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333 | Conversations - Proverbs 6 - Wisdom Unveiled · The Woman at the Well Ministries Podcast

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Music.
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Hello, friends, and welcome back to another podcast of Woman at the Well Ministries,
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where we believe that all of us have to come to Jesus like the woman at the
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well in John chapter four.
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Our highest priority is making God real in your life.
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Whether you are listening in our app, in your favorite podcasting app,
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or on our website at watwm.org,
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we invite you to sit down with us as we look to the scriptures to learn more
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about God and to strengthen Your daily walk with Jesus Christ.
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Living her life for Christ. She's a happy girl.
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Music.
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She's a happy girl.
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In this episode of the Woman at the Well Ministries podcast,
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join Kim Miller and Erica Close in a conversation as we walk with Jesus.
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In today's conversation, we continue a series on the book of Proverbs.
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In today's podcast, we discuss the lessons learned in Proverbs 6.
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Well, hello, everyone. I am Erica Close, and I am here with Kimberly Miller.
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Hello, and thank you for joining us in this podcast of Woman at the Well Ministries
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as we take a close look at Proverbs 6.
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And in this chapter, we're going to learn a lot of things, but we're going to
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learn things that God hates, and we're going to learn the blessings of obedience among those things.
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This is another one of those Proverbs that just has a lot of different things in it.
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But let's go ahead and dig in. Do you want to start reading the first half? Absolutely.
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My son, if thou be surety for thy friend, if thou hast stricken thy hand with
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a stranger, thou art snared with the words of thy mouth, thou art taken with the words of thy mouth.
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Do this now, my son, and deliver thyself. When thou art come into the hand of
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thy friend, Go, humble thyself, and make sure thy friend.
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Give not sleep to thine eyes, nor slumber to thine eyelids.
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Deliver thyself as a roe from the hand of the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the fowler.
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Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise,
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which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer,
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and gathereth her food in the harvest.
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Harvest how long wilt thou sleep old sluggard when wilt thou arise out of thy
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sleep yet a little sleep a little slumber a little folding of the hands to sleep
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so shall thy poverty come as one that travaileth and thy want as an armed man.
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A naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a froward mouth.
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He winketh with his eyes. He speaketh with his feet. He teacheth with his fingers.
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Frowardness is in his heart. He deviseth mischief continually.
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He soweth discord. Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly.
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Suddenly shall he be broken without remedy.
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These six things doth the Lord hate.
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Yea, seven are an abomination unto him. A proud look, a lying tongue,
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and hands that shed innocent blood, and heart that diviseth wicked imaginations,
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feet that be swift in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies,
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and he that soweth discord among brethren.
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My son, keep thy father's commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother.
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Bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck.
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When thou goest, it shall lead thee. When thou sleepest, it shall keep thee.
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And when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee.
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For the commandment is a lamp, and the law is light, and reproofs of instruction are the way of life.
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To keep thee from the evil woman, from the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman.
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Lust not after her beauty in thine heart, neither let her take Take thee with her eyelids.
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For by means of a whorish woman, a man is brought to a piece of bread,
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and the adulteress will hunt for the precious life.
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Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned?
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Can one go upon hot coals and his feet not be burned?
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So he that goeth into his neighbor's wife and whosoever touches her shall not be innocent.
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Men do not despise a thief if he still to satisfy his soul when he is hungry.
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But if he be found, he shall restore sevenfold, and he shall give all the substance of his house.
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But whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding,
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and he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.
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A wound and dishonor shall he get, and his reproach shall not be wiped away.
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For jealousy is the rage of a man, therefore he will not spare in the day of
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vengeance. He will not regard any ransom, neither will he rest content,
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though thou givest many gifts.
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There's a lot in that chapter, but you know how like when you just read a chapter
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and the things that kind of stick out to you?
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One of the things I love about this chapter, 6 of Proverbs,
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is right around verses 23 and 22 when he says,
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I guess actually if you move back to 20, when he says, My son,
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keep thy father's commandment and forsake not the law of thy father.
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Bind them continually upon thy heart and tie them about thy neck.
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And he says, when thou goest, it shall lead thee.
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And he continues to speak about the commandment. His parents were speaking to
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him wisdom and instruction that were in alignment with the commandment of God.
