Proverbs 19:1-3,16 ESV
“Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity
than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool.
Desire without knowledge is not good,
and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way.
When a man's folly brings his way to ruin,
his heart rages against the Lord.”
“Whoever keeps the commandment keeps his life;
he who despises his ways will die.”
A person who walks (in conduct, in practice) with integrity
is a person who is honest, trustworthy, honorable, reliable, and upright
(decent, morally pure). One who is crooked is one who is dishonorable, not
trustworthy, unfaithful, and a liar. He is corrupt, immoral, perverted, and
twisted. So, it is obviously better to be a person of integrity than it is to
be a person who is crooked in speech and is foolish (unwise, reckless,
thoughtless).
A person who desires without knowledge is often an unwise
person who goes by his feelings rather than by using his God-given brain and
common sense. He follows his senses rather than the teachings of Scripture, and
rather than the commands of God, which are God’s moral laws given to us for our
protection. The foolish person acts without thinking. If it feels good he does
it regardless of the consequences or who gets hurt in the process.
Although human beings are responsible for their own
behaviors, they will sometimes blame others for their own wrong decisions. And
sometimes they will even blame God, that somehow God did not stop them or
protect them, even though they are the ones who decided to do wrong. Yes, it is
up to us whether or not to keep the commandments of God. And if we do, we will
live for eternity, but if we do not, we will die in our sins without God.
Proverbs 19:20-22 ESV
“Listen to advice and accept instruction,
that you may gain wisdom in the future.
Many are the plans in the mind of a man,
but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.
What is desired in a man is steadfast love,
and a poor man is better than a liar.”
Now the advice and the instruction which we are to listen to
and to accept needs to be godly and biblical counsel and not the thinking and
reasoning of human beings in their flesh. We have many people out there giving
us all sorts of counsel and advice, a lot of it in memes on social media, some
of it through devotionals or books written by people professing faith in Jesus
Christ, and some of it coming from preachers and their sermons.
But we need to be discerning about what advice or what
counsel we receive to make certain that it aligns with God’s counsel to us and
that it is not contrary to the teachings of Scripture. For just because it
sounds good it doesn’t mean it is good. And just because someone quotes
Scripture does not mean he is teaching the truth of the Scriptures. So ask, “Does
the teaching and the advice align with God’s plans and purpose for our lives?”
Yes, as humans we may make many plans which don’t align with
God’s plans and purposes for our lives. And they could even be good plans, but
they may not be what God has for us to do, and they could be what we are doing
in place of what he has for us to do. So it is good for us to search out what
the Scriptures teach regarding God’s plans and purpose for our lives and then
for us to submit to our Lord and to do his will out of pure love for Him.
Proverbs 19:23 ESV
“The fear of the Lord leads to life,
and whoever has it rests satisfied;
he will not be visited by harm.”
The fear of the Lord is to take God and his word seriously,
to believe what it says, and then to do what the word teaches us we must do as
followers of Jesus Christ. It is to believe God when he says if we live
according to the flesh that we will die in our sins and that we will not have
eternal life with God. It is to believe God and his word when it teaches us,
too, that we must walk now according to the Spirit and no longer under the
control of sin.
Too many people today in America professing faith in Jesus
Christ and heaven as their eternal destiny do not walk in the fear of the Lord,
for they do not honor God with their lives nor do they take his word to heart
unless they are claiming for themselves the promises of God that they like. But
they ignore the fact that the promises of God are all conditional, such as we
must walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh if we want
salvation from sin and eternal life with God (Rom 6&8; Gal 5:16-21).
Yet, when this says here that we will not be visited with
harm if we walk in the fear of the Lord, this is not saying that bad things
will not happen to us or that we will not have to suffer for the sake of our
faith in Jesus Christ. We will. Jesus said we will. The harm we will not be
visited with is the wrath of God. We will not die in our sins but we will live
with Christ for eternity if we walk in obedience to our Lord and if we are not
living in deliberate sin.
Proverbs 19:27-29 ESV
“Cease to hear instruction, my son,
and you will stray from the words of knowledge.
A worthless witness mocks at justice,
and the mouth of the wicked devours iniquity.
Condemnation is ready for scoffers,
and beating for the backs of fools.”
Oh, this is absolutely true! If we stop up our ears so that
we refuse to listen to the truths of the Scriptures, it will not go well for
us. We cannot expect the protection of God over our lives. We cannot expect
that our sins will be forgiven and that heaven will be our eternal destiny. For
the Scriptures teach that we must walk by the Spirit so that we do not fulfill
the sinful passions of the flesh. And if we do not do that, heaven is not our
eternal destiny.
Also, if we stop up our ears because we don’t want to hear from
God what we don’t want to hear, we will most certainly stray from the teachings
of Scripture and from purity of devotion to our Lord in order to follow after
the ways of the sinful flesh, instead. We can’t tell God “No!” time and time
again and then expect him to protect us from all evil or to help us to flee
temptation to sin against him. We have to obey his teachings.
Not many people today are taking God and his word seriously.
Many people are mocking the Scriptures, even many who profess faith in Jesus
Christ. Many professing Christians think that they don’t have to obey the Lord
or forsake their sinful practices, and so they continue on in their deliberate
sins taking God’s grace for granted. But it will not end well for them, for if
we make sin our practice, and if righteousness and obedience to our Lord are
not our practice, we will not inherit eternal life, regardless of what we think.
[Lu
9:23-26;
Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-17; Eph 4:17-24; 1 Pet 2:24; 1 Co
6:9-10,19-20; 2 Co 5:10,15,21; Tit 2:11-14; Rom
12:1-2; Col 3:5-10; Gal 5:16-21; Eph 5:3-11; Gal 6:7-8; Rom 2:6-8; Heb 10:26-27; 1 Jn 1:5-9; 1 Jn
2:3-6; 1 Jn 3:4-10; Matt 7:21-23; Rev 21:8,27; Rev
22:14-15; Eph 2:8-10; Heb 12:1-2; Jn 6:44; 2 Pet 1:1; Rom 8:24; Rom 13:11; 1 Co
1:18; Ac 26:18]
Rejoice in the Lord
By Ron Hamilton
God never moves without purpose or plan
When trying His servant and molding a man.
Give thanks to the LORD though your testing seems long;
In darkness He giveth a song.
I could not see through the shadows ahead;
So I looked at the cross of my Savior instead.
I bowed to the will of the Master that day;
Then peace came and tears fled away.
Now I can see testing comes from above;
God strengthens His children and purges in love.
My Father knows best, and I trust in His care;
Through purging more fruit I will bear.
O Rejoice in the LORD
He makes no mistake,
He knoweth the end of each path that I take,
For when I am tried and purified,
I shall come forth as gold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7CflVL5Drs
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