Dr Greg Bahnsen - Proverbs: Proverbs 6:1-5 (The Urgency of Extrication) (Part 17)

Some very practical instruction comes to us this morning from Proverbs the sixth chapter, verses one to five. Please turn in God's word to Proverbs six and we'll take us on reading the first five verses. Hear this as it is the word of God, my son. If thou art become surety for thy neighbor. If thou thou hast stricken thy hands for a stranger, thou art snared with the words of thy mouth. Thou art taken with the words of thy mouth. Do this now, my son, and deliver thyself, seeing thou art come into the hand of thy neighbor. Go humble thyself and importune thy neighbor. Give not sleep to thine eyes, neither slumber to thine eyelids. Deliver thyself as a roe from the hand of the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the fowler, and thus far the reading of God's word. This morning we're going to be looking at the urgency of extrication. When we use words that long and that fancy sounding, we need to stop and make sure we understand them before we go on. Extrication is not something that takes place in a dentist office. That's extraction. He extracts a tooth. But extrication is kind of like that, and it may prove to be as painful as going to the dentist. To extricate means to free yourself from a snare, to bring yourself out of a bind. And the Bible here exhorts us in the most down to earth practical terms that it is urgent that when we have contracted debts and obligations that go beyond our ability, that have been unwise, that have been rash, that we are urgent to extricate ourselves, to deliver ourselves from that bind. This morning we're going to be looking at the cultural background to this injunction to not become a surety for thy neighbor or to extricate yourself if you have been. We're going to be looking at the specific content of the counsel and then the general principle that underlies it. And then finally, in a way that may be very surprising to you, see how it applies to the work and ministry of Jesus Christ on our behalf. Proverbs 6 says, My son, if thou art become a surety. The difficulty is the vast majority of you who read this will not have any idea what that means. That is not language we use today. We're not accustomed to talking that way. And for many of us, even who have been Bible students, this is something that is out of our vocabulary, out of our league. It's not part of our experience. And so let me explain. A surety is a pledge or Some object that is given to a creditor as a guarantee for the payment of a debt. To get an example of surety, we're going to turn to an embarrassing story in Genesis 38. Look at verses 20. Excuse me. Verses 17 to 20. Genesis 38th chapter, at the 17th verse. To put this in context, Tamar, who is the daughter in law to Judah. Excuse me. She was the wife of Judah. Tamar has been refused. Onan refused to come into her and to fulfill the obligation of the levirate to raise up children to his dead brother's rank widow. And Onan's father would not intervene to have this taken care of. And she complained to him and was put off by him. So that she devised the stratagem to trap him. She went and disguised herself as a harlot at the gate of a particular city. And we pick up the story at verse 17 after. Excuse me. Judah has come in and seen her and is now contracting the price of her prostitution. So it's an embarrassing story, but notice how surety functions here. And he said, I will send thee a kid of the goats from the flock. And she said, wilt thou give me a pledge till thou send it? Since you're not paying for my prostitution with the kid from the flock, now will you give me a pledge? And he said, what pledge shall I give thee? And she said, thy signet and thy cord and thy staff, it is in thy hand. And he gave them to her and came in unto her. And she conceived by him. And she arose and went away and put off her veil from her and put on the garments of her widowhood again. And Judah sent the kid of the goats by the hand of his friend, the Adelaide, to receive the pledge from the woman's hand. But he found her not again. Just so that I don't confuse you, Judah is the father in law here, not the husband. Sorry. Judah goes to her as a prostitute. He doesn't have the payment for her prostitution. She says, will you then give me a security deposit? Will you then give me a surety that you will pay? And he said, what do you ask of me? And she. By the way, that gives you an idea of the value of a kid from the flock, that he gave up his most precious ring and his cord and his staff to her that she held. And then he sent a servant back with the payment to recover the security deposit. That is a surety, and you can be sure of this. I don't recommend that you make use of it in that context for the sake of paying off Prostitutes. But that will show you the culture of the ancient world and how a surety functioned. Anyway, a surety was a secure deposit, not really collateral. We shouldn't confuse the two. Collateral usually is supposed to have the same value as that which you are borrowing. If I go to a bank and I say I want to borrow $3,000 and they require collateral of me, they want something that they can come and seize, liquidate and pay off the debt if I prove unable to do so. The surety is not collateral. It doesn't necessarily have the same value as that which is being borrowed. The surety is more a security deposit that signifies a sincere intention on the part of the borrower to repay the loan. Sometimes, if