Proverbs 12:2,3,  A good man obtaineth favour of the LORD: but a man of wicked devices will he condemn.  A man shall not be established by wickedness: but the root of the righteous shall not be moved. 

 Our lesson for today will concern Proverbs 12:3 which reads as follows, A man shall not be established by wickedness: but the root of the righteous shall not be moved. 

 But before we get our minds around this proverb I would like to complete our study of our last lesson on Proverbs 12:2 especially emphasizing the last part. 

Reading Proverbs 12:2, A good man obtaineth favour of the LORD: but a man of wicked devices will he condemn. 

 As is in the case of many proverbs we have a contrast between that which is favored by God versus that which God will condemn.

 Danger in being forever optimistic

Some people refuse to be around anything negative

God is positive and God is negative

The wages of sin is death

All your righteousness is as filthy rags

Come unto me all ye that labor and I will give you rest

 It was told of King David that he was a man after the heart of God and this tells us that David sought to know what God favored and what God condemned.   

And in the case of this proverb we see that God favors a good man but a man of wicked devices will not receive favor but receives condemnation.

One of the things about a good man we learn from Proverbs is that his steps are ordered by the Lord for a good man will seek God’s will in his life and God’s will is for you to take the right steps in life. 

So a good man is good because he has a good God and his steps go in a direction favored by God.

The good man is good because God plants in his heart the treasure of His word and he is able to bring forth good things, good things that satisfy himself and that is the man to whom God, the husbandman will show favor.

But on the contrary as it is given in so many of the Proverbs God tells us the fate of the man who is not good, a man whose steps are not ordered by the Lord.

For he describes him as a man of wicked devices and his fate is not salvation but condemnation.

 This is a man with a heart that devises wicked schemes, a man who engages in premeditated disobedience.

 It is a heart that God hates, a heart that God describes as an abomination in Proverbs 6:16-19, a heart that deviseth wicked imaginations.

 He hates the heart that thinks of new ideas, new ways in which to do wickedness, new contrivances for sin, and the removal of ancient landmarks.

God hates the heart that invents wicked plots and purposes and schemes.

A scheme is a plan with many steps. 

 It is not accidental but intentional and designed only for the benefit of the schemer. 

 It is a wicked thinking process from a heart that disregards God’s word in favor of its own self-gratifying desire. 

 The Bible says this wicked thinking process comes from a heart that has become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit.

 It is the heart that was displayed by the actions of Balaam whom God used to pronounce blessings upon Israel, in spite of promises of riches from Balak the Moabite. 

 But Balaam, who could not by God’s command curse Israel, devised wicked devices to bring Israel to curse itself by Israel engaging in idolatry and immorality with her enemies.  

 It is the same heart of the Pharisees and Sadducees who schemed from a process of wicked thinking which resulted in our Lord hanging from the cross.

 God hates that kind of heart, and when God hates, that heart must be condemned!

 Asaph in Psalm 73 spoke of men of wicked devices of whom he was envious for in them he saw no bands in their death, he saw them without trouble, covered in their pride, fat with their prosperity, their mouth speaking against the heavens and increasing in riches. 

 It took Asaph some time to see how vain this thinking was for God brought him into the sanctuary and then he understood their end.

 For God told him that their feet are set in slippery places and their end was a casting down into destruction and in a moment they are utterly consumed with terrors.

 So the message of Proverbs 12:2 that a man of wicked devices will he condemn, is set in stone.

 And that stone is engraved with words that say, Be sure your sin will find you out.

 Our world today is full of men who devote their lives to the invention of wicked devices.

 As I have said the meaning of wicked devices is a plan with many steps. 

 It is not an accidental plan but an intentional scheme and designed only for the benefit of the schemer. 

 It is a wicked thinking process from a heart that disregards God’s word in favor of its own self-gratifying desire.

 Many men who run large institutions are paid millions to devise schemes to manipulate their books and records in a positive direction in order to suggest high levels of performance and future growth.  

 It is the putting of your best foot forward in order to gain profit, but the foot has been decorated so that reality is covered up by trickery.

 In our country today image is king, image is reality, for all we see in the structures and culture of American society is defined by data manipulation for the sake of appearance. 

 Public relations involves itself in perception management. 

 It is not reality that comes through but manufactured image.

 Even the reporting of events are filled with wicked devices as facts are altered in order to present the best light for those in power and to promote their aspirations for continued power.

 Benghazi was a terrible story in reality so why not promote another story more in keeping with our election aspirations, schemed the men of wicked devices.

 Another story of wicked devices is the plan directed to the Internal Revenue Service to hinder the success of certain groups who oppose the current administration or promote patriotic causes. 

 Isolate certain groups into categories where approval of tax exemption is hindered, delayed and denied while approving those groups who advance the programs of the administration. 

