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Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2019 6:08:02 GMT -6
“Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die: Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain” (Proverbs 30:7-9).
First, here's the request verse 8, “Remove far from me vanity,” stuff that’s useless. I wish everybody would pray that. A lot of things we do in this life are just vain. They just don’t amount to anything.
“Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me.” What this guy realizes is that prosperity will spoil us: “But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation” (Deuteronomy 32:15).
“Jeshurun waxed fat,” when you get fat, you get sassy. You’ve heard them say, “fat and sassy?” That’s the way folks are. They get wealthy, they get high and mighty. Agur realizes that prosperity spoils you. He then tells us this in verse 9, “Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD?”
There's a man in the Bible that makes that statement exactly and it's an Exodus 5:2, and it was a man who was full of himself. That man was Pharaoh. He asked, “Who is the Lord?” Well, he found out in the middle of the Red Sea; he found out the hard way. He found out that the Lord was the Lord of glory, He is the Lord of judgment, and He is the Lord of justice and Pharaoh found that out the hard way.
“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good” (Ezekiel 16:49-50).
This man realizes that prosperity will ruin a man. He said, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me,” which is what I need. That's a good admonition. You get what you need and give the rest to missions, give the rest to the Lord. Let something be done good with it. If you just keep spending on things and food more than is needed, that's vanity. You're feeding a dead body.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2019 6:39:51 GMT -6
“Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more” (Proverbs 31:6-7).
If a man is dying, okay, give him a little wine for his stomach sake or for his infirmity. Paul said that in Second Timothy 5:23. Timothy had some kind of sickness and Paul told him to “drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.” I guess every wino in town knows where that verse is when you confront them about drinking. They'll say, “Well, you know, my stomach.” “How long have you had a bad stomach? The last 30 years? You probably do have a bad stomach now, because you drink so much wine, so much booze. You messed it all up.”
There are medicinal uses for alcohol, and he goes on to say, “and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts.” “Let him drink,” verse seven, “and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.”
I can see it now, all the poor folks saying, “Well, see there? It’s okay for us to drink.” Why, you fool, how do you think you got poor in the first place? It isn't talking about a poor man just drinking all the time because he is poor. The Bible would never condone such as that.
It's talking about a man who has been made poor by circumstances that he had no control over, and he's in heaviness of heart. He is sorrowing, and he just needs a little comfort. A little like a tranquilizer just to get through the situation.
“And there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the a***s feeding beside them: And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword [these are all things that Job owns, those were his servants and those were his oxen]; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house: And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee” (Job 1:14-19).
Well, I guess after something like that a man may need a little bit of a tranquilizer, or something to help him, but Job doesn't take it. Job doesn't need it. What did he do?
Job arose, rent his mantle, surely, he was heavy of spirit. He shaved his head and fell down on the ground and worshipped. He worshipped! Job was full of the Holy Ghost. He doesn't need a pick me up drink. Job has a pick me up in God, and he said, “Naked came I out of my mother’s woman, and naked shall I return thither; the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:20-21).
You could not do what Job did, if you were not full of the Holy Spirit of God. You couldn't do it. And a man that's not filled with Holy Spirit of God, and a man that isn’t, all he has is to face the circumstances in himself; well, give him a drink. Give him a little alcohol. But bless God, if you know the Lord and are filled with the Holy Spirit, you don't need it. That kind of thing happens to and you can rest in the Holy Spirit. The promises of God are real. The Bible says, “All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).
So, she gave a couple of instances there where alcohol could be used in desperate cases.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2019 6:30:00 GMT -6
“To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity” (Proverbs 1:3 KJV).
“Justice . . .” That is discerning right from wrong. That is what a judge does. He makes a judicial decision based on right and wrong.
“Equity . . .” That’s fairness. Equity is when two things are equal or balanced out. “A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight” (Proverbs 11:1).
There are three words there that you need to see the difference between. They are going to pop up all through your Bible. The one is knowledge, one is wisdom, and one is understanding. You may think, well, there isn’t really a difference between them. Well, there is a difference—technically. Now, generally speaking, the words can overlap, in some cases. But, technically, there is a difference.
1. Knowledge is “awareness.” In other words, you “perceive without doubt.” You KNOW something. Paul said, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able . . .” You see, that is something you know beyond a shadow of any doubt—you are aware of it. You have no doubt about it . . . it’s awareness . . . you’re informed about it. You recognize it.
2. Wisdom involves taking what you are “aware” of and “acting upon it.” It is action based upon knowledge. Now, we got a whole lot of folks that ‘know something,’ but they don’t act upon it, so they just have knowledge. And knowledge by itself, “puffeth up.” But what edifies? “Charity!” Charity is action. With the right motive, charity gets the job done.
Wisdom is taking what you know. Now the problem with that is there is evil action and there is good action. We find them contrasted in James 3, where the wisdom of this world is “sensual, devilish.” There are men that learn things, even godly things, and use them to their own benefit, for their own business, for their own profit. Not for the profit of good, but for the profit of evil. That’s wisdom! You have to give some of these criminal’s credit—they are smart—and it is not just a matter of learning something but knowing how to use it. You take a con man, they are smart. He knows how to put it over on folks. So, he learns how to take what he knows, and use it for his own profit. That is not right.
