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One of the most persistent, nagging questions that dogs the Christian faith is called theodicy—the defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil.
If God is good and all-powerful, how is it possible that he would allow the existence of evil in his world?
You can explain it to people again and again, but somehow the explanations just don’t stick. I think it is because they still cling to the God of their imagination instead of the God they find in the Bible. Oddly, the answer to the question of theodicy is stated in the simplest possible terms in the pledge of allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Those are two of the most awful words in our language: Liberty and Justice. They are the inseparable twins that define the foundations of man’s relationship with God. Men have liberty, and that means they have the liberty to hurt one another. If they are not free to do evil to one another, then they are not free at all. But liberty can be only destructive if there is no justice. Let’s examine how this is shown in the dialogue between God and Jeremiah, in chapter 19.
In a world filled with complexities and choices, this episode takes a deep dive into the Book of Proverbs, revealing Solomon's poignant advice for young men and women facing modern temptations. Discover how family expectations and biblical wisdom can be the most compelling deterrent against destructive behavior. Listen in as we share personal anecdotes and insights on bolstering one's character with, ultimately, the riches of wisdom over material wealth.
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The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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Of all the ways that a man can mess up his life, sex has to be one of the easiest, or at least one of the most likely ways that he's going to do it. And it's even more so for a woman. I don't know that a woman is more likely to mess up her life that way. It's just that the consequences for women seem more likely and more dangerous and more permanent. I suppose that's why Solomon gives so much attention to sex in the opening chapters of the book of Proverbs. It's worded the way it is because it is a father speaking to his son. I wouldn't want someone reading through this to think that God was picking on women or that he thought women were worse than men. It's just that this is all set in the words of the king, King Solomon, who has a son, and he's explaining to his son the dangers that are out there. A mother speaking to her daughter can reverse the genders in the book of Proverbs, and it will work just as well. I can remember my own dad's efforts to caution me about the facts of life once when I was about 14 and again before my first date. He was embarrassed and flustered and rather inept about the whole thing. I suspect he might have been more urgent if he had been living in a more dangerous time and place. If AIDS and other STDs had been a really great danger. But he made the common mistake of warning me about the dangers instead of impressing upon my mind the morality of the situation and the facts of love, not just the facts of life, of the importance of love in a relationship and the risks of destroying love and of destroying the possibility of love and the strength of love by moments of carelessness. Actually, like a lot of fathers, he might not have talked to me at all if my mother hadn't been after him to do it. I don't know that. I'm just guessing because I know my dad and I know my mom. Looking back, though, it was a special moment to me, and I think it probably did influence my behavior in some ways. But all parents should know that sex is far too powerful an urge to be managed in a teenager with a couple of talks and a few platitudes and some warning about sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy. Solomon's advice to his son was really pretty pointed. You'll find some of it in Proverbs 6 and verse 20. My son, keep your father's commandment and don't forsake the law of your mother. Bind them continually upon your heart and tie them around your neck. These are poetic metaphors which suggest the idea that what we've got to do is whenever we start learning our father's commandments and the law of our mother's, that we have to bind them continually on our heart. In other words, there needs to be a repetition, a continuation. They need to be tied around our neck. We need reminders constantly so it doesn't get away from us. You know, among all the young people I've talked with about this over the years in counseling sessions in college and elsewhere, that it's my impression that the expectations of family and parents have been by far and away the most effective deterrent to destructive behavior in kids. That they will actually say, well, and I don't want to disappoint my father, and I don't want to disappoint my mother, and I've got to hold up the family. And if I do this, I will let down the family. The respect for family values and family expectations and the unwillingness to disappoint father and disappoint mother. All this has kept a lot of young people from doing some very stupid things. And this doesn't happen as a result of a talk you get before you go out on a date. It comes as a result of a way of life in the family, a continual, ongoing instruction and holding up of values by mother, by father, and by the entire family. Solomon said, when you go, it will lead you. When you sleep, these values will keep you. And when you awake, they will talk with you. In other words, it's the kind of thing that needs to be implanted so deeply in your mind that when you go to bed, you think about it. And when you wake up in the morning, you think about it. And these things are on your mind as guides to life. It's a pervasive thing. It's the pervasive character of family standards and the commandments of the father and the law of the mother that are in your character that will hold you off. Family standards don't hang in midair. Solomon is assuming standards based on the Bible. He goes on to say in verse 23, "...for the commandment is a lamp and the law is a light." And reproofs of instruction are the way of life to keep you from the evil woman, from the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman. Now remember, we're talking about a continual instruction in values and what's right and what's wrong. And remember, this is a father speaking to a son. If you happen to be a mother who has to sit down and talk to her daughter about these things, just reverse the genders and warn your daughter about the handsome silver-tongued devil who will get them pregnant or worse and then walk off and leave them alone. These commandments, this law, the law of your father, the traditions of your family, and those expectations are to keep you from the flattery and the tongue of the strange man or the strange woman. To his son Solomon said, Don't lust after her beauty in your heart, and don't let her take you with her eyelids when she bats her eyes and you go following her anywhere she wants to take you. For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread, and the adulteress will hunt for the precious life. Now the message here is clear. The consequences of this way of life cannot be avoided. Not with condoms, not with trying to hide your behavior and not let people know. You know, one of the worst things we can do is to give condoms to children because in doing it, we imply that they can engage in dangerous behavior if they will just use protection. Do you know what they call people who use condoms for birth control? Parents. Among all women who use condoms, they fail to prevent pregnancy 15% of the time. That means that one time out of six that they are used, they fail to stop the sperm from reaching the egg. For some reason, the failure rate among single women is much higher than that. By an odd coincidence, though, it's just like playing Russian roulette. You've got a six-shooter and babies for bullets. One time out of six, you're going to get in trouble. The failure rate for the prevention of viral-based diseases is higher than that because those viruses can pass through smaller pores in a latex condom than can sperm. Studies at the University of Texas concluded that condoms are only 69% effective in preventing the passage of the HIV virus. This is really like getting to play Russian roulette because HIV means you die. And it's like playing Russian roulette with two bullets in a six-shooter instead of one. The only difference is it may take five or ten years to kill you instead of killing you outright. A lot of people are lucky. They get away with it the first time. Some are very lucky. They get away with it several times. But no one is lucky enough to challenge the odds again and again. Sooner or later it's going to get you. And that's why Solomon uses the analogy of fire in the bosom. You can't protect yourself from the fire with a condom. And that's why Solomon says, so is he that goes into his neighbor's wife. Whoever touches her shall not be innocent. Men don't despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his soul when he's hungry. Even though if he's found, he'll have to restore sevenfold up to the substance of his entire house. But whoever commits adultery with a woman... It lacks understanding. He's stupid. He that does it destroys his own life. Notice, a man that steals bread because he's hungry, we don't despise it. We kind of understand it, even though we may make him pay for it. But the man that commits adultery destroys his life. A wound and dishonor shall he get, and his reproach will never be wiped away. For jealousy is the rage of a man, and he will not spare in the day of vengeance. He's not going to regard any ransom. He's not going to rest content, no matter how many gifts you give him. Adultery, according to Solomon, is destructive behavior, even if God does nothing. It doesn't matter that God forgives you. You've still got to watch out for that jealous husband. There are more ways to get hurt than you can count. And a condom will not stop a bullet, and it won't stop a lawsuit. But, you know, mere warnings of consequences are not enough to deter a young man or a young woman when their hormones are raging. A young person needs to be taught every day the basics of morality and wisdom. It's got to be internalized. They need to be connected to a loving family so they understand what love is and how destructive to love. is casual sex. Solomon will explain more after these words.
