“but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.”
-Proverbs 2:22
We’ve been looking at the last two verses of Proverbs 2 the last few times, and we’ve talked about how the Jewish people were promised the land of Canaan, and yet how God would allow foreign powers to come and conquer the land at times when the Jews turned their back on God and followed their own pleasures. We have also seen how these verses also speak to us about heaven.
I think…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on March 9, 2009 at 8:19am —
1 Comment
“For the upright will inhabit the land, and those with integrity will remain in it, but the wicked will be cut off from the land, and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.”
-Proverbs 2:21-22
Wow. We’re going to do
two verses today. That is a first. I’m very excited.
I’m doing it because I want to give a good example of what Solomon is talking about. We learned last time that, in the Old Testament, God would sometimes bring a foreign army to take the land of Canaan away from t…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on March 4, 2009 at 8:42am —
No Comments
“For the upright will inhabit the land, and those with integrity will remain in it,”
-Proverbs 2:21
One of Shakespeare’s best plays is
King Lear, which tells of an aging king who is going to split up his land between his three daughters. But, being a vain old dude, he wanted them to tell him how much they love him before deciding who will get what part. The first two daughters kiss up to him and flatter him, but the third basically tells him, “I’m not going to flatter you. You kno…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on March 2, 2009 at 8:32am —
No Comments
“So you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous.”
-Proverbs 2:20
So.
It’s hard to begin a sentence with “so.” My high school English teacher very specifically told me not to do. I do it a lot.
It’s not necessarily wrong to start a sentence with “so.” But you usually don’t want to start your
thought with it. “So” suggests that you are continuing a thought.
So that is why this verse begins with “so.” Because there was something that came before.
S…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on February 27, 2009 at 8:35am —
No Comments
“none who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life.”
-Proverbs 2:19
There is a time when it becomes too late. For some, I suppose, it could be death. But for others, it is when there is so much sin in your life that there is no way for you even to repent.
What I’m going to say here is very controversial, and unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of room here to go over it. I’m going to do my best. Please forgive me if I fall short here.
Have you ever known someone who just…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on February 25, 2009 at 8:42am —
No Comments
“for her house sinks down to death, and her paths to the departed;”
-Proverbs 2:18
Have you ever met one of those people who just blame everyone else for their problems? It doesn’t matter what it is, they have an answer about how it is someone else’s fault. You even see this is really serious sins, like the guy who gets caught in adultery and will blame his wife for not being attentive enough.
It may be true that someone put that person in a bad situation, but to hear this person talk,…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on February 23, 2009 at 8:46am —
1 Comment
“who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God;”
-Proverbs 2:17
Last time, we started to look at the second major section of chapter 2: the adulteress. In that verse, we were mainly looking at the fact that she did not follow the God of the Bible, and what that means for us today. In this verse, let’s look a little bit at sexual sin in general, since this woman has forsaken the companion of her youth.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about sexual sin, s…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on February 18, 2009 at 10:34am —
No Comments
“So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words,”
-Proverbs 2:16
Solomon begins here a new section of advice, one that should have a great deal of meaning for us today, since he is talking about sex. (Yeah, I can already see my web traffic tripling over this series.)
So this first verse has a lot to talk about, so let’s dive right in.
In the first part of it, the “forbidden woman” (some translations say “strange woman”) is specifically refe…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on February 16, 2009 at 10:42am —
1 Comment
[God will deliver your from] “men whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their ways.”
-Proverbs 2:15
How do we know if a line is crooked? It’s obvious, you may say! If it’s curved one way or another, then it’s crooked. And what if the curve is very subtle? Then you may need a ruler to judge.
Let us turn the question to one that is often asked in these times. “What is normal?” What is right, for what is right for you may not be right for me?
When we judge ourselves by the peopl…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on February 13, 2009 at 8:44am —
No Comments
[God will deliver you from those] “who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil,”
-Proverbs 2:14
I am constantly amazed at the lengths this generation will go to deny the existence of evil.
We will excuse murderers and rapists because something traumatic happened to them as children, and therefore it’s not their fault. We will try to better understand terrorists so we will know what their situations are. Tyrants are asked to speak at American universities and are gi…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on February 9, 2009 at 8:33am —
No Comments
[God will deliver you from those] “who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness,”
-Proverbs 2:13
I love the way this section is written.
