Straightforward

Greetings everyone. Let’s turn to Proverbs 27:14 and pick up the Bible Study there. Once again, we’ve talked about what verse 14 talks about, but we’ll refer to it again. It says here in Proverbs 27:14.

14 He that blesses his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be counted a curse to him.

You know, some friend that does that. Why would a person want to be dramatic and draw attention to himself and be an irritant and aggravate someone by yelling loud in the morning, by taking an most inappropriate, inopportune time to make a fool out of themselves? It puts people on edge. It’s out of place. It irritates. It isn’t proper. It doesn’t show respect or love.

So we ought to consider the situation and consider the person as we relate to them and as we interact with them, not yell and disturb or upset others. And that’s what verse 14 is talking about. You can imagine how upsetting it is when someone with a loud voice rising early in the morning addresses someone else, even if they say, “Oh, what a great guy you are!” or “What a great girl you are!” or “What a great person!” It’ll be counted a curse to him. It’s going to backfire. People are not going to like him for doing that or like her for doing that. So it should be avoided. It’s not loving our neighbor.

15 A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike.

I’m sure you’ve experienced rainy days where you hear the eave dropping water, you know, water dropping off of the eave or dropping down the downspout or hitting a hard surface. It just goes on and on and on and on and on.

Another example would be if you have a leaky faucet in the kitchen and it’s dropping in a pot and it’s late at night and you’re sitting there and it’s really quiet and tranquil, and yet there’s this drip, drip, drip, drip, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop in another part of the house. It’s just aggravating. It’s unpleasant. It creates tension. It’s something you want to fix. It’s something you want to get taken care of so that that’s not the way it is and you don’t have to put up with that. And as far as rain is concerned, if you have a leak somewhere and it’s dropping on a surface that gets to be an irritant, it gets to be something that is a distraction, something that is hard to tolerate, then you want to fix that leak. You want to fix that circumstance so that that continual dropping will not be something you have to endure.

Well, a contentious woman is like that, as it says in verse 15. Someone who’s just always confrontational, always negative, always picking, always criticizing, constantly and continually nagging—it’s really a tough thing to be around a woman or a man or anyone like that.

16 Whosoever hides her hides the wind, and the ointment of his right hand, which bewrays itself.

In other words, if you try to restrain her, a better translation, it’s like restraining the wind. And you know what happens when the wind is compressed or restrained, it has a howling sound. You know, wind just blowing is one thing but when it blows through a crack in the wall or it blows through restricted surface, then it will whistle and howl and even be more irritating or noticeable or overbearing or unpleasant. And that’s what happens when a person tries to restrain a contentious woman. It just makes it even worse. And really, unless she repents and changes and she starts to realize that she needs to be a Christian, and she starts to realize she needs to do what God says and really fundamentally has a change of heart and attitude, it’s just like grasping a handful of oil.

You can take your right hand and reached down into a bucket and try to get a handful of oil, and you can’t hold on to it. It’s going to run out between your fingers and you just can’t do anything with it.

So verse 15 and 16 draw several analogies here regarding interpersonal relationships, and it points out something for the ladies and there are lessons there for women to consider. They should strive to be pleasant people and cooperative people. They should strive to reach the full potential that God has put in every woman made in his image. And then it’s an incredible, wonderful experience to be around people like that. And the good they can do is almost incalculable. But to dig in their heels and to be selfish and to be contentious and to be confrontational and aggravating and to create tension and irritation, that’s something that is not pleasing to God or anyone else, and it’s described very clearly right here in verse 15 and 16.

Notice verse 17:

17 Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.

Now, you don’t take an ax and sharpen another ax. That’s not what it’s talking about here. You don’t take a hoe and sharpen another hoe with that hoe. You take a file and you sharpen a garden hoe. You take a file and you sharpen an ax. So this is talking about one person sharpening up another person—helping them to look sharp, feel sharp and be sharp—and then the next day that individual might return the favor.

When you take a piece of iron or a file and you are sharpening up an ax, there’s friction involved there, sometimes there’s even sparks. And when a friend is helping another friend like iron sharpening iron, sometimes there can be friction, sometimes there can be sparks. But because you love one another, you cut each other some slack. You know where you’re coming from, you get through that kind of tough time and you’re much sharper for it.

