Posted on 01/11/2022 10:10:47 PM PST by Pilgrim's Progress
“Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge: but he that hateth reproof is brutish. A good man obtaineth favour of the LORD: but a man of wicked devices will he condemn. A man shall not be established by wickedness, but the root of the righteous shall not be moved” (Proverbs 12:1-3).
“Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge . . .” If you love knowledge, then obviously you have to love instruction, because that is how you get it. Not a how lot to that, just a axiom, just a truth, “but he that hateth reproof is brutish.” He’s like an animal. Did you ever try to teach a cow anything? Did you ever try to teach an animal something? I mean other than ‘come’, ‘go’, ‘sit’, etc.? A person that hates reproof is just like an animal. There just isn’t any hope for them. Honestly, what can you do for someone that just refuses to learn? They are only interested in self-gratification, self-preservation, and self-propagation. The best dog you got is only interested in that. When a man won’t learn the principles of life and to be above those things, are no better than animals.
“But he that hateth reproof is brutish.” You take an evolutionist. He is brutish. He will not accept reproof, he will not believe what the Bible has to say about Creation, about God. And so, he winds up being a monkey’s uncle. And that is exactly his own claim—we came from the monkeys. They act like it. You go out here in the world and they dress like it, and they even smell like it. And they look like it. They get more brutish all the time. As a result, they hate reproof and they live for the body and the flesh, and for the lust of it.
“A good man obtaineth favour of the LORD,” like Cornelius in Acts chapter 10. Noah was righteous in all his generation. God delivered him and his family. A good man, that wants to do everything right, even though he doesn’t understand everything—like Cornelius did—God will show him favor. The Lord will send the gospel to him, whether through a missionary or an angel. Now, the angel won’t tell him how to get saved (he doesn’t even know that answer to that), but as in the case of Cornelius will tell him where to go to find it. If God can’t get the missionary to go to the heathen, God will send the heathen to the missionary. God will show favor to a man that wants to do right.
“But a man of wicked devices will he condemn,” to hell. Haman was a wicked man, concerned about his own profit. Ahab was a wicked man, concerned about his own profit. Haman, Lot, and others. You just look at the end of those men’s lives—it just didn’t end up right. Of the seven richest men in the 1920’s, all but one of them ended up a pauper. They were wicked and ungodly in their ideals and their lives, and God condemned them, in this world and in the next.
“A man shall not be established by wickedness,” a guy might think that wickedness is the road to success; it is not, it is the road to ruin. This is an absolute promise—the wicked shall not prosper. Psalm one says that the righteous shall be like a tree of life, but the ungodly are like the chaff that the wind drives away. The ungodly shall not stand in the day of judgment. The reason is because they have no root.
“but the root of the righteous shall not be moved,” if a man is saved, whether in the Old Testament or the New Testament, we all have the same root. He is found in Revelation: “And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof” (Revelation 5:5 KJV).
The world can come along and cut down my tree, but the roots are still there. We are rooted and grounded in the Word of God, and we are rooted in Christ and our home is in heaven. There is no way to get rid of us.
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It is interesting that both persons receive the same thing but considers it to be different. What is in the heart determines how something is received or if it is received.
Consider the parable of the master giving three servant money, Matthew 25.
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