Now there is good wisdom from above that is first of all “pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy, and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” In other words, there is a wisdom where you know what is right and you do right. It is pure, and it produces the fruit of peace. “The work of righteousness shall be peace” (Isaiah 32:17). So, wisdom is taking what you know and putting it to a good use.
3. Understanding deals with attitude. It is taking what you know and wisely using it in relation to God. Job says, “to depart from evil is understanding” (28:28). You see, there you have taken what you know, and you applied it, but you have applied it and you acted upon it, in relation to God. In other words, with a desire to please God, with a desire to listen to God and to avoid evil, you have used understanding.
“The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God . . .” He has no understanding of things in relation to God. The only thing he can ever understand is when the Holy Spirit reveals to him that he is a sinner on his way to hell. He can understand that much, and he can understand the gospel as the Holy Spirit leads him along and reveals it to him. Now, he won’t really “see” that gospel until his heart turns to the Lord. When he turns to the Lord, then the vail is taken away, and then he sees the gospel. Paul writes, “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost” (2 Corinthians 4:3).
A lost man can have wisdom and knowledge, but he has no understanding. He cannot relate the world to God, only to nature. That is the philosophical, scientific approach of today. They relate everything they see to nature. And they come up with evolution.
A man of understanding takes what he sees and applies it to what God has revealed to him, and he understands everything it its proper context. That is understanding, and there is no lost man that has understanding. Understanding is a relationship to God. “To depart from evil is understanding.” You never saw a lost man depart from evil until God was dealing with him and showing unto him the way of salvation.
It’s good to know the difference between those three words: knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. A lot of Christians have a knowledge of the Bible, but don’t use it. It ain’t no good that way. “To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding” –what God has said— “The word of God is quick and powerful” – “To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity.” The Christian is to judge things. He is to be just in his dealings with people, to be honest, and to have the proper judgment. “he that is spiritual judgeth all things” – “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” Then you should be capable of judging the smallest matters . . . according to the Book! The Christian needs to have the proper judgment, and he needs the words of understanding to make those judgments.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2019 7:33:19 GMT -6
“That thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous. For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it” (Proverbs 2:20-21 KJV).
There are three things that we are talking about. This is the third thing that discretion and wisdom will give you when it enters into your heart, and knowledge is pleasant to the soul. The first two things are to keep you from the evil man, and to keep you from the strange woman, two things that we have to deal with in life.
The third thing is that it will give you wisdom to stay away from the wrong people and run with the right folks. We would be better off to have no friends at all, then to run around with the wrong bunch. I can remember “friends” that I had in my childhood that put things into my life, that I am still dealing with today. I wish I had never met them. I’d have been better off never having any friends, then the wrong kind. Of course, I was an unsaved kid back then, but kids that are saved have a choice. My parents didn’t have discretion, they didn’t have discernment, we didn’t go to the right kind of church, I didn’t have Christian kids around me—so I ran around with worldly kids.
“That thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous,” you want that narrow path, not the wide one that leads to hell.
“For the upright shall dwell in the land,” that, of course, is a physical promise to the nation of Israel, “and the perfect shall remain in it,” now that perfection there is in the Old Testament sense. The perfect Jew was the man that abided by the Law, he walked in the Law, and when he did sin a sin of ignorance, he sacrificed a sacrifice for them. He kept the commandments, the judgments, and the ordinances. That was perfection in the Old Testament economy. We see an example of this in Luke.
“There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless” (Luke 1:5-6 KJV).
The same is said of Paul.
“Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee [Christ said that if any wanted to go to heaven their righteousness had to exceed that of a Pharisee]; Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:4-6 KJV).
Now, none of these were sinless. When they did sin, they atoned for it—and they got forgiveness for it. Neither of them was “sinless,” but they were “blameless.” When they did do wrong, they had the right sacrifice for it. When a Christian does wrong, he confesses it—gets right—repents of it, turns from it.
“. . . and the perfect shall remain in it,” the word “perfection” in the Bible talking about an individual is never talking about sinlessness, but that state where the Christian is aware of right and wrong, and when he does wrong, he gets right about it.
“But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it” (Proverbs 2:22 KJV).
“But the wicked shall be cut off,” during the Tribulation they really will be cut off.
“. . . and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it,” pulled up by the roots.
To transgress is to “go across,” sin is not coming up to what you are supposed to do, while to transgress is to go beyond falling short and willfully sin.
Nothing good is in store for the lost man or woman.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2019 8:53:10 GMT -6
“Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart” (Proverbs 3:3 KJV).
“Let not mercy and truth forsake thee,” don’t let them get away from you. They’ll try. Well, it isn’t so much that they will try, but it’s hard for the flesh to keep them: mercy and truth. James has the best statement about mercy, “For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment” (James 2:13 KJV). That is to say, if you want God to judge you unmercifully, then you judge others unmercifully. When you judge others, unsaved people or carnal Christians, whatever the situation, if you are unmerciful in your judgment, then you will be judged with the same judgment. Just be merciful—be full of mercy. Be really careful about it.