 And in the same light hinder journalists, by investigation, who write against those programs.

Also politicians who run on a reduced crime rate platform are very interested in the statistics generated and many times interfere in their analysis in order to put their platform in the best light.

Think about the wicked devices played out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and its monthly reports on jobs data. 

Just take out those people who have given up looking for jobs that don’t exist so as not to count them towards the unemployment rate, and thereby present a positive picture in lieu of reality. 

Is this the kind of positive thinking we want?

Where is the money that was taken from pay checks to pay Social Security checks. 

Oh, wicked devices invented long ago took all that and left promissory notes. 

We see the pervasive efforts of educators who devise wicked devices to prepare their students for standardized tests and discard what is best for the student in order to teach to the test and therefore gain additional funding which will not benefit the students.

 We see wicked devices in the overuse of drugs for control of children instead of using God’s word in the rearing of children.

 All kinds of wicked devices are in play today because of the dearth of good men.   

But our confidence is in the Lord for God has promised a man of wicked devices will he condemn.

And now on to Proverbs 12:3 which reads as follows, A man shall not be established by wickedness: but the root of the righteous shall not be moved.

 Now many buildings are called establishments. 

And they are called that because they have been built to last.

 They have been built to continue through wind and rain and storm.

 God is in the establishment business and here he tells us that he does not establish by wickedness and particularly he does not establish men by wickedness.

 God uses the word “establish” when he says I will establish my covenant, I will establish thee an holy people, I will establish my word, my kingdom, I will establish Jerusalem, I will establish thy seed, I will establish equity, judgment, and righteousness.

 When God says this he is saying that any establishment of his is eternal.

 This word established as used in this proverb means that which is straight up, that which is perpendicular, that which is fixed in the strongest position.

 It means that which is established does not lean to the right nor to the left.

 It means to be upright, to be erect for anything that is not erect is subject to falling.

And God provides the Bible as His standard to insure erectness, to insure establishment, to insure a fixed position.

 Now the human transporter called the Segway is an interesting example of being established for in a way being upright is its whole duty.

 It is described as the world’s first self-balancing human transporter. 

It has only two wheels yet it manages to stay upright by itself for it is constantly measuring its perpendicularity.

 It has been made to mimic your body’s ability to stay upright for God has made your brain to know when you are out of balance because fluid in your inner ear shifts, so it triggers you to put your leg or arms forward and stop the fall.

The Segway does pretty much the same thing, except it has wheels instead of legs, a motor instead of muscles, a collection of microprocessors instead of a brain and a set of sophisticated tilt sensors instead of an inner-ear balancing system.

Like your brain, the Segway knows when you are leaning forward.

To maintain balance, it turns the wheels in a direction so you remain upright. 

And in this way you are established. 

God tells you to study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed. 

This verse means you are to be a Segway who studies every move in order to maintain uprightness. 

The Segway studies any shift forward or backward and makes adjustments to maintain perpendicularity. 

And this is what God provides through his word for the man who is established.

As we are told in Proverbs 4:26,27, He is to: Ponder the path of his feet, and let all his ways be established.  He is to Turn not to the right hand or to the left; he is to remove his foot from evil.

 And therefore the root of the righteous man shall not be moved. 

But the workers of iniquity, those who desire establishment by wickedness, are not so, for they lean and tilt, they are crooked, they are double minded, they are unpredictable for they operate according to the dictates of other men who are also unstable. 

 They have no eternal standard by which to measure uprightness so they are crooked. 

 They get their desires fulfilled by hypocrisy and iniquity but this always leads to destruction as their portion.

 The workers of iniquity have no eternal strength for the only way they have to contemplate is their own way or the way of fallible men who follow and promote other fallible men.   

They are blind and always look for other blind men to lead them.

 Jude says they are raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

 But in contrast to the wicked man the root of the righteous shall not be moved.

 God chooses to bring the root to our minds for when we think of the root we think of that which is established. 

 The righteous man has root. 

 He is like a tree planted by the rivers of waters.

 Paul spoke of being rooted when he wrote the Ephesians in: 

Ephesians 3:17-19, That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; ¹⁹ And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.

 The root of the righteous shall not be moved for it is established upon a rock and that rock is Jesus Christ who promised in John 10:28: 

 ^….. I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

 If a man is saved his root is established and no man nor any power can pull that root up.  

 As a tree loses its leaves, as the branches of the tree may be blown and twisted by tempests, as a tree suffers through all kinds of tribulation and hardship the righteous man may also do.  

But nothing can topple the tree rooted in Christ. 

 That root is planted deep upon the principles of life given by God in His Holy Word. 

 His Holy word shall not be moved and when that word is planted in the heart that man also shall not be moved.

 Upon that we can be sure. 

Colossians 2:6,7, As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.