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If you need help in teaching Christian values to your children at home, write or call and give us the ages of your children and the call letters of this radio station. Born to Win will send you a free sample lesson from Youth Educational Adventures. Listen for the address at the close of this program or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44. And visit us online at borntowin.net.
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It's almost funny the way Solomon keeps coming back to the subject of sex and the problem of the strange woman with his boy in this introductory section of Proverbs. But again, if you think about young men and the temptations in the way of young men, and young women for that matter, you can kind of understand why he will approach this from several different angles. And he will rub it in. as many times as he can to his son. In the seventh chapter, verse 1, he says, My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with you. Keep my commandments and live, and my law as the apple of your eye. Tie them on your fingers. Write them on the table of your heart. In other words, memorize them. Say to wisdom, you are my sister, and call understanding your kinswoman. It's all very poetic, but what he's talking about, let's find all the ways we can to to write wisdom and knowledge and character and understanding into this boy to keep him out of trouble. This talks about the development of character, not merely the giving of repeated warnings about STDs and AIDS. Say to the wisdom, you are my sister, and call understanding your kinswoman, that they may keep you from the strange woman. from the stranger that flatters with her words. For at the window of my house I looked out through the casement, and I beheld among the simple ones, I discerned among the youths, a young man void of understanding. Ah yes, I know this young man well. It's a picture of all of us as we come of age, a bunch of young dolts who don't know enough sometimes to come in and out of the rain, who don't have enough wisdom to stay out of trouble by the pranks we got into on Halloween Eve and turning over toilets and painting people's cars and soaping up people's windows. Oh, yeah, the young man. The natural state of a young man is stupidity, a void of understanding. If we had any wisdom before puberty, it flies over the horizon when the hormones start to flow. Well, so Solomon continues to explain about this young dolt that he saw walking along the street. He said, I saw him passing through the street near her corner, and he went the road that went by her house in the twilight in the evening, in the black and dark night. And behold, there met him a woman with the attire of a harlot and subtle of heart. Aha, she was all dressed up fit to kill, which may be more meaningful expression than many of us might think. All dressed up and very subtle of heart. It says she is loud and stubborn and her feet won't stay in the house. Now she is without. Now she's in the streets and she lies in wait at every corner. Actually, this isn't the ordinary streetwalker or hooker. This is an adulteress. It's a woman who's got a husband who won't stay home. But she found this young fellow, and she caught him. That's an interesting expression. She grabbed him and kissed him, and with an impudent face said to him, Well, I have some stakes in the house, and I have paid my vows this day, which ceremonially meant she was clean now from her monthly period. And therefore I came out to find you, diligently to seek your face, and I have found you. You're the one. You're the one I was looking for. You're the one that's important. Oh, sure. He had really the exact qualifications he was looking for. He was male. I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, she said, and carved works. With fine linen of Egypt, I have perfumed my bed with myrrh and aloes and cinnamon. Come, let's take our fill of love till the morning. Let's solace ourselves with loves, for the good man is not at home. He's gone on a long journey and has taken a lot of money, and he'll come home way down the line. With her much fairer speech... she caused him to yield. And with a flattering of her lips, she forced him. You know, it's funny. Solomon almost speaks of this as a kind of rape. Oh, I know it's silly to speak of a woman raping a young man and all of his strength and vigor of youth. But to tell the truth, a young dolt A stupid young man who hasn't got the training, who hasn't been brought up right, who hasn't tied the commandments of his father around his neck and written his mother's law in his heart is helpless in the face of an assault like this. Oh, yeah, he can make the right choices. It's within his grasp to do so. But not many of them will. That's why in our society it's statutory rape for an older woman to take advantage of a young man. You know, this is really one of the great pieces of literature. It's a marvelous picture of the seduction of a young man. And the idiot might think that a condom would protect him from a woman like this. He needs a dad to tell him, son, a raincoat is not enough with a woman like that. He goes after her straightway like an ox goes to the slaughter, or like a fool to the correction of stocks, till a dart strikes through his liver like a bird hastes to the snare and doesn't know... that that snare is going to take away his life. The young fool doesn't realize that the stake he is playing for is his life. I think a lot of young people think that the only reason this behavior is wrong is because God says it's wrong. And God, well, he just doesn't want us to have any fun. And God, well, he really doesn't want to hurt me. He'll forgive me. I can do this, and it will be no big deal. And what they don't know is that it's not God who will hurt them. They don't know that the only reason God tells them not to do this type of thing is because it will naturally hurt them. The actions have consequences. And take this in mind, folks. Get a hold of this and fear that even if God forgives you completely, the consequences may not go away. And so Solomon continues to speak. Hearken to me now, therefore, you children. Listen to the words of my mouth. Don't let your heart incline to this woman's way. Don't go astray in her paths, for she has cast down many wounded. Yea, many strong men have been killed by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death. And every mother should sit down carefully with this and rewrite it for her daughter. Because it is just as true for the strong young women who have died because of listening to some silver-tongued devil that went out in the streets looking for them. Think about this, mothers. Think about this, dads. We'll be back after these words.