Just remember, when we look at a Christian, and we judge that Christian, and we say, “Boy, is he a reprobate!” You just remember that inside that Christian is the Holy Spirit of God, and the spirit of that believer that is not sinning, and if that Spirit were having its way—that Christian might be living a better a holier life than you or I. The problem is that the flesh has the upper hand.
What you are seeing is not that Christian, you are seeing the old nature—the Adamic, carnal nature—you are not looking at that Christian’s spirit. The Christian is “in Christ,” that part is totally submerged and does not shine through when the flesh is in control. So, remember when you judge a Christian for what he is doing, it is really the flesh that you are looking at. In every one of us the Christian is inside wanting to do right, whether we do right or not. There’s a drive to do right in every Christian, “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I” (Romans 7:15 KJV). There was a time when Paul struggled with that very thing.
If that spiritual nature is not fed, and it’s not cultivated, it will lose control and the carnal nature will take over.
How about truth? “For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, [which what?] which effectually worketh also in you that believe” (I Thessalonians 2:13 KJV).
As much as you can, “. . . let not mercy and truth forsake thee.”
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2019 8:53:22 GMT -6
“For I was my father's son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live” (Proverbs 4:4 KJV).
“Let thine heart retain my words,” don’t worry about it sticking to your head. Don’t worry about memorizing them. Get them in your heart. Did you know that once you get them in your heart it is easy to memorize them? Once you learn them, once you apply them to your life, once you make them real, and part of your heart—it’s easy to memorize them. Then you don’t have any problem remembering them. But if you just memorize it with your head—aren’t they gone soon? You know why? Because it isn’t in the heart. If you can ever get it down in the heart, you can keep it.
“Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live,” well, what is sin? Sin is a transgression of the law; the wages of sin is death. If you want to live a long, prosperous, and peaceful life, keep the commandments and live.
Now, these are laws and doctrines that you can break. Young people are tempted, more than anybody else, to think that they can break the laws and get by—and the reason is—they are so healthy and think they have their whole life in front of them, that they are indestructible. They will break a law, and nothing will happen to them immediately. When Adam and Eve partook of that tree back in Genesis, God said that in the day they ate thereby, they would surely die. Now, they recognized a change right away. They knew they lost their relationship with God and they went and hid from Him. It was hundreds of years later that they died physically, but they did die, eventually. The death process set in immediately, no matter how long it took.
“And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death” (Romans 7:10 KJV). He said, keep the commandments, and live.
This can be applied to a Christian.
“Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die” (Romans 8:12-13a).
If you live after the flesh, what will you do? Die. Why? It is sinful. The wages of sin is death. Lost or saved, the result is the same. How do we know this? Galatians 5 says, “The works of the flesh are manifest,” you see anything good on that list? Fornication, adultery, lasciviousness, covetous, revelry, and such like . . . you walk after that flesh, you’re in trouble. So, Paul says that “if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die,” because it is sinful. You have to deny that flesh or it will kill you. The flesh is an untamed animal, nor can it be tamed.
“. . . but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Romans 8:13b KJV).
You say, “Well, everybody dies.” Yea, that’s right, sooner or later, you will wear out. You can go a whole lot more peaceful than some folks. Moses was a hundred and twenty years old, and his physical powers were not abated.
The problem with a lot of us that were saved later in life is that we were already worn out by the Devil, and the world, and sin. It’s not easy to recuperate when you get to be 30-35 years old what you lost when you were 15 or 20. Bob Jones Sr. used to say, “Every draft on you is a dissipation of old age.” Every time you use your ability to do wrong, every draft on you, is a dissipation of old age. You are just slowly writing your own death warrant. Every draft on you.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 5, 2019 7:56:19 GMT -6
“Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell. Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them” (Proverbs 5:5-6 KJV).
Don’t try to figure her ways out. Don’t try to figure out evolution—evolutionists can’t figure it out. They are still trying to find the missing link. You can’t pin sin down. “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8). Now, you can pin the Bible down—it will tell you straight. Sin is a whole lot like a mirage, just about the time you think you understand it, it changes its shape, it disappears. The ways of sin are moveable. Oh, the Devil will make you all kinds of promises—but he won’t keep one of them. There is no foundation to them.
The Lord said that if a man would build his house upon the sand, it would fall. And He makes a statement there in Matthew about that thing that a lot of people don’t realize: “And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it” (Matthew 7:27 KJV). Do you see that? “GREAT was the fall of it.” The sad thing about messing your life up is how many other people you mess up in your house as well.
One man dies without Christ, that one man goes to hell. But if that one man was a false teacher of the Bible—that one man deceived other people into believing his heretical philosophy of the Word and of life—it is not only him that is destroyed eternally, but many others that followed him. How great are the multitudes that followed men like Joseph Smith or Judge Rutherford into a Christless eternity? How many are they that followed Mary Baker Eddy or Ellen G. White into the Devil’s hell because they built their houses on the foundation of their cultic teachings.
