Proverbs 7:1 My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee.
2 Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of thine eye.
3 Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the table of thine heart.
4 Say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister; and call understanding thy kinswoman:
5 That they may keep thee from the strange woman, from the stranger which flattereth with her words.
Once again God begins this chapter by reaching out to the son. It should be obvious to all who read God’s Word, that God wants us to hold to His Word. As we have noted as well, God expects the male sector of humanity to be the leaders and the anchor. In order to be a right leader and a right anchor, the son needs to take God’s Word as THE TRUTH. He must hold to all that God has to say. We cannot go around inventing our own truth and be good leaders. God’s words are His commandments. The godly father holds to that and he wants to pass that on to his son.
There is no greater joy that a father can have than to see his son know the Lord and grow in the Lord. That does not mean the son needs to go to seminaries and get a doctorate or a master’s degree. In fact most times, that will spoil the person. The son needs to be a humble student of the Word of God.
In verse 2 God continued with this same thought. Man needs to keep His commandments. Man needs to make it his primary purpose to keep God’s commandments. The apple of the eye is literally the middle of the eye. It is that thing that is constantly there. This is why God’s word tells us to begin our day with Him in His Word and then meditate upon His Word day and night.
Verse three further explains what keeping His Words requires. We must bind them upon our fingers. If you bind something upon your fingers it will affect your ability to do certain things. Our hands are busy all the time. Our fingers need to be guided by truth.
The heart is the central being of man. We know the human heart is needed to live. If your heart stops beating, you will not live long. Heart failure affects the entire body. In the spiritual life, the heart is also the central part of man. The lost man’s heart is corrupt. The saved man’s heart has been cleansed by God and now needs to be fed and controlled constantly by God. Thus we need to be in God’s Word daily and submit to God as our Authority.
In verse 4 we see that we as men should look at wisdom as our sister. How should a man treat his sister? He needs to treat her with a tenderness and respect. The godly son would never consider defiling his sister. He will also consider her words carefully.
The godly son needs to receive God’s wisdom with the greatest of respect. When a son does this, he cannot accept the perversions. Those who were and are involved in creating those perversions obviously do not take heed to His Word.
God has made His Word so readily available to man. His Word is so clear and so valuable that man should see the absolute need to heed It. Understanding needs to be my kinswoman. A kinswoman is a relative. Again we see the connection that God’s wisdom should have with the son.
In verse 5 we see again that God is concerned about the moral purity of the son. Solomon, the writer of these chapters, obviously failed to keep God’s Word close to his heart. He was directed by God to write these words, not because he was such a good example, but because God told him to write them. He would have been wise to heed God’s Word.
The strange woman does not know the Lord. That is what makes her strange. She does not know how to behave as a godly woman. Her ideas and her actions are strange.
There is a case of a young mother in the U.S. who killed her three young children. The courts are trying to determine her culpability for her actions. People in the U.S. have expressed their opinion on this case. Apparently some employers are considering terminating the employ of some of their employees based on their belief on this case. That woman is a strange woman. No God-fearing woman would consider killing their child.
The strange woman is also the one who wants to sell her body for the abuse of the males. She is willing to be defiled, some very quickly, some after a little more teasing first of all.
The immodesty of our day is clearly a picture of the strange woman. They are so blinded they cannot see the wickedness of their choices in “pseudo-clothing”. The wise son needs to discipline his eyes and his heart to look away from the blatant immodesty that is becoming more and more prevalent. Most churches do not seem to be teaching on this. The world is no longer just creeping into the churches. It is now pushing its way into the mainstream of the churches.
We still have the Word of God. We can still know the Truth. God expects the same holiness of this generation that He did from Solomon’s generation. The argument, ‘everybody’s doing it’ holds no weight for the true child of God. Peer pressure cannot dictate the course of the true child of God. The Word of God is what must dominate in the true child of God. The son needs to take the lead. He needs to be instructed. No son is an island unto himself. The father needs to see the necessity of taking the time to teach his son. It is a great detriment to the son when the father is absent. A five minute meeting with a son is not sufficient. That is why God designed the family as a man and a woman who are married and they live together and when the children come, they live together as a family. Long-distant parenting is a strange thing not supported by the Bible. A travelling evangelist would need to be guarded in the amount of time he spends away from his family, if he is a married man. He is still a man, even if he is called to be an evangelist.
Sometimes a godly man can get his vision out of balance. He can try to justify his zeal for the Lord and thus the lack of time spent with his family. However, God created the design for the family. The family needs to be brought along with the father as he serves the Lord. God gave us His Word. We need to guard against ‘blind spots’. That is why the local church is so important. We need other godly people to help us to check our course in life. The humble servant of the Lord appreciates others who want to have godly input into their life. It is not a nuisance. It is a blessing.
Pastor Bartel