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For a free copy of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only. And request the program titled Making Life Work, number 17. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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Once again in chapter 8, Solomon returns to the theme of wisdom. And once again, he personifies wisdom as though wisdom were a woman who reaches out to us. And in fact, the contrast between wisdom and folly is illustrated by the whorish woman on the one hand and sweet wisdom on the other. Does not wisdom cry, Solomon said, and doesn't understanding put forth her voice? She stands in the top of the high places by the way in the places of the paths. She cries at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors. Everywhere you turn, you open a door and walk in, wisdom is there. You pass by a street corner and wisdom is there. Wisdom is just as accessible as the street walker. It's all a matter of the choices that we make. Unto you, wisdom says, O men I call, and my voice is to the sons of men. O you simple, understand wisdom, and you fools, be of an understanding heart. You know, foolishness is not genetic. These people, you see, who seem to be fools weren't born that way. Just because you start out stupid, too, doesn't mean you have to stay that way. You have a choice. And the book of Proverbs is just filled with instances of law and principle, instruction and wisdom that can help you make choices that are the choices of the wise instead of the choices of the stupid. Here, says wisdom, I will speak of excellent things, and the opening of my lips shall be right things. My mouth shall speak truth. Wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are in righteousness, and there is nothing twisted or perverse in them. They are all plain to him that understands, and right to them that find knowledge. Now listen, this is important to understand. Wisdom is not esoteric. It's not hidden off somewhere. It's not in the hidden wisdom of the East. You don't have to climb up a mountain and find a guru somewhere to get wisdom. Wisdom is plain. It is right. It is straightforward. It is clear. And it's everywhere. It's not hidden. It all depends on whether you've got any kind of standards to make the choices you make. And we do. We have the law of God. Receive my instruction, wisdom says. Forget about silver. Get knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies. And all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it. Now, you know, this is probably hard to accept. But the truth is that wealth, without the wisdom to go with it, is destructive. On the other hand, wisdom leads naturally to whatever wealth is good for us. I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and I find out the knowledge of witty inventions. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil and pride and arrogancy in the evil way. The perverse mouth, these things I hate. Mind you, it's wisdom speaking. She hates these things. That means that these attitudes are the enemy of wisdom. And wisdom will not dwell in the man who thinks this way. What way? Well, of evil and pride and arrogance, the evil way and the twisted and perverted mouth. You won't find wisdom in these men. Such men are not wise, they are fools, and sooner or later that will become apparent to the whole world. Wisdom then says, counsel is mine. Sound wisdom is mine. I am understanding. I have strength. By me, kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me, princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth. Man, do you realize what that's saying? That's saying that wisdom lies at the heart of all of the seats of power. Oh, to be sure, evil will oftentimes be there as well. But the real power, the ones who will ultimately succeed, the great leaders, all rule by wisdom. And wisdom says, I love them that love me, and those that seek me early shall find me. You know, you do have to want it. Wisdom says, I love them that love me. Do you love wisdom? Is it something you want? Is it something that when you get up in the morning, you think, I need to go look for some wisdom for the day, because this is where it comes from. It's not hard to find, but you do have to look. Riches and honor are with me, yea, durable, lasting riches, along with righteousness. My fruit's better than gold. It's better than fine gold. My revenue is better than silver. Now, why do you think this is? Well, because, as wisdom says, my way and my way of doing things will actually lead to riches and honor and righteousness, so that you have the knowledge and the ability to use those good things, and they won't destroy you. Huh, so you want to be rich? Wisdom has just told you the way. It is by acquiring wisdom. Not knowledge. but knowledge coupled with values, knowledge coupled with a sense of right and wrong. For knowledge without an idea of what is right and what is wrong is only going to get you and all the people around you in a lot of trouble. Just how great is wisdom, after all? Well, in verse 22, Solomon continues to talk about wisdom. Actually, wisdom speaks personified and says, The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning before the earth was. In other words, before God ever turned a finger to create anything physical, wisdom was with Him. Knowledge... the idea of right and wrong, the set of values that would carry on throughout all eternity. Wisdom was with God from the beginning before it started. When there were no depths, I was brought forth. When there were no fountains abounding with water, before the mountains were settled and before the hills was I brought forth. Wisdom was first. After that came the rest. Wisdom did not come from the creation. It came before the creation. God possessed wisdom, and that wisdom led to what we see. While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world, when he prepared the heavens, I was there. When he set a compass upon the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above, when he strengthened the fountains of the deep. when he gave the sea his decree that the waters will stay in this area and go nowhere else, when he appointed the foundations of the earth, I was with him like one brought up with him. I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him, rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth, and my delights were with the sons of men. What a charming piece of poetry, as it presents wisdom frolicking before God. God enjoying wisdom, wisdom enjoying God, and the two of them together actually laying the foundations of the earth. Now listen to me, you children, for blessed are they that keep my ways. Get instruction, be wise, and don't refuse it. Blessed is the man that hears me and watches daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. This is a man who opens his Bible, reads his Bible, thinks about what he reads, and tries to grasp all the wisdom that is out there before him. For wisdom says, whoever finds me finds life. and shall obtain favor of the Lord. But he that sins against me wrongs his own soul, and they that hate me love death.
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Until next time, this is Ronald Dart and wisdom is for winners. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1-888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
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Stay in touch with the new Born to Win with Ronald L. Dart app. This app has all of your favorite Ronald L. Dart radio messages, sermons, articles, and it even has a digital Bible. Simply search on the iOS or Android app store to download it for free today.
Years ago, I used to enjoy going up on internet forums and discussing religion there. They had any number of them divided up by category. I tended to hang out on the Christian forums. What was fascinating to me, and something I did not really understand, was the degree of hostility expressed on Christian forums. It seemed a good thing that these people were separated by the anonymity of the forum. If they had been in the same room, they might have come to blows. And I wondered, What generates so much hostility in some people of faith? Why is it that, when faced with a different belief, people don’t adopt one of two rational responses: indifference, or curiosity.
Indifference—when I encounter someone with an off-the-wall religious idea, I can tell quickly enough whether there is likely to be any merit there or not. If the answer is not, I toss it in the wastebasket or click my mouse and go somewhere else. If I am face-to-face with an adverse person, I have a stock reply. You may be right. I’ll give that some thought.