Dad, where will your children spend eternity if you are not building your house on the solid foundation of Jesus Christ and His perfect Word? If you are not living right, you should be up at night in a state of fear until you settle this thing. Don’t let your house have a GREAT fall!
GREAT was the fall of it,” all the servants, all the guests, all the family—everybody went down with the house when the house went down.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 6, 2019 7:15:33 GMT -6
“Do this now, my son, and deliver thyself, when thou art come into the hand of thy friend; go, humble thyself, and make sure thy friend” (Proverbs 6:3 KJV).
There is an old saying, “Engage brain, before putting mouth in gear,” think about what you are about to say or do, before you do it. Where we so often get into trouble is with impulse thinking or actions. Most retail establishments thrive on impulse purchases. They realize that 80-90% of the time, when you go to the store, you are going there for a specific object. Chances are, if they can, they want that object in the back of the store. That is why the milk and the bread will hardly ever be up front in the grocery store. They’ll be in the back because they want you to travel through the store because they realize that most people buy on impulse. How often we hear people say, “I just went in to buy one bag of groceries and came out with three!”
“Do this now, my son,” here is good advice. If you get into a situation with a friend, as hard as it may be, go and humble thyself. You just have to go to that friend and admit that you made a mess of things and got myself into something I should have never gotten in to. We don’t like to admit that we made a mistake.
“humble thyself, and make sure thy friend,” you would be better off keeping your friends and getting out of the responsibility. Here is how you make sure a friend: “
This is when you got something against another Christian. Everybody knows where Matthew chapter 18 is in the Bible. Very few Bible believing Christians don’t know that they are supposed to go to another brother when they have a problem. If they are asked, “What are you supposed to do if you have a problem with another Christian?” “We are supposed to go to them alone, according to the 18th chapter of Matthew.” But I don’t think there are 1 or 2% of Christians that practice it. That’s the shame of it. We all know it’s there, but very few use it. The verse isn’t hard to find, but the wherewithal to do as it instructs.
Southerners are more like to go to another believer. Northern folks will just shun you. Southerners just don’t let things lie; they go after it until it’s settled.
“Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother” (Mat 18:15 KJV).
If your brother, or your friend, gets you involved in a responsibility that the Bible says you are not supposed to be involved in, then you’ve got to go to him and tell him. “When thou art come into the hand of thy friend,” if you’ve gotten under his power, that is, you’ve co-signed for a note or something—he’s got you—all he has to do is quit paying and then you are on the hook. “If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother,” and that is what you want him to do. It’s a hard thing to do, but we need to work it out. That is what keeps problems at a minimum. You are never going to eliminate all problems, and you can keep your molehills from becoming mountains.
“Do this now, my son, and deliver thyself, when thou art come into the hand of thy friend; go, humble thyself, and make sure thy friend.” There is an application here to salvation here. Have you made surety with the Devil? Have you made surety with sin? Yea, everybody has. We are all born into sin and the Devil is our father. You need to “deliver thyself.” How are you going to do that? “Go humble thyself,” just turn to the Lord—trust Him. That is the way that you deliver yourself from the surety of sin. What’s the surety of sin? “The wages of sin is death,” it’ll wind you up in hell, that’s the surety of it. You are, in a sense, a co-signer with the Devil—especially as you let that relationship continue. You are not responsible for being born into his family, but you are responsible for remaining in the Devil’s family once you are aware of it. Once you are awakened to sin, it is as though you have signed on the dotted line to continue in his family if you choose to stay there. There is pleasure in sin for a season, but the season always runs out.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2019 7:14:47 GMT -6
“Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us solace ourselves with loves. For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey: He hath taken a bag of money with him, and will come home at the day appointed” (Proverbs 7:18-20 KJV).
Solace is a word for “easing grief,” or for relaxing after a long hard day of work. Get home and turn on the tube to relax. Who really thinks they are relaxing while they are watching TV? Every show builds up to a climax and uses a certain amount of suspense and tension to get there. Eleven o’clock comes around and then what? The NEWS and all of its violence.
Sin can be relaxing, for a season—but guilt never is. Guilt will ride you up until the day you die, unless you take care of it God’s way. Man’s way is to drink guilt away, or commit more sin to cover the old, It might work for an hour or two, but the aftereffect of guilt is long lasting.
One of the tragic situations in America is that folks have mistaken love for lust.
“For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey,” sin always tries to make itself look easy, “but the way of the transgressor is hard.” It doesn’t matter how easy the Devil makes sin look easy, it isn’t going to turn out that way. The one thing to remember about the Devil is that he is a liar, and the father of lies.
“He hath taken a bag of money with him, and will come home at the day appointed,” now, perhaps the good man is that same good man spoken of in the parables. The good man in some of the parables is the Lord Jesus Christ. So, if the woman here is a type, or a picture of the apostate church; wooing the world, that is exactly what the worldly church does. Nowhere does the Bible tell a Bible-believing Christian to hook up with apostates for any purpose. Forget your ministerial alliances. They are allied with the world, not the Lord. We are not to be “unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (II Corinthians 6:14).
