Delivered by Righteousness

It says in verse three, "The integrity of the upright shall guide them, but the perverseness of transgressi- of transgressors shall destroy them." So last week we talked a little bit about that one.

The integrity of the upright, it's literally a guide.

It's guiding the person through life itself.

If you picture life as a terrain, there are bumpy parts, there are smooth parts, times you have to climb, times you have to go downhill, you know, mountainous regions, all these types of things.

Life is an extremely diverse terrain, if you want to put it in, in those terms.

And so what is righteousness? It is a guide that leads us through that.

This is the kind of thing that every person wants, but only the righteous person gets.

Uh, of course, it is talking about integrity being the guide, but what is integrity? Uh, of course, integrity is honesty, it is goodness, it is striving for truth, and it can only come from a place of righteousness.

And so you can't have this guiding integrity unless you first have righteousness.

That's kind of the point there, and that's, that's why it says, "The integrity of the upright." The upright is, is righteousness there.

"The integrity of the upright shall guide them." Uh, and so again, we imagine the difficulties that we would have if we didn't have that guide.

We want the guide, and therefore we should strive to live righteously.

So there's verse three, and then, and we talked about that more last week, but that's just a quick review.

In verse four it says, "Riches profit not in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivereth from death." And I think we, we talked about verse four a little bit last week as well, and I want y'all to note right here, I believe verse four is, is talking about the spiritual salvation.

It says, "Righteous will profit not in the day of wrath." So I see that as a reference to the day of the Lord out in the future when, when final judgment will come.

Or I should say the beginnings of final judgment.

Uh, don't want to get into that.

But, uh, final judgment, we'll just, we'll just keep it simplified there.

When it comes on the day of the Lord and wrath comes, riches, the riches the, the world- worldly, wicked people have accumulated for their own pleasures, and nothing but their own pleasures, that will mean absolutely nothing in that day.

But righteousness delivereth from death.

And so again, because of the, because of the antecedent there, uh, earlier in the verse, the contrast that is given, I believe that that is a reference to deliverance from the final death.

In other words, salvation.

But even though I believe that is, is the case of, of verse four, I want you to take note of that phrase deliver or delivereth, um, because it's about to come back in, in Solomon's string of, of thought here, in the proverbs he's giving us.

But not in a spiritual sense, but rather in a material or physical sense.

Uh, so he continues the theme, but in a different way.