KJV Bible study - Proverbs 17

Dave G. said:

Matthew Henry's commentary on verse 15: Verse 15 This shows what an offence it is to God, 1. When those that are entrusted with the administration of public justice, judges, juries, witnesses, prosecutors, counsel, do either acquit the guilty or condemn those that are not guilty, or in the least contribute to either; this defeats the end of government, which is to protect the good and punish the bad, Rom. 13:3, Rom. 13:4 . It is equally provoking to God to justify the wicked, though it be in pity and in favorem vitae—to safe life, as to condemn the just. 2. When any private persons plead for sin and sinners, palliate and excuse wickedness, or argue against virtue and piety, and so pervert the right ways of the Lord and confound the eternal distinctions between good and evil

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James1971 said:

When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a claim that the other disputes, the one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim especially when it challenges a perceived status quo. Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of craziness and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor.

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brinny said:

That is POWERFUL.

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Dave G. said:

Amen Sis, well I still think it can come down to the personal level.

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brinny said:

Can you elaborate?

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Dave G. said:

Well if 15 spoke to my heart it seems to me that it is more than about leaders and judges and such. Just as a for instance and this is complicated, a young unmarried couple have regular sex and she gets pregnant. Do we celebrate this pregnancy as if they were married ? And yet not condemn ourselves in the process !!

Incidentally Matthew Henry has even more to say about verse 16: Verse 16 Two things are here spoken of with astonishment: 1. God’s great goodness to foolish man, in putting a price into his hand to get wisdom, to get knowledge and grace to fit him for both worlds. We have rational souls, the means of grace, the strivings of the Spirit, access to God by prayer; we have time and opportunity. He that has a good estate (so some understand it) has advantages thereby of getting wisdom by purchasing instruction. Good parents, relations, ministers, friends, are helps to get wisdom. It is a price, therefore of value, a talent. It is a price in the hand, in possession; the word is nigh thee. It is a price for getting; it is for our own advantage; it is for getting wisdom, the very thing which, being fools, we have most need of. We have reason to wonder that God should so consider our necessity, and should entrust us with such advantages, though he foresaw we should not make a right improvement of them. 2. Man’s great wickedness, his neglect of God’s favour and his own interest, which is very absurd and unaccountable: He has no heart to it, not to the wisdom that is to be got, nor to the price in the use of which it may be got. He has no heart, no skill, nor will, nor courage, to improve his advantages. He has set his heart upon other things, so that he has no heart to his duty or the great concerns of his soul. Wherefore should a price be thrown away and lost upon one so undeserving of it?

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Dave G. said:

Good stuff Brinny !

Incidentally, I witnessed to a young woman/girl ( 17 yo), Job was her favorite book. She is about 19yo now, maybe 20 and pregnant. She loved the bible, came to the Lord but when she read of the verses of same sex relations being taboo, unmarried sex being taboo, she put the bible down not enduring sound doctrine. And went on in her life. And incidentally, she found those verses reading on her own, neither myself or the pastor involved pointed her to them.

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brinny said:

They're sin. It is what it is, Dave. Amen?

I was unmarried myself, and pregnant, etc.

Do you trust that God (and His inexplicable grace) can work out in her heart whatever issues she's struggling with?

Are you praying for her? God works inexplicably by His grace, as only He can.

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Dave G. said:

Brinny ? Of course I'm praying for her ! Of course his Grace is sufficient. We're still back in Proverbs under Law, we haven't carried this out to new testament provisions.

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brinny said:

Proverbs is the book of wisdom.

If you have placed this dear one in God's hands, she and her li'l one she's carrying are in a good place, because God is surely mooooving on her behalf.

What is sometimes difficult to reconcile for us Christians is that God is a HOLY God, and that as such that He does not "compromise" even if at times we might because we are uncomfortable with His absolute Holy-ness and when He calls "sin", what it is, and that is "sin".

Every man/woman of God in history had something in common. It was a fear of God which prompted them, just as Job did, to "eschew" evil/sin and not to compromise but to say it like it is.

Also known as shining Light in darkness.

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LivingRightInWrongWorld said:

Amen!
Proverbs 9:10 : "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding."

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