you're out on vacation, you may have had this experience. Say you go to the boathouse and you want to rent a rowboat. And they are going to require a security deposit of you. Maybe they'll require that you leave your driver's license there until you return the oars and the boat and good condition. And then you get your driver's license back. Obviously, the driver's license is not worth the same as the boat and the oars. Because you could take off with the boat and the oars and go through the pain of reordering your driver's license, and they wouldn't be able to cash in your license at all. They are then taking as a security deposit your inconvenience at not having your driver's license if you don't return. So the security deposit is not met as collateral per se. It's met as a sincere indication that. That you intend to repay the borrower. Now, according to God's law, we can say a little bit more about these security deposits, these sureties. According to God's law, the pledge or the surety should not be held in such a way by the creditor as to be ungracious or cruel to the borrower as when he takes a man's means of living. Turn in your bibles to Exodus 22, verses 26 and 27. And then we'll be turning to Deuteronomy, chapter 24. First of all, Exodus 22 at the 26th verse, where we read, if thou at all take thy neighbor's garment to pledge, thou shalt restore it unto him before the sun goeth down. For that is his only covering. It is his garment for his bare body, wherein shall he sleep. And it shall come to pass when he crieth unto me. That I will hear, for I am compassionate. And then Deuteronomy 24. A number of verses in this chapter speak of laws pertaining to surety as well. Deuteronomy 24:6 no man shall take the mill or the upper millstone to pledge, for he taketh a man's life to pledge. And then verses 10 to 13 when thou dost lend thy neighbor any manner of loan, thou shalt not go into his house to fetch his pledge thou shalt stand without and the man to whom thou dost lend shall bring forth the pledge without unto thee and if he be a poor man, thou shalt not sleep with his pledge thou shalt surely restore to him the pledge when the sun goeth down, that he may sleep in his garment, and bless thee, and it shall be righteousness unto thee before Jehovah thy God. And one more verse, verse 17 Thou shalt not wrest the justice due to the sojourner or to the fatherless, nor take the widow's raiment to pledge. God's people were not allowed to loan money to an impoverished brother upon interest. When an impoverished brother came to them, they had to loan charitably, without looking to profit from the arrangement. However, when even an impoverished brother came to one of God's people for a loan, it was not inappropriate, in fact highly appropriate to require of the impoverished brother signs of sincerity, a surety, not down payment, but a security deposit from him. However, God says, in such situations you are to act graciously and not oppressively. For instance, the heavy outer cloak that was often given in a pledge given by way of surety for the payment of a debt would be needed by a poor man to wrap himself in at night and sleep. Accordingly, God required that the cloak, if it be used for the security deposit, be returned every night to the man, and that a widow's cloak not be taken ever to show graciousness and compassion. Someone might say, well, then, why take the cloak at all since it has to be given at sundown every night back to him? Well, this will give you an insight to the ethical and economic outlook of God's people and the law of God. You see, if the man kept his cloak every day, he could come to fellow Jew A and say, please lend me $30. Here is my excuse me. He doesn't give the cloak. Instead of giving the cloak, he says, but my cloak will be the deposit, but I need it all day long. And so he gets the $30. And then what does he do? He goes to fellow believer Jew number B, and he says, please give me $30, and my cloak will be the Deposit for that. But of course, I need it all day long. And then he goes to sea and gets $20, says, but I need my cloak all day long. What we call contracting multiple indebtedness on the basis of one deposit or down payment or collateral, if you want to use it that way. And the law of God forbids that, which is to say the law of God forbids our modern banking system, which is fractional reserve banking. What it means is the bank may lend out a certain amount of money against a fragile fraction of that amount that they have in reserve. A fractional reserve is the foundation for their loans. So that if a bank has $100,000 in reserve in deposit, it may loan out 10 times that amount. It turns out in our day, which is to say one cloak is being used as the foundation or deposit, the reserve against 10 loans. And the Bible forbids this, and we're heading for economic chaos and destruction because of it. Well, we could get into an economic lesson. The point is, compassionately, you don't take a man's cloak and keep it at night as the security. Moreover, you don't take the upper millstone nor the whole mill. Now, what does this mean? We tend to think of down by the old mill stream, mills are big buildings with huge stones. Now, the mill that is being referred to here is more like the Cuisinart in your kitchen, although that may be a bit advanced. Every Jewish family had a kitchen utensil called a mill, and it had a large, small, large, small, a large lower stone, and then a movable, smaller upper stone. And then the