Proverbs 13:15b, For Millions It’s A Rough Road!
July 13, Proverbs 13:15b
Rom. 6:21, 23 “Bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things” (1 Tim. 4:18).
For Millions It’s A Rough Road!
Transgressors, as we have noted before, are Jews who literally take the shirt off the backs of their fellow Jews (Ex. 22:26; Deut. 24:10-13). Hence, in the eyes of God, they are wicked, treacherous deceivers. They are traitors, who for greed, would sell the needy for a pair of shoes (Amos 8:4). These are heartless exploiters of their poorer brethren. They fall into that despised category of publicans (tax-collectors), but for all their money-grubbing, their way is hard. It is hard in the sense of an awful permanence. It describes the rolling down of the waters as a mighty stream (Amos 5:24). It never ceases. It is also a harsh and forbidding way, like a rough valley (Deut. 21:4), suggesting the hardened behaviour of the wicked. We are to understand that transgressor is but another name for sinner. In other words, the way of the transgressor is:
1. The Path Of Sin: Our text speaks of a way that is a well trodden path. It is a way that is both chosen and persisted in. This much frequented track describes the habit of a sinner’s life. God is not in all their thoughts. They have no place for things eternal. For the transgressor, self is the chief end of man. What was only once a plaything, a mere diversion, has become the dearest idol. Wild oats will only produce a harvest of thorns. Sinners will discover, sooner or later, that they labour for a task-master as hard as their way. Millions are on this hard road taking them further and further from God.
2. The Power Of Sin: The way of the transgressor is hard because it is one, great, awful unit. This one who deals treacherously, who deliberately deceives others, in the end deceives himself most of all. Every sinful act only serves to increase sinful desire, and to weaken spiritual resolve. How tragic it is to see men, women, but especially young people, sinning against light and love. This is the kind of sin that makes pity almost impossible, except with God, for he knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust (Ps. 103:14). “Sin, which drowned the old world, will burn this.”
3. The Pain Of Sin: Surely the way of transgressors is pleasant, even if it ends in death. No, indeed! Sin barters away the future while it doesn’t secure present peace in return. All sin is visited with penalty, but the point of our text is to remind us that it comes here as well as hereafter. We cannot miss the misery caused by sin, which is everywhere around us today, nor dare we explain its cause away as social experts do. Truly, things are not always what they seem, but how limited in duration are the pleasures of sin! They deceive even while they last. Voltaire, for all his boasted skepticism, cried: “I wish I had never been born.” A well-known soldier, before his conversion, said that he sometimes envied the existence of a dog! How hard (permanent) is the eternal ruin of transgressors!
Thought: “The wicked have the seeds of hell in their own hearts” (Calvin).
Prayer: Lord Jesus, keep me in the way everlasting.