Posts tagged with “Proverbs”

Selections from Proverbs 30

Today has been a busy one, so thankfully, Proverbs 30's first four verses might be able to stand on their own.

Verses 1-4

The man declares, I am weary, O God;
  I am weary, O God, and worn out.
Surely I am too stupid to be a man.
  I have not the understanding of a man.
I have not learned wisdom,
  nor have I knowledge of the Holy One.
Who has ascended to heaven and come down?
  Who has gathered the wind in his fists?
Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment?
  Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name, and what is his son's name?
  Surely you know!

Verse 1 has some translational challenges in that it could actually be addressing two people instead of weariness; with that in mind, I do empathize with weariness. It's especially moving considering that the passage ends with an allusion to Jesus. Matthew 11:28-30:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Once again, we're reminded of humility by this writer's opening stanzas. For every small nugget of truth or wisdom I hear or learn, regardless of where it comes from, it often reminds me of how little I really know or understand. To say that my brain is kind of hardwired to remind myself of my own stupidity is a bit of an understatement.

There's an odd juxtaposition in that. I was recently talking with a person who mentioned that I sounded a bit arrogant when I was relating something new that I had learned. I started to correct him and stopped. In that moment, I realized something - I think I have an issue with my verbal delivery. I changed direction and starting asking him if he could explain why, because I wanted to understand what I was doing. He couldn't really explain what he meant by it, so instead I asked him some more questions. When queried on whether it seemed more like I was excited about what I'd learned or if I was condescendingly explaining what I learned. He told me it was the latter.

We then drifted off into a conversation about tone and intonation in speech, and he affirmed that yes, I may have been excited to convey something new I'd learned, but it sounded more like someone who knew everything having to annoyingly teach an introductory course. That hit me like a giant lead brick.

One can think one way, and actualize it another. It's another form of double-mindedness. I can't see or hear myself as an outside observer, so I never really realized that I was doing it.

As an introvert, I'm very thankful that people are willing to point out these things to me. Of course, my impatience makes me wish it hadn't taken 40 years to happen, but it's all in God's time, who has the looong term in view.


Proverbs 29:1

Today we look at the wisdom in Proverbs 29.

He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly be broken beyond healing.

We are often reproved by God in ways unlooked for, unexpected, and sometimes blindly unheeded. He uses many different means, be it circumstances, people around us, situations, or even suffering. The reproof is meant for our good and to point us to the hope we have in Christ Jesus, a hope that is above all hope. Yet still we often will ignorantly of obstinately refuse to heed that reproof.

God, in his omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, has His plans and purposes for timing things the way he does. We are allowed to walk in error for however long He desires due to purposes we can't necessarily fathom. His "patience", as it were, does have limits based on His plan. That "patience" can often run its course and we find our stiff necks being crushed so that we come to the end of ourselves.

I use a program called E-Sword, it's a free bible study tool kind of like a poor man's Logos. It comes with multiple bible versions, dictionaries, and commentaries that are laid out on screen side-by-side to use for study. It comes with a lot of free resources, one of them being Matthew Henry's commentaries. Hence, why I refer to Henry's work often.

The obstinacy of many wicked people in a wicked way is to be greatly lamented. They are often reproved by parents and friends, by magistrates and ministers, by the providence of God and by their own consciences, have had their sins set in order before them and fair warning given them of the consequences of them, but all in vain; they harden their necks. Perhaps they fling away, and will not so much as give the reproof a patient hearing; or, if they do, yet they go on in the sins for which they are reproved; they will not bow their necks to the yoke, but are children of Belial; they refuse reproof, despise it, hate it.

I came to belief in Christ in 2012, though I have struggled mightily with the fear of man and of persecution. Where I had full belief in Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection, and his propitiatory sacrifice for us on the Cross; I still had a very long way to go in wisdom and understanding. For many years, I struggled with the intellectual assent of the basic tenets of Christianity while still not having an understanding of how to apply it rightly. I couldn't get past the milk to the meat.

God went about things in a strange way that I am still having trouble understanding. He gave me the natural (e.g. inborn) gifts of reasoning and perception, but not clarity, making the intelligence and perception difficult to use in a sense of determining and rightly discerning Biblical wisdom. I spent years struggling with this as sin and the world still clung to me tightly, refusing to let go. This presented a major problem in marriage - I was unable to get past the slow dying corpse of myself in front of me in order to rightly and properly lead and disciple my family. I ended up causing much hurt and trauma, being unable to apply biblical discernment or right-minded response and leadership. That being said, I am not solely responsible for everything, only for my conduct; not how others may have responded to this.

