect us from making so many of the worst decisions of our lives.
The reality is that here in our fallen and broken world, the pull of foolishness is unbelievably strong.
Know what I’m talking about?
The pull of self-destructiveness is unbelievably strong.
Our fallen and broken world seizes on our sinful nature, and it offers us a carrot and stick that leads to self-destruction.
And the result is that life in this world is always only a few catastrophically terrible decisions away from absolutely collapsing.
Right?
We are just a handful of terrible decisions away from completely falling apart.
And yet it does not have to be that way.
Because in the Proverbs, God is sitting us down on the couch and having an important but uncommon conversation with us about how to flourish instead of languishing, how to thrive instead of withering.
And these conversations the Lord has with us in the Proverbs are conversations we desperately need.
And we see a prime example of that right here in the Proverbs together this morning.
Stand up for what is right.
Stand up for our principles.
Stand firm in what is true and good and right and beautiful, over against the onslaught of pressure from every corner of the culture of our fallen and broken world calling us to capitulate and compromise.
And trade what is good for what is convenient.
A Culture Filled with Fear
Because if you were to describe the national mood at this exact moment in one word—
We are living in a place and time that is absolutely filled with fear.
A very specific type of fear.
Most of us are not walking around day by day afraid of being vaporized by a nuclear bomb.
But there’s a really fascinating phenomenon that’s developed over the past 10 years.
And that is that increasingly, as modern Americans, we are afraid to actually believe anything.
Know what I’m talking about?
When I say believe, I’m not talking about religion.
I’m talking about literally anything.
We’ve come to a point where we are afraid to hold any ideals too tightly.
We’re afraid to hold any convictions with any seriousness.
We’re afraid to be genuinely passionate or sold out for any belief system, any philosophy, any ideology.
Really anything at all.
Until we get permission from our cultural overlords.
What am I talking about?
Here’s what I’m talking about.
There was a 2021 Harris Poll that found that 64% of the people they interviewed admitted that they are horrified for people to find out what they believe about most major issues.
They said that they regularly self-censor their beliefs because they’re afraid of how people will react.
They said they do everything they can just to keep quiet about how they feel about most major issues.
Because they’re afraid of the backlash that might come if they publicly voice them.
That was true of people who were on the right and people who were on the left.
So it’s not just a political thing.
A Barna Group study of Millennials and Gen Z people found that 42% said that they are afraid of publicly voicing so many of their beliefs and their ideals and their opinions about a really big range of things.
Because they’re afraid they’ll be rejected by their friends or their family or their coworkers or their neighbors if they do.
Another poll found that about 30% of adults say that they avoid ever talking about anything that could potentially be controversial—
Even when they feel really strongly about it—
Because they’re afraid they’ll get dragged publicly on social media if they do.
And another study found that 23% of college students said that they feel a really intense pressure to conform to whatever the prevailing ideology is at their college.
Even when those ideologies conflict with their values.
And once again, this is true across political lines.
Students at liberal colleges feel intense pressure never to contradict the liberal narrative about things.
And students at conservative colleges feel intense pressure never to contradict the conservative narrative about a whole range of things.
So when you take a step back, the picture is pretty clear.
And it’s pretty dark.
And whether it’s higher education, or it’s the workplace, or it’s the family unit, or it’s your friend group, or the neighborhood barbecues, or anywhere else—
There is this overwhelming atmosphere of fear, reticence, and timidness.
We are afraid to actually believe almost anything.
Three Trends at Work in Our Culture
And so the question that we have to ask is: How did we end up like this?
When we do that, the answer is actually not that complicated.
Over the past 10 years, sociologists have sounded the alarm about three very specific trends that are at work in our culture.
We’re going to run through them very, very quickly.
1. A Culture of Condemnation
Number one is that we have what they refer to as a culture of condemnation.
When people talk about cancel culture, that’s kind of the pop-psychology version of this.
We have a culture of condemnation.
There are cultures of grace, cultures of understanding, cultures of openness, where we accept people and love people as they are—
Even if we don’t agree with all of their choices or beliefs.
And then there are cultures of condemnation.
A culture of condemnation is one where anybody who gets just a little bit outside the lines is immediately judged, is immediately punished, is immediately treated like a pariah.
An outcast.
And over the years, we have gradually, fully morphed into a culture of condemnation.
People who diverge from our broader culture’s attitudes about so many different things very quickly get cast out—
Banished from society.
That’s number one.
2. A Comfort Culture
Number two.
We have what they call a comfort culture.