And then I change the subject. Perhaps to the weather. Does that seem disingenuous? Not if you maintain an awareness that even you don’t have all the answers. And why get angry or hostile about it. That goes nowhere.
Curiosity—if I think there is merit, I want to know more, and so I pursue the matter. I may even pursue the matter when I disagree. If the person advancing the idea seems reasonable, well informed, intelligent, well then reason demands that I give him a hearing and try to understand him, even when I disagree with him. I discovered C.S. Lewis a little late in life, and I found that I sometimes disagreed with the man. This would not dismay Lewis in the least. But I never had any difficulty understanding why I disagreed because I tried to understand his point. When you think about it, what’s the point in only reading people you agree with?
Now, realizing that indifference and curiosity are reasonable responses, I wondered why some people found a third response—anger.
In this episode, we delve into practical financial advice rooted in biblical teachings. Ronald Dart unpacks Solomon's guidance on avoiding debt, embracing diligence, and the vital lesson of self-reliance. Learn how to navigate life's temptations and make prudent decisions that lead to long-term success and stability.
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The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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There are a lot of ways to mess up your life. It's frightening how easy it is, how one small mistake can carry consequences that last a lifetime. I used to know a fellow. He was about 30 at the time. Good-looking, drop-dead handsome. I mean, the girls really would have been chasing him. But for one thing, he was crippled. He dragged one leg behind him most of the time, and one of his arms didn't work right. I thought maybe he had had polio, but it turned out that what had happened is when he was a kid, one day he was showing off, and he dived into the pool in the shallow end and banged his head on the bottom of the pool. And the result was the crippling effect that I saw. He was lucky, I guess, that he didn't spend the remainder of his life in a wheelchair. You know, there's no way to avoid every mistake, and accidents will happen from time to time. But what happened in his case was a moment of reckless behavior. that wisdom would have kept him from, would have prevented, would have headed off some way along the line. Now, you know, kids don't have much wisdom. And so somebody else has got to have it for them. And some level of discipline has got to be applied to children so that they will learn not to run on the edges of pools, just to impress upon their minds that there are things they can do that can hurt them. because they can't see out there far enough like you and I can, and they don't know how much danger there really is. But if you can teach wisdom to a child early in life and begin to implant some of these lessons, it can make an enormous difference. But the problem is, most people assume that knowledge is wisdom, and it's not. Mere knowledge will not do the job. And the reason is very simple. Some things are so tempting that just knowing better won't keep you out of it. What you've got to have is wisdom. And wisdom is more than knowledge. Wisdom includes a sense of right and wrong, a set of values to go with knowledge that puts it together and helps you make the right kind of decisions in your life. King Solomon put it this way. In chapter 5, verse 1, he said, Pay attention. Bend your ear to my understanding, that you may regard discretion, and that your lips may keep knowledge. For the lips of a strange woman drop like a honeycomb. Her mouth is smoother than oil, but her end is as bitter as wormwood. It's as sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death. Her steps take hold on hell. Do you understand what he's saying? He's saying, you better pay attention to me. Gain wisdom. For here is something that's going to be sweet like a honeycomb and smoother than oil. And the end of it, it's going to kill you. Wisdom has the ability to see beyond the moment, to know that some things are right and some things are wrong intrinsically. You know, when we're little kids and Dad tells us to do something, our favorite question is, well, why, Daddy? And Dad's favorite response, well, because I said so. I heard that more times when I was a kid than I'd like to think about, because I said so. I guess I heard it so many times because I asked why so many times. And you know, because I said so has to be good enough for us at certain times in our lives, but it won't carry you all the way. At some time, you have to come to the realization that Dad said no for a reason other than his own convenience. It wasn't just because your dad didn't like to see you running on the edge of the pool that he told you to stop it. So when you ask him why, he just doesn't want to take the time to say, because I'm tired of watching you risk your neck, you little twerp. Stop it. Solomon emphasized the power of the temptation. To help us understand the importance of wisdom and discretion and foresight, we need to understand the end from the beginning. And the problem with kids is that you just can't see very far. And as kids, we depend on people who can. Solomon chooses the strange woman only because she serves as a good example of all the things out there waiting, lurking to destroy your life. And there are more of them than we like to think about. Not only is this woman powerful, and not only is the end of fooling around with her destructive, she's deceptive. Solomon said in verse 6, Lest you should ponder the path of life, her ways are movable so that you cannot know them. She's tricky. And life is tricky. Temptation of all kinds are tricky. And they're sweet. And they're smooth. And you just have a hard time really getting and understanding which of the paths that lay before you lead to life because some of them look so good. Hear me now, therefore, you children, said Solomon, and don't depart from the words of my mouth. Remove your way far from this woman, the strange woman, and don't come near the door of her house. Don't even go down that street. lest you give your honor to others and your years to the cruel, lest strangers be filled with your wealth and your labors in the house of a stranger, and you mourn at the last when your flesh and your body are consumed and say, How have I hated instruction? How has my heart despised reproof? Why haven't I obeyed the voice of my teachers? Why didn't I listen to them that instructed me? Boy, this is a painful song, and it's one we have all sung at one time or another. How could I have been so stupid? It is all so easy to see after the fact. You know, when you're sitting in a doctor's waiting room and he calls you into the office and sits you down and says, Bob, I'm sorry, but your test came back, you're HIV positive. Oh, yeah, you slap your forehead then, and then at that time you're going to say to yourself, Bob, How was it I couldn't listen? How could I have imagined that I could get away with this? And you mourn at the last when your flesh and your body are consumed. Or when you're slapped with a lawsuit for sexual harassment and strangers are filled with your wealth and all your labors go into the house of a stranger. Oh, yeah. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have been so foolish? Where was the wisdom when I needed it? Why didn't I follow God's instructions? Why didn't I go in the right way? It is easy to see it then, isn't it? And don't we all know it? You know, there is always an alternative to evil. Solomon draws a really nice metaphor for faithfulness to your wife or faithfulness to your husband. In verse 15, he said, drink waters out of your own cistern and running waters out of your own well. Don't let your fountains be dispersed abroad in rivers of waters in the street. Don't take your resources and pour them out in the street. Let them be only your own and not a stranger's with you. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of your youth. Let her be as the loving hind in the pleasant row. Let her breast satisfy you at all times and be you always ravished with her love. You know, the love of one man for one woman and one woman for one man is really a beautiful thing. the closeness, the love, the warmth, the being able to depend upon each other in times that are good and times that are hard, of knowing that when you're in the hospital and lying up there racked with pain, that there will be somebody somewhere who cares enough to come in and wipe your brow and sit beside you and hold your hand. One of the most tragic results of following the strange woman, condom or no condom, is that it takes this away from you. You can't have that kind of relationship with one woman when you're sharing it with another. And the same thing goes for women with men. And why will you, Solomon asked my son, be ravished with a strange woman and embrace the bosom of a stranger? For the ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his goings. His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself. He'll be held with the cords of his sins. He shall die without instruction, and the greatness of his folly he will go astray. What Solomon is saying is it's so much better to learn this lesson beforehand and so much cheaper. Solomon will change the subject a little, and we'll talk about that right after these words.
