What Will Keep You From Evil?
One of the laws of thermodynamics says that systems seek the maximum possible level of disorder or chaos. This explains why your bedroom gets messy unless you clean it. It explains why when you drop a bunch of pasta on your kitchen floor, the noodles don’t stay in a neat little pile. It takes “energy” to make order out of a system. There is a similar principle as it relates to evil. Evil is the natural default of the human heart. Left to its own, each human heart tends toward wickedness and evil. You might not like that. I might not like that. But it doesn’t matter. Sin has affected us in such a way. So what can be done about it? The cure for stopping an inevitable slide into evil and wickedness is God’s wisdom. Let’s read verses 10-12 of Proverbs chapter 2: 10 When wisdom enters your heart, and knowledge is pleasant to your soul, 11 Discretion will preserve you, understanding will keep you 12 To deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things
These verses tell us that we need wisdom to enter our heart; for knowledge to be pleasant to our soul. God wants to give us wisdom and wisdom goes to work on our behalf as we saw in yesterday’s passage. In verse 11 we read that discretion will preserve us and understanding will keep us. Discretion and understanding come through wisdom. How many times would you like a “do-over” in your life in the area of discretion? Sign me up! But we don’t get “do-overs” in life. Discretion and understanding will keep us from evil. Understanding will “keep” us. It will protect us. What an incredible blessing God’s wisdom is intended to be in our lives.
But it won’t be that way if we don’t seek wisdom and receive it from God. Left to our own, we will slide toward evil. We will see tomorrow a greater description of evil but please ask yourself the question, “What will keep me from evil?” The answer is never “I can do it on my own” or “I’ll just be neutral regarding evil”. The answer is always God’s wisdom.
In wisdom,
Eric