Over the years, we’ve gradually come to a point where our loudest desire is the desire for comfort—
The desire for convenience, the desire to avoid struggle, to avoid suffering, to avoid discomfort at all costs.
We desperately seek the path of least resistance.
We desperately avoid conflict at all costs.
We desperately steer clear of absolutely anything that could inconvenience us.
Unless it is absolutely necessary and unavoidable, we will pursue comfort to the detriment of absolutely everything else—
Even if it means we lose everything else in the process.
Know what I’m talking about?
That’s number two.
3. A Groupthink Culture
And because we have a culture of condemnation that relentlessly punishes difference, and we have a comfort culture that relentlessly avoids conflict and inconvenience—
We have what they call a groupthink culture.
A groupthink culture is a culture where people abandon their convictions at a moment’s notice in order to align with the majority.
If the group believes one thing and you believe another thing—
You immediately put your divergent belief to rest so that you can go rejoin the group with as little friction as possible.
And in a groupthink culture, things like free and open debate are stifled.
Because if you don’t agree with the majority view—
You get called a bigot.
Or you get called a communist.
Or you get called a this or a that.
But we’ve come to a place where we are afraid to have genuine, deeply held convictions.
Because genuinely believing anything puts us at risk.
At risk of experiencing the discomfort and the inconvenience—
And sometimes straight-up suffering—
That comes with conflict and ostracism.
A Culture of Cowardice
But that’s had a really ironic effect.
Because the result of all this has been that we are anxious all the time.
In the Journal of Behavioral Psychology, they did a study in 2021 where they found that people who regularly compromise their principles in order to conform to pressure from society experience significantly higher rates of anxiety and depression than people who don’t.
So there’s this irony.
We abandon all of our principles in order to avoid discomfort—
And the result is that we are way more anxious than we should be.
We traded one form of discomfort for a much deeper form of discomfort.
We’ve created a world where we are all walking on eggshells.
Looking over our shoulders.
Policing ourselves into oblivion.
Wondering, “Is today going to be the day that I get called out?”
“Is today going to be the day that I get punished?”
“Is today going to be the day that I get dragged through the mud?”
“Is today going to be the day that everybody leaves me, everybody abandons me, everybody rejects me?”
And at risk of sounding harsh—
We’ve created a culture of cowardice from the ground up.
And the result is that we are falling apart.
But that shouldn’t surprise us.
Because the truth is that society itself hinges on the willingness of sincere people to stand up for what is true.
Civilization hinges on the willingness of honest people to stand up for what is right.
Everything good about life in this world hinges on the will of people to stand up for what they believe in.
And we see that more clearly than anywhere in the Proverbs.
The Fear of Man Lays a Snare
I love the way Proverbs 29:25 puts it.
It says:
“The fear of man proves to be a snare,
but whoever puts his trust in Yahweh is kept safe.”—Proverbs 29:25, WEB
I love how hard that first phrase goes.
The fear of man lays a snare.
What is this talking about?
Here’s what this is talking about.
The fear of man is not just a cool catchphrase.
It’s referring to a very specific part of ancient Near Eastern culture.
Just a little bit of trivia here—
From Genesis through Revelation, the story that the Bible tells takes place in the ancient Near East.
We live in the modern West.
The Bible took place in the ancient East.
There’s the Far East, there’s the Middle East, and there’s the Near East.
The nation of Israel was located in the Near East.
And it was part of ancient Near Eastern culture.
They did not think like modern Americans.
They thought like ancient Near Easterners.
And one of the most important things to understand about the ancient Near Eastern culture is that it was what was called an honor-shame society.
We do not live in an honor-shame society.
So we have a hard time wrapping our heads around this.
But in an honor-shame society, they don’t think about most things in terms of right versus wrong.
I know what I just said sounds crazy to you.
But it’s true.
Honor-shame societies don’t really think about most issues as right or wrong, good or bad, just or unjust, righteous or unrighteous.
No—
In an honor-shame society, what they think about is approval versus disapproval.
Does the group approve of you, or does it disapprove of you?
Do people think well of you, or do they think ill of you?
Do they embrace you, or do they reject you?
If society approved of you, they saw you as good.
And if society disapproved of you, they saw you as bad.
Your name—your reputation—was more important than your character.
That is the way honor-shame societies tend to think.
And that means anything you did that went along with the group was considered right, good, admirable.
But anything you did that went against the group was considered wrong, bad, shameful.
And because that is true in the honor-shame society of the ancient Near East, so often, absolutely wicked, unjust, ungodly, horrible things were considered perfectly fine.