Most of those people are heretics, and the Apostle Paul told us that if they don’t teach it like we teach it, “Mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned, and avoid them” (Romans 16:17). Those preachers will spend a month teaching on the Blood of Christ and then spend a week teaching you can lose your salvation. Well, if a man can lose it, the Blood of Christ can’t save him. Have no fellowship with the apostate churches. “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Proverbs 13:20 KJV).
That is surely the most popular enticement to sin. Nobody is around, so we can surely get away it. We won’t get caught! Well, God sees it, the Devil sees it, and the people involved see it.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2019 7:33:12 GMT -6
“They are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to them that find knowledge” (Proverbs 8:9 KJV).
“They are all plain,” talking about the words here, plain, easy, simple. In other words, they make sense. The words just ring like a bell. The Holy Spirit witnesses to it that it is the Word of God. That it is true, that it is right, and that it is plain.
“A scorner seeketh wisdom, and findeth it not: but knowledge is easy unto him that understandeth” (Proverbs 14:6 KJV).
Let’s see if we can get this in our hearts and brains, this business of all these new Bibles. It is the product of scorn. People scorn the preserved Word of God. Now, they are seeking wisdom, so these people are out there publishing all these Bibles and are trying to replace the Bible that God has blessed to the saving of multitudes of souls over the past 400 plus years—they never will. Their claim is that they are trying the correct the mistakes of the King James Bible, and make it easier to understand. Well, The Words of God “are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to them that find knowledge.”
No one needs to find the King James Bible hard to understand with a little study, a little prayer, and a little patience—just waiting on God—God isn’t going to show you everything right now. Some things He may not show you because you are not yet ready for them. You don’t tell a baby or a child everything, he isn’t capable of handling all the information that you have. He doesn’t have the background. God doesn’t generally give man new truth until he has learned and applied the truth that he has now.
New Christians grow slowly, “here a little, and there a little” we read in Isaiah 28. We don’t need new Bibles; we need new attitudes. If you have the right attitude, where do we get understanding and knowledge? Proverbs 2 tells us that if we will seek for knowledge, if we will receive the Words, hide them in our hearts, incline our ears unto wisdom, apply our hearts unto understanding, study the word, work at it, cry after knowledge, pray, seek God, seek truth as after silver—search for it—there will be a good result: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7 KJV).
You can’t be a lazy Christian and expect something for nothing when it comes to growth in grace and knowledge. They want the blessings, but they don’t want the work, and the prayer, and the effort that is involved in getting it. They are part-time Christians that want full-time pay.
In Proverbs 2, we are told that if we will do those things, “Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God. For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous: he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly. He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way of his saints” (Proverbs 2:5-8 KJV).
The Bible will be plain and simple. It is people that are trying to live their own lives, their own way—that’s where the Bible becomes complicated to them, because it doesn’t say it just the way that they want to hear it—they just want it some other way so they can justify the way they live. That is the bottom line of the issue.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 8:13:58 GMT -6
“But he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell” (Proverbs 9:18 KJV).
Sin always tastes good at the beginning, and each time a man tastes of it, it is a little less sweet and a little less pleasurable then it was at the first. And pretty soon, when that things got a hold of you it tastes bitter—but you can’t quit drinking of it.
The Gospel of truth is just the opposite. When you first hear the truth of sin and hell, it is most bitter. “Oh! I don’t like that! I don’t like what it says about me!” When you first taste it, it doesn’t taste good. “I don’t like that! Yuck! I just don’t believe that! But I’ll try it anyway. I’ll down it, like medicine, like cod liver oil.” Now, no medicine can be any good if it tastes good. Anything that you put on a cut, if it doesn’t burn, it really doesn’t do anything. They may say that it will do the same thing, but I’m suspicious of it.
I just think that God’s got it worked out that if anything is going to work or do any good, it’s going to be bitter to start with. With the Gospel, you just can’t sugar coat it. Before a man can get saved, he has to know that he is lost first. And that is a bitter truth to swallow for self-righteous folks.
“Stolen waters” is the advertisement of sin. “But he knoweth not that the dead are there,” she has a good looking place—it doesn’t look like it will end up in a bad situation—but the dead are there. Christ said, “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” (Matthew 15:14 KJV). They don’t have any understanding; they don’t have any spiritual life—the dead are there.
“. . . and that her guests are in the depths of hell,” her guests, her religion, a religion of convenience. “For great is thy mercy toward me: and thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell” (Psalms 86:13 KJV). There are levels of hell, and the Pharisees are said to have the greater damnation. And a person that deceives another person in a religious or a spiritual matter is going to receive the greater damnation than the one he deceives. A person like a Pope who deceives 800 million souls as to what the true plan of salvation is, and how to get to heaven, is far more wicked than an Adolf Hitler could ever possibly be. Hitler will be in a lower level of hell to be sure, but not as low as a religious charlatan that deceived upwards of a billion souls.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2019 7:40:50 GMT -6
“The LORD will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish: but he casteth away the substance of the wicked” (Proverbs 10:3 KJV).
