PROFITING FROM PROVERBS

“The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy” (Proverbs 14:10).

Here we see two aspects of the same heart. A heart in bitterness and a heart in joy. No one else can know your bitterness, and no one else can know your joy. Now Paul says that we can rejoice with those that rejoice, and weep with those that weep, but we can’t really know, or intermeddle, with what another is really feeling. You and God are the only ones that really know how you feel. Over in 1st Samuel, Hannah was in bitterness of soul as she wept sore unto the Lord. Nobody else understood what she was feeling. She was under reproach for being barren so she poured out her heart in the temple. Eli thought that she was drunk. She was not.

Hannah was bitter, she had bitterness in her soul. Now others could feel sorry for her, and weep with her, but no one could know the depth of her sorrow. “The heart knoweth his own bitterness,” it’s a picture of loneliness. When it comes right down to it, in this life, whether in your joy or your bitterness, you are really all alone in it. The cause of the bitterness is known by the one going through it, and it is ruinous to you and to others according to Hebrews: “Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled” (Hebrews 12:15).

Jesus Christ knows our hearts, though.

“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3). Jesus became our High Priest because He experienced what we feel: “Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:14-16).

Before we can be a part of God's eternal building, we must submit to the grinding, the polishing, the shaping which He directs. God has no use for the sharp, unworked stones.

There are so many kinds of evil to be rubbed off—like pride, which goes before destruction, or anger, which rests in the bosom of fools. And read what the Book of Hebrews says about bitterness: “Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.”

Daily Bible study is necessary if we are going to begin our day with the right attitude and the right spiritual diet. Proverbs has 31 chapters, and most months have 31 days, so let's read a chapter of Proverbs a day and see what God might have for us. As the Lord leads, share with us what God has shown you in a special way and by His grace let us build up a devotional repository. Let's keep our knives and forks handy for some daily bread! Ideally, a chapter or two of Proverbs will fit in nicely with a good plan of reading our Bibles through each year.

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