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Bible Notes - Tabernacle Commentaries
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Proverbs 12:3
Comments
The proverb pictures those who make a way of life out of wickedness. Perhaps they ambush traders who pass through the area, and plunder their goods. Well that is a risky life. And if you choose a get-rich quick criminal life, one thing you are choosing along with it is insecurity and instability. You may have to be on the run, and to live out of town, and people will know what you are, and what you have done, and you may be hunted. Yes, you may get away with it for much of your life, you may get your hands on riches and things that you could never have had by working at your farm, but it is hardly a way to be established. Surely, he seems to reason, everyone will agree with that. Whereas the righteous, they are keeping their farms and their homesteads, and they are doing things in a regular and a proper way. At least they can be settled and established, and nobody will up-end them and arrest them, and seize their homes.The apparent advantages given by wickedness are an illusion, even when they appear to offer short-term gains. There is a strong temptation to the wicked to break God’s commandments for their profit, because it seems to them that their sins will not be discovered and their gains cannot be taken away. A lie is viewed as something useful if it hides sin and avoids any unpleasant consequences. Why would you not use oppression to eliminate an enemy who stands in your way? They have no awareness of God’s scrutiny of their lives, or of his overruling providence to punish the wicked and reward the righteous. But the righteous do not dare to act in this way. If they seem to lose out by sticking to the path of integrity, they see this as a test of their commitment to God’s standards, and know that he will not allow them to be disadvantaged in the long term. They trust in the Lord who exalts the humble and puts down the proud. They exercise patience and can cope with the delay in his justice, for they walk by faith and know that the circumstances of this world will be entirely changed when Christ returns. This attitude of the righteous will be rewarded for they shall never be moved, that is, they will lose no eternal advantage and even in this life all things will work for their good.
Application
This also has to do with attitude. The attitude of the believer is this, my respect and my regard, the things that I appreciate are the long-term things of life, the stable things of life. It is the unbeliever who is all out for the shifting, unstable things. The things I can have today, no matter what happens tomorrow. This little picture which is almost in every chapter is brought up here in the context of attitude, drawing attention to this. ‘I want’, we have to say, ‘the things that are permanent and rooted, and firm. I do not want to do things that will destroy Christian character, I do not want to do things that will result in no abiding spiritual fruit, trivial things, passing things.’
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