Proverbs 22:3 (KJV)
A prudent man foreseeth
the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.
Proverbs 27:12 (KJV)
A prudent man foreseeth
the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished.
Same verse repeated –
you ought to pay attention then!
Two persons presented
(we’ve seen them before)
· The Prudent
· The Simple
Notice that both foresee
the same evil.
· The trouble is not with right and wrong, good and bad, holy
and evil.
· The trouble is not with our eyesight – everyone knows
intrinsically what is holy and what is evil.
The trouble is with what
we do with what we know.
· The prudent foreseeth the evil and hide from it
· The simple foreseeth the same evil and pass on
I want to approach this
passage by examining
· What it means to foresee the evil
· What it means to hide from it and
· What it means to pass on
I. WHAT IT
MEANS TO FORESEE THE EVIL
Proverbs 22:3 (KJV)
A prudent man foreseeth
the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.
The Bible says that both
the prudent and the simple can foresee the evil.
It’s just what they do
about what they see that is different.
What makes people
process the same information to come to differing conclusions is a matter of
great interest to me.
Think about
Violence
There is a shooting in a
church in Texas
-One group of individuals sees that evil and blames it on
the guns.
They conclude that if
guns did not exist, the guy could not have shot the people in the church.
They want to make laws
banning guns.
-Another group of individuals sees the very same evil and
blame[1] it on the lack of
guns.
A good guy with a gun
stopped the shooter.
· If more people had had guns
· If someone in the church had had a gun
Then perhaps fewer people
would have been killed.
Poverty
There are people who
have needs
-One group
of individuals sees the evil and blames it on conservatives.
They conclude that the
way to end hunger and need is to regulate all business, free enterprise and
wealth creation in order to insure that all the good things get distributed
evenly.
They want to tax the
businesses and the rich so the government can give the money to people who need
it.
-Another group sees the same evil and blames it on liberals.
They conclude that the
way to end hunger and need is to free people to reach their full potential.
They understand that
every human being has a different capacity for self discipline and wealth
accumulation. They believe that when those who have the greatest capacity to
succeed in business are freed to do so, they will create job opportunities for
others.
They want to keep the
hands of the government off of our money so those who have it can spend it for
the good of all.
Salvation
It is appointed unto man
once to die.
-One group of individuals foresees the evil of death and concludes
there is no hope.
They think of human life
as not much different than a dog’s life. They do not believe there is life
after death so they believe people ought to live any way they please (so long
as it doesn’t hurt anyone else too much). Let them eat, drink and be merry,
they say, for tomorrow they die.
-Another group foresees the very same evil of death and
realize this can’t be all there is to man.
Our passion for life,
our sense of something greater, our awareness of how short life is and of
little we accomplish in the few years we live here, all of that leads us to
believe that there must be something beyond the grave.
We find that “something”
in the Bible. Heaven for the saved and hell for the lost.
The Bible gives purpose
to life today and hope for life after death.
The differences between
the groups cannot be completely explained by:
· Culture
· Education or
· Experience
I can’t explain it right
now completely other than to say that the voice of God has something to do with
it.
· One person hears the voice of God
· The other ignores it
II. WHAT IT
MEANS TO HIDE FROM IT
Proverbs 22:3 (KJV)
A prudent man foreseeth
the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.
Strong’s concordance
says that the word means:
· To be absent
· To keep close or
· To conceal
One commentary said it
means to put oneself in a place of safety.
I want to draw on that
and suggest that the prudent man protects himself.
If we were going to
apply this to the three illustrations I gave in point one it would be something
like this
A. He protects himself from violence and crime
Sometime after the
shooting in the Methodist church on the east coast, I saw a short video on
protecting yourself from an active shooter situation. It basically gave these
three tools of protection, in this order:
· If you can, flee
· If you can’t flee, hide
· If you can’t hide, fight
A prudent person,
foreseeing that evil things can happen:
First, does what he can to prevent them from happening to him – he locks doors, creates lighting, installs cameras, etc.
