Read Proverbs 22:7 & 9  Do you get an allowance?  An allowance is money that your parents give you each week so that you can pay for things that you need to.  You may need to buy your tee shirt for your baseball team or you may want to buy Christmas presents for your family.  Some of you are not old enough to get a job, but you can do things at home and get paid for doing them.  My mother had a list of chores - work that I had to do - posted inside of my closet in my bedroom.  I had to brush my teeth every day.  I had to make my bed every morning.  I had to feed our dog and take out the trash.  These were jobs that I could do and earn money.  If I did my jobs, my chores, I could mark them off on my list each day.  At the end of the week, my dad paid me an allowance for the jobs that I had finished.  I got paid 35¢ each week to do my jobs.  When I was about your age, I went to the bank and opened a savings account.  Each week when we went to town, I put some of my money in the bank and the total amount grew each week.  I had money to use for Christmas or camp or a new baseball glove that I needed.  Our verses tell us two ways to have enough money.  Verse 7 tells us that we should save for the future.  We don't know when we are going to camp, but we will need money when we do.  So we have to save for what might happen in the future.  But if we don't have any money saved, when we have to buy a tee shirt for baseball, we will have to borrow the money from our dad.  Then when we get paid our allowance, we don't really get any money because we have to pay back the money that we borrowed.  So, when we get our allowance, we don't get anything!  We owe it!  We can't do what we want to with our money because we owe it.  Our verse says that the borrower is the servant of the lender.  But the second way to get money is that God gives us money.  God says in verse 9 that if we are generous with our money, God will take care of us.  Sometimes we have extra money and our brother or sister doesn't.  We can loan them some money if they have a need.  They can pay us back the loan.  But we can also give them money when they need it.  We give them money just because we care about them and want to help them.  If they waste their money, I don't think God would want us to pay for their needs.  They should save for their own needs.  But sometimes emergencies come up and we might not be prepared.  Sometimes we just have more money than someone else.  If we save, we will have money for ourselves - that's verse 7 - and if we save, we will have money to help others who don't - that's verse 9.  In either case, we should save and be ready for the future.

Proverbs 22:6  Our verse talks about raising children and our verse has a great promise about raising children:  If a parent is faithful and trains his son or daughter the right way, the son or daughter will be faithful and will make their parent proud.  The word  for train in our verse means to bend a sapling in a certain way.  Can you bend a tree?  No way!  But when a tree is young - when it is only a few inches thick - you can bend it.  When I was a little boy I used to love to climb trees.  I would pick a limber sapling that had a lot of spring in it.  I would climb up into the top of it and swing back and forth and finally launch myself out to the side while hanging on.  My weight would bend the little tree over and it would let me safely down to the ground.  I would let go just when I touched the ground and let the sapling spring back up.  Well, almost back up.  It would always stay bent just a little.  After I did this a few times, the little tree would stay bent over.  It could not spring back up.  I have gone back into those same woods some 40 years later and found those same little trees, except they weren't little any more.  They were full grown trees.  But they were still bent over.  They stayed the way that I had bent them so many, many years ago.  That is what the training part of our verse means.  If we train our children early, they will stay that way.  They will stay the way that we train them.  If you are a child, please obey your parents.  If you are a parent, please train your children in God's way.  What a wonderful promise from the good Lord!

Read Proverbs 22:3  Today's verse compares the actions of a prudent man to a simple man.  If someone is prudent that means that they are thoughtful and careful and observant.  A prudent man is one who doesn't drive a car while texting.  A prudent man is one who does his best at his job and saves his money and doesn't waste it.  Our verse says that a prudent man looks out and sees when trouble is coming and does what he can to avoid it.  The simple man, however, just keeps going along and falls right into the trouble that he didn't see coming.  He doesn't look ahead and hasn't even planned for what might happen.  When something bad does happen, the simple man has to scramble to figure out what to do and where to get the money to resolve the problem and how he is going to pay it back.  He doesn't plan ahead like the prudent man, he just works his way out of trouble as best he can.  But the problem is, sometimes he can't get out of his trouble.  He has to depend on someone else to get him out of his trouble.  And that someone else is usually the prudent man who is prepared for the trouble.  Thank God for prudent people, who have money saved up.  God lets prudent people keep the simple from disaster.  Wouldn't you rather be a prudent person than a simple person?

Read Proverbs 22:1  In our verse for today, King Solomon said that a good name is important.  The story is told in Genesis of Isaac and his twin sons.  His oldest son was named Esau and he was an outdoors man.  He loved hunting and didn't care for much of anything else.  Esau's younger twin brother was named Jacob and he was a sneaky boy who schmoozed with their mother, Rebekah.  Isaac was an old man and wanted to give Esau two things before he died.  As the oldest, Esau was entitled to the Blessing and the Birthright.  But Esau wasn't interested in his birthright.  He didn't care about an inheritance from his father.  As a matter of fact, one day Esau came back from hunting empty-handed and chanced upon His brother Jacob, who happened to be cooking some great-smelling porridge.  Esau was starving and begged his sneaky brother for some of the porridge.  Jacob said, "Will you give me the family birthright for a bowl?"  Esau replied, "Sure.  I don't care about an old birthright and anyway, it won't do me any good if I starve to death."  Esau despised his family name.  He didn't care that his father had a good reputation.  He just wanted to hunt and stay in the woods all day long.  But our verse says that a good name is important.  We should respect and protect our father's name.  We have two (or sometimes three) names: Our surname, which is the family name and our given name, which is our first name and the one that was given to us by our parents when we were born.  We carry our father's name with us wherever we go.  We should respect it and try to uphold it.  We should not do anything that would bring shame to our family name.  The last part of our verse says that when we develop a close friendship, we should take care of it just as much as we take care of our good family name.  We should Guard our friendships and our family name more than a pile of money.  We should be careful of our reputation.  Reputations are what others think about us.  Reputations are built up over years and years, but can be torn down in moments by careless actions.  Guard your good family name.  Guard your good friendships.  Both are so important.  Solomon said so!