The most interesting thing, to me, is looking back at my early few years as a believer and applying gained wisdom to my gifts. In the southern US, as part of the Bible Belt, churches are a dime a dozen and there's a mixing of wolves amongst the sheep. I ended up at First Baptist Atlanta, under the tutelage of Charles Stanley. It is a fairly large denomination, probably easily seeing 3,000 or more every Sunday. I remember walking through the crowds, doing my SOP of people-watching, and almost being able to tell a difference in people, like I could perceive how authentic they were being. Subtle hints in body language and action can tell you what a person really believes in their heart - I remember this distinctly when visiting Grace Community Church under John MacArthur. Almost everyone there had this sense of genuine hospitality that was unmistakable. Yet walking through FBA there was such a mix of people that you could tell, on their faces, that they might attend church, but they certainly didn't act on those beliefs during the week.

Such was I, an exhibitor of this behavior, in my struggle to shake off the dead man in me and live as a new creature in Christ. The memory of it nearly makes me weep with sorrow.

The issue of this obstinacy is to be greatly dreaded: Those that go on in sin, in spite of admonition, shall be destroyed; those that will not be reformed must expect to be ruined; if the rods answer not the end, expect the axes. They shall be suddenly destroyed, in the midst of their security, and without remedy; they have sinned against the preventing remedy, and therefore let them not expect any recovering remedy. Hell is remediless destruction. They shall be destroyed, and no healing, so the word is. If God wounds, who can heal?

The Lord's patience was tried with my obstinance, and at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, I got the axes. That story is perhaps for another time; it suffices to say that I was utterly ruined. It took over a year and a half of continuing to point myself in the wrong direction before beginning to correct paths (e.g. driving headlong, at breakneck speed, toward focusing on meeting my financial obligations instead of working on my heart matters). I was still being disobedient.

Then, this year, something changed. That is also another story for another time. I will sum it up in simple terms: I am no longer afraid. My sails have been trimmed and I am slowly turning the hulk of the near-derelict ship back to safe harbors to be repaired. Through God's breaking of my neck, He healed and reset it to better than it was before. Fear is being driven from me every day that passes. I grow bolder in Christ and proclaiming Him.

In a sense, the prodigal is returning Home.


Proverbs 28:1

For the first foray into Proverbs 28, we're going to camp in verse 1 pretty hard.

The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.

The wicked flee when no one pursues. What does that even mean? Wicked, at least in this sense, definitely means evil or immoral people. Why would they run away and vanish at the slightest hint of someone coming after them? Matthew Henry may tidy it up a bit:

Guilt in the conscience makes men a terror to themselves, so that they are ready to flee when none pursues; like one that absconds for debt, who thinks every one he meets a bailiff. Though they pretend to be easy, there are secret fears which haunt them wherever they go, so that they fear where no present or imminent danger is.

Or, put even more succinctly,

Sin makes men cowards. Whatever difficulties the righteous meet in the way of duty, they are not daunted.

This is all too true. I could probably think for mere moments and easily name at least 5 times sin made me to be the hugest of all cowards, especially in my marriage. However, when the Lord came and plucked His lost sheep from the wilderness and took him back to be with the 99, he has given me strength to overcome the sin of cowardice to boldly proclaim Christ to all. To bring it home in a more contemporary fashion, we have John MacArthur exhorting:

A guilty conscience imagines accusers everywhere (Numbers 32:23, Psalm 53:5), while a clear conscience has boldness to face everyone.

It's a rather interesting duplicity. Since the days of Adam, the fall itself brought awareness of the conscience, and conscience ever gnaws at us all. Conscience is bound up in guilt and shame, all direct descendants of that one deception by the father of lies himself. Adam and Eve hid because they were afraid; they covered themselves from shame. All of these emotions bind us and leave us as helpless cowards, twisting in the wind. When we have no other choice but to be found out, we flee.

There have been so many times I have fled when I should have stood fast and resolute. Especially when I was in the wrong. I don't mean that I should have stood proudly or stubbornly in my wrongness, by no means. Instead, I should have laid claim to the error, taken it into consideration, asked for forgiveness, and owned it. We only learn by our mistakes; we are not God and we are not perfect. I let one small thing snowball into a mountainous dung heap and ended up rotting everything from my passivity. Let that be a warning to all men - retain your spine, you need it for your station.

As a parting gift, I leave you with the verse in 1 Samuel 17 where David boldly proclaims that he will righteously stand up against the Philistine champion. May that encourage us that we are not meant to always be passive and on the sidelines.

1 Sam 17:32 And David said to Saul, “Let no man's heart fail because of him. Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.”

God has made men warriors just as much as He has made us gentle. It seems we have forgotten this truth in our postmodern feminist society, with its squishy love bombing and sissified, needy Jesus.