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And when you let the commandment of God,
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take the lead in your life, then and only then will you know the blessings of
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God and have that abundant life that he promises in John chapter 10, verse 10.
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And when we look at that little section right there of this proverb,
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it gives a great charge to those who have authority and influence over those
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who are younger than them.
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He is being told to let the commandments of his parents take the lead of his
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life because the commandments of his parents were to put God first,
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to have no other gods before them.
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To not lie, to not kill. Especially those 10 commandments are being extremely
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important and understanding that God's wisdom and instruction is what needs to take your lead.
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And so if you have people, whether it's your child or your grandchild,
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your niece, your nephew, your cousin, your neighbor, whoever it is that's younger
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than you, that's looking to you for for information.
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Make sure you're giving them godly instruction.
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Absolutely. And this chapter really is filled with a whole lot of godly instruction.
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It has that beautiful section that you just talked about right there in the
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middle, but that is sandwiched with some really just practical advice and wisdom.
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The first few verses talk about being surety for your friend and talking about
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literally like answering for the debt of a friend.
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But the verses talk about how when you do that, you are bound and tied to someone else.
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And it's saying, and these verses are saying, you need to be careful who you are bound and tied to.
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In previous chapters in Proverbs, we've read so closely about basically you
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need to be careful who your friends are, right?
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And then when you get into some kind of contractual relationship with someone
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you shouldn't, you're going to be in a jam and you need to be careful.
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And the Lord is the only person we are to be bound to.
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And I think sometimes we do look outside of God's provision for us and outside
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of God's plan for us, maybe to fill our wants or our desires.
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And because we are not putting him front and center, we find ourselves bound
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to others and not even others who know who God is.
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But he's saying don't do that and then he goes through a list of things saying
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don't be lazy because sometimes the reason we are contractually bound to someone
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is because we haven't done our due diligence to.
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Make what we need and take advantage of what God has provided for us.
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Now, there are plenty of instances in life where you will find yourself in need
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and it is nothing that you have done.
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But he goes through this thing about the ant and about being a sluggard because
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he wants you to understand that we are going to live by our toil.
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And we got that way back in Genesis. We did.
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I love that section about the ant because, you know, ants really are fascinating.
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And, you know, there's lots of little documentaries we can watch about,
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you know, an ant. But an ant is never idle.
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Nope. You know, an ant is always doing ant work, right? Always working.
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And this section, you know, says, you know, the ant doesn't have a guide,
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doesn't have an overseer, doesn't have a ruler, but provideth meat, gathereth food.
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You know, the ant does not rest.
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And this section talks about how we can absolutely over rest.
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You're going to sleep your life away.
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Absolutely. And not do the things that the Lord wants. And it says,
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you know, there's this there's this verse in here in verse 10.
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Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.
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You know, it seems like, oh, I'm just going to do this for a minute or I'm just
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going to not put this off for a little bit.
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But putting things off for a little bit over and over and over again leads to
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things not getting taken care of for a long time.
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And in verse 11, it says what comes with that is poverty and want and want and
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want like an armed man, like want like someone who has done the wrong thing.
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It's incredible how quickly we see idleness turn to sinfulness how quickly we can see idleness,
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turn to mischief and how quickly we can watch idleness send us down a path we.
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Don't want to go and throughout scripture we are warned of this but i believe
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that's what he's saying in this,
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portion of scripture about being a sluggard.
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Don't waste the time God has given you. Now, Jesus went aside to rest.
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There needs to be balance. You need to be still and know that he is God,
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according to Psalms 46.10.
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But you can't be always at rest.
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You need to do something so that you need to rest. And rest is a portion of
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the day, but it's not the whole day.
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Absolutely. Absolutely. The next section, starting in verse 12,
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you know, talks just about sinful people, right?
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It talks about people who are naughty and wicked, people who,
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you know, it says, wink with his eyes and speaketh with his feet and teaches
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with his fingers. is like basically is trying to do mischievous things, right?
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We're not supposed to be that person.
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We're not supposed to be devising mischief, like we read in 14,
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and sowing discord, discord, because what comes in 15 is calamity, right?
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And it comes suddenly, and it says, suddenly he be broken without remedy.
