THE CONTRAST BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL (Proverbs 9:13-10:7)

For the last several weeks, we have been studying about the virtues of God’s Wisdom.  We have talked about the character of God’s Wisdom, the majesty of God’s Wisdom, how to find God’s Wisdom, and then last week we talked about how to apply God’s Wisdom to our lives.  I think it is safe to say that God intends for us to use His Wisdom as we do the work that He has for us to do.  God drives this point home in our message today where He contrasts the differences between good and evil.  A good example of this is the contrast between a wise son and a foolish son.

Proverbs 10:1
1 The proverbs of Solomon. A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.
KJV

Do you see the contrast here?  “A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.”  You have the wise son and the foolish son, and the impact they have on the family.  

Now, many parents have understood the truth of this proverb. It describes the experience of a loving set of parents when their son, who is likely in his teenage years, goes through a rebellious phase and, as a result, he goes seriously wrong.  The young man may have run away from home, experimented with alcohol and drugs, and he ends up getting arrested, and is likely headed to jail.  The young man has rebelled against parental discipline, chose his friends from a worldly crowd, and had no use for preachers who have their own faults, or the church full of hypocrites.  He especially does not want to hear the Wisdom of God’s Word.

Solomon says that such “a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.”  This means that the son’s actions drive the mother into a state of depression.  You can imagine the feelings of doom and gloom in the hearts of both of the son’s parents, but it especially impacts the mother.  Of course, the devil is having a heyday with all of this.  That is when the mother becomes convicted and asks the Lord for help, both for her and her wayward son.  She wears out the rug on her knees as she prays.  After perhaps months, or even years, of these nights spent in prayer with a broken heart, there comes a day, when late that night, the son comes stumbling into the house after a night of partying.  He sees his mother there, on her knees, talking to the Lord Jesus about her son.  He might even pause to listen to her cries for help, and see her tears fall down her cheeks.  

Sometimes, the son is impacted by this image of his mother praying over him, and other times it pushes them even further out.  But, I still believe there is nothing stronger than a mother’s prayer for her children.  Sometimes, that rebellious son will be so impacted by what he sees that he chooses to return and be saved.  It is then, that the foolish son becomes the wise son, and Solomon tells us, “A wise son maketh a glad father.”  A wise son is a blessing to both of his parents.

In this life one of two things happens to us. Either our sins get blotted out, or our names get blotted out. There can be no greater horror for a man than to wake up in a lost eternity to the terrible realization that his name is not written in the Lamb’s book of life.  If he had but chosen to make Jesus Christ his Lord and Savior, if he had been redeemed, then his name would have been written in the Lamb’s book of life to be remembered for Christ’s sake forever.  

Click on the link below to hear a message on God’s Wisdom of living an honorable life that is pleasing to God.

Amen.