The Devotional – 1401 – "But"

The Devotional – 1401 – "But"

Proverbs 1:7 – The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. 

 

 Comments and challenges

The word “but” is not found in the original Hebrew text; this is true with many prepositions in the Holy Bible. Those who translate added these words to give flow to reading and yet in some cases the added preposition causes the declaration of God’s intended command or challenge to lose some of the effect. In this case I believe the effect is lost so let me see if we can search out the Living Word and find God’s wonderful challenge to all the fools who read the Holy Bible.

Let me remove the “but”! The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and instruction.

I see in the verse “choice” when the preposition is remove and when you add it, this seems to imply that there are two kinds of individuals who read the word, the one who fears God and has knowledge and the one who does read and is a fool. Yet I am mindful of my own experience in that as an unbeliever I did not read the Holy Bible and was barely aware that it existed. Was I a fool? Yes we can classify all unbelievers as a fool, yet how would the unbelieving know that he or she is a fool, it they do not read the Holy Bible? Would this individual remain a fool if he or she became a believer? The answer is yes and no, since the believing person by choice can and does live in the Spirit and in the flesh.

Reading in James 1:21-27 we can see that hearing and doing is necessary to every believer in order to remain pure and undefiled. Let your guard down and we quickly forget who we are in Christ; the mirror of our relationship in Christ becomes blurry, does it not? On the one hand we can spiritually abide in the Faith of who we are in Christ and on the other hand there are moments in time when we despise wisdom and instruction and we foolishly abide in works.

In the New Year if there is a “resolution” to make and as I have said before… I do not like making resolutions since these are easily broken; I would resolve to study the Living Word of God (The Holy Bible). Then I would resolve to eliminate the “prepositions” that often leave the door open to walk through to the other side. Like: “but I have no time” or “but I have to work” you know the drill. There is nothing more offensive to “self” and the nearby “saint” than the fool who has access to the Word of God, but fails to study it.

Proverbs 26 has a lot to say about the fool, in this chapter I do not see anything that says that Solomon under the direction of God the Holy Spirit is talking about “unbelieving people” and in verse 10 and 11 the challenge is this. “The great God who formed all things gives the fool his hire and the transgressor his wages. As a dog returns to his own vomit, so the fool repeats his folly.

If there will be any hope for the Citizens of the United States of America, it will be the return of the many of its foolish Citizens to the living Word of God. If we fail at this challenge, we fail our future freedom and any hope of restoring the Constitution.