Posted on 01/05/2022 10:08:18 PM PST by Pilgrim's Progress
“My son, if thou be surety for thy friend, if thou hast stricken thy hand with a stranger, Thou art snared with the words of thy mouth, thou art taken with the words of thy mouth. Do this now, my son, and deliver thyself, when thou art come into the hand of thy friend; go, humble thyself, and make sure thy friend” (Proverbs 6:1-3 KJV).
Proverbs chapter 6. Six is the number of man in the Bible. “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six” (Rev 13:18 KJV).
This chapter in Proverbs is hard on men and women. Now, there is two things here that will get you in trouble, that you need to notice, and they both begin with “m.” The one is money and the other is your mouth.
Now there is one thing that you do not want to be sure of, and another that you do want to be sure of. You want to be sure of keeping your friend, and you don’t want to be get involved with another kind of surety—let’s look at some other verses and see if we can catch it.
“He that is surety for a stranger shall smart for it: and he that hateth suretiship is sure” (Proverbs 11:15 KJV). Here it is a stranger, in chapter 6 it is a friend. You are not to be a surety for anybody. Notice that suretyship is something you get involved with, it is being a co-signer on a loan. It deals with credit.
Chapter six is not only hard on co-signing on a loan, it is also pretty hard on loans period. Before you get very far down here, it says, “consider the ant.” In other words, go to work, eat what you got and don’t eat no more. It is the wise man that learned long ago to get out from under credit cards. If you have credit cards, you are going to have credit. And they are anything but “easy payments,” they are “difficult payments.” It used to be in America that before you could file for bankruptcy, you had to go and sit before a referee, and he would determine whether you outgo was equal to your income and he would determine whether you could file for bankruptcy. If you could, they would dissolve your assets in hopes to straighten you out—it usually didn’t.
One referee was asked, “Why do most people file for bankruptcy?” He said, “Young people want to get married and acquire everything in a few months what it took their parents years, if not decades, to achieve. Suddenly, these young people have more purchasing power than they have ever had in their lives, and they are simply overcome with all the things that are available to buy. Before long, they have spent more than they can ever make.” He said, “That is the case in 80 to 90% of the cases. Nobody warns them, or they simply don’t listen, and they find themselves in trouble.”
But, see, if you are a Bible believer, the Bible will warn you about these things. The longer a man is a Christian, the less he ought to want to deal with credit. A Christian is to be a good steward over the money that God gives him, which he earns from the job that God supplied to him.
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