- 00:06
- Well, good morning on this Tuesday, July 13th, in the year 2021.
- 00:12
- Hope your day gets off to a good start, getting some time with the Lord as the day begins.
- 00:18
- Well, I don't often in these devotionals look at the Proverbs or the
- 00:24
- Psalm passages, but I wanted to today. There were three different, three verses in Proverbs that are in our reading for today.
- 00:31
- And the first verse can raise an interesting question, can't it?
- 00:38
- I'm reading from the New King James, and it says in verse 21 of Proverbs chapter 12, it says, or calamity, that verse could be translated.
- 00:56
- No grave trouble will overtake the righteous. The ESV translates it this way.
- 01:02
- It says, Now, if you read that and you're reading it with your mind engaged, you're certainly raising your eyebrows on that one, aren't you?
- 01:17
- How is it that no ill befalls the righteous or no grave trouble falls upon the righteous?
- 01:25
- How is it? I mean, because God's people suffer. I mean, even in our own church, we're praying for people who are suffering.
- 01:34
- Some are battling with cancer. One of our ladies is still getting over a long, long siege of battle with COVID and some ramifications of that.
- 01:51
- Great, great suffering there. People, God's people, they get sick. God's people face hardship.
- 01:58
- They face hardships when they're in employment. They can lose their job and suffer financial hardship through not necessarily any fault of their own and so forth.
- 02:09
- So how is it that this can be true? And even though we acknowledge it's a proverb, and a proverb is a maxim, it's not a universal truth in the sense that there's never any exceptions to the rule.
- 02:24
- It's a maximum. It's a generally observable truth that you can see.
- 02:32
- You can verify. Well, even from that standpoint, we have trouble with it because every believer
- 02:42
- I know has gone through some troubles and difficulties. And so that leads the question, is this just wrong?
- 02:50
- Well, I think the answer to the question is in Romans 8, 28, where we read that for those who love
- 03:02
- God, those who are the called according to his purpose, those who are righteous, that for them,
- 03:10
- God is working all things together for good, for their good, and for his ultimate glory.
- 03:18
- So in other words, the ill that I experience, as the
- 03:25
- New King James puts it, the grave trouble that seems to be a grave trouble that I experience is just a grave trouble on the surface of things and has a good purpose behind it, ultimately.
- 03:42
- I'm sure that doesn't resolve all of our problems and difficulties with understanding this, but it does give us a different perspective on it and should be helpful.
- 03:52
- Because how many times have we been able to look back on grave troubles that we've gone through and we looked at them as very serious and difficult struggles and realized they really had some positive benefits to them, that some things happened that I never would have otherwise experienced.
- 04:15
- So that's one of the things. The other verse, a couple of verses in Proverbs in our reading today, offer us two words of wisdom regarding our mouths.
- 04:26
- And one of them is, speak the truth. Speak the truth. Speaking the truth is an act of faithfulness that delights the
- 04:35
- Lord. Verse 22 says, The second word of wisdom regarding my mouth in verse 23 says,
- 04:52
- A prudent man conceals knowledge, but the heart of fools proclaims foolishness.
- 04:58
- I think what's getting at here is that it is prudent not to say everything
- 05:04
- I know on a subject or about someone. It's prudent not to say everything
- 05:11
- I know. It may really only stir up trouble and argument that is unnecessary.
- 05:18
- Sometimes it's better to be quiet. Sometimes it's prudent to not speak what you know to be true, what you know to be so.
- 05:32
- And it takes a great deal of wisdom to know when those times are. And yet the wise person, the one who's sensitive to the work of God's spirit within and wanting to do what would please
- 05:46
- God in a given situation, is going to weigh carefully. Do I really need to say this?
- 05:52
- Will it really prove to be helpful? Or will it only make matters worse?
- 05:59
- So, some words to the wise. Father, I pray, help us to be wise with our words.
- 06:08
- And Father, help us to be trusting in our hardships. We pray in Jesus' name and for his sake.
- 06:14
- Amen. Alright, well have a good rest of your Tuesday. Trust God will bless you in it.