“The LORD will not suffer,” that is the word for “allow,” “the soul of the righteous,” that is the qualification, “to famish.” Now, He might let your body perish, but He won’t let your soul famish.
In the Old Testament, the soul and the body are stuck together, and the saint; if he did right, God took care of his needs. “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread” (Psalms 37:25 KJV). This is an Old Testament promise. A lot of New Testament saints have latched on to it, praying that God will work it out for them as well. This is a general Old Testament truth. “An horse is a vain thing for safety: neither shall he deliver any by his great strength. Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon them that fear him, upon them that hope in his mercy . . .” (Psalms 33:17-18 KJV). Our hope is in the Lord, not in guns, or strength, or personal ability, or brains—our hope is in Him—if things get bad and He doesn’t come through, we are in sad shape. “. . . To deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waiteth for the LORD: he is our help and our shield. For our heart shall rejoice in him, because we have trusted in his holy name. Let thy mercy, O LORD, be upon us, according as we hope in thee” (Psalms 33:19-22 KJV).
God will not allow our soul to famish, no matter what our body does. He’ll feed you with the bread of life and the manna from heaven—you can get a Bible just about any time—even in jail.
“The LORD will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish: but he casteth away the substance of the wicked,” eventually it will catch up with you. Paul says in I Timothy 6:7 that how you go out will be like how you came in—naked and empty—and probably with no teeth and no hair.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2019 7:59:43 GMT -6
“The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked cometh in his stead” (Proverbs 11:8 KJV).
“The righteous is delivered out of trouble,” IS delivered. Right now! It’s there, we are not waiting for it, we have already been delivered.
“. . . and the wicked cometh in his stead,” that simply means that where the wicked attempts to bring the righteous into trouble and tries to bring wrath upon the head of the good man, God reverses the whole thing and they end up being the ones to suffer. The Lord works it out, He makes the wicked a substitute. The wicked comes into trouble in his stead, in his place, as a substitute.
Consider the sin of Achan back in Joshua. God told Joshua that someone had committed a great sin so that His wrath has fallen upon the people. They lost their first (and only) battle at Ai, so that Israel could not stand before their enemies. In other words, the righteous were falling. God told Joshua how to handle the situation, and when he handled it, the wicked Achan was put in the place of the righteous and suffered their judgment.
It is a substitutionary thing—it is a type (or picture) of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ became unrighteous in our place: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (II Corinthians 5:21 KJV). Jesus died in our place.
When Jesus Christ dies in our place, how does He die? He is the sinless Son of God, but when He dies, He dies with all of our sins upon Him. He dies as a sin-bearer. Jesus said: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:14-15 KJV).
He takes our place, that we might be made righteous through Him. He bears our sin, and we bear his righteousness.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 12, 2019 7:13:00 GMT -6
“The words of the wicked are to lie in wait for blood: but the mouth of the upright shall deliver them” (Proverbs 12:6).
“The words of the wicked are to lie in wait for blood,” that seems a little harsh. Do you really think that that modernist preacher in your town is trying to destroy men’s souls? But that's exactly what he's doing if he misleads the people as to the gospel. These preachers have the ears of an often-full church building. He is their preacher, so they are going to take what he says and apply it to not only their temporal life, but because he is a preacher, they are going to trust their eternal life to his words as well. And because he himself is ignorant of salvation, his people are not taught how to be saved. Unless they are led to Christ outside of their church, they are all going to share the fate of that false prophet and wind up in the Lake of Fire for all eternity.
The thing is, if a man surrounds himself with wicked men, even if they seem like good man; but they don't have the truth, and there's no light in them, they are going to be destroyed. You can bet that the modernist preacher mentioned above is a kindly man that speaks the language of love with syrupy emotion. But they are religious murderers. What they are doing is killing those that would listen to them, and then they, and their flock, will die and go to hell at the end of life. And God is not going to accept any man’s excuse, “Well, this is what my preacher told me!”
“The words of the wicked are to lie wait for blood.” There is somebody directing the wicked behind the scenes. These guys are puppets. The “god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them” (II Corinthians 4:4).
“The words of the wicked are to lie wait for blood: but the mouth of the upright shall deliver them.” Daniel, by the things that he said delivered himself and his friends. By the actions and the words of Mordecai and Esther, the nation of Israel was saved under Ahasuerus.
We have Moses in numbers 14, and God is ready to kill Israel; and Moses says, “Now Lord, if you kill them you know what those Egyptians are going to say, and by the time it is over with, Moses had talked the Lord into repenting of his inclination to wipe Israel out, and by the way, to start all over again with Moses. What did he do? Well Moses, according to verse 6, “the mouth of the upright shall deliver them.”
Jesus Christ spoke the truth. He delivers all that put their trust in Him: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed” (Romans 10:9-11).
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Post by Deleted on Nov 13, 2019 7:48:27 GMT -6
“Much food is in the tillage of the poor: but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment . . . The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul: but the belly of the wicked shall want” (Proverbs 13:23, 25).
