Posted on 06/26/2022 12:39:07 AM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears. As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, So is the man that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, Am not I in sport? Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out: so where there is no talebearer, the strife ceaseth. As coals are to burning coals, and wood to fire; so is a contentious man to kindle strife” (Proverbs 26:17-21).
“He that passeth by, and meddleth with strife,” there's a guy walking by, and got two other people, or a crowd of people going at it; arguing. He passes by, “meddling with strife belonging not to him.” see the strife doesn’t have anything to do with him, “is like one that taketh a dog by the ears,” he is looking for trouble.
Verses 18 and 19 go together. “As a madman,” here we pick up the troublemakers and talebearers. We’ve looked at the fools and the sluggards, now we pick up the troublemakers and the talebearers.
Now, the reference here is to the practical jokers and that guy that just goes overboard with it. He's a mad man that tricks his neighbor on a regular basis. One can go too far with it. It can even get dangerous. He thinks he can always just laugh it off with a “the jokes on me! Oh, it’s just in fun. I’m just having a little sport.” I mean, you know one joke after another, and pretty soon they are trying to outdo one another. There have been cases where practical jokes went too far, some people just get carried away with them, and someone is killed. Some people just get carried away and they are like a mad man.
Verses 20 and 21 go together. What do you need to say about verse 20? You want to know where half the problems you have get started? People talk about one person’s problems to other people. They like to gossip. “Did you hear the latest news?” You are always going to have some problems, but most of them will just go away with everybody will just shut their mouths and stop spreading stories around.
If everybody will just shut up and pray about it, and if you have a problem with somebody, just go to them and don't tell the secret to anybody else. Go to him with the problem, and it will usually get ironed out. Some folks are just fire stokers. They are just stoking the fire in the furnace, and the hotter it gets the better they like it.
You know what they like to do? They like to stir up a lot of trouble and just back off and watch it. To them it is fun and games. It is cheap entertainment. It can cause a tremendous amount of trouble.
“Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good” (Ecclesiastes 9:18).
“As coals are to burning coals, and wood to fire; so is a contentious man to kindle strife.” (Proverbs 26:21).
This speaks about the troublemaker. The Scribes and Pharisees, when they dealt with Jesus and Paul; what they did was they would go around behind their back and they would stir up the people against them. That was adding wood to the fire. It was hard enough to watch the things that Jesus and Paul preached that put people under conviction. If the Scribes and the Pharisees would let that thing go, the Holy Spirit would have worked salvation in those lives, but what happened was those Scribes and Pharisees went out and stirred the people against the Lord, and a lot of people that were for him.
I mean, do you realize that when Jesus Christ came into Jerusalem, they were saying “hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna! to the King” and four or five days later they are hollering, “kill Him! kill Him! kill Him!” How could that happen? The Scribes and Pharisees. They said, “Well, He did this, He said that he was going to destroy the temple in three days, and He is against the Jews, and he's a revolutionary, and so forth. They turned the people against Him and told a bunch of lies and said contentious stuff. They were troublemakers and talebearers.
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Bump that one.
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