Proverbs 20:3 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Proverbs 20:3

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The deceptive influence here is the lure of strife. Now it may sound curious, but it is undeniable that there is a strange, magnetic attraction that strife has for people. People will be sucked into strife so easily. It is almost like a pleasant food. In one sense, nobody wants it and nobody likes it, but in another sense people are very readily drawn into it. It is about people who are hostile controversialists by nature, or people who are just over-reactive, over-defensive. If anyone says anything, they must defend themselves, respond in some way. Or people who are vengeful. You know there are people – perhaps there is a bit of this in everyone – who cannot let an issue go. They cannot put it down, especially when young. They absolutely must have the last word. Some children are like that; thankfully they may grow out of it, but they must have the last word. It is difficult to keep a straight face sometimes because it amuses you, the ingenuity with which the last word will be had. There are people who are just critical and looking for trouble, who are interfering in other people’s business and want to correct them.

Application

We have to mention social media because it is worked up on social media as nowhere else. You have all seen it, those of you who are parents. One of the biggest things in life for young children is who is liked and who is unliked in the playground; whose group you are in, and whose group you are excluded from. They come back from school and they want to tell you who they are in with or out with today, who this one is palling up with and so on. And when Facebook came in with its ‘like’ and ‘unlike’, it seemed as if they had brought the playground back again. This is infantile, so sad, and there are adult people engaging in this. They have gone right back to the primary school playground. You did not get it in the secondary school. It was the real baby stuff, and now it is back. And adults, even some Christian adults, are taking it all so seriously, and becoming so over-wrought and so on. That is exactly what this proverb is about. ‘It is an honour [it is noble] for a man to cease from strife,’ to be out of all those arguments and foolish to-ing and fro-ing. There are so many deep things for us to be thinking about, learning about, so many significant things for us to be praying about, engaging in, working on. We have not got time for the trivial and the nonsense and the childish. This is a distraction of Satan. Christian people must focus on things that are noble.

Questions

The word translated ‘strife’ comes from the verb to throw. But it is about fighting, grappling, and by extension, quarrelling and bickering.

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

Proverbs 20:3 Commentary and Bible Study

Explain meaning of Proverbs 20:3