March 10, 2024 -- Proverbs 10:23 -- Fully Exposed

Doing wrong is like a joke to a fool,
    but wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding.
Proverbs 10:23 ESV

Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death
19 is the man who deceives his neighbor
    and says, “I am only joking!”
Proverbs 26:18-19 ESV

“I am only joking”. What a feeble line for the man who is trying to wriggle off a hook. When a man’s ways catch him out of step with peers, or with the sensitivities of the people around him, and when his ways reveal his rebellion against God, resorting to feeble humour is a lazy way out. However, the Proverbs expose the sins and their deeper motivation. A man who can’t be serious is a fool. That is, he lives as if God doesn’t exist. He knows God exists. He knows the tooth fairy doesn’t exist—but he doesn’t have to make proclamation about it. So a fool knows God does exist. But he is protesting the Mighty Power and Nearness of God. His light-hearted wrong-doing is actually more malicious and motivated by evil than he allows himself to see. He is glaringly self-deceived.

Proverbs 26 uncovers the perverse nature of the man masquerading as a mere jokester. He is concealing the fact that his heart is a writhing, slithering, ball of viperous evil intentions. The surface life seeks to be funny all the while it is concealing an inner life that is constantly stirring up evil. It will be exposed.

The Bible exposes the contradictions of a man’s life with the sole purpose of giving him every opportunity to turn from his wicked ways, to confess them to Jesus and to seek to live by faith. Sin exposed has the brief opportunity to either recoil and find new disguises in mocking laughter, or to finally shake free of the ignorance that chained it and walk in the wisdom of Jesus Christ.

MOST HOLY and merciful Father; We acknowledge and confess in thy presence, our sinful nature prone to evil and slothful in good. And all our shortcomings and offences against thee. Thou alone knowest how often we have sinned, in wandering from thy ways, in wasting thy gifts, in forgetting thy love, but thou, O Lord, have pity upon us, who are ashamed and sorry. For all where in we have displeased thee, teach us to hate our errors; cleanse us from our secret faults; and forgive our sins; for the sake of thy dear Son our Savior. And O most holy and loving Father send thy purifying grace into our hearts, we beseech thee; that we may henceforth live in thy light and walk in thy ways; according to the commandments of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Confessions 2.Divine Service Book for The Armed Forces. 1950. page 5

https://youtu.be/px-eU1QjQiU?si=Sgh7JhNwNZQ1v9OG Psalm 51 Shane and Shane

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