Proverbs 21:19 ¶ It is better to dwell in the wilderness,
than with a contentious and an angry woman.
We’ve had this thought presented to us before
in;
Proverbs 21:9 It is better to dwell in a
corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house.
There isn’t a man alive who has been married for
any length of time who can’t tell a young man starting out in life that being
married to woman with a sweet and kind spirit is far better than being married
to what was once called in our language, a shrew.
Any young man who is attracted to a girl who is
perpetually angry and always itching for a fight, while he might think that’s
cute now, would be a stone cold fool to choose her for a mate and to be the
mother of his children.
In the Bible, a wilderness is a desert place
where there is very little that is useful to man. John Gill, the 18th century
Calvinist Baptist commentator, points out that this verse could also have an
application that it would be better to be with the church in the wilderness than
with a harlot like the church of Rome, angry and lusting for gold and blood.
Christians are called to come out of this world
system as some commentators use this verse to mean separating yourself from the
world system before it is destroyed.
Revelation 18:4 And I heard another voice
from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of
her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
You do realize, of course, that the world system
on which you depend is about to be destroyed, annihilated? As a Christian you
were not to serve that system in any event. Jesus said this about the economic
system, giving it a personalized Syriac name. Mammon is the economic system and
worldly wealth personified.
Luke 16:13 No servant can serve two masters: for either he
will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and
despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
We serve mammon with our energies, our
indebtedness, working to pay back debts at criminally high interest rates with
money that is taxed many times by many different government entities, including
the tax of inflation where money is printed and printed until its worth is less
and less. This too is a type of taxation. As more and more of our efforts must
go into earning more money to survive the demagogues will blame the poor, the
elderly, and the sick for being a drain and the kool aid drinkers will all
shout Amen. But government policies and corporate greed continuingly support
globalism, to lower the standard of living our fathers built, raising the
standard in other places, until we are all at some kind of mean that is easier
for the global elite to control and manipulate.
The system that you and I are a part of where we
are addicted to cheap, foreign made products that are still overpriced because
we don’t need them and only want them because of the mind manipulation of
advertising, the cheap food, and mindless entertainments is in the way of your
relationship with the risen Saviour. Remembering that Satan operates this world
as the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4) should keep you thinking
skeptically about everything from smarmy billboards to jingoistic, patriotic
symbolism.
Each hour you listen to profane country music or
rock or rap is an hour you are hearing from Satan’s mouth and not from God’s.
Each minute that you are watching television or movies is a minute away from
God’s blessings in His word. Each second that you choose to spend enriching the
men and women of the global money elite is a second less you’ll spend in
fellowship with Christ.
The world system is a contentious and angry
woman, a harsh mistress, and a vicious paramour. You would be better off
dwelling in a wilderness which has little to commend itself to you in the way
of comforts and pleasures than to stay with her.
One of the biggest problems Christians have
besides pride and self-righteousness is the innate willingness to kiss the hand
of the human master that’s stealing us blind and whipping us bloody. As long as
we get our little comforts and petty satisfactions we are happy to bow our
shoulder under their yoke. And yet, we have little to offer a Saviour who has
redeemed us out of all this and when ten million years have passed with you
living in eternity with Him the cheap, plastic Chinese garbage you have filled
your house with and the trip you took to the beach last summer on credit will
have vanished from view.
Better we separate ourselves now from this
contentious and angry woman and live in the wilderness than to continue bowing
and scraping before her hoping to appease her wrath and like an abused pet
whimpering and kowtowing hoping for a crumb or a kind word.
No comments:
Post a Comment