housewife would get up every day and prepare her flour and make bread from this. And so God says, if you're going to take a security deposit from somebody, you don't take their household mill or the upper stone. Take the upper stone. The mill's no good at all for grinding things into flour. And why is that? Because you take away the man's livelihood, you take away his means of daily bread. That would be akin to taking as a security deposit from a plumber his tools, and then say, now go out and try to work and pay off the debt you see, you remove from him his livelihood. Moreover, the law of God says that the sanctity of the debtor's home was to be preserved. The creditor could not enter it to seize the pledge. Interesting in light of our practices today, isn't it? God says in compassion, when a man is impoverished and must take a loan from you, you don't go into his house and you choose the object for the security deposit. You keep your distance, and it says, you don't enter his house. You stay outside, so that his privacy and his dignity, his honor and his freedom are preserved. He brings out the pledge of his choosing to you. Well, you begin to get some idea then of the ancient world of God's people and how this concept of surety functions. The surety was the security deposit, the guarantee, the indication of a sincere intent to pay back an obligation. Now we have to expand this beyond the surety being an object, a person could become surety for another man. How so? Well, in the place of his own possessions being used as a security deposit, a man would sometimes seek out another individual, a third party, to stand up for him, to be, in our language, a co signer on his loan, to take his part and thereby guarantee the payment of his debts. And a person who would do this sort of thing was said to go surety for his neighbor. If I go surety for you, that means I co sign, I stand up for you, and I say I will back up his intention to pay so that if he doesn't repay, it falls to me to do so. By the way, the contract to back a loan in this way was sealed in the ancient world by a handshake. The Hebrew means to strike the hands. I guess you could take that as maybe a high five kind of striking of the hands. I think more likely it's what we would do in a handshake. We see this in job 17 and throughout the book of Proverbs. Loans were contracted upon a handshake. That was the seal of the covenant that you will perform it. And when you go surety, you do so with a handshake as well. You co sign by striking the hands. Now, this practice of a person becoming the surety, the security deposit, the co signer for his friend, is reflected beautifully in some Old Testament prayers that we find where God is called upon to become the surety for his people. Job calls on God. He says, strike the hand with me and become surety for me. Take my side, God. Be co signer for me, that I am righteous. David prays in Psalm 119, verse 122 that God would show him a surety for good, that God would take his side for the good and be his backer. Hezekiah prays in Isaiah 38:14 that God would become surety to him. And so you understand the practice then. The person who becomes the co signer or surety for another is assuming a responsibility to intervene in Fact. Surety in Hebrew comes from the verb to intervene, to interpose yourself for another, he becomes the one responsible to intervene in favor of the debtor. If the debtor becomes insolvent and cannot pay back his debt, this is exactly what Paul took upon himself for the sake of Onesimus. If you look at Philemon, verses 17 to 19, Philemon's, that short book of the New Testament is hard for people to find. Right before the Book of Hebrews, verse 17, Paul says, if thou countest me a partner, receive him as myself. Paul says, I'm standing behind Onesimus. You see me as Onesimus. If then thou countest me a partner, receive him as myself. But if he hath wronged thee at all, or oweth thee anything, put that to mine account. I, Paul, write with mine own hand. I will repay it. Paul says, I'm the surety for Onesimus. If he owes you anything you can count on, receive him as though it's paid, because I will see to it that it's paid. I will intervene and pay his obligations. Obviously, that sort of thing calls for careful consideration of whether you can meet the obligation before you co sign another man's loan. And that brings us then to the specific council of Proverbs. Knowing what a surety is, Proverbs tells us that it is risky business to become a surety for another man's debts. In fact, you could be hurt in so doing. Look at Proverbs 11:15. He that is surety for a stranger shall smart for it. He shall be sore broken for it. But he that hateth suretyship is secure. Yes, you could be hurt by becoming a co signer for another man. In fact, Proverbs says, you could lose your own bed. Proverbs 22, verses 26 and 27. Be thou not one of them that strike hands, or of them that are sureties for debts. If thou hast not wherewith to pay, why should he take away thy bed from under thee? You'd better be careful about co signing another man's loans. If he doesn't have the money to pay, the creditor's going to come and take your bed from under under you. And thus it shows a lack of understanding to become a surety for someone. Proverbs 17:18 says, A man void of understanding striketh hands and becomes surety in the presence of his neighbor. A person who is so unwise as to become a surety for a stranger. For a man he doesn't even know that well will