Feb 6 - Today from Proverbs 6 we look at verses 26 & 30-32
"The prostitute reduces you to a loaf of bread, and the adulteress preys upon your very life. Men do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he is starving. Yet if caught, he must pay sevenfold, though it cost him all the wealth of his house. But a man who commits adultery lacks judgement; whoever does so destroys himself."
The surface lesson seems very clear - adultery is deadly! It not only destroys trust, self-confidence, integrity, and social acceptance, but it destroys the fabric of emotional stability in the lives of children whose parents get caught up in this selfish, self-serving trap. The Bible has nothing good to say about adultery because it goes so totally against God's plan for male/female relationships and for His family plan.
But there is a broader principle here and I believe it has to do with motivation. "The prostitute reduces you to a loaf of bread . . . Men do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he is starving. . ."
In both cases the motivation for the sin is basic survival. In both cases one can have some compassion on the perpetrator because of the dire straits in which they find themselves. The prostitute offers her services in exchange for enough to pay for her daily sustenance. She isn't lusting after a man, nor is she trying to bond on any level with a man. She just needs some money to survive. Or, the man who hasn't eaten for some days gets desperate and steals so that he can buy something to eat. He's really no different than the prostitute. Out of desperation they each turn to a criminal act. Even though they may be pathetic, they are still guilty.
But people who perpetrate crimes against others out of lust and greed do not arouse compassion. Their motivation is not survival, but self-serving gratification. An adulteress isn't looking for a meal - she's looking for sexual adventure with another woman's husband. There is no necessity involved, just self-gratification.
One does not have to stay on the subject of sexual gratification to apply the principle of this text. In how many areas in our own lives do we do harm to others because we want to gratify our own selfish interests or desires? There is a warning here that if we continue in such behaviors there will come a day of reckoning - and when it comes, there will be little compassion from others. We can almost excuse a person who crosses boundaries in order to survive - but we have little patience with people who invoke harm simply for self-serving interests.
Since Nov 08
About Me
- Ken
- While mentor-ing a couple of young men late in the year 2001 , I told them that if they agreed to read a chapter of Proverbs each week-day as a part of their devotions, I would choose one verse from the chapter and share a meditation by email. They agreed. I continued to write the meditations at my desk in my home for the next two and a half years. They began to forward them to their friends and I received requests from those friends to be placed on the email list. My personal email bundle was to about eighty people. Many of those people forwarded them to friends all over the country – and some over the world. Only the Lord knows how extensive the writings traveled. I am not a professional writer, and each meditation was spun off in a relatively short period of time during my own personal devotions in the morning. In April of 2004 I assembled 366 of the meditations into a calendar year. As I now bring up the Proverb of the Day to send on to my friends, I am surprised at how fresh each of them is to my own heart – and often how they speak to me in a completely different way than when I first wrote them. . . . . Ken Sweers
2 comments:
Wow! We see this a lot in our society today don't we? It has always been here but it seems to be more intense and happening more and more as our society focuses on sexual culture and self serving desires. We see it every where we turn.
It is becoming more acceptable in society which makes it very hard when raising children. To teach our children what a true, trusting and blameless marriage is.
I worry for my daughter as she grows in the times of today. I as a mother must keep her close to Gods family and teach her about Jesus to help keep her out of harms way.
I see the broken marriages of many and a lot of it seems to have to do with broken trust, adultery, and lustful issues. It seems to be this sickness that is spreading. People are becoming lazy in trying to have self dicipline.
So very bad do I want to protect my daughter from the world; but I can't; I can though, lay it down in Gods lap and He can.
Unfortunately there are no guarantees. If there were a tried and true formula to keep our children from traveling such harmful paths, it would be worth billion$. But there is much we parents can do to safeguard – and it looks like you are doing them; raise them in the nurture of the Lord, pray for them, love them unconditionally, set and keep reasonable boundaries, and live an exemplary life (integrity). The rest is is God’s hands.
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