This is an allegory by comparison between a big work and a little work. The bigger a work gets, the laxer it gets about small things. You take a small farm with one man working it, and that man will work every corner of that field. “Much food is in the tillage of the poor,” that means that he is careful to break up the clods and get every weed out.
You take these big farms; they don’t worry about those corners. They just hit wherever the tractors hit, and they move on. They have quantity on their minds, not so much quality. “Much food,” or more food can be taken out of the acres when they are cared for personally than when you get all that machinery involved in it.
This is true also for a church. The bigger a church gets, the harder it is for the pastor to deal with the individual members. It becomes impracticable to deal with every little corner in the church. The best a pastor can do, unless he wants to run himself ragged seven days a week, is 200-300 members. You get beyond that and you are reaching a point where the pastor is losing touch with the people, and “much food is in the tillage of the poor.”
“. . . but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment,” contrasting a big work with that of a little work. When the work gets too big the emphasis shifts more to money. There is always a danger when a church moves from being a ministry that God blesses to a mere business.
“The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul: but the belly of the wicked shall want”
“The righteous eateth to the satisfying of his soul,” God has given you a feast. Just have at it. Eat all you want and it’s a free meal. Just get you a Bible. Every morning you can get up and have a breakfast of champions, and you don’t have to stop there—you can just sit and eat at the table of God’s Word throughout the day. Why, you can have a regular dinner marathon. You can eat until you are full, and you’ll never get fat. You won’t get stuffed and bloated.
Of course, in the Old Testament sense, the people worked all year long and around feast time the people would all come to Jerusalem and they’d have a good time. God would just let them all go, and they would all eat to the satisfying of their soul.
“. . . but the belly of the wicked shall want,” not only in the sense of lacking food, but they are never satisfied.
“Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes” (Haggai 1:6).
Some people get so wicked that nothing satisfies them. When a person is right with God, it is true that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (I Timothy 6:6). It is amazing what a man can be satisfied with when he is right with God, and it is also amazing what a person can’t be satisfied with when they are not right with God.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 14, 2019 8:54:52 GMT -6
“Fools make a mock at sin: but among the righteous there is favour” (Proverbs 14:9).
“Fools make a mock at sin,” here again is your scorner. He mocks hard preaching. He laughs at sin, hell, the Devil. He boasts that he and the Devil will enjoy drinking beer in hell. Well, he ought probably to consult with the rich man. If he couldn’t find a drop of water to cool his tongue, I doubt anyone is going to find a cool, frosty glass of beer—though perhaps some will spend an eternity seeing one in his mind.
They say, “Oh, a little of this or that isn’t going to hurt anybody,” but the Bible says “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” (Galatians 5:9). What started out as a little at the beginning becomes a whole lot more than they bargained for at the end. A person that has no wisdom and no understanding are deceived into thinking that they can handle the situation. They know when to quit—until they don’t—and then it is usually too late. Every wino in the streets have said that a time or two. Looking back after they have lost everything, are those words they wish they could have all over to rethink? They know when to quit, nut not how to quit.
“Fools make a mock at sin,” is a great preaching text. Fools joke about it. They make fun of it. How many times have we heard men say that they are looking forward to going to hell because “all their buddies are there.” They joke about heaven, and ol’ Saint Peter at the gate. You know why they do all that stuff? They do it to somehow reassure themselves. Way deep down they have a gnawing idea that they are going to go to hell, and they are trying to ease their troubled conscience through levity. They are not interested in changing their lives, so they try to deceive themselves into thinking that it just isn’t going to be as bad as what their hearts and conscience tells them that it is.
“. . . but among the righteous there is favour,” favor with God and favor with men.
How a man treats sin is how God treats that man. If a man sees the awfulness of sin, and the terribleness of sin—and does something about it—God favors that man. He will give him favor and be favorable toward Him and give him grace and forgiveness. If, on the other hand, a man jeers at sin and refuses to acknowledge how bad sin is, God will one day laugh at his distress. Sin was awful enough to send God’s Son to the Cross.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2019 8:21:03 GMT -6
“The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Proverbs 15:3).
God wears the universe. It is His garment and His vesture. He puts it on as He would a cloak. The Spirit of God inhabits the entire universe. God wears the universe like a cloak, or a vesture:
“And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail” (Hebrews 1:10-12).
A vesture is a robe. Jesus Christ wore a seamless robe that was bigger at the bottom than it was at the top, and it is a picture of the universe. It is a picture of God wearing the universe. God is the head of the universe, and the universe is shaped like a pyramid. In the sides of the north, the mountain of his holiness. Heaven is described as a pyramid-shaped mountain.
Einstein figured out that all parallel lines meet in infinity. The universe is shaped like a garment, like a pyramid. We have a pyramid on the back of our dollar bill. Satan uses that as a symbol of his unity with himself—the all-seeing eye at the top. Satan is great for counterfeiting God’s truths. Even the pyramids of Egypt are reported to have strange qualities about them. The reason that the Egyptians used pyramids was due to the preserving power in their structure.