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Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44.
SPEAKER 03 :
Wisdom is not that hard to come by. In fact, through experience, the kind of wisdom that comes from experience will catch up with you whether you like it or not. But sometimes that's a pretty expensive way to get wisdom. It's a whole lot better to learn from someone else's experience. Well, in the sixth chapter of Proverbs, Solomon gives us right off the bat two really important principles that could have an enormous amount to do with your net worth not that many years from now. In chapter 6, verse 1, he says, My son, if you be surety for your friend, if you have stricken your hand with a stranger. What's that? Well, to be surety for your friend would be something like to co-sign on a note with your friend. And to strike your hand is like, well, it's like signing, taking your hand and signing a loan document. And, of course, you're borrowing money from this bank. And you may think, well, he's your friendly banker and you know him. He's Bob or John or Phil. But you could go back there a month from now, and Phil has gone on to another job, and you're dealing with a whole different person in that job. If you go in and sign a note with a bank, you have stricken your hand with a stranger. You're snared, he says, with the words of your mouth. You're taken by the words. You've made a promise. You have to do it. Do this now, my son, and deliver yourself. When you are coming to the hand of your friend like this, you're actually in his power. in a way. You go and humble yourself and make sure that your friend makes that payment. Don't give sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. Get yourself out of that like a deer gets away from the hand of a hunter, or a quail gets away from the guy with the double-barreled shotgun. Well, no, Solomon didn't use the expression double-barreled shotgun, but you know what I mean. Whatever you do, says Solomon, don't make yourself responsible for someone else's debt. If he can't afford it himself, let him do without. Now, a lot of people have gone contrary to that advice to their own sorrow and to their own hurt. You know, if I were giving advice to a group of young people today... I wouldn't tell them to never borrow money. That would be asking a little too much in our world. But I would tell them to only borrow for two things. Two things and two things only. They are basic housing and essential transportation. Now, the reason I think this is good advice is easy enough. You have to have a place to live, and you and your young bride, you're out there getting your life started together. If you rent a house, you're paying interest on the house, and you might just as well, if you can manage the down payment, be paying that interest against your own principal so that eventually you do own the house. That's easy to understand, isn't it? You are going to have to pay interest anyway, so you might as well pay it directly instead of through a middleman and let him make a profit on the whole deal. Second, you have to have a way to get to work. If you don't, if you have public transportation, don't even think about a car. But nowadays, most places in this country, you can forget about working if you don't have a car to get to work. But you don't need a new Firebird that goes 150 miles an hour to get to work. A jalopy will get you to work. My advice to kids is always go out and buy a cheap, ugly car with good tires and good brakes. And if that embarrasses you a little bit, get yourself a bumper sticker that says, don't laugh, it's paid for. And all your friends that are driving around their shiny new cars and making payments on them, you can laugh at them and say, ha, you're making those payments my car's paid for. The payments I'm making, I make to myself. There is a time, by the way, when you can buy a new car. That's when you can afford to pay cash for it. Now, I know that runs counter to what a lot of people think, but the truth is you'll come out way ahead of the game if you'll just follow that simple advice. Because when you have the cash, you've actually managed to save up, and you've put together $14,000, $15,000 in real hard cash in the bank. You're going to think a long time before you go down and you plunk that down all at once on a brand-new Belch Fire 8 special, right? Something about cash in the hand that conveys its own kind of wisdom. And another piece of advice, never finance consumer goods like clothes, CD players, and television sets. Save up and buy cash. Now, I'll give you a little exercise. I'm not going to do it for you. I'll let you do it for yourself. You know that you've got credit cards, and you know that those credit cards have spending limits, and you know that all you have to do every month is pay off a certain part of that debt that you have on the card, and if you pay off part of it, then you can spend that the next month and run your spending limit right back up. Right? Right. Now, let's suppose here you are. You're 18, 19, 20 years old, and you, the first month, you and your bride get a new place and You take your credit card down and charge it all up, and you get your maximum limit, say $2,000 that you can borrow on your credit card, and you buy some things you need to have for your little house. You get yourself a television set so you won't be bored in the evening. Think about that one for just a minute. You get yourself a CD player. You buy yourself some fancy expensive clothes and so forth. Wham, before you know it, $2,000 are gone. Next month, you drag out the checkbook when your bill comes in for the credit card, and you pay off the minimum that you have to pay. And that gives you that much money to charge against your credit card the next month, right? And so you go out and buy something else, keeping it up there. Now, just imagine that you kept your credit card right at the upper limit for the next 40 years, okay? Sit down with your pencil and piece of paper or your handy calculator, because I don't think very many of us remember the multiplication tables anymore, and sit down and work out for yourself, okay? on that original $2,000 loan that you made, how much interest do you pay at your credit card rate of interest over 40 years? And realize something. From that first year forward... Everything you have done has been done on a cash basis. For 39 years, you paid cash for everything. And you kept paying interest on that first $2,000 that you borrowed. Because effectively, that's what's happened here. And for the privilege of having all that stuff... A few months earlier than you could have if you just made the payments to yourself and then went out and bought them and paid cash for them. For the privilege of having that stuff a few months early, look at how much money you have paid out on $2,000 over a 40-year period of time. Can you think of anything that you could do with that much money? Solomon's not through giving advice in this area. In verse 6, he says this, Go to the ant, you sluggard, consider her ways and be wise, who having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provides her meat in the summer and gathers her food in the harvest. Now, right here is one of the great rules of life, and it is not very well understood. What would you say is the lesson that Solomon is trying to teach us with the parable of the ant? Go to the ant, you lazy lout. Consider her ways and be wise. She doesn't have any guide, overseer, or ruler, and yet she does her work. What is it? Zeal? Diligence? Well, not exactly. The lesson of the parable is that the ant is able to work without a supervisor, to be a self-starter. Now, with the ant, this is not a matter of character. It's a matter of genes. It's written into the ant's very being. But now imagine the value of writing this idea into