Proverbs 17
McGeeCHAPTER 17
Proverbs 17:1
This verse is very similar in thought to Pro_15:17: “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.” The last part of the verse pictures a scene of religious activity, but activity does not always denote the working of God. A church can have a lot of meetings, a lot of organization, and a tremendous amount of activity, but all of this may cause a great deal of confusion and frustration. I think of Elijah in the court of Ahab and Jezebel. There certainly was plenty of activity going on in Ahab’s palace, including a lot of religious practices, but nothing really pertaining to God. Elijah stepped in and proclaimed that it wasn’t going to rain until God said so, and He wasn’t in the mood to say so. Then Elijah walked out. Where did he go? He went far off to the Brook Cherith where he stayed a long time alone with God. God was training him out in the quietness of the desert. “Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith.” God took Moses out of the palace of Pharaoh (another scene of great activity and religious organization) and put him in the desert of Midian and taught him there. Both Moses and Elijah had “a dry morsel, and quietness therewith.” It is nice to get off at times and be by yourself. My wife and I are busy at many conferences, and we have had to cut down on the number of them in order to get some quietness and rest. When we get home from a series of conferences, we go nowhere but just outside on our patio. I tell my wife, “Come on out here, and let’s sit down together and get acquainted with each other. I’ve been married to you a long time, and it’s time I was getting acquainted with you.” It’s a good thing for us to do. God wants us to have times like that. They are very important for our spiritual refreshment.
Proverbs 17:2
A servant who is faithful is better than a son who is not faithful. It is better to have a servant in whom you can have confidence than a son you cannot trust. I think here of Abraham and his faithful servant Eliezer, and of David and his son Absalom. Abraham told the Lord that Eliezer was his only heir and that he wanted a son (Gen_15:2). He felt it was much better to have a son, and God answered his request. But if the son is not dependable, if he is going to be like David’s son Absalom, who openly rebelled against him, then certainly it is much better to have a good, faithful servant. And David had a number of faithful men who stayed right with him.
Proverbs 17:3
To get pure silver, the mined ore must be put into the fining pot and heated until it melts so that the dross can be removed and the pure metal remain. The same thing applies to gold; it is put in the furnace, and the dross is drawn off. And the Lord puts His servants into the fire so that He can develop something in them. He tries our hearts in order to strengthen us. He wants to produce better sons and daughters for His use. We are more precious to God than gold or silver. Therefore, we should not be discouraged when we are tested. “Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (1Pe_1:6-7). God uses this method. God had a purpose in allowing Job to go through the furnace of affliction. God had a purpose in giving Paul a thorn in the flesh. God had a purpose in permitting the period of martyrdom that came to the church. Persecution actually molded the church, and it has never been as rich spiritually as it was during that period. I think one of the problems among Christians today is our affluence. This was one of the problems in Israel. Moses described it in Deu_32:15: “But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.” I’m afraid we may have a lot of fat saints today. They have everything, and yet they become complainers, faultfinders, critics. They really are no help to the cause of Christ. So God must put the saints that He is going to use into the furnace in order that He might develop them for His use. I received a letter from a lady who prayed that she might know the Lord Jesus better, that she might grow in grace and the knowledge of Him. What did the Lord do? He gave her cancer. Someone might say, “That’s no way for God to do.” But that is the way He sometimes does it, friend. You are listening to a preacher who knows all about it. I know why God gave me cancer. One mean letter sent to my wife and me said that God gave us cancer because we won’t obey God and we’re ignorant, and because of the kind of folk we are. Well, some of that may be true. But He didn’t do it in a mean spirit, the way the letter was written. He did not do it because He hates us or because He is mean. God did it in a loving way, and you don’t know how precious He has become to us because of it.
Proverbs 17:6
Here is a verse I am sure many of you can appreciate. “Children’s children” are grandchildren. It is a verse for grandfathers. “The glory of children are their fathers.” Children look to their fathers. I have always been grateful for a daughter who has loved and respected her father. We have always been able to communicate, even though she has the same kind of temper that I havea short fuse. Every now and then we have a blowup, but then I go to her or sometimes she comes to me. We don’t even let the sun go down on our disagreement.
