Tag: Book of Proverbs

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Sanctified Common Sense Decision Making

Everyday Hearing God

When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia. But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.

2 Cor 2:12-14

Hearing God is often relegated to only supernatural experiences: audible voices, angelic visitations, and divine encounters. However, hearing God could often be described in scripture as sanctified common sense. Over time, our thinking processes are transformed by scripture, our understanding grows in our knowledge of God’s ways, and our wills are conformed to God’s direction (Rom. 12:1-2). We begin to make wise and godly decisions without dramatic spiritual experiences. As we grow in Christ, our understanding of God’s will becomes an every day ordinary occurrence. As believers, we should form a level of sanctified common sense when making everyday life decisions.

Proverbs, and the wisdom literature in general, counter the idea that being spiritual means handing all decisions over to the leading of the Lord. The opposite is true. Proverbs reveals that God does not make all people’s decisions for them, but rather expects them to use his gift of reason to interpret the circumstances and events of life within the framework of revelation that he has given. Yet when they have exercised their responsibility in decision-making, they can look back and see that the sovereign God has guided.

Graeme Goldsworthy,  New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, eds., Brian S. Rosner, T. Desmond Alexander, Graeme Goldsworthy, D. A. Carson (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 210.

 

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It Will Get You No Where

 

Flattery Is a Form of Deception

To flatter friends is to lay a trap for their feet.

Prov. 29:5 NLT

In the end, people appreciate honest criticism far more than flattery.

Prov. 28:23 NLT

Flattery is encouragement without substance: praise without merit. Flattery misleads—the praised abilities are not as good as advertised. Flattery is the giving of confidence in a talent or ability that the other person does not possess. Flattery glosses over the faults, flaws, and weaknesses of others for the purpose of gaining and receiving approval.

Encouragement is different from flattery in that our faults are recognized, but we are urged to overcome their difficulties. The wise person according to the Book of Proverbs sees through flattery and does not resort to its deception.

Too often the flatterer finds more favor than the reprover. ‘Few people have the wisdom to like reproofs that would do them good, better than praises that do them hurt.’ And yet a candid man, notwithstanding the momentary struggle of wounded pride, will afterwards appreciate the purity of the motive, and the value of the discovery. ‘He that cries out against his surgeon for hurting him, when he is searching his wound, will yet pay him well, and thank him too, when he has cured it.’

Unbelief, however, palsies (def. weakens) Christian rebuke. Actual displeasure, or the chilling of friendship, is intolerable. But Paul’s public rebuke of his brother apostle produced no disruption between them. Many years afterward Peter memorialized his ” beloved brother Paul” with most affectionate regard. The Apostle’s painful rebuke of his Corinthian converts eventually increased his favor with them, as the friend of their best interests. The flatterer is viewed with disgust; the reprover—afterwards at least—with acceptance. A less favorable result may often be traced to an unseasonable time, a harsh manner, a neglect of prayer for needful wisdom, or a want of due ‘consideration’ of our own liability to fall. Let us study the spirit of our gracious Master, whose gentleness ever poured balm into the wound, which his faithful love had opened. Such a spirit is more like the support of a friend, than the chastening of a rod.

Charles Bridges, A Commentary on Proverbs (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1846), 549.