ARE YOU LIVING A HARD LIFE?

Read Proverbs 13:13-25

This morning I would like to focus on Proverbs 13:15, "Good understanding giveth favour: but the way of transgressors is hard."  I begin by asking you a simple question. How's your understanding?  Two divergent thoughts are seen in this verse.  We see that good understanding gives favor.  There is a positive result when we live life with good understanding.  To understand most often refers to one’s comprehension of facts written or spoken.  But I believe understanding speaks of both knowledge and application.  To understand is to comprehend knowledge and possess the ability to apply it to your own life.  Everything good comes from God (See James 1:17).  Good understanding is to have a thorough and complete knowledge of things morally pure.  Psalm 111:10, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do His commandments..."  One can deduce from this verse that until we are keeping God's commandments, we don't have good understanding.

 The other reality is that the way of transgressors is hard.  Sinners have a hard time living life.  Sin causes all kinds of trouble and grief. Notice, "...but the way of the transgressors is hard."   Sin causes all kinds of trouble and grief. All of us can travel a rough road now and then, but the toughest roads are traveled by those who are transgressors.  A transgressor is one who walks in disobedience and unfaithfulness. Life is difficult enough without one making it harder on oneself.  There are, however, those who live this way.  As a matter of fact, the Bible talks of those "who oppose themselves” in 2 Timothy 2:25, "And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will."  You may be your own worst enemy! Gill, in his "Exposition of the Bible" states, transgressors are "ungrateful and unpleasant to themselves and others; it is a rough and rugged way, in which they stumble and fall; and cannot walk with pleasure themselves, when their consciences are awakened, and they are loaded with guilt, and filled with terror, and must be very disagreeable to those who have seen the evil of them."  Those who run with fools will eventually be destroyed by their sin.  Read 1 Corinthians 15:33 and Psalm 1:1.

I hope you have  "good understanding!" 

Enjoy your day meditating upon the precious Word of God.

Your Friend and HIS,

Pastor Abbott

MEDITATIONS

1.  What are the two greatest sources for understanding?

2.  How can knowledge help us, if it is never used or practiced?

3.  Would you say that you have good understanding?  How does it manifest itself in your life?

4.  List five hard consequences related to sin.  Have you ever lived a hard life because of sin?