But “children’s children are the crown of old men.” The proverb is right. Now I am an old man with grandsons, and I could bore you to tears talking about them. Perhaps you have heard of one old man saying to another old man, “Have I ever told you about my grandson and shown you pictures of him?” The other man replied, “No, you haven’t, and I want to thank you for it!” If I had known how wonderful grandchildren can be, I would have had them before I had my children! They are a pride and joy to have around, and they draw families together. The child looks to the father, but the grandfather looks back to the grandchild; that is where his affection centers.
Proverbs 17:10
Somebody says, “You know, poor Mr. So-and-So, he’s a wonderful child of God, and look at the trouble he has had!” God reproves his saints, sometimes by sending trouble into their lives. God is coaching them, because they are wise men. The wise man will listen to reproof. The fool won’t listen to reproof. Even if God laid an hundred stripes on his back, it wouldn’t do him any good. When you see someone prospering who is ungodly, the reason may be that he is such a fool that no matter what God would do to him, he would not change. The Lord Jesus told about the man who took down his old barns to build new barns for his crops. He was prosperous and was expanding his business. There is nothing wrong with building a new barn.
The thing wrong was that the man was a fool. I didn’t say thatJesus said it. He was a fool because he did nothing about eternity. The chastening of the Lord would not have changed him. During the Great Tribulation the world will go through such intense suffering and judgment that people will gnaw their own tongue. But do you think they will turn to God?
No. A hundred stripes will not do any good when they are applied to a fool. This leads me to repeat that I believe we have a wrong philosophy about prisons today. A prison is not for the purpose of developing men and putting them back into society. There may be some place for that, but a prison is primarily a place of punishment, not an institution for discipline. Discipline is for a childyour own child. Punishment is for the one who has committed a crime.
Proverbs 17:16
I have known a lot of boys from wealthy families who had no heart for college at all. They shouldn’t have been in college. It wasn’t that they were not able to pass the courses, but they didn’t want to go to college in the first place. Their hearts were not in it. I do not agree with the philosophy that every person should have a college education. I think that every person should have access to a college education, but I do not think that young folks should be forced to go to college. A lot of young people don’t have a capacity for it, nor do they have the heart for it. This has nothing to do with being rich or poor. It involves the desire to learn. I believe that every poor boy who really wants to learn should have the opportunity.
The door ought to be opened for him. On the other hand, there are a lot of rich boys who should not be in college at all. I was a poor boy, and I thank God for a wonderful Christian elder who took an interest in me. If it hadn’t been for that man, I could never have gone to college. I thank God for opening the door to college for this poor boy.
Proverbs 17:17
This verse reminds us of Jonathan who was such a wonderful friend to David. “A friend loveth at all times.” Jonathan loved David when he was playing his music in the palace as well as when he was hiding for his life, trying to escape King Saul. Although Jonathan was the son of Saul and heir to the throne, he loved David. It is a wonderful thing to have a friend like that. If someone doesn’t love you at all times, that person is not your friend. It is one of the disappointments of life to have someone profess to love you and be your friend, then when the chips are down, you find that he really does not love you after all. He was a Judas Iscariot or an Absalom, who betrayed you.
Proverbs 17:21
This has been repeated several times in Proverbs. The father of a son who is making good is a father full of joy. He will talk constantly about his boy. If he has a son who is not doing well, he becomes very silent, and no one hears about the boy.
Proverbs 17:22
There are a lot of folk today who are actually sick with a heart sickness. It is not heart trouble. It is a heart sickness, a lack of joy. They live down in Mudville. They are the mighty Casey who struck out at bat. This description applies to many Christians. God wants us to have a merry heart. He wants us to have a big time! Our fellowship at church should be a place of fun. We should laugh and rejoice and praise God when we go to church. We are simply too stiff and stilted in our churches.
Proverbs 17:23
There are many different ways of bribing, and there is so much bribing going on in our world today.
Proverbs 17:28
This proverb has humor in it. It says that it pays to keep your mouth shut. An Arkansas farmer had a son who was simple. Folks would say he was “not all there.” They drove into town with a load of apples, and the father left the son to sit and hold the reins of the horses while he went off on an errand. “Now, son,” said the father, “don’t you say anything to anybody because if you do, they will find out you are a fool.” The boy promised he wouldn’t open his mouth. A man came up to the wagon and asked, “How much are your apples, son?” The boy never said a word. The man asked two or three times, but the boy just sat there and looked at him. Finally the man said, “What in the world is wrong? You act like a fool.” Then he walked away. When the father returned, he asked the boy, “How did things go?” The boy answered, “I kept my mouth shut, but they found out I was a fool anyway.”