Proverbs 1:8-9 English Standard Version

The Enticement of Sinners

8 Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching,
9 for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.

The editors of the English Standard Version added the words “The Enticement of Sinners”. I suspect they had some purpose in mind to stir up conversation over what they might have thought of a proverb that is not as clear as some others.

The Oxford Dictionary defines enticement as something used to attract or to tempt someone; a lure. 

I reject the notion of temp because His Word says that God is neither tempted nor temps. The word lure however does remind me of what Jesus told Simon and his crew.

Matthew 4:19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

What my parents taught me was that life owes you nothing and you need to work hard. That was not an attractive garland for my head, nor a pendant for my neck. But as a teenager a classmate who lived down the street showed interest in me and I followed her to church.

She lured me into the place where God revealed Himself to me. Her parents raised her according to Christian principles and she was attractive in ways that makeup could not enhance.

Suddenly this proverb makes sense, it has real world application.

What if a child is raised in a household that believes in ungodly principles? I don’t have to label those behaviors, we can think of some examples without making a list. The child would look totally different and their enticement would only draw others deeper into sin of a particular type.

Sin then becomes a lifestyle and is only attractive to others of a like mind.

How can God reach those lost sinners?

Psalm 34:18 The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

A few days ago we quoted Lamentations and the issues of vanity, emptiness of results. When sin crushes them, perhaps then they will look for a way out. But how can they find the God that saves?

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

How do we access God’s plans for us? As we said yesterday, by faith. If we look at all the referenced scriptures we will read what His Word says. How to access the truth in those scriptures is a matter of faith.

Did those disciples that left Jesus in John 6:66 have faith? They certainly thought they did because they were Jews and had been taught that their faith was the true faith. So why did they leave Jesus?

John 6:65 And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

Many times what happens in scripture is explained in the preceding verse. Perhaps those that left Jesus did so because they realized they were not called by God the Father to believe in Jesus. Perhaps.

Let us clear up one issue before we judge these Jews who left Jesus. Jesus had not died on the cross and resurrected from the dead at this point in His ministry. That event was the game changer. We have no idea how many of these that left Him might have come to believe by faith after the Cross.

What does that have to do with lost sinners today?

We have no real way of predicting just what it will take for a lost soul to feel God has called them to believe. All we have are His Words and our faith.

By faith I believe that God the Father will capture every last lost soul who will accept Jesus by faith. That does not relieve me of the responsibility to activate God’s plan for my life to serve Him by faith, the same faith that saved me.

Faith does not do just one thing and is then done. It activates His plan, our future and our hope.