They normalized so many terrible things.
And at exactly the same time, so many good things—godly things, righteous things, fair things, just things—were ostracized.
They were considered shameful.
People sought safety and acceptance and admiration and success by conforming to the group, even if the group was wrong.
But the result was absolute chaos.
The result was that you couldn’t trust anyone.
You couldn’t truly rely on anyone.
You couldn’t truly be at peace with anyone or at home with anyone.
Because there was no genuine honor.
That’s the ironic thing.
In a high-conformity society, no one ever really has honor.
In a society where the group is always right and outliers are always wrong, you can never truly do anything honorable.
Justifying the Wicked and Condemning the Righteous
We see the same thing in Proverbs 17:15.
It says:
“He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the righteous,
both of them alike are an abomination to Yahweh.”—Proverbs 17:15, WEB
This one is directed very specifically at rulers, kings, and judges.
You see, in the ancient Near East, the courts were extremely corrupt.
There are a lot of problems with our justice system, but it’s a whole lot better than everything that came before it.
In the ancient Near East, so often, the verdict of every trial was secured by bribes rather than by weighing the evidence and then judging justly.
In the ancient Near East, the wealthy and the powerful regularly bought court victories.
They purchased verdicts from the judges.
They literally paid the judges to rule in their favor.
So a lot of times, wealthy landowners, wealthy landlords, would expand their territory by suing poor farmers, small landholders, and paying the judge to rule in their favor.
So that the family farm that had been in this small landholder’s family for generations would get taken away from them and given to the wealthy landlord.
And they would keep doing this over and over and over until everybody in the village had to live on their land.
Had to take care of their animals.
Grow their crops.
They reduced everyone to slavery.
That was the norm.
And the reason this was possible was because almost every judge was bought.
And if they couldn’t buy the judge off, then they would threaten the judge with retribution.
They would use their bottomless resources to threaten the judge, or threaten his family, or threaten his land, and so forth.
And so the Proverbs say a true judge cannot be moved by bribery.
And they cannot be moved by threats.
A true judge is someone who judges justly and fairly and honestly based on the evidence—
Regardless of what they offer him, and regardless of how they threaten him.
But in the ancient Near East, throughout the history of ancient Israel, there were so few honest judges.
There were so few honest rulers.
There were so few who had the backbone to persist in standing firm in what was right.
And the result was absolute chaos.
The result was that the world was constantly on the verge of falling apart.
A Muddied Spring and a Polluted Fountain
I love the way Proverbs 25:26 puts it.
It says:
“Like a muddied spring and a polluted well,
so is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked.”—Proverbs 25:26, WEB
Now, this is really important.
The metaphor it uses is really important.
Because in the ancient Near East, they didn’t have indoor plumbing.
They didn’t have industrial water purification.
So they had to build every village next to a spring.
They had to build every encampment with a fountain, with a well that functioned.
Springs and fountains were absolutely vital.
In every settlement.
Every community.
It was non-negotiable.
It was important to keep the spring clean.
To keep the fountain, the well, pure.
Because if the spring became muddied or the fountain became polluted, what happened?
Life became unlivable.
They would literally have to leave the village and go start over somewhere else.
It says that a man who gives way before the wicked—
Who gives in to the wicked.
Who lets the wicked have their way.
Who lets the wicked be in charge.
Who lets the wicked set the terms.
Who lets the wicked control the culture.
Control the court.
Control life in the village—
Is making life unlivable for everybody.
It’s like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain.
When we stop standing for what is right—
When we allow ourselves and our culture to be overtaken by wickedness, by injustice, by dishonesty—
Gradually, life becomes unlivable, doesn’t it?
Gradually, things become unbearable.
Gradually, we get to a place of absolute chaos.
A place where we are constantly living in fear.
Constantly on the verge of falling apart.
Constantly withering.
Constantly languishing.
We know this from history.
Because that is exactly what happened to the nation of Israel.
Our World Needs People Who Will Stand Firm
And when you take all of this together, the picture is unbelievably clear.
Our world needs leaders.
And our world needs people who will stand firm in what is right instead of capitulating to the culture’s bent toward wickedness.
Our culture needs people who stand firm with moral clarity.
It needs people who stand firm in what is true.
Who stand firm in what is good.
Who stand firm in what is beautiful.
Who stand firm in what is just.
Who stand firm in what is fair.
There’s this common myth in our culture that just says, “Life’s not fair. Deal with it.”
