Warning Against The Enticement of Sinners
April 1, 2021
Commentary
Hearing a father’s instruction and cleaving to a mother’s law are the things that make a young person’s life beautiful (vv. 8-9). Throughout the Bible you will find that obedience to parents runs parallel to being in subjection to God. Ephesians 6:1 where it says,"Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right” is an example of this admonition. There is a similar passage in Colossians 3:20 that says, “Children obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.” On the other hand disobedience to parents is one of the warnings of the last days in II Timothy 3:1-5.
Now we find a solemn warning against having evil companions. The world is full of evil men who will seek to lure their potential victims from the path of honor and virtue (vv. 10-13). Nothing will please them more than to get someone to make their money available to them (v.14). We must realize that the way of sinners is attractive (vv. 10, 14), but it leads to destruction (vv. 15-19). “For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).
The only safe course is to stay away from them. If you start to walk with them you will soon be running with them. “Come out from among them, and be ye separate,” is the command of the Lord.
Application
“Honor your father and mother” doesn’t have a time limit. It has been said that God’s commandment applies to the nursing infant and continues to the nursing home. In other words parenting never stops. While I was giving advice to my children, my parents were still giving advice to me. Lord, help me to be the kind of parent who lives close enough to you that the advice I give echoes your thoughts and not just my thoughts.
Proverbs 1:8– 19 (NET)
8 Listen, my child, to the instruction from your father, and do not forsake the teaching from your mother.
9 For they will be like an elegant garland on your head, and like pendants around your neck.
10 My child, if sinners try to entice you, do not consent!
11 If they say, “Come with us! We will lie in wait to shed blood; we will ambush an innocent person capriciously.
12 We will swallow them alive like Sheol, those full of vigor like those going down to the Pit.
13 We will seize all kinds of precious wealth; we will fill our houses with plunder.
14 Join with us! We will all share equally in what we steal.”
15 My child, do not go down their way, withhold yourself from their path;
16 for they are eager to inflict harm, and they hasten to shed blood.
17 Surely it is futile to spread a net in plain sight of any bird,
18 but these men lie in wait for their own blood, they ambush their own lives!
19 Such are the ways of all who gain profit unjustly; it takes away the life of those who obtain it!
Illustration: The Sheffield Was Sunk by a Singe Missile in 1982
During the 1982 war in the Falkland Islands between England and Argentina, the Royal Navy’s 3,500-ton destroyer HMS Sheffield was sunk by a single missile fired from an Argentine fighter jet. It caused some people to wonder if modern surface warships were obsolete, sitting ducks for today’s sophisticated missiles. But a later check revealed that the Sheffield’s defenses did pick up the incoming missile, and the ship’s computer correctly identified it as a French-made Exocet. But the computer was programmed to ignore Exocets as “friendly.” The Sheffield was sunk by a missile it saw coming and could have evaded. (Today in the Word, May 12, 1992).