your children's character. Let's see if we can understand why this is so. Imagine for a moment that you've got a job working in a factory manufacturing. I'd like to come up with a better name for it, but let's call them widgets. That's what everybody who uses illustrations like this calls them. And you make these widgets, and the widgets sell for $10 apiece. You can make so many widgets in a day, and as a consequence, you can earn so much money. Now, if you were reliable enough to come to work, set up your machinery, do all this stuff yourself, and carry it out and put it all out and get it ready for mailing and everything, and didn't need a supervisor, Why, you could have, let's say, a dollar each out of all the widgets you could make in a day, and that would make you a very good living. A hundred bucks a day, shall we say. Really good. But on the other hand, supposing you can't work like that. Supposing you've got to have a supervisor. Somebody's got to organize the work schedule. Somebody's got to solve your problems for you. Somebody to see to it that you're at work on time. Somebody to get you back from breaks on time instead of letting you linger at the coffee pot and so forth. Well, you see, if you have to have a supervisor, the $100 a day that you might have been going to make, some of that money is going to have to be given to the supervisor because the output isn't any higher, right? We're only doing so many widgets a day, right? And so consequently, if you have to have help to do that, well, then you've got to give up some of what you make. One of the reasons why we don't have any more than we do is because we have to share so much of what we produce with the people who help us produce it. So if you can teach your children early in life to do the right thing without being told, To be diligent in their work without having to have somebody make them go do it. To get up in the morning without having to have somebody kick them out of bed. You have put them a long way down the road to being wealthy. Because in the long run, if you can work without a guide or an overseer or a ruler, you'd only be working in a factory. You need to be working for yourself.
SPEAKER 02 :
in your own business. For a free copy of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only and request the program titled Making Life Work, number 16. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791 or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44 and tell us the call letters of this radio station. How long will you sleep, you lazy lout?
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When will you get out of bed, asks Solomon. Well, let me sleep a little longer, you say, a little slumber. Let me fold my hands and snooze a bit longer. And Solomon says, so your poverty will come like a traveling man and your want like an armed man. Cause and effect, folks. Laziness, sleeping a little too long, loving slumber leads to poverty. Now, this isn't to say we don't need sleep. It's a follow-on to the parable of the ant that says we've got to be self-starters. We don't need to have somebody else wake us up and get us to work, not if we're going to be successful and fairly well-to-do. Well, I'm sorry, but that's the way of life. You've got to be able to get yourself moving. And unless you somehow teach your children that, well, you're neglecting your duty as a parent. A naughty person, Solomon continues, a wicked man. He walks with a twisted mouth. He doesn't just tell you the truth. He puts a spin on it. He's got to be clever in the way he puts things. He winks with his eye. He speaks with his feet. He teaches with his fingers. He's got all kinds of secret signs and symbols and movements. He's a fidgety kind of guy, these deceivers. Perverseness is in his heart. He devises mischief continually, sows discord. Therefore, his calamity will come suddenly. Suddenly, he will be broken without remedy. I think this is here to tell us to get away from people like that. Don't get sucked in by them, because they really are smooth oftentimes, and they can offer you this fine little dinner. You know, they say something about swindlers and con men. The saying is, you can't con an honest man. And the fact is that this type of man that's going out there looking for somebody to swindle is looking for someone who himself is trying to pull a fast one, trying to get away with something. And so he comes in and uses our own little criminal instincts against us, and we learn the hard way. Now, you may be under the impression that God loves everybody and everything. Well, it's not quite true. There are some things that God hates. In fact, there are some of them that he says are an absolute abomination to him. Now, I don't know about you, but it seems to me it would be a good idea that if there is something that God hates, that we knew what that was. Well, Solomon is kind to us. He gives us a list. These six things, he says, does the Lord hate. Yea, seven are an abomination to him. Absolutely despicable. Number one, a proud look. Second, a lying tongue. Three, hands that shed innocent blood. Four, a heart that devises wicked imaginations. Five, feet that be swift in running to mischief. Six, a false witness that speaks lies. And seven, he that sows discord among brethren. Well, you've got some attitudes here and some things that people do. And what's disturbing? You know, you always hear these people say, well, you love the sinner, but you hate the sin. Well, unfortunately, we get down to the fact that God also hates some sinners, I guess, because that's the way it's listed. First of all, he talks about the things sinners do, proud look, lying tongue, and so forth. But then he says, first of all, he said he hates a lying tongue. Then he comes back around to it and says he also hates the false witness that speaks lies. That's disturbing. And finally, he hates the man that sows discord among brethren. Now, I know that we could defend ourselves by saying, well, I was just telling the truth. But, you know, there is a time when telling the truth to somebody is going to separate chief friends and will actually do no good. I don't think we can justify ourselves in splitting up people or causing discord between people with the excuse, well, what I was doing, it was just the truth, and I guess people need to know the truth. I think the lesson in these six things, the seven that God hates, is pretty important. It is possible to get on the wrong side of God, and you do it with having a proud and haughty look about you. You do it by having a lying tongue. You do it by giving testimony that might lead to the shedding of innocent blood. You do it by devising wicked imaginations in your heart, so you ought to really give attention to your fantasies. You do it with feet that are in a hurry to run into some kind of mischief. And then the speaking of lies and the sowing of discord among brethren. These things are really important to God, and we ought to regulate our lives taking them into account. Solomon continues, My son, keep your father's commandment, and don't forsake the law of your mother. Tie them upon your heart. Tie them around your neck. When you go, it shall lead you. When you sleep, it shall keep you. And when you wake up, it will talk with you. You got these things in your mind, and they're so deeply ingrained in you that when you wake up in the morning, they come to mind. Folks, that's a recipe for staying out of trouble. For the commandment is a lamp, and the law is a light, and the reproof of instruction is the way of life. Only a loser looks at the commandments of God as shackles and the law as chains. The winners, well, the winners see them as a light in a dark place. Until next time, this is Ronald Dart.
SPEAKER 02 :
And you were born to win. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1-877-7000.