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There are consequences to our sin.
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There's consequences when we're not doing things the Lord's way.
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And we don't want to believe in those consequences, but they happen.
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And we can't be sketchy. Our life is supposed to be a light,
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and everything's in the open when there's light.
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Nothing is hidden. And if you're a sketchy person doing mischief things and naughty things,
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then you can't be spreading the gospel, the light of the gospel,
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you can't be the light of the world that is bringing honor and glory to the Lord.
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So we have to be careful about the decisions we make, the friends that we choose to have,
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the people we associate ourselves with, who we really get close to,
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because the devil is always walking about trying to devour us and we need to
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be diligent and guard our heart.
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And allow God to be who we submit to. And we need to listen to the instruction
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that God gives us through his word and through people who are speaking his word,
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which Solomon is speaking his word to his son,
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and we are reading it, and this is truth that we need to live by as well.
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The section on the six things that the Lord hate and the seventh is basically an abomination.
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That's a pretty direct passage.
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And I think, you know, so often there are things in the scripture that we have
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to pray to understand, right?
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We ask for the Holy Spirit to give us understanding and we have to look and
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say, okay, here, you know, for example, the ant. Like we we're much larger than an ant.
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We're not told to do the things that ant does, but we're told to look to an ant for a model.
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Right. So we need to think about what that passage means.
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This passage is very direct and doesn't really require much.
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Much understanding, right?
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There's no debating it. Right.
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The Lord does not like, in fact, hates, a proud look, a lying tongue.
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Hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that deviseth wicked imaginations,
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feet that be swept in running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lives.
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Those are the first six things. And that...
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Intro verse to that section is the seventh, right? And seven make an abomination.
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And the last one is he that soweth discord among the brethren, right?
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That is a very specific thing.
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All those things the Lord hates, and those are not things that are to be found
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in a Christian and someone who is following the Lord, but we also don't need
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to be sowing discord among the brethren.
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We may not always agree with the people that we worship with.
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We may not always agree with every other Christian that we're friends with, but first and foremost,
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we are Christians, and we are Christian brothers and sisters,
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and we are not to be sowing discord.
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You know, my Bible has a little section I'm being a busybody, right?
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That's not what we're supposed to be. Because we are all children of God with
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one purpose, which is to spread the gospel, go into all the world and teach and preach the gospel.
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And you cannot be doing that because the gospel is the love of Jesus.
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And he says that you have to love your neighbor better than you love yourself.
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You can't be doing that if you've got discord and division among you.
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So we have to be in unity in order to stand together against the wiles of the devil.
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The next section of this proverb is the section that we started with about how
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we have to keep the Father's commandments to bind them upon our heart.
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Verse 23 talks about the commandment is a lamp and the law is light and the
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reproofs of instructions are the way of life.
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That is such a powerful passage about the power of God's Word in our life.
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And then we go into a passage that is really very similar to something that
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we read when we read Proverbs chapter 6.
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It again compares sin.
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Proverbs chapter 5. Excuse me, Proverbs chapter 5, thank you,
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it then compares sin to a temptress, right? To an evil woman.
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It talks about how evil flatters.
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It talks about how evil is beautiful, how evil is trying to come after us,
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to pull us off the path that God would have for us.
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It says, you know, for by means of an evil woman, you know, a man is pulled
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even for just a piece of bread.
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Like so often what we get in exchange for what we lose in sin can't be compared. Amen.
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And verse 27, you know, can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned?
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We can't not get burned by sin. Sin 28 can one go upon hot coals in his feet and not be burned.
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We can't not be burned. You can't play with sin. Yeah. Sin is bigger than you
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are, but it's not bigger than the God in you.
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But if you hang out and linger like Eve did with the serpent,
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she could have said no and walked away.
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But it was his cunning deceitfulness. It was his allure that continued and her
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just hanging on, just lingering and having conversation, giving him more time,
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giving him more space in her mind and in her heart, and she succumbed to him.
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We cannot hang out with sin.
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We can't harbor it in our heart. The Bible says in Psalms that the Lord won't
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hear us if we have iniquity in our heart.
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He hears the prayer of repentance, but if we are living in sin,
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we got to get ourselves right before we can begin to pray for someone else.
