Proverbs 20:1-7

The chapter opens with the one vice Solomon singles out by name. Wine mocks — it promises a pleasure it can never deliver, and it turns the man who trusts it into a scoffer who jeers at what is holy. Strong drink rages — it tears down the fences of decency until a man is no longer the master of himself. Note carefully: the Bible does not call wine evil; it calls it a good gift of God, abused. The sin is in being deceived by it — and deceit is exactly its trade. Think of it as a creature with many limbs that, when its food runs short, bites into its own coiled body and sucks, never realizing it is drinking its own blood — that is what strong drink does to the man and to the nation that lives on it. And the warning is aimed first at God's own people, not the world: even Noah and Lot fell here, recorded "not as a laughing-stock to the ungodly, but as a beacon to the saint." "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall" (1 Corinthians 10:12). The cure is not merely an empty bottle but a full heart: "be not drunk with wine... but be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18).

To enrage a king is to stand in front of a roaring lion — you endanger your own life. But Solomon holds the earthly king up so you will look past him to the Great King, whose anger is past all conceiving: armies of terrors are nothing to a single look of His angry face. So the verse turns into an appeal: poor sinner, do not keep provoking Him. Seek a Mediator. Stop sinning against your own soul.

The world calls backing down from a fight weakness; God calls it honour — a noble victory over your own flesh, especially when you are in the wrong, or when pressing even a right point would do no good. It is the meekness of the wisdom from above, the temper of Abraham, of Isaac, and supremely of our Lord, who "when he was reviled, reviled not again" (1 Peter 2:23). The fool does the opposite: he rushes into every quarrel as if it were his native air — a torment to himself and a plague to everyone near him. It is a low thing to quarrel with men; how much lower to quarrel with God.

The sluggard skips the plowing because the weather is unpleasant — and then comes to harvest with empty hands. God's whole system of providence is built this way: He does not do the work for a man, He gives him the means to work for himself. He gives the seed, but He gives it to the sower; He gives the rain, but the rain is useless without the labor. And it is a parable of the soul: the cold heart finds the smallest difficulty enough to stop it from serving God — has your praying, over your whole life, cost you the effort of one hour's plowing? The man who will not face the cold of the furrow will not enjoy the bread of the harvest.

A man's real intentions lie deep, like water at the bottom of a well — still waters are deep — and it takes a man of understanding to let down a bucket and draw them up, reading conduct, words, and company down to the true motive underneath. The verse has a bright side too: the man whose mind has been deepened by God holds "deep waters of heavenly counsel," and the deepest well of all is the counsel of God Himself — never say "the well is too deep," for prayerful meditation lowers the bucket and brings up "a well of water springing up into everlasting life" (John 4:14).

Almost everyone advertises his own goodness — even the openly wicked do it, like Jehu boasting of his zeal. Judge a man by his own estimate of himself and you have all the proof you need of how little he knows himself. Goodwill is everywhere; faithfulness — the man who is true to his word and true to you when it costs him — is rare, one in a thousand. And before you congratulate yourself for spotting the boasters, the warning turns inward: that mirror shows more of your own face than you would care to admit. "Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth" (Proverbs 27:2).

The truly righteous man's integrity is not a performance for special occasions — it has become his ordinary walk, the easy habit of a man with a second nature in holy living. He lives by the faith of the Son of God, as Abraham did, his righteousness "not like the morning cloud, but like the light of the sun, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day" (Proverbs 4:18). And his integrity overflows onto his children, who are blessed after him — not as a reward for the parent's merits (grace never runs in the blood), but because such is the mercy of God to the root and the branches. The best inheritance a father leaves is a life his children watched and a covenant they can plead.