Posted on 04/02/2020 5:26:26 AM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“To deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh froward things . . . To deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth with her words . . . That thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous" (Proverbs 2:12, 16, 20).
If your Bible has paragraph marks, you’ll see one at verse 10, where it says, “When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul; Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee," and then, if you read carefully, there's three basic points below that. One is verse 12, “to deliver thee from the way of the evil man,” the second point is verse 16, “to deliver thee from the strange woman,” and then in verse 20, “that thou mayest walk in the way of good men.”
Now, the evil man speaks “froward things.” Froward has the meaning of “willfully contrary,” or just plain contentious talk. It is somebody being contrary just to be contrary, somebody saying ungodly things just to stir up trouble. Atheists are like that. Another word for this crowd would be “scorners.” They just like to cause you grief. They like to say things that irk you when you say something faithful about the Lord. We see a lot of people like that today. The news media is like that. Sometimes you find a Christian like that. He just likes to argue. He is froward. If you say the sky is blue he's going to say, “No, it's Azure,” It's a sad thing, an argumentative type of spirit. It is just somebody that is just trying to be contrary.
Verse 12, “To deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh froward things,” or the willful contrarian. Frowardness shows up three times in this chapter: once in verse 12, once in verse 14, and once in verse 15. Oddly, the strange woman is not said to be froward, but the evil man is said to be froward.
Verse 14, “Who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked,” you see some of the celebrations going on nowadays for sports championships. In the home cites of the team, they're going to demolish things and burn stuff. It's gotten now where even when a high school team wins a championship, they have to call out the full contingent of the local Police Department. These kids are going to turn cars over and smash windows and stuff. Well, those are people who rejoice to do evil, and Proverbs says that there is an entire generation of people like that.
Verse 15, “whose ways are crooked.” They're not straight. They don't talk straight nowadays The word even applies, as far as it goes, to the homosexual thing. They label non-sodomites as “straight,” but they never say that they are crooked, so they come up with “gay.”
Do you remember the street that Ananias lived on? It was call “Straight.” We need to be straight. We need to be straight as far as straight speech, or plain speech, is concerned. We need to be straight as far as honesty is concerned. Anyway, it says down in verse 15, “Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths.” They walk in the way of forwardness. Three times it says an evil man is froward. Froward is not the same as forward.
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