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The reality of it is, is sin will draw you in.
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It will pull you. You cannot play with sin, or in this instance,
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play with fire and not get burnt.
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You have to abstain from all appearance of evil.
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That's what we're told in Thessalonians. You have to depart from evil.
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We are told earlier in Proverbs and continuously throughout the scriptures.
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You got to turn your back on sin. The flesh wants sin.
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Sin will feed the flesh and it will overcome you because you will ignore the
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God that is in you that is greater than the sin that is around you.
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So we have to heed Solomon's warning and the instruction that we are given by
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God to abstain from sin. See it, leave it.
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Turn away. That last section of this proverb talks about adultery.
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It talks about the sin of adultery. I think it compares all of sin to adultery.
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I think it's interesting in verse 32, but
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whoso committeth adultery with a woman Lacketh understanding so
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much of these proverbs that we looked at are about gaining Understanding and
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gaining wisdom and clearly that sin comes From a lack of understanding which
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can easily be understood Because if you understand god's wisdom and instruction He's clear.
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That's even one of the big ten If you understand you're going to abstain from that that.
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Because there's no good to be had because you're not enjoying anything that God has given you.
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And every good and perfect gift cometh down from the Father of lights,
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where there's no variableness or no turning.
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God has the greatest things for you that fit you perfectly.
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And trying to pick other things out of the world will never work for you. It's disastrous.
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It's uncomfortable. uncomfortable, it'll be awkward, and it certainly will not lead to peace.
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I love that you talked about the fact that it's not going to lead to peace because
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the very end of the chapter talks about how as a result of sin,
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we are wounded, we are dishonored, we are reproached, we are.
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Jealous, and we have a rage, and we will not be spared.
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But the very end, neither will he rest Rest content, though thou givest many
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gifts. He talked about peace.
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This passage ends with the one who is living in sin, the one who is following
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after sin and following after evil, will not be content and will not have that rest.
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He will not have the godly rest that were promised.
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Not that he's not going to get all the gifts. And he also says it rains on the
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just and the unjust. So he gets many gifts.
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Right. But he won't have access to them or be content with them. Amen.
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And it's so important because there is pleasure in sin for a season,
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but the pay and the cost is far greater than the reward or the benefit.
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In fact, there are no rewards or benefits in sin.
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And there is one thing for sure.
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It may seem difficult to abstain from all appearance of evil.
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But God will supply all the strength you need.
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He'll supply every need you have.
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And when you are walking in his ways, you are set up for the abundant life he
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has planned for every individual.
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And anything outside of his commandments draws you away from his perfect plan
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for you. And there is peace with God, but there are blessings abundant.
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For the one whose eyes are focused on him.
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In fact, Isaiah 26, 3 says, I will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed
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on thee, because he trusteth in thee.
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It is our prayer that you have placed your faith, your complete trust,
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and your entire being in the hands of Jesus Christ, and that you know him as personal Savior.
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If you do not know him as personal Savior, we invite you to come to our website at www.watwm.org.
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Get in touch with us there, and we are happy to answer any questions that you
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have concerning a personal relationship with Jesus.
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And we would love to help you invite him into your life.
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But he's waiting, and whosoever calls upon the Lord shall be saved,
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in Romans 10.13. John 3.16 says.
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Being saved is as simple as ABC.
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Acknowledging that you are a sinner in need of a Savior, and that Jesus Christ,
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whose sinless perfect blood He willingly shed on the cross of Calvary,
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that those who would believe in Him would have their sins washed,
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Though they be red as scarlet, they are white as snow.
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And he died, and he shed his blood, and on the third day he rose again,
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making him victorious over hell, death, and the grave.
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He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father without today...
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You can change your life forever, not just in this world, but in the world to
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come by accepting Him as your personal Savior.
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It is our prayer that you know Him. It is our prayer that if you don't know
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Him, that you have prayed that prayer.
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Ask the Lord to come into your heart, and He surely will.
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Have a wonderful day. Stay rooted and grounded in the Word, and remember you
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are loved. Jesus loves you.
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Music.
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Thank you for joining us in today's podcast. You can visit the show notes for
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quotes from today's podcast and scripture references.
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Music.