Posted on 03/14/2020 5:50:57 AM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“In the mouth of the foolish is a rod of pride: but the lips of the wise shall preserve them” (Proverbs 14:3).
“In the mouth of the foolish is a rod of pride,” people that are proud will beat you senseless with words. They put others down with their words. They’ll use words as a stick to beat you with. A proud man is a fool. He thinks more of himself then what is really true.
“Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise” (I Corinthians 3:18).
A proud man knows it all, he’s got it all figured out and no man can tell him otherwise. He believes that he deserves your attention—he is looking for your attention. He simply cannot understand why folks don’t pay no more attention to them than they do. He feels like he is a little bit better than anyone else and deserves all the attention he can get. He is a fool, and he will reprimand others for not yielding to his whims and ways.
“. . . but the lips of the wise shall preserve them,” first of all, with the lips they profess salvation: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Romans 10:9). This will preserve you throughout all eternity.
The lips of the wise will also preserve them in this life, they’ll keep you out of all sorts of trouble. Nobody really likes proud people that are always boasting and talking up about themselves. We’ve all been around these kind of people and they make us sick. If a man is wise, he won’t be making the kind of statements that the prideful make.
The proud with his words often backs himself into a corner with claims that he cannot meet. This is the type of fellow that the cowboys call, “all hat and no cattle.”
“Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands?” (Ecclesiastes 5:5-6).
A proud man gets himself into situations that he thinks he can handle, and he makes commitments that he can’t keep. You and I deal with people that tell us all the time that they are going to do something, or be somewhere, and they constantly let us down. A humble man will at least be honest enough to say if the Lord is willing, they’ll do this or that.
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