Posted on 06/05/2022 12:29:30 AM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house: Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel: Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger” (Proverbs 5:8-10 KJV).
Stay away, don’t even come near the thing. The Bible takes it for granted that if you get near it, it’ll get you. It’s like a trap. It always looks good, always looks inviting. How many times do we hear a Christian say, “Well, I just don’t see what’s wrong with it?” The best answer for them is, “What’s right with it?” How does it help you to win people to Jesus Christ? What does it do to make you a better Christian? You get involved with it, does it make you feel like going to prayer meeting, or does it encourage you to support missions? What’s right with it? “Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house.”
“Lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel,” that’s the best years of your life, your honor and your labor.
“Lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger,” there went your honor, and your life, and your wealth, and your labor—like a slave.
Do we know of a character in the Bible that had quite a bit and decided to just have his fling in the world, and before it was all over with his honor was gone, he wasted time, somebody else had his wealth, and he was laboring in the house of a stranger? The Prodigal Son. That is the picture of the Prodigal right there. One sermon title about this was, “He Gave Him What He Wanted, but He Lost What He Had.” “And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul” (Psalms 106:15 KJV). You could go through every person in the Bible, and you know what you will find in every case where there is a failure or a fall in that individual? They wanted something that they didn’t need, they wanted something that was wrong, and God gave it to them, and they lost what they had. Take heed!
Eve certainly wanted what she didn’t need, and when she got it—she lost everything that she had. She lost her fellowship with God, she lost her life, she lost her home in the garden, she raised a murderer as a son, and you can bet that wasn’t what she bargained for.
Lot had a family before he lusted over the plains of Mamre. He lost his family. He had riches and cattle. When he came out of Sodom he didn’t have anything but the skin of his teeth. If that don’t scare you all, you ought to hit the altar.
I wonder if Proverbs 5:8-10 was well known to the Prodigal, and I wonder if he wasn’t thinking about that very passage when he woke up to find himself in the pig pen, eating the same food as the pigs. I wonder if God didn’t speak to his heart and say, “Remember when?” I wonder if that wasn’t possibly the moment that he came back to his senses and decided to repent and go home to his father? Surely the father trained him up in the Word as a child, and now that he was older, he returned?
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Child support.
He may be the Creator of the Universe, but He's also a loving and caring Person (He cared enough to tell me when I didn't want to listen).
That’s the truth!
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