Words; in particular, words of knowledge; a series
As I opened my Bible this morning, my eyes fell on some words from the writings of one King Solomon who is reputed to be the wisest man who ever lived or at least the wisest man of His time…there is some question as to how wise a man with 1000 wives just might be. However, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he wrote with considerable wisdom; in fact His words are recorded for us within the canon of scriptures. And the particular words that I looked at this morning around 6 a.m. were these found in Proverbs chapter 23 and verse 12. “Apply your heart to instruction, And your ears to words of knowledge.”
Words of knowledge…propensity, now that is a word of knowledge and I am not talking about the gift of the word of knowledge as laid out in 1 Cor. ch. 12. Propensity in the online dictionary that I use from time to time is described as ; 1. a natural inclination or tendency. 2. A favorable disposition or partiality. 3 .An innate inclination; a tendency .
Mankind has been born with a natural inclination, a tendency, a propensity to sin…it’s our nature. We inherited it from our fathers and our mothers and they inherited it from their fathers and their mothers and you can keep going back until you can identify a couple who were entrusted with the most beautiful garden ever known to any civilization of any time in history and they got themselves kicked out because they listened to a snake. You might think that they had a natural inclination to stupidity but that was not the case although it was stupid. It is always stupid to disobey God. It was more than stupid; it was sin; disobedience to God and what He says in His Word is always sin. We were born in sin and shapen in iniquity, the Bible says. A natural tendency to sin.
Even sometimes after we are saved from that sin we can slip in and partake of that which we are forbidden to do and that is because the old sinful nature has to be put to death on a daily basis. Paul said “I die daily.” We must put to death, he says, the old man and his deeds. The old ,man refers to that old sinful nature. Put it to death! Abstain from the very appearance of evil. Easy for Paul to say, after all he was an apostle, he had seen the Lord on the Damascus highway. He had met Peter and the rest of the apostles. He was close friends with people who knew Jesus and ate with Him. He had been converted in a miraculous way, he had a spectacular testimony.
Don’t we serve the same God as Paul served? Don’t we have Jesus living in us as he had? Will He not hear us when we are in trouble and cry out to Him? I know He will when we ask Him in faith. When the old nature rises up within with it’s tendency to sin, we can cry out to Him and instead of being hell-bent we know we are heaven bound. “Therefore if any person is (engrafted) in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether) ; the old [previous moral and spiritual condition ] has passed away. Behold the fresh and new has come! (Amplified Bible) And that means that our propensity to sin isn’t as strong anymore, in fact we have all the defenses we need to guard against it for we have His indwelling Spirit.
Now our propensity is to do what is right and proper and when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. From our Granada short term mission to the children comes this word: “The old has gone; the new has come.” Next blog in this series; faithfulness
As I opened my Bible this morning, my eyes fell on some words from the writings of one King Solomon who is reputed to be the wisest man who ever lived or at least the wisest man of His time…there is some question as to how wise a man with 1000 wives just might be. However, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he wrote with considerable wisdom; in fact His words are recorded for us within the canon of scriptures. And the particular words that I looked at this morning around 6 a.m. were these found in Proverbs chapter 23 and verse 12. “Apply your heart to instruction, And your ears to words of knowledge.”
Words of knowledge…propensity, now that is a word of knowledge and I am not talking about the gift of the word of knowledge as laid out in 1 Cor. ch. 12. Propensity in the online dictionary that I use from time to time is described as ; 1. a natural inclination or tendency. 2. A favorable disposition or partiality. 3 .An innate inclination; a tendency .
Mankind has been born with a natural inclination, a tendency, a propensity to sin…it’s our nature. We inherited it from our fathers and our mothers and they inherited it from their fathers and their mothers and you can keep going back until you can identify a couple who were entrusted with the most beautiful garden ever known to any civilization of any time in history and they got themselves kicked out because they listened to a snake. You might think that they had a natural inclination to stupidity but that was not the case although it was stupid. It is always stupid to disobey God. It was more than stupid; it was sin; disobedience to God and what He says in His Word is always sin. We were born in sin and shapen in iniquity, the Bible says. A natural tendency to sin.
Even sometimes after we are saved from that sin we can slip in and partake of that which we are forbidden to do and that is because the old sinful nature has to be put to death on a daily basis. Paul said “I die daily.” We must put to death, he says, the old man and his deeds. The old ,man refers to that old sinful nature. Put it to death! Abstain from the very appearance of evil. Easy for Paul to say, after all he was an apostle, he had seen the Lord on the Damascus highway. He had met Peter and the rest of the apostles. He was close friends with people who knew Jesus and ate with Him. He had been converted in a miraculous way, he had a spectacular testimony.
Don’t we serve the same God as Paul served? Don’t we have Jesus living in us as he had? Will He not hear us when we are in trouble and cry out to Him? I know He will when we ask Him in faith. When the old nature rises up within with it’s tendency to sin, we can cry out to Him and instead of being hell-bent we know we are heaven bound. “Therefore if any person is (engrafted) in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether) ; the old [previous moral and spiritual condition ] has passed away. Behold the fresh and new has come! (Amplified Bible) And that means that our propensity to sin isn’t as strong anymore, in fact we have all the defenses we need to guard against it for we have His indwelling Spirit.
Now our propensity is to do what is right and proper and when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him. From our Granada short term mission to the children comes this word: “The old has gone; the new has come.” Next blog in this series; faithfulness
posted by Randall | 6:16 a.m.
1 Comments:
Great word. We know we are sinners by nature - therefore, our greatest protection against sin is "just not to go there" - to avoid the places or circumstances where we might be prone to sin.
The Bible gives us two action words when we are tempted - "resist" and "flee".
We are more than overcomers with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Thanks for good, solid exhortation. As I have heard you point out the scripture, Heb. 8:13, "exhort one another daily"; you have been doing that, my brother, in your writings.
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