Posted on 04/03/2022 11:38:12 PM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“For I was my father's son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live” (Proverbs 4:3-4 KJV).
“Let thine heart retain my words,” you want to attain to understanding and then you want to retain it—keep it—don’t let it get away from you.
Knowledge and wisdom are kind of like a little animal that you try to keep penned up in your house, like a little bird, it just wants to fly away all the time. Our minds get lazy, when we get over 30, and you decide to go back to school. You begin to take classes, and you try to take notes and you notice that your hand just doesn’t move like you think it should. You try to write things down and you can’t keep up, and you make mistakes. You sneak a peek over at some young person and you see they have filled up a page and you are lucky if you got half-a-page of notes. You find it’s harder to remember as you get older, its hard to retain it all. The crazy thing is that the youth don’t want to learn when they can, and the older people want to learn—but they can’t!
“He taught me also,” the more you compare Psalms and Proverbs, the more you see that a lot of what Solomon learned, he learned from his own father—David. So many times, we don’t think about David’s relationship to Solomon, and Solomon’s wisdom. We think of Solomon back there in the book of Kings praying for wisdom and God just miraculously zaps him with wisdom. Well, we do know that God gave Solomon some miraculous wisdom, but long before Solomon ever prayed for wisdom he was being brought up by a wise man—David.
You do know that sometimes God answers our prayers before we even ask. Read through the Psalms, and David made a lot of mistakes in this life, as we all do, but he was a very wise man when it came to his relationship with God. David got a lot of physical things wrong, in the material world, he just had too big an eye for women, (something he may have also passed on to his son?) he was constantly getting into trouble with women. But his heart was right when it came to his relationship with God. Anytime David’s relationship with God was broken, he would get right back in. He was just that kind of man. We wonder why he kept messing up, well, “all flesh is as grass,” and David was no exception. David was a sinner just like anyone else, but we can learn a lot from David.
“Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways” (Proverbs 3:31 KJV). Where might he have gotten that? His daddy wrote those thoughts down a generation before Solomon ever thought of it. “Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity” (Psalms 37:1 KJV). A lot of things that Solomon writes, you can find in some seed form in the book of Psalms.
True, David is not known for his great wisdom. He was a great warrior. I don’t know if David ever lost a battle. He grew discouraged at Ziklag, but God eventually gave him the victory over that mess.
David was a great warrior. He put Joshua to shame. He was a great general. And, of course, he had some great men under him. He had those 30 or 33 mighty men. Those were some dudes to run into. Some of those guys in a snow storm was killing a thousand men. A tough bunch of fellows, nothing like you would ever see today.
David was a wise man, God also gave David ability as the greatest warrior in the Bible.
Young people do well to pay attention to their mom and dad. Well, they make a lot of mistakes. Yes, and so will you. And they have learned to eliminate a lot of them also. You can learn from them.
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The solution to all of the ills we are seeing.
The Parable of the Fork.
There was a woman who had been diagnosed with a deadly illness and had been given 3 months to live. Her doctor told her to start making preparations to die so she contacted her pastor and had him come to her house to discuss certain aspects of her final wishes. She told him which songs she wanted sung at the service, what scriptures she would like read, and what she wanted to be wearing. The woman also told her pastor that she wanted to be buried with her favorite bible.
Everything was in order and the pastor was preparing to leave when the woman suddenly remembered something very important to her. There’s one more thing. She said excitedly. What’s that? came the pastor’s reply. This is very important. The woman continued. I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand. The pastor stood looking at the woman not knowing quite what to say. That shocks you doesn’t it? The woman asked. Well to be honest, I’m puzzled by the request said the pastor. The woman explained. In all my years of attending church socials and functions where food was involved; my favorite part was when whoever was clearing away the dishes of the main course would lean over and say ‘you can keep your fork.’ It was my favorite part because I knew that something better was coming. When they told me to keep my fork I knew that something great was about to be given to me. It wasn’t Jell-O or pudding. It was cake or pie. Something with substance. So I just want people to see me there in that casket with a fork in my hand and I want them to wonder ‘What’s with the fork?
‘Then I want you to tell them: ‘Something better is coming so keep your fork too.’ The pastor’s eyes were welled up with tears of joy as he hugged the woman good-bye. He knew this would be one of the last times he would see her before her death. But he also knew that that woman had a better grasp of heaven than he did. She knew that something better was coming. At the funeral people were walking by the woman’s casket and they saw the pretty dress she was wearing and her favorite bible and the fork placed in her right hand. Over and over the pastor heard the question What’s with the fork? And over and over he smiled. During his message the pastor told the people of the conversation he had with the woman shortly before she died. He also told them about the fork and about what it symbolized to her. The pastor told the people how he could not stop thinking about the fork and told them that they probably would not be able to stop thinking about it either. He was right. So the next time you reach down for your fork, let it remind you oh so gently that there is something better coming.
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