Walk in Wisdom and Live Victoriously!

Proverbs 7

Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Wednesday, October 11.

Have you ever found yourself fixated on an issue? Maybe it’s money, work, a game, social media, or, if your like Solomon, sex. Solomon did not write Proverbs in a vacuum; foreign women were threatening to distract him from his relationship with God, so he instructed his students on this intimate subject, in Proverbs 7:1-5:

My son, keep my words and treasure my commandments within you. Keep my commandments and live, and my teaching as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers; Write them on the tablet of your heart. Say to wisdom, “You are my sister,” and call understanding your intimate friend; that they may keep you from an adulteress, from the foreigner who flatters with her words.

The adulteress’ lips were dripping with honey in Proverbs 5 and now she’s sprinkled her bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. The king was struggling with an unhealthy fixation. While that might surprise you; it shouldn’t because Solomon was a real person, in real history, who dealt with real life issues. In 1 Kings 11:3, we learned about Solomon, “He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned his heart away.” Solomon wrote Proverbs while he was trying to focus on God, passing on to his students the very wisdom he so desperately needed to heed himself – “Keep my commandments and live” (Proverbs 7:2).

Why didn’t Solomon follow his own advice, plentifully found in the book of Proverbs? Sexual purity was on his mind; it was a significant battle that he knew he must win to remain faithful to God. Solomon had the way of victory, and he prescribed it for others, but it was not enough for him to have the wisdom, he had to walk in it for himself.

Seize the moment and apply the wisdom of Proverbs 7: walk in wisdom and live victoriously!