God is all-knowing, all-present, and all-powerful. These “eyes of the Lord,” are defined for us in Revelation 5:6: “And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.” The “eyes of the Lord” are defined as the “seven spirits.” And these spirits are defined for us in Isaiah.
“And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD” (Isaiah 11:2).
“The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good,” so the Lord sees everything.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 16, 2019 7:09:12 GMT -6
“A divine sentence is in the lips of the king: his mouth transgresseth not in judgment” (Proverbs 16:10).
“Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4).
“Divine” usually speaks of something which is spiritual. To have a “divine nature” is to have a spiritual nature. In context it is God’s nature. But sometimes it can be connected with the Devil.
In Acts 16, we have a woman that Paul ran into in Philippi, whose name was Lydia. She had a spirit of “divination.” A divine spirit, but it is not God’s spirit. So, when considering “a divine sentence,” it could come from either God or the Devil. However, in the verse before us here we can determine that the sentence is from God because “his mouth transgresseth not in judgment.”
God gives authorities and governments the right to punish evil doers. This clarifies the idea of “a divine sentence is in the lips of the king.”
“Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same” (Romans 13:1-3).
Ahasuerus had Vashti the queen put away. That was a divine sentence. It was a right sentence because she had rebelled and refused to obey the king. He had a right to put her away. Later on, there is a plot between two men to kill Ahasuerus. That was a plot of conspiracy and murder, so the king had them both hung on a tree. That was a divine sentence. Capital punishment is from God. There is no transgression in such a judgment. It is the king’s right, as well as the right of government to pass a sentence of death.
God told man before the Law was even given, in Genesis 9:6, “Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” In Leviticus 20:16; Numbers 35:16, 30 God told the children of Israel to kill the murderer. Then, after the Law in Acts 25:11 Paul says, “If I have committed anything worthy of death, I refuse not to die.”
Paul believed in capital punishment, the death penalty was in effect before the Law, during the Law and after the Law. And when a sentence of death is brought upon and individual that is deserving of it, there is no sin in it.
Here, in fact, is the sin: “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Ecclesiastes 8:11).
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Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2019 9:11:03 GMT -6
“Excellent speech becometh not a fool: much less do lying lips a prince” (Proverbs 17:7).
“Excellent speech becometh not a fool,” you take a guy who is an anarchist and a socialist that is actively seeking to overthrow our government, there is nothing excellent about his speech. It is all about rebellion as they seek ways to sow discord against our country. In a sense, it may be pleasing to the ears of those that agree with him, but of those that love America and its Constitution it is reprehensible speech, if not seditious.
To “become” means that it makes something, like a dress is ‘becoming’ to a woman in the sense that it makes her more beautiful or matches her personality. With regards to a excellent speech from the wrong lips, they are “professing themselves to be wise, but they became fools” (Romans 1:22).
These people that believe in evolution, they can give excellent speeches, but they don’t become them at all. They don’t give them even a modicum of spiritual wisdom. Knowing what they believe and what they do, it is kind of like a fur coat on a pig. It doesn’t become them at all.
“. . . much less do lying lips a prince,” a man that is in a position of authority that was raised in a royal home . . . becomes no better than the urchin living down in the back alleys. “That’s the prince, but he’s a liar. We don’t trust him.” Be careful anytime says something good about you, and then immediately follows it with a “but,” because he is about the tell the truth about you. Are there any sadder words than, “He’s a Christian, but . . .?” Yet, it is possible to grow up in a good, godly Christian home and live like and have the reputation of a Devil. Don’t let that be said about you!
“. . . much less do lying lips a prince,” here is a man that has been raised in royalty, and raised with good things and a good education, and given an opportunity to rule the people—but he has no credibility. A prince is a king in the making. It is possible to look at a child and have a good idea of what kind of man he will be.
That’s what you and I are. We are children of the King. We are kings in making, and we are going to rule and reign with Christ one day. And lying lips doesn’t become a prince.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 18, 2019 8:30:50 GMT -6
“A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24).
“A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly,” to be friendly, a man must “love at all times” (Proverbs 17:17). He can’t be a fair-weather friend and only available when he has a mind to it but must be ever ready to step up and be there when truly needed. He can’t be picky about his friends, and he needs to be capable of overlooking a lot of faults. Now, this does not mean that he accepts their doctrinal errors, or ungodly lifestyle—he is not to compromise his own values in order to have friends, because they will end up pulling him down.
“Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart: so doth the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty counsel” (Proverbs 27:9).
Sometimes, “by hearty counsel” a friend may have to tell another friend things they don’t want to hear: “Open rebuke is better than secret love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful” (Proverbs 27:5-6). Sometimes, as their friend, you might have to sit down with them and rebuke them about something. You might have to tell them the truth about something they are doing wrong.
A friend will do that for us, a casual acquaintance would never do that. Somebody just trying to use you will never tell you all the truth about you. A true friend will tell it like it is.
Christ said, “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you” (John 15:14). Also, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). A lot of young men found that out in war times, when one of the members of their platoon threw themselves upon a live grenade to save the lives of his friends.
“The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children” (Matthew 11:19).
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