SPEAKER 01 :
1-888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net Christian Educational Ministries is happy to announce a new full-color Born to Win monthly newsletter with articles and free offers from Ronald L. Dart. Call us today at 1-888-BIBLE44 to sign up or visit us at borntowin.net
This episode takes listeners on a journey through Solomon’s teachings on wisdom and financial prudence. The conversation begins with a gripping personal story that sets the stage to explore the distinctions between knowledge and wisdom. Listeners learn about the devastating consequences of lacking discretion and the vital need to navigate life with an understanding that goes beyond the superficial. Practical advice for financial stewardship, especially for the young, is discussed as Solomon offers timeless wisdom on borrowing and managing resources. With an engaging narrative on the parable of the ant, the discussion underscores the value of diligence and self-motivation. The episode also addresses the spiritual dimension of wisdom, cautioning against traits detested by God, such as a lying tongue and sowing discord. Through these lessons, the episode inspires listeners to seek a life governed by wisdom, illuminating their path with prudence and clarity.
SPEAKER 01 :
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
SPEAKER 02 :
There are a lot of ways to mess up your life. It's frightening how easy it is, how one small mistake can carry consequences that last a lifetime. I used to know a fellow. He was about 30 at the time. Good-looking, drop-dead handsome. I mean, the girls really would have been chasing him. But for one thing, he was crippled. He dragged one leg behind him most of the time, and one of his arms didn't work right. I thought maybe he had had polio, but it turned out that what had happened is when he was a kid, one day he was showing off, and he dived into the pool in the shallow end and banged his head on the bottom of the pool. And the result was the crippling effect that I saw. He was lucky, I guess, that he didn't spend the remainder of his life in a wheelchair. You know, there's no way to avoid every mistake, and accidents will happen from time to time. But what happened in his case was a moment of reckless behavior. that wisdom would have kept him from, would have prevented, would have headed off some way along the line. Now, you know, kids don't have much wisdom. And so somebody else has got to have it for them. And some level of discipline has got to be applied to children so that they will learn not to run on the edges of pools, just to impress upon their minds that there are things they can do that can hurt them. because they can't see out there far enough like you and I can, and they don't know how much danger there really is. But if you can teach wisdom to a child early in life and begin to implant some of these lessons, it can make an enormous difference. But the problem is, most people assume that knowledge is wisdom, and it's not. Mere knowledge will not do the job. And the reason is very simple. Some things are so tempting that just knowing better won't keep you out of it. What you've got to have is wisdom. And wisdom is more than knowledge. Wisdom includes a sense of right and wrong, a set of values to go with knowledge that puts it together and helps you make the right kind of decisions in your life. King Solomon put it this way. In chapter 5, verse 1, he said, Pay attention. Bend your ear to my understanding that you may regard discretion and that your lips may keep knowledge. For the lips of a strange woman drop like a honeycomb. Her mouth is smoother than oil, but her end is as bitter as wormwood. It's as sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death. Her steps take hold on hell. Do you understand what he's saying? He's saying, you better pay attention to me. Gain wisdom. For here is something that's going to be sweet like a honeycomb and smoother than oil. And the end of it, it's going to kill you. Wisdom has the ability to see beyond the moment, to know that some things are right and some things are wrong intrinsically. You know, when we're little kids and Dad tells us to do something, our favorite question is, well, why, Daddy? And Dad's favorite response, well, because I said so. I heard that more times when I was a kid than I'd like to think about, because I said so. I guess I heard it so many times because I asked why so many times. And you know, because I said so has to be good enough for us at certain times in our lives, but it won't carry you all the way. At some time, you have to come to the realization that Dad said no for a reason other than his own convenience. It wasn't just because your dad didn't like to see you running on the edge of the pool that he told you to stop it. So when you ask him why, he just doesn't want to take the time to say, because I'm tired of watching you risk your neck, you little twerp. Stop it. Solomon emphasized the power of the temptation. To help us understand the importance of wisdom and discretion and foresight, we need to understand the end from the beginning. And the problem with kids is that you just can't see very far. And as kids, we depend on people who can. Solomon chooses the strange woman only because she serves as a good example of all the things out there waiting, lurking to destroy your life. And there are more of them than we like to think about. Not only is this woman powerful, and not only is the end of fooling around with her destructive, she's deceptive. Solomon said in verse 6, "'Lest you should ponder the path of life. Her ways are movable, so that you cannot know them.'" She's tricky. And life is tricky. Temptation of all kinds are tricky. And they're sweet, and they're smooth. And you just have a hard time really getting and understanding which of the paths that lay before you lead to life because some of them look so good. Hear me now, therefore, you children, said Solomon, and don't depart from the words of my mouth. Remove your way far from this woman, the strange woman, and don't come near the door of her house. Don't even go down that street. lest you give your honor to others and your years to the cruel, lest strangers be filled with your wealth and your labors in the house of a stranger, and you mourn at the last when your flesh and your body are consumed and say, How have I hated instruction? How has my heart despised reproof? Why haven't I obeyed the voice of my teachers? Why didn't I listen to them that instructed me? Boy, this is a painful song, and it's one we have all sung at one time or another. How could I have been so stupid? It is all so easy to see after the fact. You know, when you're sitting in a doctor's waiting room and he calls you into the office and sits you down and says, Bob, I'm sorry, but your test came back, you're HIV positive. Oh, yeah, you slap your forehead then, and then at that time you're going to say to yourself, Bob, How was it I couldn't listen? How could I have imagined that I could get away with this? And you mourn at the last when your flesh and your body are consumed. Or when you're slapped with a lawsuit for sexual harassment and strangers are filled with your wealth and all your labors go into the house of a stranger. Oh, yeah. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have been so foolish? Where was the wisdom when I needed it? Why didn't I follow God's instructions? Why didn't I go in the right way? It is easy to see it then, isn't it? And don't we all know it? You know, there is always an alternative to evil. Solomon draws a really nice metaphor for faithfulness to your wife or faithfulness to your husband. In verse 15, he said, drink waters out of your own cistern and running waters out of your own well. Don't let your fountains be dispersed abroad in rivers of waters in the street. Don't take your resources and pour them out in the street. Let them be only your own and not a stranger's with you. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of your youth. Let her be as the loving hind in the pleasant row. Let her breast satisfy you at all times and be you always ravished with her love. You know, the love of one man for one woman and one woman for one man is really a beautiful thing. the closeness, the love, the warmth, the being able to depend upon each other in times that are good and times that are hard, of knowing that when you're in the hospital and lying up there racked with pain, that there will be somebody somewhere who cares enough to come in and wipe your brow and sit beside you and hold your hand. One of the most tragic results of following the strange woman, condom or no condom, is that it takes this away from you. You can't have that kind of relationship with one woman when you're sharing it with another. And the same thing goes for women with men. And why will you, Solomon asked my son, be ravished with a strange woman and embrace the bosom of a stranger? For the ways of a man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his goings. His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself. He'll be held with the cords of his sins. He shall die without instruction, and the greatness of his folly, he will go astray. What Solomon is saying is it's so much better to learn this lesson beforehand, and so much cheaper. Solomon will change the subject a little, and we'll talk about that right after these words.
