PROFITING FROM PROVERBS

“The LORD will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish: but he casteth away the substance of the wicked” (Proverbs 10:3 KJV).

The reasonable question might be, if the Lord will not allow the righteous to go hungry, why is it that many believers have died of starvation? Great famines have wreaked havoc across the world and many of God’s people have died along with the unbelievers, “for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45).

The Bible speaks of another kind of famine, and it is one that the Bible believer (whether Old Testament saint nor New Testament believer) could be immune to, as this famine was a self-imposed hunger and thirst.

“And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD” (Amos 8:10-11 KJV).

Throughout the Word, there is a class of people that held to their biblical convictions and continued to worship and serve the Living Lord, despite what the crowd was doing. It was this one in a thousand that served to hold off the judgment of God upon the land, as Isaiah shows us:

“Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah” (Isaiah 1:9 KJV).

There are elements of the Sermon on the mount that can be applied to believers of all ages, though its primary message is to the Jews of the Millennial kingdom, but one truth that applies to all is: “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6 KJV). We are reminded that in the Lord’s rebuke of Satan in the desert, where He had not eaten for 40 days or nights, said: “But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4 KJV).

Friend, are you well-nourished? In America it is unfortunate that the majority of people are too well-nourished to the point of obesity. But I am not speaking of the sin we commit with our knives and forks, but of the Word of God. Are you well-fed? I will venture a guess that most every home has a Bible in it, perhaps even sitting on a coffee table. Also, I would suggest that many of those Bibles would cause a mini-dust storm if they were ever picked up. If that is your situation, you are starving. You are anemic. You need the spiritual food of the Bible much more than you need meat and potatoes. Spiritual starvation is a self-imposed famine.

Father, Your Word is precious. Not only is it a Manufacturer’s Handbook of sorts or an Owner’s Manual of the soul, but it is also the greatest love letter ever written. Would we draw even closer to You by learning of You and learning from the examples of others both for the good and for bad. “Deal bountifully with thy servant, that I may live, and keep thy word. Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law” (Psalms 119:17-18 KJV). Amen.

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