The Enticement of Sinners

Proverbs 1; I die daily devotional.

⁸ Hear, my son, your father’s instruction And do not forsake your mother’s teaching; 

Whenever I experience my appetite for food, I cook me up some eggs, butter the toast, and pour me up some milk (pun intended). The relationship between the body and the soul gives instruction and provides teaching, just like a father’s instruction and a mother’s teaching. If we are tossed into uncharted territory our survival instincts kick in, and we adapt to live. So I hear this verse enlighten us to a law, that 5^th commandment; ^{Duet 5:16}‘Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, that your days may be prolonged and that it may go well with you on the land which the LORD your God gives you.

FATHER’S INSTRUCTION

Jesus is our perfect example of a perfect child (literally) to learn how to hear our father’s instruction and not forsake our mother’s teaching. Our Father instructs us to believe: ^{John 5:38} “You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent.” Jesus is the revelation of a very real place of eternity that inspires us to believe Him whom He sent.” Jesus is our instruction of belief, our focus being on Him because there is no other way to be reconciled to our God and Father. This world, and our life here on earth, is a place of sin that separates us from our Holy Father. Jesus is the Word of God to our soul of sin; sin is the consequence that convicts our soul to death; the knowledge of good and evil is how we understand the consequence of not believing in Jesus Christ. Jesus died on the cross as the innocent Lamb of God that took away the sin of the world, providing a way of escape from the consequence of sin in our lives today; we are saved by grace through faith. There is nothing we can do (no amount of money earned or intelligence obtained) to have salvation from the jail of Hell, but time to believe in Jesus right now, today. The day of Christ will reveal the nature of our hearts, whether we truly believed, or not.

MOTHER’S TEACHER

Jesus is our perfect example to learn how not to forsake our mother’s teaching. Jesus remained faithful throughout His ministry. When in the face of death at the garden of Gethsemane; ³⁴ Jesus *said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch.” ³⁵ And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. ³⁶ And He was saying, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.” Notice the teaching Jesus is faithful to here, that even in the experience of deep grief to the point of death He expresses His condition that is taught by Wisdom. Jesus is crying out to His Father in complete vulnerability; Wisdom is the knowledge and discipline during this hour of death He is experiencing in His Soul, yet remaining faithful to trust the decision of His Father to either take the cup from Him, or for Jesus to endure the pain of God’s wrath that is actually the consequence of our sin. Jesus trusts His Father and Mother in every step to the cross, and the commitment of His last breath God gave Him to breathe. It’s remarkable! Jesus never forsook His Mother’s teaching, even with the honest desire for the cup of death to be removed from Him.

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RECOURSE

Proverbs 1 (NASB)—blueletterbible.org
¹ The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel: ² To know wisdom and instruction, To discern the sayings of understanding, ³ To receive instruction in wise behavior, Righteousness, justice and equity; ⁴ To give prudence to the naïve, To the youth knowledge and discretion, ⁵ A wise man will hear and increase in learning, And a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel, ⁶ To understand a proverb and a figure, The words of the wise and their riddles. ⁷ The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction.  ⁸ Hear, my son, your father’s instruction And do not forsake your mother’s teaching; ⁹ Indeed, they are a graceful wreath to your head And ornaments about your neck. ¹⁰ My son, if sinners entice you, Do not consent. ¹¹ If they say, “Come with us, Let us lie in wait for blood, Let us ambush the innocent without cause; ¹² Let us swallow them alive like Sheol, Even whole, as those who go down to the pit; ¹³ We will find all kinds of precious wealth, We will fill our houses with spoil; ¹⁴ Throw in your lot with us, We shall all have one purse,” ¹⁵ My son, do not walk in the way with them. Keep your feet from their path, ¹⁶ For their feet run to evil And they hasten to shed blood. ¹⁷ Indeed, it is useless to spread the baited net In the sight of any bird; ¹⁸ But they lie in wait for their own blood; They ambush their own lives. ¹⁹ So are the ways of everyone who gains by violence; It takes away the life of its possessors. Wisdom Warns ²⁰ Wisdom shouts in the street, She lifts her voice in the square; ²¹ At the head of the noisy streets she cries out; At the entrance of the gates in the city she utters her sayings: ²² “How long, O naïve ones, will you love being simple-minded? And scoffers delight themselves in scoffing And fools hate knowledge? ²³  “Turn to my reproof, Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you; I will make my words known to you. ²⁴ “Because I called and you refused, I stretched out my hand and no one paid attention; ²⁵ And you neglected all my counsel And did not want my reproof; ²⁶ I will also laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your dread comes, ²⁷ When your dread comes like a storm And your calamity comes like a whirlwind, When distress and anguish come upon you. ²⁸ “Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; They will seek me diligently but they will not find me, ²⁹ Because they hated knowledge And did not choose the fear of the LORD. ³⁰ “They would not accept my counsel, They spurned all my reproof. ³¹ “So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way And be satiated with their own devices. ³² “For the waywardness of the naïve will kill them, And the complacency of fools will destroy them. ³³ “But he who listens to me shall live securely And will be at ease from the dread of evil.”

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COMMENTARY

Matthew Henry (P1-V8) Commentary
II. Let them have regard to their parents as their superiors (v. 8, 9): My son, hear the instruction of thy father. He means, not only that he would have his own children to be observant of him, and of what he said to them, nor only that he would have his pupils, and those who came to him to be taught, to look upon him as their father and attend to his precepts with the disposition of children, but that he would have all children to be dutiful and respectful to their parents, and to conform to the virtuous and religious education which they give them, according to the law of the fifth commandment.

• 1. He takes it for granted that parents will, with all the wisdom they have, instruct their children, and, with all the authority they have, give law to them for their good. They are reasonable creatures, and therefore we must not give them law without instruction; we must draw them with the cords of a man, and when we tell them what they must do we must tell them why. But they are corrupt and wilful, and therefore with the instruction there is need of a law. Abraham will not only catechize, but command, his household. Both the father and the mother must do all they can for the good education of their children, and all little enough.
• 2. He charges children both to receive and to retain the good lessons and laws their parents give them.
  • (1.) To receive them with readiness: “Hear the instruction of thy father; hear it and heed it; hear it and bid it welcome, and be thankful for it, and subscribe to it.’
  • (2.) To retain them with resolution: “Forsake not their law; think not that when thou art grown up, and no longer under tutors and governors, thou mayest live at large; no, the law of thy mother was according to the law of thy God, and therefore it must never be forsaken; thou wast trained up in the way in which thou shouldst go, and therefore, when thou art old, thou must not depart from it.’ Some observe that whereas the Gentile ethics, and the laws of the Persians and Romans, provided only that children should pay respect to their father, the divine law secures the honour of the mother also.