Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Through patience a ruler can be persuaded,
    and a gentle tongue can break a bone.
If you find honey, eat just enough—
    too much of it, and you will vomit.
Seldom set foot in your neighbor’s house—
    too much of you, and they will hate you.
Like a club or a sword or a sharp arrow
    is one who gives false testimony against a neighbor.
Like a broken tooth or a lame foot
    is reliance on the unfaithful in a time of trouble.
Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day,
    or like vinegar poured on a wound,
    is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.
If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat;
    if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head,
    and the Lord will reward you.

• Proverbs 25:15-22

Proverbs 25:16 ”This may be a parable that goes with v. 17, instructing the wise not to overdo anything that may lead to disgust and rejection, including overstaying or being overbearing with a friend who may begin to resent him. ”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

The Message

I have had my moments of being impetuous.  I have always lacked quiet patience.  I might wait, but I am usually not happy about it.  But I have been in the habit lately of cheering softly when I am called at a doctor’s office or my car has finally been fixed at the repair shop.  The ones around me chuckle.  But this is a different type of patience.

Here, the patience is in giving wise counsel to someone who does not wish to listen.  It’s that constant drip of water that breaks through rock.  It takes a long time, but it works.  I had a friend who had a cabin on a lake in the mountains.  He needed to break up some huge boulders in order to install a boat dock.  He could have used dynamite, but he did not have a permit.  He could have used a jack hammer, but he used his available cash on the materials for the boat dock.  So, he had a bonfire, with the boulders as the backdrop.  The family roasted hotdogs.  They made s’mores.  Then the weather turned cold that night.  Over a few months, there were more bonfires.  With each time the rocks went from cold to extremely hot and then back to cold, even freezing cold, the rapid change in temperature caused the rocks to crack.  And my patient friend carried away the broken pieces, a few at a time until the large boulders were no longer there, and he had useable stones for other building projects.

My Dad misquoted Mark Twain whenever he visited people.  He would say, “House guests are like fish, after three days, they start to smell.”  My Dad was true to that.  He enjoyed when you visited, as long as you left in a couple of days.  And when he visited, he was usually gone in three days.  When he came to visit us in Europe, he stayed a little longer.  Mark Twain said, “House guests are like fish; they are only good for three days.”  Benjamin Franklin said, “Fish and visitors stink in three days.”

The point here is that Proverbs 25:16-17 speak of not overindulging.  In food, you get a stomachache, and in a recent philosophy essay (Is Man a Machine? – yesterday morning), you might die.  In being a house guest, you might wear out your welcome.

Proverbs 25:18-20 speak of friends that are either not friends or poor in being a friend.  Do they betray a trust?  Are they unreliable?  Do they do inappropriate things at the absolute worst of times?  Then we could expand that to the government.  Do we rely on the government for something and then it falls through or does the government solution make things worse than they were before instead of better?  The corollary is to trust in God, for He never fails us.

And then we have the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, but this from Solomon.  We are to love our enemies.  We are to give them food.  Solomon says that it is like heaping burning coals on their heads.

But I talked to a man while in Germany.  He had been a signal corps soldier in World War II in the Polish army.  They were stringing wire to a listening post to hear what the Germans were planning when the Germans overran his position and instead of becoming a POW, he became a Nazi soldier.  He was not given a choice, or rather his choice was to join the Nazi army or be killed right there in the forest.  He was then in Russia and his position was overrun by the Russian army.  He laughed at his sterling military career of being overrun and captured, twice.  He was captured and sent to a POW camp in Arkansas, where he spent the remainder of the war growing crops to feed millions of people.  There was no fence or armed guards.  Unlike Europe at that time, there was no starvation.  He gained weight during his captivity and his captors showed love for him.

You could either heap burning coals on your enemy – meaning they hate you, but you show them love, to show them that their hate has no merit or cause.  Or you can make a friendship by loving that neighbor.  You do not control the outcome.  You only control how you respond to their animosity.

And now let us sing.

The following song is Love Your Enemies.  This is sung by Kyle Sigmon.

Closing Prayer

Dear Lord,
We need Your wisdom.  Help us to value wisdom.  Give us the strength to have quiet patience, to give good counsel even when the one being counseled is stubborn.  Help us to not overindulge in food, drink, or the length of our visit.  Help us to love our enemies, and it might just start with giving them food to eat.  And may we always turn to You, oh Lord.  Our friends and governments let us down far too often.  In thy Name we pray.
Amen

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.