There’s also instances where you might be down, you might be discouraged, you might be disoriented and a friend comes in and just lights up the room, and because of their attitude of their love for life, and because of their positive outlook and their enthusiasm, and because of their determination, they will light you up and sharpen you up just by being in their presence. They’ll open up your thinking and open up the possibilities. They’ll refocus you. That’s a wonderful friend that will do that, and then you can return the favor later.

Rather than pull one another down and commiserate with one another, and when you have been around the friend for a while and you depart, rather than both of you being worse off than you were before you met, when iron sharpens iron, both of you are better off than you were when you met because you do one another good. And sometimes the good you do is not a soft, pleasant experience. Sometimes it can be kind of tough; sometimes it can be kind of grating. There can be a little friction and sparks might fly a little bit, but then it settles down and the good that flows out of that is a wonderful thing because you are friends and you will do what needs to be done to help one another.

Let’s read verse 17.

17 Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.

There’s one more principle I want to mention there. Good character builds good character. Bad character builds bad character. Now character is an interesting subject, and this is iron sharpening iron. When you talk about that, you’re talking about character, and when you talk about character, you’re talking about iron sharpening iron.

Character is the determination of an individual to have moral excellence and firmness and soundness and quality. It is wanting to do the right thing at all cost. It is wanting to do what God wants and let the chips fall where they may, but do it without getting self righteous about it.

Character involves knowing what is right, determining to choose right over wrong, and then choosing right over wrong, and then doing right over wrong. In other words, it’s making the right choice between right and wrong, and it’s choosing right and then it’s doing right instead of wrong. And we build character in doing that. We build moral excellence and firmness.

Iron sharpening iron will help the development and progress of character building. It involves integrity. Integrity has to do with soundness, with incorruptibility and honesty. It has to do with a code of moral values. And all of us who are trying to live life God’s way and all of us who are trying to be Christians, we want to live our life based on integrity and character, and we want to help others do that. And that’s all a part of verse 17 as well, this matter of iron sharpening iron.

Now let’s go to verse 18.

18 Whoso keeps the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof: so he that waits on his master shall be honored.

In other words, be a good employee, be a good neighbor, be a good family member, be diligent in all your duties and you will reap the benefit of that, and I’ve known people who are not way up in this world, I’ve known people who do not occupy a very powerful position and yet they are an excellent employee, they are an excellent assistant. They do their jobs very, very well. And as time goes along, their boss or their supervisor starts to honor them more and more. And as their boss or supervisor or company succeeds, some of that success is passed on to them because they were such a fine employee, such a fine assistant, such a fine servant. That’s the principle.

Know what your job is and do it diligently, and you will be blessed for doing so. You will reap the benefit of that. Just like someone who carefully keeps the fig tree, when it begins to bear figs, they’re going to be able to eat the figs off that fig tree. Someone who does his job well, when the company starts doing well, when the boss starts doing well, when the husband starts doing well, when the wife starts doing well, they’re going to reap some of the benefits of that success. That’s the principle.

19 As in water face reflects to face, so the heart of man to man.

You can look in a mirror, and what stares back at you? Well, your countenance. You can look into water and it’ll reflect back your face. Same thing happens when you have a man to man talk with somebody who has some substance and maturity and who is a friend. What you tell him comes back to you and then what he tells you comes back to him and you both learn from it. You can learn a lot about yourself when you’re helping somebody else. And you can learn a lot from somebody else when they’re helping you, and they can learn a lot about themselves when they’re helping you.

So as we go through life and as we relate to other people, just realize that some of that is going to come back and reflect and show us a lot about ourselves. You know how it is, you see somebody doing something and then you realize, “Well, you know, I do that too.” You see them making a mistake, you say, “Well, you know what, I do the same thing, I make that same mistake, I need to quit doing that. And when I encourage him not to do it, I need to practice what I preach and realize I do that so I need to quit it too.”

It’s just like Jesus Christ said, “Be careful when you’re trying to point out a fault to somebody else. You might be pointing out a little fault when you’ve got that fault in even a bigger way yourself.” It’s like looking in the mirror. When you look in the mirror, what do you see? You see a reflection of you coming back. When you talk man to man to somebody while you are helping them, you’ll probably also see that some of the things that you’re helping him with, you see in yourself and therefore you see some of the things you need to change. That’s the lesson in verse 19.