himself need to offer a further pledge to to the creditor. You see, if I'm loaning money to someone and that someone says, well, I'll go out and I'll get a surety to back up the loan. And then as a creditor, I see that the person who is backing up the loan doesn't even know this person that well, they're strangers. Then Proverbs says, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to require a surety of the surety. Because it doesn't seem to me that's a very wise arrangement. Look at Proverbs 20:16. Take his garment, that is surety for a stranger, and hold him in pledge, that is surety for foreigners. When the man who comes as the surety has done this unwise thing, you'd better take a surety of the surety, then a pledge from the man who is pledging so Proverbs is eminently practical. The thing that bothers people, though, is that seems so ungracious, so lacking in compassion, so unloving. Proverbs 17:18, for instance, has been said by some to conflict with the verse immediately preceding it. Proverbs 17:18 says, A man void of understanding strikes hands and becomes surety in the presence of his neighbor. But the verse preceding verse 17 had already said, a friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. If you're a friend and a brother to somebody and adversity comes and he needs you to co sign, isn't that what you've been born for? Isn't that what a friend is for? And then the very next verse says, but boy, don't become a surety, because then you're void of understanding. You see, what we need to understand is that Proverbs 17:18 is not in conflict with the preceding verse, not in conflict with compassion, but is simply warning against unlimited liability, warning against blind guarantees and rashness in becoming surety. Reckless promises are not signs of love, but of foolishness. Generosity is certainly urged in the Bible, but never a generosity devoid of prudence. That's one of the problems with pietistic preaching about love, isn't it? Is that it takes one general theme of the Bible about being good to others, and then makes it unqualified, as it were, idolizes and absolutizes that it and doesn't see all of what God's Word teaches. Generosity is needed, and we need more generosity than we show in this congregation, to be sure. But the Bible never calls for generosity devoid of prudence, because there's a difference between Charity and stupidity. We should learn from this as well, that good intentions are not in themselves a virtue. A man may intend to do something good for his neighbor, but it is not virtuous if he does what is stupid and foolish, devoid of understanding. God requires of us not just good intentions, but realism. One cannot forget that there are events beyond his control, such as the debtors becoming insolvent, unable to repay. And this has to be taken into account when you assess your ability to commit yourself in advance, so that you'll find that I'm willing to co sign alone. But you know it's going to be a very, very small, circumscribed group of people for whom I will co sign. My children, my parents, what have you. Maybe a little beyond that. But you see, there are reasons why I hope to be able to take care of that. When a person says, well, I'll stand behind what this man's doing and doesn't take into account future liabilities, and that he may lose control of the situation if he doesn't assess this realistically, he's being a fool. And so we come to Proverbs 6 to understand specifically what God is telling us. He says, if you have foolishly ensnared yourself by co signing an arrangement, hurry up and get yourself free from it. Proverbs 6. Let's read it again. Here, my son, if thou art become surety for thy neighbor. If thou hast stricken thy hands for a stranger, thou art snared with the words of thy mouth. Thou art taken with the words of thy mouth. Do this now, my son. Deliver thyself, seeing thou art come into the hand of thy neighbor. Go humble thyself and importune thy neighbor. Don't give sleep to thine eyes, nor slumber to thine eyelids. Deliver thyself as a roe from the hand of the hunter, and a bird from the hand of the fowler. If you're ensnared, vigorously extricate yourself. That's what Proverbs is telling you. True to the spirit of Proverbs, this is very practical advice. In verse three, literally it reads, bestir yourself and be boisterous. Don't hold back, don't be passive, be aggressive. Go to the person and humble yourself and say, I shouldn't have made this arrangement. Please deliver me now. Interestingly, Roland Devoe, who's a scholar, an Old Testament scholar, reads verse three here as indicating that you should plead with the debtor. Pay your debt, so I don't get stuck with it. However, it's very unlikely I think in light of verse five that that unique interpretation is correct. The one you go importune, the one you plead with, is the hunter, is the fowler, is the creditor. Who's going to come after you now that you're ensnared? You go and get on your knees and beg for mercy. That's what the book of Proverbs says. If you are foolishly ensnared, vigorously try to get out of this. You see, there were no bankruptcy laws at that time to protect the co signer or limit his responsibility. His only hope would be to plead with the creditor to secure his release, to look for mercy. Now, what is the general principle we learn from this? This is very practical advice. I hope you don't miss the practical down to earth advice this has for you. Don't co sign loans, don't extend yourself beyond