Read Proverbs 22:15  Oh no!  Here is another one of those verses that talk about spanking!  We don't want to talk about spanking, but the truth is: it works.  Our verse says that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.  Is that true?  If it is, then may be our need for spankings may also be true.  I have had four little children and can answer this question accurately.  None of my children had to be taught how to say, "Mine!"  They were just naturally selfish.  Actually, they had to be taught to share and be nice.  They didn't want to share their things with other children.  They had to be taught to share.  I did not have to teach my children how to lash out and hit other children.  I never had to teach them to bite other children while they were in the nursery.  Quite the opposite, I had to teach them to be nice; I had to teach them to be kind and gentle to others.  That is because we were all born with a sin nature.  We got this sinful nature from our great, great, great, great-grandfather, Adam.  We are sinners by nature and we are sinners by choice.  We all sin because we got our sin nature from Adam and we sin because we choose to sin.  We like to sin.  We like to be selfish.  We like to have our own way.  And our verse says that when we are spanked, we have a sudden awareness that sin is no fun.  We connect our sin with the pain of the spanking.  This is called cause and effect.  Every effect in our life has a cause.  If we are kind to others, we will have friends.  If we are mean to others, we will not have any friends.  This is the cause and effect.  If we disobey God, He will have to punish us.  If we obey God, He will bless us and will not have to punish us.  Again, cause and effect.  When our parents do what God says and punish us for our naughtiness, we don't like the punishment.  So we don't do those naughty things.  We don't like the effect, so we change the cause that led to the effect we didn't like.  We do the right things and we like that we are not spanked.  Again, cause and effect.  Our spankings quickly drive our foolishness out of our thinking because we don't like spankings.  We learn to be good because we don't like what happens when we are naughty.  Our parents must correct us because God tells them to.  And God corrects us and our parents when we disobey because He loves us and wants us to do what is right.  If we are smart; if our parents are smart; we will obey God and avoid correction.  God loves us and wants us to be right and to live a happy life.  But in order to learn, we need to be corrected.  let's learn from our spankings so that we will not have to get many more.

Read Proverbs 22:13  Do you remember what a slothful man is?  What is another word for slothful?  Another good word for slothful is lazy.  A lazy person comes up with an excuse why they can't do their work.  The reason that the slothful man in our verse is afraid to go out and work is - he says - that there is a lion out in the streets.  If he goes outside, the lion will eat him.  That is a pretty big story, isn't it?  Do you think that there was really a lion in the streets walking around?  Or was this lazy man just saying that there was a lion walking around in the streets just so that they wouldn't have to go out and do their work.  Lazy people can come up with some pretty crazy excuses - but a lion in the streets?!  That is a real story!  May be tomorrow the slothful man will say that there is a tyrannosaurus Rex in the streets!  Or may be he will say that there is a ninja warrior in the streets!  What do you think that the slothful man will say is in the streets?  Pretty crazy, don't you think!  Lazy people will say almost anything to get out of work.  Have you ever been so lazy that you used a stretcher of an excuse?  Wasn't that crazy?  Don't be like the slothful man in our verse.  Don't use exaggerated excuses.  Just do your work and don't be lazy.

Read Proverbs 22:10  Do you remember the four types of people that Solomon talked about in Proverbs?  The fool, the simple, the scorner, and the wise.  Our verse today talks about the scorner.  King Solomon talked about the fool and the simple as not being very smart.  But he did have hope for them.  Solomon said that the fool could be made to listen and the simple could be taught, but here in our verse Solomon does not have any hope for the scorner.  Solomon said that there is nothing to do for the scorner but to kick him out.  That is pretty serious.  The reason that the scorner must be cast out is that if he isn't, he will lead the fool and the simple into the wrong way.  I heard an old preacher years ago say that one child is worth all of the gold in the world.  But one child is not worth 20 children.  Do you understand what that means?  If this one scorner leads the 20 kids in the wrong way, then 21 kids will do wrong.  But, as Solomon said in our verse, if we cast out the scorner,  then the other 20 children will not be let into the wrong way.  May be they will listen and become like the wise.  So, we may have to boot out the scorner in order to save the 20 other children who may be following the scorner.  In our verse Solomon said that if the scorner is cast out, then things calm down.  Solomon said that strife and reproach will cease.  The scorner likes to stir up  the pot.  He likes to cause trouble and he likes to get other people into trouble.  So if the scorner is cast out, things will calm down and the kids that are left will probably listen and learn.  After all, shouldn't we listen to our parents and to God?  Shouldn't we listen to our Sunday school teachers and our youth pastors?  But we can't listen to these good leaders if we are listening to the scorner.  So, don't listen to a scorner.  He will get you into trouble and lead you into the wrong way.  If the leaders do not obey our verse and kick out the scorner, then we must obey our verse and kick the scorner out of our life.  If you are around someone who mocks God and good leaders, they are a scorner. Don't listen to them.  Don't follow their bad ways.  Kick them out of your mind.  Kick them out of your thinking.  Obey God's Word and you will never be sorry that you did!

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!