20 Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.

Well, you know, if we’re balanced and if we’re trying to do the right thing and if we are growing, we can be satisfied, we can think, “Boy, that was really a full day. Now I‘m going to go to bed and get some rest and start another day tomorrow.” We’re not restless, we’re not unfulfilled.

But the typical human being, the typical man is unfulfilled. There’s a big old open empty space inside them that can never be filled because they leave God out of the picture and they’re trying to do it their way. So they think a new car will do it, a new house will do it, food will do it, wine will do it, a husband or a wife will do it, travel will do it, music or art, or seeing a beautiful mountain range or a beautiful beach or some beautiful scenery, that will do it. But it never does. There’s always an itch that can’t be scratched.

A human being is missing something until they submit to God, and then God becomes the center of their life and that missing dimension is then met. That missing dimension is then taken care of. They no longer feel unfulfilled because now they’re doing what God made them for in the first place. They’re serving Him. They’re obeying Him. They’re living life His way. They’re developing and growing and overcoming so that one day they can be in His family. So that then a sunset takes on a great deal of pleasure that wasn’t there before even though there was some pleasure there.

Everything goes better, everything is better, everything is much more fulfilling and satisfying when we live life God’s way, and then our eyes are satisfied. But when God is not in our life and God is not in the picture, try as we might, we’re never fully satisfied and never fully fulfilled. God created us to walk with Him, and as we do that, life becomes satisfying and fulfilling. But until we do that, it’s never satisfying and it’s never fulfilling. We never quite get to where we want to get to in terms of peace and fulfillment and happiness.

21 As the fining pot for silver, and the furnace for gold; so is a man to his praise.

Well there’s a better translation than that: As the refining pot for silver and the furnace for gold; so is a man when he is tested by what others say to his praise. In other words, when you put silver in a refining pot, sometimes it refines out to be good silver and sometimes it refines out to be flawed silver, and the same with gold in a furnace. The crucible that silver and gold have to go through exposes the good and the bad, and sometimes there’s more bad than good and sometimes there’s more good than bad.

Well, praise that you might receive from someone is going to test you out. Are you going to get pumped up about it? Are you going to get vain and arrogant about it and full of pride? Are you going to be full of yourself? Are you going to start being obnoxious because somebody complimented you or praised you, and therefore you begin thinking you’re just the greatest thing around?

Or will you be humbled by it when someone compliments you or appreciates you or praises you? Will you be thankful and encouraged by it and yet humbled that you are able to accomplish what you accomplish and help somebody else by doing so, and yet it’s a humbling thing?

After all, who are we to get vain and full of ourselves? God is the one who gives us everything. He gives us breath. He gives us life. He gives us the talent. He gives us the ability. He’s the one who should receive the glory and the honor when we’re able to accomplish something and when we’re able to help others and when they give us praise. Okay, that’s encouraging. We can be thankful about that. But we can also be humble that we had the opportunity to serve them.

And there’s the test when the praise comes. Are we going to have that attitude? Or are we going to get vain and arrogant and full of pride and become obnoxious and boastful because someone, or several someones, complimented and praised us. That’s the question that verse 21 is talking about or raising.

22 Though you should bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.

That’s one of the most colorful verses in the whole Bible regarding how utterly useless a fool is. Now a fool doesn’t have to stay a fool. They can repent and change and grow and be wise. But most fools are so selfish and so rebellious and so totally arrogant that it’s hard to get a point across to them until they come to the point to where they can be taught. And so what it’s talking about here, it is actually using a practice to make the point of how a fool just won’t learn.

22 Though you should bray—

or grind

22 —a fool in a mortar—

That was a bowl that they would put wheat in or grain in.

22 —with the pestle—

That was a club or an instrument that they ground it with. So it can be a little bowl and a little club, it can be a big bowl and a big club. It can be a lot of wheat or not much wheat. But that was the process of taking grain and wheat and preparing it for use as food, making bread and eating it, cereal, etc. You take it and you put it in a bowl and you take an instrument, a club, and you grind away at it and you push away at it until you begin to separate the husk from the grain and you separate the chaff from the usable food, and then you can take the good part of the wheat and use it and throw away the chaff. It was a way of preparing it from the field to the kitchen to be used, and there’s a lot of power and grinding that goes on.