Solomon has been talking about how God will deliver us from evil, and so now he’s going to give us several verses that tell us about the people He’s going to rescue us from.
It’s great because we’re all expecting him to talk about the murderers and rapists and people who talk in the theater, but that’s not where he starts. In f…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on February 6, 2009 at 8:31am —
No Comments
“delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech,”
-Proverbs 2:12
In my research of this verse, I also read the King James Version, which reads, “To deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh froward things.”
And let me add that it will be a small miracle if I can catch my spellchecker as it changes every mention of “froward” and changes it for “forward.”
Like my spellchecker, I thought for sure the online version of the KJV misspelled somet…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on February 4, 2009 at 8:39am —
No Comments
“discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you,”
-Proverbs 2:11
Have you read the poem “Footprints?” It’s a nice little poem that has unfortunately been over produced on wall plaques and cards, though the idea of it is pretty good.
The basic plot is that there’s a guy walking with Jesus though the sand, and at the end of his road he looks back, and at the worst times of his life, he notices that there are only one set of footprints. He’s sort of upset, because these are t…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on February 2, 2009 at 8:51am —
1 Comment
“for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;”
-Proverbs 2:10
I was listening to a sermon this morning which was about, in part, how the new birth changes us. How we were once dead, and now live. How we can now see where once there was darkness.
And then the pastor said something very interesting to me, because it is something I’ve had to deal with when it comes to this blog. He said that if we use these sorts of phrases to people on the street (lik…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on January 29, 2009 at 8:44am —
No Comments
“Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path;”
-Proverbs 2:9
What wonderful goals these are. When I read this verse this morning, I think that’s what struck me first. What if we all lived like this.
So many organizations have sought these goals. So many people have made this their mission. Let’s take a look at these ideas.
Righteousness. Righteousness speaks of how we act in all situations. To understand this is to never say, “What should I do?” for t…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on January 27, 2009 at 8:35am —
1 Comment
“guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints”
-Proverbs 2:8
“Just wait until your father gets home!”
I’ve heard that threat in a lot of stories from a lot of people. I think for my generation and the generations before, there were multiple levels of punishment when you did something wrong. The first punishment would come from whomever was around at the time, whether it be your mother, a teacher, or someone at church. But then . . . dad would come home.
That th…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on January 23, 2009 at 8:33am —
No Comments
“guarding the paths of justice and watching over the way of his saints.”
-Proverbs 2:8
Is there a patron saint of blogs? Sadly, I would be half surprised if there were not. I was going through some of the Roman Catholic Saints once because I needed one for a book I was writing. The book was set in medieval times, and I needed a saint’s name to use as a location. There were so many I eventually had to find a list of strictly medieval saints just to get a handle on things.
But actually, t…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on January 21, 2009 at 8:25am —
No Comments
“he stores up sound wisdom for the upright; he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,”
-Proverbs 2:7
I had a coworker once who was somewhat of a party girl. She knew I was a Christian, and occasionally we would talk about Christ and such (though regrettably I did not speak to her much about these sorts of things). I remember distinctly during one of these conversations she told me something I had heard several times before from different people: “I’ll probably seek God when I’m olde…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on January 19, 2009 at 8:25am —
No Comments
For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
-Proverbs 2:6
We do a funny thing in schools sometimes. We will, in these cases, study books about a writer rather than just reading the works of the writer. This is especially true with Classical philosophers and older works. We read the summary, the criticism, or the explanations without ever reading the source.
Personally, I have found Plato much easier to understand than all the books ABOUT Plato’s philosoph…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on January 16, 2009 at 8:34am —
No Comments
“then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.”
-Proverbs 2:5
Let’s be honest here. I don’t think here’s ever been an age so full of its own understanding as this one is. I enjoy history, and I’ve found that, throughout those many ages, people have had a respect for what came before.
Not this one.
We think people of the past were backwards, stupid, and oblivious to everything that was going on around them. We even make up lies about the past, such as that…
Continue
Added by Paul Lytle on January 14, 2009 at 8:47am —
No Comments
Proverbs 2:22: No inheritance for you!
