Proverbs 4:14 Commentary and Bible Study

In this verse there begins an illustration of a journey, and this illustration includes some characters we have seen before, and Solomon keeps doing this. He will often begin a new illustration, and he will impart into it some characters that he has used in a previous illustration. The illustration now is of a long journey, and there are apparently a number of routes which you could take in the general direction in which you want to go. This is not a journey of roads which diverge away from each other, so that if you go to the left you go to one destination, and if you go to the right you go to another; this is not the broad way and the narrow way. This is an illustration in which there appears to be a city over yonder, and it can be reached by a number of different roads. But reintroducing some characters we have met before, the district gang are at work, and they are operating on some of the roads. They are operating in order to ambush traders from far off places, and kill them, bury them at some distance from the track, and purloin all the gold and silver they may have been carrying. They may be operating on these roads in order be at a distance from their home town, so that they would not be so easily detected in their criminal activities. So here is the illustration. You have got a number of alternative roads to go where you want to go, but the district gang are operating on some of them. ‘Enter not’ into that track. You will know, you will be warned, hopefully by some means; you will be aware that the district gang is operating on certain roads. Keep completely clear of them. Now the purpose of the illustration is this. The Christian life is something absolutely opposite to the life of atheism and unbelief. You have got those who come to Christ by his grace, they yield to him; they belong to him. And you have got those who are unbelievers in the living God, as we all once were, and they detest him, and they determine in their minds that he does not exist, and there are no absolute standards of right and wrong, and there is no day of account, and by getting rid of God from their minds, they have liberty to do what they like and to live for themselves. Now, says the picture, there must be no meeting, no common cause. Of course this does not mean there must be no witness. This does not mean we withdraw from the world; it means that we do not merge our lives with theirs, doing the same things, thinking the same way, enjoying the same pleasures. Do not take the same road. The same thought was in the previous illustration also of the tender bride. You come to Christ and you seek him, you are all for him, and you are not for the world. You set out on this long journey, you must take the routes and the roads, the pathway on which so far as you know the district gang are not operating.