Well, the point is, if you take a big bowl and you put the fool down there and you take a big club and you start pounding away on that wheat and on that grain to grind it into food and get the waste out, and the fool is down in there and the fool is subjected to that grinding and pounding and beating and banging, when you get done and you empty that bowl out and you take the wheat and roll the fool out to the side, you know what it says?

Yet will not his foolishness depart from him.

After having been put through that grinding, painful process, he still won’t get the point. So therefore you’re wasting your time. The best thing to do is to try to help a fool quit being a fool. And if he won’t be helped, go your way and let him go his way and maybe through the school of hard knocks, he’ll come to himself. But don’t let him pull you down, or don’t let her pull you down, to the level of being a fool and of being foolish.

23 Be thou diligent to know the state of your flocks, and look well to your herds.

Now, this is a principle that is a wonderful principle in every facet and walk of life. It’s a principle to follow in your business. It’s a principle to follow on your farm. It’s a principle to follow in your family. It’s a principle to follow in the church. It’s a principle for ministers to follow, supervisors to follow. It’s simply saying look after your responsibilities. The analogy here or the example here has to do with flocks and herds.

23 Be thou diligent to know the state of your flocks, and look well to your herds.

If you’re a farmer and you are successful at it, you’re fully engaged in all aspects of that farm, and shepherds not only know the state of their flocks, they know what the face of their sheep look like. And each sheep is different. And they get so up close and personal, they know what they look like in the face and they know their names. They call them by names. It’s a very personal responsibility, a shepherd looking after his sheep, and a cattleman looking after his herd of cattle.

Well, it should be even more personal and it should be done even in a more diligent way and with more responsibility when it comes to human beings. And so that’s the principle. We are to personally look after our responsibility, and in particular, when it comes to other human beings. Look after them. Find out how they’re doing. Find out if they need anything. Find out how well things are going for them. Be fully involved and in and out and among the flock and the herd, out and among and in the middle of the operation. Go take a look for yourself. Don’t just delegate it to others. Delegation has its place, obviously. But the really successful leader will also go and take a look for themselves to make sure that things are going well in the company and on the farm and in the family and in the congregation.

24 For riches are not for ever: and does the crown endure to every generation?

No. I don’t know of anything that disappears faster than money when you really think about it. And power can seem invincible and yet change overnight. So you better be diligent is what it’s saying.

25 The hay appears, and the tender grass shows itself, and herbs of the mountains are gathered.

And then they’re gone.

26 The lambs are for your clothing, and the goats are the price of the field.

You know, when you really study the nation of Israel, which the Bible talks a lot about—and some of the principles in Proverbs are really based on the nation of Israel and how God looked after them and watched over them—when you really make a study of that, you realize that herds and flocks were the greatest source of wealth in Israel, their herds and their flocks. They supply their every need, and look what it says here.

25 The hay appears, and the tender grass shows itself, and herbs of the mountains are gathered.

And boy, they sure do have their place, but they come and go. But the lambs are for clothing. The lambs are always there supplying fleece for clothing.

26 —and the goats are the price of the field.

They supply meat and they supply milk, but they could also sell the goats and buy a field and then plant crops and therefore then they could have food. It’s just incredible when you really study about the herds and flocks of Israel and the sources of needs that were supplied by the herds and flocks. It was the greatest source of wealth. It opened up the doors to other wealth, such as land. And so they had to take care of them. They had to look after their herds and flocks because the herds and flocks are what supplied the needs for Israel and opened up the door to supply even more needs like land and water. And so they were to look after their herds and flocks. And we are to take that principle and look after our responsibilities, and in particular, our responsibilities toward other human beings.

27 And you shall have goats' milk enough for your food, for the food of your household, and for the maintenance—

or the nourishment

27 —of your maidens.

Or of your friends and relatives and employees, etc.

This chapter is so full of so many lessons, this Proverbs 27, and running throughout it from top to bottom is the principle of being diligent, of being responsible, of working hard, of using wisdom, and of walking with God—and many other lessons as well.

I hope we can internalize the tremendous principles that are so richly found in Proverbs 27. Well, until next time, I hope we’ll continue to study through the book of Proverbs and we’ll go into Chapter 28 at our next Bible Study.

This is Charles Bryce with the Enduring Church of God.