It is absolutely true that life is not fair.
But the implication when we say that is that, because life isn’t naturally fair, we should just stop caring about fairness.
But that’s actually extremely stupid.
Fairness is part of God’s created order.
Fairness is part of the moral order God baked into the universe.
Life is not naturally fair because of the Fall.
It is our freaking job to make it fair.
That’s my brief rant.
But our world needs people who will lead by standing firm for what is right in a world that is descending into chaos.
And when we do that, God’s Word says that we become pillars of stability.
Know what I’m talking about?
People who stand firm with moral clarity become pillars of stability for a house that has been crumbling and without a foundation.
And we have spent our entire lives growing up in a culture of comfort and a culture of groupthink, under the thumb of a culture of condemnation that has given birth to a culture of cowardice.
But as the people of God, we are called to create a culture of conviction.
Know what I’m talking about?
We need to create a culture of conviction—
In ourselves.
In our families.
And in the church.
And the Proverbs give us a really vivid picture of what that looks like.
The Righteous Are as Bold as a Lion
I love Proverbs 28:1.
You should get this one, like, tattooed on your ribs or something.
It says:
“The wicked flee when no one pursues;
but the righteous are as bold as a lion.”—Proverbs 28:1, WEB
Now, there’s two parts to that.
First off, it says, “The wicked flee when no one pursues.”
What is that talking about?
Here’s what it’s talking about.
So many of us live in fear because we are disconnected from the God who protects us, who preserves us, and who sustains us.
Know what I’m talking about?
So many of us have blinded ourselves to the reality of the God who protects and preserves and sustains us.
And because that is true, we are afraid of everything.
We live our lives in constant fear because we are at the mercy of our circumstances.
Know what I’m talking about?
We’re afraid things aren’t going to go our way.
We’re afraid bad things are going to happen to us.
We’re afraid we’re going to experience misfortune.
We’re afraid we’re not going to get that promotion.
We’re afraid that person isn’t going to love us.
We’re afraid we’re not going to have enough money.
We’re afraid of all these different things.
We’re afraid we’re going to get sick.
We’re afraid we’re going to be injured.
And on and on and on.
All we can see is the cold, hard facts of our circumstance.
And at the same time, we’re at the mercy of other people.
Are those people going to treat me well, or are they going to treat me badly?
Are they going to help me, or are they going to harm me?
Are they going to accept me, or are they going to reject me?
From a purely human standpoint, so much of your life hinges on whether you were born with good genes or bad genes, whether you were born into a good family or a bad family, whether you catch a lucky break early in your career or you catch an unlucky break, whether you’re able to get into a good school or a bad school, whether you inherit a bunch of money or you inherit a bunch of debt, whether you meet somebody you really click with and fall in love and spend your life with them, or you meet somebody who makes your life a living hell, whether you find a community of people who love you and embrace you, or you go your whole life facing rejection after rejection.
From a purely human standpoint, so much of our lives hinges entirely on that.
And as a result, we live in fear.
And we’re always looking over our shoulders.
And we will contort ourselves into all different shapes to try to win people’s acceptance and impress people and get ahead of people and get the once-over on people.
We become chameleons just to survive—
Because we are so scared of what will happen if we don’t.
But it’s not meant to be that way.
Proverbs says, “The righteous are as bold as a lion.”
Here’s the vitally important thing.
That boldness doesn’t come from their personality.
There are some people we think of as really bold, but they’re actually just really stupid.
There are some people we think of as really bold and confident, but it’s actually just brashness.
It’s actually just a lack of social awareness.
Some people are way more confident than they have any reason to be.
That guy that talks about everything as if he knows it all.
That person who pushes everybody around and bullies them at your workplace.
That’s not biblical boldness.
Those guys are just idiots.
No, you become bold as a lion by fearing the Lord.
When the Lord Is Your Shepherd, You Do Not Have to Fear the Wolves
If you’ve been here for all of our Proverbs series, you may remember—
Early on, we talked about how the fear of the Lord is not about being afraid.
When you fear the Lord, what it means is that you are in such overwhelming awe of the God who created you and rules you, that you completely give Him the keys to your life.
You bend everything about yourself in service of Him.
You trust Him even more than you trust yourself.
Your habits and your attitudes and your lifestyle are all melted down and reshaped by your absolute amazement at His greatness and glory and beauty.
And when that happens, it makes you bold.
Because when the Lord is your Shepherd, you don’t have to be afraid of what the wolves might do to you.
Know what I’m talking about?