your ability, don't be unrealistic when it comes to making business contracts. God holds you accountable to live up to this obligation. Now there's a general principle though, and the principle is first of all, when promises are made, we should see that we have become debtors. We are obligated to pay off our promise, as it were, and we are obligated to do so even when it turns out to be disadvantageous, even when the promise proves to be to our hurt. And so in Psalm 15:4, a well known passage in our congregation, we've had reason to refer to it a number of times. In Psalm 15:4, David asks, who will dwell with God? Who has the right to come into God's presence? And he says, a man who swears to his own hurt and changes, not a man who makes a promise. And then he says, oh, I shouldn't have done that. Oh, that's going to be far more inconvenient, far more costly, far more hurtful than I thought. This isn't really a good arrangement. I thought it was going to work out for me and it's not. You know what happens when people do that today? You know what happens? It probably really irritates you when it's happened to you. People will make a promise and they find out it costs too much, they won't do it. They say, well, I just can't do it. I didn't know it was going to be like this. I didn't know it was going to cost me. I didn't know I was going to have to take so much. But the Bible says you don't dwell, Jehovah, you behave like that when you've made a commitment when you've got a contract with, when you've given your word and sworn, then you do it, even when it's to your own hurt. Now, since that's the background to our contractual obligations, when we have struck a contract and committed ourselves in some way to some other person and we see the foolishness of our commitment, then our only option, besides fulfilling the promise is to do what, is to go to the creditor and humble ourselves looking to renegotiate that contract or promise. The only option you have is to go and to ask the man who holds you an obligation to release you. Now, he might not do so, but the Bible says you do that. Don't you sleep before you go and plead with the man to find another way around this, to let you out of the obligation and so settle your accounts and settle them quickly. The Bible says, owe no man anything but to love one another. If you have got yourself committed to something that goes beyond the obligations of love, pay it off. If you have to plead for mercy, extricate yourself. It's urgent. You know, in many ways we get ourselves into positions of obligation which are disadvantageous and are unwise. And God wants us to see the urgency of extricating ourselves from those conditions. And so Jesus, and in the Sermon on the Mount taught in Matthew the fifth chapter at verse 25, Agree with thine adversary quickly while thou art with him in the way, lest aptly the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the last farthing. Jesus says, you've got an obligation. Your adversary is coming after you. So settle up quickly. Do so. Extricate yourself. It's urgent. Why don't we do this? It's so sound, it's so practical. It's common sense. Why don't we do this very simply? Because it requires humility and aggressiveness and we are lazy and proud. Did you miss that? The reason why we don't follow this advice, and it needs to be told us, is because we are lazy and we are proud. We are not aggressive to go settle our accounts, and we are too proud to say, I was wrong. I should not have said this. I should not have given my word. I was a fool to do this. Would you please be merciful to me? Would you give me another way out? Would you release me from your hand? Proverbs says, you go, do it. Do it quickly. Don't sleep until You've done it bestir yourself. Humble yourself, throw yourself on his mercy. But that isn't the way we are. When you've gotten yourself into a mess, the Bible says you shouldn't hesitate to confess your error or your foolishness and then make amends that are necessary to free yourself from the bind. But we don't like to admit that we've made mistakes. We don't like to go to people and to be at their disposal and say, what can I do to renegotiate? I've been wrong. What Proverbs is saying is not only should you be realistic in your business arrangements, you should be humble when you are wrong. And we find that so hard to be realistic and humble. There's a very interesting application of this. It seems to me, though, to the ministry of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ Christ, that we shouldn't miss, because Proverbs is saying, you be very careful about becoming a co signer on a loan. You be very careful that you not get yourself into a bind by backing someone else up and saying, I'll keep his promise, I'll keep his commitment. I'll be surety for what he has said. It seems to me there are two ways in which the counsel of God's word requiring debts and sureties can be applied to the work of our Savior. The first is seen in terms of our debt to God. And the second is seen in terms of God's debt, surprisingly to us. First of all, consider Matthew 6:12, where Jesus teaches us to pray, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And Matthew the 18th chapter, verses 23 to 34, where Jesus tells the of story story of a servant of the king who owes him a large amount of money, thousands and thousands of dollars, and he can't pay. And he goes to the king and he pleads to be released. And the king says, your debt is forgiven. And then that