Proverbs 24:5 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Proverbs 24:5

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Wisdom is not only a project but it is a constant engagement to apply the skill that God has revealed to us through his word. The Christian life should be viewed as a war and this is the illustration. In olden times you might have an aggressor and he invades. He arrives on our shores. His troops are not that numerous, they cannot be, they have come by boat. They are also quite shaken about. But they have come ashore, and a great army, which may be two or three times larger, is amassed by the defenders. However they are not full time soldiers they are farmers, and that much larger army of spare time soldiers is easily routed and defeated by the invaders, because they are expert in handling their weaponry. They are fulltime soldiers. They did not have to till the fields, they did nothing but shoot arrows at targets, and so they were skilled and practised in their weaponry.In the Christian life, in sanctification, we have got to be skilled and we have got to understand the problems and the things that are against us. Take for instance the matter of temptation. Someone might ask, ‘Doesn’t all temptation come from Satan?’ No, you have to understand that temptation also comes from our own flesh, the old nature, the things that are residual in us. So we have to deal with our own sinful desires as well as the suggestions that are made by the enemy of the souls. That is basic, but if we do not know it then we will not defend against half the temptations that come into our lives. ‘A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength’. To start with you need to be skilled at your weaponry. But then you need to add to that smart tactics, whether it is attacking from flanks, or using pincer movements, feinting with troops, or ambushes. All these things are added to the skill in weaponry. This is the holy war, and we should know and learn what we are doing.

Application

Now it happens that somebody misses church – a young person perhaps – and you ask, ‘Why were you not there?’ The answer comes back, ‘I was depressed.’ But did they not know that when you get depressed the very first thing the devil, or one of his junior henchmen, whispers in your ear is: ‘Do not go to church’, and they fell for it? We must know what to expect, how things are going to be made to appear to us as unhelpful which are the very things we need to strengthen and lift us up. We must not be naïve when we go into this war.

What happens if I pass through a time of grief or emotional turmoil of some kind? Do you know how to ration your thinking about the thing that is concerning you? Because if you do not think of good and gracious and godly things and limit your thinking about the offence or the trouble or the worry, you will lose perspective. If there is a temptation keeps coming back and a pressure upon you, do you know how to divert your thoughts in the biblical manner? As the apostle Paul says, Think on these things, right things and good things, and bring every thought into captivity. Do you know how to consider the damage and the hurt the sin will do if you are tempted to sin, so that you learn to hate it and recoil from it rather than to be attracted to that temptation? Do you know how to worry about the addictiveness of sin? That first image that should not have been looked at, it is not going to be the last if it is looked at. And every time something of that kind is looked at, it develops in power and holds over the mind. Are you afraid of that? Do you know about the parent sins? There are many, many sins that are parents of other sins and breed other sins, so we have to be so careful. There is the old saying, for example, not all liars are adulterers, but all adulterers are liars. That is an example of one sin that always leads to others. And there are many sins like that. If we understand these things it helps us enormously in the battle against sin? We cannot be naïve. Do we know how to be constructive in our lives? Again if we are tempted to covetousness you can switch that off by planning to do good for somebody else and to help someone else or be sympathetic to someone else, to be more outgoing and more productive for the Lord. Do you consider if tempted the price that will have to paid by Christ to deliver you from this temptation? Well he has already paid it but day by day we add to Calvary. That is a very deep concept. Are we not moved by those things? Do we practise self-denial so that we toughen ourselves against future temptations? The person who falls for big covetous things is usually the person who has never practised any form of self-denial. So they have made themselves weak.

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Proverbs 24:5 Commentary and Bible Study