Warning: Bridge Out!
(Proverbs 28:6-10)
1. Sometimes people escape, unscathed, from traps that should have caught them.
2. I failed the first quarter of a class in middle school, so I made a fake report card. I did this every quarter that year. I forgot that they mail home the end-of-year cards, and my mom got it before I could intercept with my fake. She was steaming —at the school for their error. The teacher also retired that year and had already thrown out his records, so they had to take my mothers “proof” (the fake ones I made throughout the year) and “correct” the “mistake.” Ive never told her the truth. thoughtcatalog.com/
3. Talk about dodging a bullet. Many traps we set for ourselves, but not always. Physical/spiritual.
Main Idea: Life is laced with spiritual hazards. We need the wisdom of God’s Word in order to avoid the many traps that surround us. Today, we will look at three such traps.
I. First Trap: Trading INTEGRITY for Riches (6,8).
Covetousness can strike Christian singing artists or other Christian celebrities. Christian businesses can become crooked, Christian professionals unethical for the almighty dollar. I have seen it repeatedly.
A. A lack of integrity is WORSE than poverty.
1. Bruce Waltke explains, ““The double dealing rich person first defrauds the poor and the humble and then covers his wrongdoing over by making himself appear righteous.”
2. We are shocked: big name pastors who have been part of the Me-too abuses or who have big bucks and are in law suits with the churches they once served for distribution rights….
B. The crooked but rich may seem to have a better life, but it is spiritually and eternally IMPOVERISHED.
C. This proverb does not address the rich who have integrity or the POOR who do not have integrity.
1. The assumption many make is that the rich must be blessed because they are good, and the poor cursed because they are evil. This proverb destroys that assumption.
2. The Hebrew literally is, perverse of two ways; i.e. who, going one way, pretends to go another; the "two ways" being the evil which he really pursues, and the good which he feigns to follow. [source: Pulpit Commentary]
3. Septuagint, "A poor man walking in truth is better than a rich liar."
D. We must gather wealth in LEGITIMATE ways and remember to be GENEROUS (8)
1. "Usury" (neshek) is interest on money lent taken in money; "unjust gain" (tarbith) is interest taken in kind, as if a man, having lent a bushel of corn, exacted two bushels in return. All such transactions were forbidden by the Law of Moses, at any rate between Israelites” (Lev. 25:36, 37) [Pulpit Commentary]
2. Gambling, vice (drug dealer), or dishonest gain, examples of gathering wealth illegitimately.
II. Second Trap: DISOBEDIENCE to God’s Word, Whether Open or HIDDEN Defiance (7, 9).
A. Cherishing and obeying God’s Word defines successful MATURITY (7).
1. A person is known by the company he keeps.
2. A person becomes like the company he keeps.
3. People may say they are influencing their lost peers for good, but what almost always happens is the lost peers influence the believer for the bad.
4. I Corinthians 15:33, Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.”
5. Jesus associated with tax collectors and sinners, but His peers were the disciples, esp. Peter, James, and John.
6. John Lawrence writes: “The Hebrew word is "zalal" which means to be vile, frivolous, gluttonous, or worthless. The word was used in Deuteronomy 21:20 to describe a son who is worthless in his character…”
7. We think of gluttony as excessive eating, and so it is in English. But words do not always translate exactly. The Hebrew word is about excess in worthless, unproductive things and riotous living.
8. I Samuel 2:12, 22-24, Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord… Now Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. And he said to them, “Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all these people. No, my sons; it is no good report that I hear the people of the Lord spreading abroad.”
Dr. Leonard Sax summarizes what is going on with today’s young people: “More and more boys are developing a great ability to enjoy themselves – to binge on video games, pornography, food, and sleep – but they often don’t have drive and motivation to succeed in the real world outside their bedroom. More and more of their sisters have that drive and motivation in abundance – but they don’t know how to relax, how to have fun and enjoy life. For some of these girls, each accomplishment is only a stepping-stone to the next goal. The treadmill never shuts off. The performance never ends” (“Girls on the Edge,” 2020 revision, p. 9).
B. Our obedience to God’s Word must be a matter of SUBSTANCE, not image (9).
1. Some people who appear to be kind are as nasty as can be when they don’t get their way.
2. A lot of religious people put on a front, but their soul is dark and dirty before God.
3. Jesus spent a lot of time addressing this issue, as you probably know.
C. God is OFFENDED when we pray to Him if we have no intent at all to obey Him (9b).
1. Millions of people are attending church today, but some have no real interest in God.
2. It is one thing to be a seeker, or a struggler, or not in fellowship with God right now; another to be putting on a front.
III. Third Trap: Being Tricked by DECEPTIVE People (10).
A. Believers may fall for cons and TRAPS.
Jesus said in Matthew 10:16, “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.”
1. Some of us are shrewd as serpents, but not innocent like doves.
2. Others of us are shrewd live doves and innocent like serpents – the reverse.
3. Some of us are innocent like doves, but not shrewd like serpents.
4. We really need both qualities.
5. “The line shows that the wicked will be caught in their own devices; but it also shows that the righteous are corruptible—they can be led into morally bad conduct.” (Ross)
6. Many Christians get in with the wrong crowd and are corrupted, even to the point of denying the truth of Scripture and their Savior.
B. Those who set such traps will THEMSELVES be trapped.
1. Matthew 18:6, “but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
2. Sometimes it comes back upon evil doers in this life. Often, actually. But not always.
