Proverbs 29:1 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Proverbs 29:1

Comments

To harden the heart when we are being dealt with leniently, when mercy is being extended to us and we are being given further opportunity to repent, even when we are being punished less severely than we deserve because there is no wish to destroy us but to bring us to our senses – to persist in a path of evil under these circumstance is a very dangerous thing to do. We are not in control of the leniency being shown us; it is completely in the hands of another. Justice calls for something very different, and mercy could end at any moment. What is going on in the minds of the authority? We do not know and therefore we are gambling with our destiny. Do we think we have some hold over the one who wields the rod so that we can try their patience towards us to such a degree? They owe us nothing and it is not because they are afraid of us that they hold back. Every new rebuke is ignored at huge risk, for we cannot see where the breaking point is in the mercy being shown us. If you stretch a piece of elastic, you do not know precisely when it will snap, so why go on stretching it? The obvious thing to do is very simple. We should turn from our evil behaviour, our sinful ways. We are well aware that that is what is being called for.Here is a parable about how sinful men and women try the patience of God at great risk to their eternal souls. Even one more sin is an amazing foolhardy gamble with eternity. If we have not come to Christ then the only thing that stops us from falling into the pit of hell is the patience of the Lord towards us. He is slow to anger and of great mercy and it is because of this that we are not immediately dispatched to hell. The warning given before the fall of our race was enough to justify immediate justice, but amazingly God continued to keep in existence a world that that was now in rebellion against him. Could he expect any improvement over time? Not at all, for man had lost what he could never now regain by his own efforts. How long will God allow this state of affairs to persist? We know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming. The goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering of God is designed to bring us to repentance not to encourage further transgression, and yet we learn nothing from it.

Application

When therefore God’s patience with sinners is exhausted – and eventually it certainly will be, for although God’s mercy endures forever towards his elect, it has a limit towards the reprobate – when that happens, it will be sudden and without remedy. What would be the purpose of mercy being extended anymore? No change is ever going to come about. The number of the elect gathered into the kingdom will be complete, and there is no reason why Christ glorious kingdom should be delayed any longer. There is no remedy from this final collapse, or as the Hebrew says, there is no healing. Let nobody vainly hope that God will change his mind; he cannot change once he has exercised his verdict. Even a human judge would never do such a thing, much less the God who has warned the human race for thousands of years that this day would come. Let us then repent early and settle matters with our divine adversary quickly, ‘whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison’ (Matthew 5:25). Does God have emotions? The lost will discover that he does, though not like human emotions. They will discover that they have a personal enemy who is infinitely angry with them and his anger will never be pacified. But the elect will discover that they are the objects of his everlasting love.

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Proverbs 29:1 Commentary and Bible Study