servant goes on and he takes literally by the throat, he takes his fellow servant and says, pay me back the $5 you owe me. And when the servant will not, puts him into prison, debtors prison. When the king hears this, then this one is cast into the outer darkness. Whereas the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, Jesus says, and so shall it be for every one of you, Jesus teaches, who will not forgive others their debts. So God will not forgive our debts. The point of this is that our sins are brought into a position, brought us into a position of owing God a payment. In the spiritual realm, sin is portrayed as a debt we Owe God payment, a payment that will mean our eternal destruction. But the Bible teaches that Christ has intervened as a surety for us who are insolvent debtors before God. Christ has intervened to pay the price for us in our place. Christ stands up and as Paul did for Onesimus, Christ stands up and he says, forgive their debt, because I will pay it. I will be surety against their obligation. The Bible says, you be very careful. Don't you stand for someone else. And then the Bible teaches us that's exactly what Jesus did on our behalf. He loved us so much as unworthy strangers, he nevertheless said, I will be surety for their debts. But you see, there's an even more beautiful way in which this applies, and that is in terms of God's debt to us. And to understand that, you must turn to Hebrews, the seventh chapter, as we conclude today. For the author of Hebrews talks about the promises of the New covenant. In verse 22 we read by so much also hath Jesus become the new surety of a better covenant. Put this in context. In the context of the author's words. We have to remember that the promises God makes for our salvation in the New Covenant have the character of a debt of obligation. How can God be in debt? How can God be obliged to save us? Hebrews 6, verses 17 to 20 explains wherein God being minded to show more abundantly unto the heirs of the promise, the immutability of his counsel interposed with an oath that by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have strong encouragement who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us, which we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast, and entering into that which is within the veil, whither as a forerunner, Jesus entered for us, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. These are amazing words. God not only promises salvation, he has taken an oath. I will pay. And that oath has its substance to make Jesus a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, who will enter into the very presence of God to secure salvation and there enter by entering. Open the way for us to come in within the veil. Can you be sure you will be saved? Will God keep his promises? Well, God's taken an oath. God has struck hands. God has committed himself, and through Jesus we'll make this oath come true. And in order that that oath might be secure, God in turn made an oath to his Son that he would be a priest after the Order of Melchizedek look at Hebrews 7:21 for they indeed the Levitical priest have been made priests without an oath, but he with an oath by him that saith of him the Lord sware and will not repent himself, Thou art a priest forever. The Lord swore and will not repent himself. Psalm 15:4 says the godly one gives his word and doesn't repent, doesn't change. And God has given his word that Jesus will be a priest after the ordeal of Melchizedek and he will not change. And it's on that basis then that verse 22 says by so much also hath Jesus become then the surety of a better covenant, the guarantee of payment, the pledge, the surety that God offers for the promised benefits of salvation concerning which God has made himself a debt debtor to us. The surety is the Lord Jesus Christ. He has become God's co signer guaranteeing salvation, guaranteeing the promises to which God has made himself a debtor. Very simply, Christ has become a two way surety. Christ has become the two way co signer. We owe God because of our sins. We have debtors debts and Jesus co signs them and pays them off. On the other hand, God has put himself in debt by taking an oath to save his people and Jesus has become the co signer, the one who stands up for the guarantee of the promises of God. That's so amazing because in our practical affairs the book of Proverbs makes it clear you'd better be very sure of what you're doing when you stand behind another person's debts. What does this tell you brother and sister about Jesus attitude toward us? That he has become the co signer, he has become the surety of our salvation. I don't think Jesus looked at us and said they look like a good risk. I think Jesus said I love them to the uttermost and I'll see to a that their debts are paid and in so doing fulfilled the debt of my Father to give them salvation. Let's pray. Lord, we ask you to open our hearts today to receive this message from your Word. The assurances that we have that you love us. Indeed the assurance that we see in the very person of our Savior Jesus Christ, who is assured a security deposit of our salvation, that our debts will be paid off and your oath will be fulfilled to save us. We do love him with all of our hearts and pray that His Spirit might so fill us, to make us compassionate, to make us loving and to give us that realism that godly men need in this world. Lord, help us to learn the lesson of being sureties. For we pray in Jesus name, Amen.