He does what he can to
prevent bad things from happening
Secondly, he makes it less likely that evil will happen to
him
· He stays away from high crime areas
· He travels with others and when alone, lets others know
where he is
Thirdly, he enables himself to resist the evil from
happening to him
· He stays aware of his environment
· He learns some self defense skills
· He carries some sort self defense with him
B. He protects himself from poverty and need
This goes to the lesson
I taught in my adult Sunday school class this morning from Proverbs 22:7 (KJV)
The rich ruleth over the
poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.
The word rich there just
means, “to accumulate and grow.”[2]
Understanding that those
who have mastery over their income need not be servants to the richest people,
the wisest of us will:
· Work hard
· Plan ahead and
· Save
So that we become free
to dedicate ourselves to Christ. We would still work because there is honor in
work. But we would not be slaves to others for our care.
One of these days every
one of us is going to have a “reduced capacity” to earn an income.
Foreseeing that evil, we
need to make some sort of plan.
It’s protecting yourself
from that day when you can’t earn anymore.
C. He protects himself from eternal
condemnation
Hebrews 9:27 (KJV)
And as it is appointed
unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:
The first part of this
verse is self-evident.
No one we have ever
known or heard of, except One, has escaped it.
Death; we can foresee
that it is a fact.
It’s the second part
that people sometimes question.
“…after this, the judgment.”
That tells me two
things:
· That there is life after death
· That it has a critical aspect to it - judgment
Jesus, the only One who
has ever died and rose again to tell us about it, said this,
John 10:9 (KJV)
I am the door: by me if
any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.
By the way, there is no
other door.
John 14:6 (KJV)
Jesus saith unto him, I
am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
Either Jesus is the only
door, or Jesus is no door at all.
It is prudent – it just
makes sense to protect yourself from the judgment after death, by coming to
know Jesus Christ.
III. WHAT IT
MEANS TO PASS ON
Proverbs 22:3 (KJV)
A prudent man foreseeth
the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.
The prudent man hideth
or protects himself.
The simple on the other
hand, pass on and are punished.
This is interesting to
me.
This phrase is the same
one we get the phrase when someone dies that they “passed away.”
It means
· to cross over
· to keep going
· to pass by
I want to suggest to you
that it has to do with ignoring danger.
The simple foresees the
evil.
· He has heard about it,
· He knows it happens, but
· He chooses not to think about it.
A. Crime
He ignores the warnings
about certain
· people,
· places or
· activities
He chooses not to
protect himself, and therefore he becomes an easy victim.
B. Poverty
He knows that someday he
won’t be able to work like he does now, but he ignores it.
· He spends every dime he has, saving nothing for a rainy day.
· He invests nothing into life insurance, or retirement.
He makes no plans and
becomes a victim of his old age.
C. Salvation
Many years ago Anita and
I knocked on the door of a home in Warrenton, OR. When the lady of the house
opened the door, after a few moments of conversation I asked her this question,
“I you were to die today, do you know for sure you would go to heaven?”
Her response was, “Well
aren’t you the bearer of good news!”
· She did not want to talk about her death.
· She did not want to face the inevitable truth.
· She did not want to think about growing old and dying.
And because of it, we
left her house with her unprotected from what is the most certain thing that
will ever happen to her.
Let me tell you, Christianity
is not about
· how to raise a family and
· how to be a good citizen and
· how to have a happy marriage.[3]
The sole point of
Christianity is to answer Hebrews 9:27 (KJV)
And as it is appointed
unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:
· The prudent understand that, and they get saved.
· The simple ignore it, and they face everlasting punishment.
[1] I understand that blame
is not the correct term here. I use it merely for rhetorical effect. They (myself
included) would blame the problem more on lack of God in the schools, lack of
morals in our culture, lack of discipline in parenting, etc.
[2]
https://steemit.com/christian-trail/@mackmck/you-ll-want-to-be-rich
[3] Those things are
by-products of Christianity.
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