May 30 - Today from Proverbs 30 we look at verse 10
"Do not slander a servant to his master, or he will curse you, and you will pay for it." (NIV)
"Accuse not a servant unto his master, lest he curse thee, and thou be found guilty." (KJV)
I would like to share what I believe is a New Testament companion verse to this proverb from Romans 14:4;
"Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand for the Lord is able to make him stand."
This is a warning to believers to be careful in going farther with 'law' than God has. Romans 14 begins with this admonition, "Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters." It is wise to heed this counsel. Christians are very good at majoring in the minors while completely overlooking the spirit of the law. We are to be a people of grace. If we are to boast at all, we are to boast in understanding the Lord; That He exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for it is in these things that He delights. (Jer. 9:24) If we were perfect in keeping the whole of the law, only then would we be fit to judge another ("Let him without sin cast the first stone" John 8:7). If we are not perfect in keeping the whole of the law, then it is by grace alone that we are able to stand - and it is by grace that any servant of God stands. When we think that somehow we have learned to stand on our own, and have gained a position to point out the faults of others to God, we are in a very precarious position. We are positioned for a great fall, while the one we judged will continue to stand by God's grace. Pride is very subtle. Sometimes it feels just exactly like righteousness. We need to rend our heart before God and let His word expose the deceitfulness of pride, confess it, repent of it, and accept those who are weak in their faith without passing judgment. Rather, we need to encourage them and bear them up. Then we begin to look like the body of Christ, and the world will know we are His disciples.
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
No comments:
Post a Comment