Posted on 10/05/2019 7:26:28 AM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house: Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel: Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger” (Proverbs 5:8-10 KJV).
Stay away, don’t even come near the thing. The Bible takes it for granted that if you get near it, it’ll get you. It’s like a trap. It always looks good, always looks inviting. How many times do we hear a Christian say, “Well, I just don’t see what’s wrong with it?” The best answer for them is, “What’s right with it?” How does it help you to win people to Jesus Christ? What does it do to make you a better Christian? You get involved with it, does it make you feel like going to prayer meeting, or does it encourage you to support missions? What’s right with it? “Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house.”
“Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel,” that’s the best years of your life, your honor and your labor.
“Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger,” there went your honor, and your life, and your wealth, and your labor—like a slave.
Do we know of a character in the Bible that had quite a bit and decided to just have his fling in the world, and before it was all over with his honor was gone, he wasted time, somebody else had his wealth, and he was laboring in the house of a stranger? The Prodigal Son. That is the picture of the Prodigal right there. One sermon title about this was, “He Gave Him What He Wanted, but He Lost What He Had.” “And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul” (Psalms 106:15 KJV). You could go through every person in the Bible, and you know what you will find in every case where there is a failure or a fall in that individual? They wanted something that they didn’t need, they wanted something that was wrong, and God gave it to them, and they lost what they had. Take heed!
Eve certainly wanted what she didn’t need, and when she got it—she lost everything that she had. She lost her fellowship with God, she lost her life, she lost her home in the garden, she raised a murderer as a son, and you can bet that wasn’t what she bargained for.
Lot had a family before he lusted over the plains of Mamre. He lost his family. He had riches and cattle. When he came out of Sodom, he didn’t have anything but the skin of his teeth. If that don’t scare you all, you ought to hit the altar and fall on your knees before God.
I wonder if Proverbs 5:8-10 was well known to the Prodigal, and I wonder if he wasn’t thinking about that very passage when he woke up to find himself in the pig pen, eating the same food as the pigs. I wonder if God didn’t speak to his heart and say, “Remember when?” I wonder if that wasn’t possibly the moment that he came back to his senses and decided to repent and go home to his father? Surely the father trained him up in the Word as a child, and now that he was older, he returned.
Let’s read a chapter of Proverbs a day and see what God might have for us. As the Lord leads, share with us what God has shown you in a special way and by His grace let us build up a devotional repository. Let’s keep our knives and forks handy for some daily bread!
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The Good News is, Our Heavenly Father is right there waiting for us with open,loving arms when we hit rock bottom. But that rock bottom is our Firm Foundation, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. We just have to be humble enough to recognize it.
Yes, you did a big stupid. That doesn't mean you ARE stupid. There is NOW no condemnation. And what time is it always? It is ALWAYS "now".
So, what is it that we receive when we come to that realization? That which we went on our bender to find! Total peace. Total acceptance. Total love.
What the world wants us to believe is that we are being punished when, in fact, we are being rewarded beyond our capacity to understand. "Losing" the opinions of others is not truly a loss. It's a gain. Our trip to Stupidville began when we set out to seek another's love and approval instead God's.
It's like one giant "Start Over" button. Hopefully, you'll learn the lesson the first time around but guess what? If you don't, you'll eventually end up at Father's doorstep again.
But only if you believe and accept The Good News. If, you don't, you'll spend your life skulking through the bushes beating yourself up and never even making it to Your Father's front gate.
Interesting analogy on the electric fence! If that don’t get there attention . . .
I think the whole quote is, "Some people learn by reading. Others learn by watching other peoples' experiences. The rest just have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."
Proverbs has a lot of “stay away from dangerous women” verses. One day it hit me: the writer of Proverbs must have been the father of teenage boys. Keeping them away from women who could ruin them would have been the big worry of his life.
When I finally had a teenage boy, I realized that there really are some girls, (as well as boys, women and men) who would like to steer him wrong, for their own satisfaction. And you can’t hide a boy under a rock. You have to teach him why the way of the Lord is better.
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