Read Proverbs 21:31  Today there are many tools that the army uses for war.  They have tanks and cannons.  The Air Force uses bombers and fighter airplanes.  The Navy uses battleships and missle launchers.  But back in Solomon's times they used horses and chariots for protection.  Our verse tells us that Solomon prepared for battle with his powerful horses.  In Psalms 20:7 Solomon's father, King David, said that "Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God."  Solomon must have heard his father say words like that because here in our verse Solomon wrote about where his true strength came from: true safety is only found in the Lord God.  David and Solomon prepared their horses and chariots in order to defend against their enemies, but then they prayed to God, who was their true source of safety.  God protected them.  And God protects us!  We may lock our doors at night, but only God can protect us from a thief breaking in.  We may lock our cars, but only God can keep our things safe from someone breaking into our car parked in a parking lot.  We may keep extra money in our purse or wallet in case of an emergency, but only God can protect us from someone stealing our purse or our wallet.  Just like Solomon, we try to plan for emergencies, but only the Lord can truly keep us safe.  We need to trust in God and not just in strong locks.

Read Proverbs 21: 19  Hey, wait a minute.  Is Solomon talking about angry women again?  Solomon talked about angry women in Proverbs 21:9 and he will talk about angry women again in Proverbs 27:15.  I think King Solomon talked about angry women a lot because he had 700 wives!  I Kings 11 tells us that Solomon made treaties with foreign kings.  In order to seal the peace treaty with one of these foreign kings, Solomon would marry his daughter.  The king would never attack Solomon because he would be attacking his own daughter's husband.  But then Solomon needed to make a peace treaty with another king.  So Solomon married his daughter.  And then another.  And then another, and another until Solomon had 700 wives!  There in I Kings 11 we are told that Solomon's great peace treaty plan backfired on him.  Solomon's father-in-law kings did not attack him, but Solomon was drawn into wickedness because of all of the different religions of his foreign wives.  His foreign wives worshiped idols and they talked Solomon into worshiping idols with them.  I think Solomon followed these idol-worshiping wives because they whined all the time.  One would say, "Solomon, you never go to my temple with me.  Why don't you come and worship with me this week?"  And he would.  But then another of his wives would say, "Solomon, you never go to my temple with me.  Why don't you come and worship with me this week?"  Can you imagine Solomon hearing this whined 700 times!  Now we can understand why Solomon would rather dwell in the wilderness!  God tells us in I Timothy and Titus that a pastor must have only one wife.  That is God's plan for peace and happiness in the home.  One husband and one wife.  God did not make Adam and Eve and Sally and Harriet and Francene and . . . well, you get the picture.  God made Adam for Eve only, and Eve for Adam only.  Too bad Solomon didn't think first.  If Solomon had followed God's plan, he wouldn't be writing a verse about dwelling in the wilderness!

Read Proverbs 21:11  Do you remember the three different types of people that Solomon has talked about in Proverbs?  Our verse for today mentions three of the four.  Today we read about the scorner, the simple, and the wise.  The fourth is the fool.  We talked about the scorner back in Proverbs 19:25.  It said that if you "smite the scorner, the simple are made wise."  That is pretty strong.  Our verse here is a little softer.  It says that when the scorner is punished, the simple are made wise.  Some young people just seem to get into trouble all the time.  Then there are others who never seem to get into trouble.  But then there are many of you who fall into the middle category.  You get into trouble some of the time.  Usually, when we get into trouble it is because we forget what we are supposed to do.  Most of the time we are not just outright rebellious, we are just forgetful.  That is how we find this simple young person here in our verse.  But they have a wonderful lesson.  Fortunately for them, they have another young person around them: a scorner.  And this scorner gets into trouble all of the time.  They get into trouble often because they are downright rebellious.  They don't really want to do the right thing.  They want to do the wrong thing.  That is bad for them, but good for the simple young person.  It seems like the scorner is always getting punished.  They never learn because they do not want to learn.  They are stubborn and self-willed.  But when they are punished, or like Proverbs 19:25 even spanked, the simple young person sees it and says, "Hey, I don't want to get a spanking like blank."  I almost said someone's name, but I put a blank there.  Just think a minute.  Would your name go in the blank?  Are you a scorner.  Or are you a simple young person who straightens up when the scorner kid is punished?  Or better than that, are you a wise young person.  Do you know the right thing to do and you do it.  If you are wise, you don't usually get into trouble.  You listen and learn.  If you are a simple young person you get into trouble often, but you are reminded to be careful when someone else is punished.  But, if you are the scorner, well, you never listen.  You never learn, and you are always in trouble.  I don't like to be in trouble do you?  I want to be a wise son of my heavenly Father.  Don't you want to be a wise son or daughter?  If you do, you are already not a scorner.  If you want to do what is right you can.  And, with God's help, you will!