Posted on 09/18/2022 12:32:09 AM PDT by Pilgrim's Progress
“He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him. The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear? The heart of the prudent getteth knowledge; and the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge” (Proverbs 18:13-15).
That is prejudice. It is a pre-judging. It is rejecting something that is true or rejecting material before you have studied it in any form. Condemning without a hearing. That is the case with false religions—they’ll condemn you without a hearing. That was much of the basis for the inquisition. If a man had a Bible he was killed, they were not interested in what he believed—just that he wasn’t one of them.
This was touched on in chapter 17: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones” (Proverbs 17:22).
When a person’s spirit is wounded, and is broken, they can’t bear the infirmity. God told Paul, “My grace is sufficient” (II Corinthians 12:9). And it is. Paul bore his infirmities, and said, “More gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” Through God, Paul was able to get victory over the thing, and he was able to handle it.
Sometimes you can’t handle a thing if your attitude is just down in the dumps and you just don’t have the spirit to do it. It is amazing what a person can put up with if they just have the right attitude.
The prudent fellow is the careful man that is cautious in judgment. They are not interested in getting lies and falsehoods. They want the truth. The heart, not the brain, getting knowledge. Head knowledge can only accomplish so much, but when you have heart knowledge—you have it all.
You’ll never really have much knowledge if it is just in your brain, “and the ear of the wise seeketh knowledge.” The ear is connected to the heart.
In Acts 28, Paul quotes Isaiah: “Saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive: For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it” (Acts 28:26-28).
Paul is here reviling the Jews that have rejected the Gospel and rejected Christ, he tells them that they have ears, but they are not open and could not understand, and they had eyes to see but they could not perceive what they were seeing. The problem was not with the eyes or the ears, but the “heart of this people is waxed gross.” They heard and they saw, but the heart would not let them understand.
If there were a problem in America it is that their hearts are waxed gross. Americans have heard the Gospel until they are sick of it. Some are still open to it, but not as many as could be. Religion has left a bad name and a bad taste in the mouths of most Americans. Their hearts are waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and they have closed their eyes to the truth.
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