When the Lord is your Shepherd, you don’t have to be afraid of what the wolves might do to you.
When you fear the Lord, you stop having to fear anything else.
And the result is that you become bold as a lion.
You may be a sheep, but you become bolder than the wolves around you.
Steadfast in Righteousness
And the result is that you start to look like Proverbs 11:19.
It says:
“He who is truly righteous gets life.
He who pursues evil gets death.”—Proverbs 11:19, WEB
I love that word—steadfast.
It says, when you fear the Lord, you gradually become absolutely unshakable.
When you fear the Lord, you become absolutely immovable.
The fear of the Lord slowly turns you into a person who cannot be knocked off course.
Who cannot be pressured into capitulating.
Who cannot be talked out of doing what you believe is right.
You become steadfast in righteousness.
The Lord is on a mission to purge you of cowardice.
And we see that more clearly than anywhere in Proverbs 24:10–12.
It says:
“If you falter in the time of trouble,
your strength is small.Rescue those who are being led away to death!
Indeed, hold back those who are staggering to the slaughter!If you say, ‘Behold, we didn’t know this,’
doesn’t he who weighs the hearts consider it?
He who keeps your soul, doesn’t he know it?
Shall he not render to every man according to his work?”—Proverbs 24:10–12, WEB
It says the true test of your character is whether you can continue to stand for what is right even when it becomes extremely costly.
The fear of the Lord gradually turns you into someone who doesn’t faint in the day of adversity.
And God is gradually turning you into a person who doesn’t give up your principles when it becomes inconvenient or costly.
He’s turning you into a person who stands for what is right.
And therefore, He is turning you into a pillar of stability.
I’m going to say that again:
God is turning you into a pillar of stability.
Fear Nothing but Sin and Desire Nothing but God
One of my favorite quotes of all time—this is another one you should tattoo on your ribs—
It’s from the great evangelist John Wesley.
He’s one of my heroes in the faith.
He once said:
“Give me 100 people who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God,
and I care not whether they be clergymen or laymen,
they alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on Earth.”—John Wesley
The Lord is on a mission to turn you into someone who fears nothing but sin and desires nothing but God.
And if you let Him do that, you will shake the gates of hell.
And you will save your community.
Save your culture.
Save your country.
You’ll become a pillar of stability.
1. Pray Specifically for Courage
And so what we want to do this morning is this:
Before anything else, pray specifically for courage.
Pray that the Lord will give you the courage not to be afraid of the culture of condemnation.
Pray that the Lord will give you the courage not to be afraid of discomfort.
Not to be afraid of inconvenience.
Not to be afraid of conflict.
Ask the Lord to give you the courage not to sleepwalk into our groupthink culture.
Instead, ask Him to give you the kind of courage that we see in Acts 5:29, when Peter and the apostles say, and I quote:
“We must obey God rather than men.”
—Acts 5:29, WEB
That’s number one.
2. Ask God to Teach You to Embrace Rejection
And if you are willing to pray for courage, then at exactly the same time—
You need to pray and ask God to teach you to embrace rejection.
Ask God to teach you how to accept rejection.
You live in a groupthink culture.
And that means that standing for your convictions is going to cause some people to leave you.
Being open about what you believe is going to cause some people to stop liking you.
There are basically two possible futures that are open to you.
One of them is rejection.
The other one is cowardice.
Ask the Lord to give you the courage to be rejected.
That’s number two.
3. Surrender the Outcome to God
And number three: Surrender the outcome to God.
At the very core of our fear of rejection, our fear of ostracism, our fear of condemnation by our culture—
Comes from our desire to control what happens to us.
Know what I’m talking about?
We’re trying to control the result.
We’re trying to control the ship on our own.
But we don’t need to.
Courage comes when we learn to focus on faithfulness instead of focusing on success.
When we learn to focus on obedience instead of focusing on results.
The reality we have to understand is this:
The Lord will work through absolutely everything we experience to bless us.
Know what I’m talking about?
Romans 8:28:
“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.”
—Romans 8:28, WEB
Even rejection.
Even abandonment.
Even opposition.
If you are rejected and attacked and punished for standing up for what is right—
God will use that rejection and that attack for your ultimate good.
The ultimate fruit of that rejection will be so much sweeter than the acceptance that cowardice and conformity purchase for you.
Let the Lord form you into a person of conviction.
A pillar of stability.
And then watch the way that He transforms your life.
And then this church.
And then our whole surrounding community through it.
Mount Zion Baptist Church - Louisburg, NC 
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