SPEAKER 01 :
Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44.
SPEAKER 02 :
Wisdom is not that hard to come by. In fact, through experience, the kind of wisdom that comes from experience will catch up with you whether you like it or not. But sometimes that's a pretty expensive way to get wisdom. It's a whole lot better to learn from someone else's experience. Well, in the sixth chapter of Proverbs, Solomon gives us right off the bat two really important principles that could have an enormous amount to do with your net worth not that many years from now. In chapter 6, verse 1, he says, My son, if you be surety for your friend, if you have stricken your hand with a stranger. What's that? Well, to be surety for your friend would be something like to co-sign on a note with your friend. And to strike your hand is like, well, it's like signing, taking your hand and signing a loan document. And, of course, you're borrowing money from this bank. And you may think, well, he's your friendly banker, and you know him. He's Bob or John or Phil. But you could go back there a month from now, and Phil has gone on to another job, and you're dealing with a whole different person in that job. If you go in and sign a note with a bank, you have stricken your hand with a stranger. You're snared, he says, with the words of your mouth. You're taken by the words. You've made a promise. You have to do it. Do this now, my son, and deliver yourself. When you are coming to the hand of your friend like this, you're actually in his power. in a way. You go and humble yourself and make sure that your friend makes that payment. Don't give sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. Get yourself out of that like a deer gets away from the hand of a hunter, or a quail gets away from the guy with the double-barreled shotgun. Well, no, Solomon didn't use the expression double-barreled shotgun, but you know what I mean. Whatever you do, says Solomon, don't make yourself responsible for someone else's debt. If he can't afford it himself, let him do without. Now, a lot of people have gone contrary to that advice to their own sorrow and to their own hurt. You know, if I were giving advice to a group of young people today... I wouldn't tell them to never borrow money. That would be asking a little too much in our world. But I would tell them to only borrow for two things. Two things and two things only. They are basic housing and essential transportation. Now, the reason I think this is good advice is easy enough. You have to have a place to live, and you and your young bride, you're out there getting your life started together. If you rent a house, you're paying interest on the house, and you might just as well, if you can manage the down payment, be paying that interest against your own principal so that eventually you do own the house. That's easy to understand, isn't it? You are going to have to pay interest anyway, so you might as well pay it directly instead of through a middleman and let him make a profit on the whole deal. Second, you have to have a way to get to work. If you don't, if you have public transportation, don't even think about a car. But nowadays, most places in this country, you can forget about working if you don't have a car to get to work. But you don't need a new Firebird that goes 150 miles an hour to get to work. A jalopy will get you to work. My advice to kids is always go out and buy a cheap, ugly car with good tires and good brakes. And if that embarrasses you a little bit, get yourself a bumper sticker that says, don't laugh, it's paid for. And all your friends that are driving around their shiny new cars and making payments on them, you can laugh at them and say, ha, you're making those payments my car's paid for. The payments I'm making, I make to myself. There is a time, by the way, when you can buy a new car. That's when you can afford to pay cash for it. Now, I know that runs counter to what a lot of people think, but the truth is you'll come out way ahead of the game if you'll just follow that simple advice. Because when you have the cash, you've actually managed to save up, and you've put together $14,000, $15,000 in real hard cash in the bank. You're going to think a long time before you go down and you plunk that down all at once on a brand-new Belch Fire 8 special, right? Something about cash in the hand that conveys its own kind of wisdom. And another piece of advice, never finance consumer goods like clothes, CD players, and television sets. Save up and buy cash. Now, I'll give you a little exercise. I'm not going to do it for you. I'll let you do it for yourself. You know that you've got credit cards, and you know that those credit cards have spending limits, and you know that all you have to do every month is pay off a certain part of that debt that you have on the card, and if you pay off part of it, then you can spend that the next month and run your spending limit right back up. Right? Right. Now, let's suppose here you are. You're 18, 19, 20 years old, and you, the first month, you and your bride get a new place and You take your credit card down and charge it all up, and you get your maximum limit, say $2,000 that you can borrow on your credit card, and you buy some things you need to have for your little house. You get yourself a television set so you won't be bored in the evening. Think about that one for just a minute. You get yourself a CD player. You buy yourself some fancy expensive clothes and so forth. Wham, before you know it, $2,000 are gone. Next month, you drag out the checkbook when your bill comes in for the credit card, and you pay off the minimum that you have to pay. And that gives you that much money to charge against your credit card the next month, right? And so you go out and buy something else, keeping it up there. Now, just imagine that you kept your credit card right at the upper limit for the next 40 years, okay? Sit down with your pencil and piece of paper or your handy calculator, because I don't think very many of us remember the multiplication tables anymore, and sit down and work out for yourself, okay? on that original $2,000 loan that you made, how much interest do you pay at your credit card rate of interest over 40 years? And realize something. From that first year forward, Everything you have done has been done on a cash basis. For 39 years, you paid cash for everything. And you kept paying interest on that first $2,000 that you borrowed. Because effectively, that's what's happened here. And for the privilege of having all that stuff... A few months earlier than you could have if you just made the payments to yourself and then went out and bought them and paid cash for them. For the privilege of having that stuff a few months early, look at how much money you have paid out on $2,000 over a 40-year period of time. Can you think of anything that you could do with that much money? Solomon's not through giving advice in this area. In verse 6, he says this, Go to the ant, you sluggard, consider her ways and be wise, who having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provides her meat in the summer and gathers her food in the harvest. Now, right here is one of the great rules of life, and it is not very well understood. What would you say is the lesson that Solomon is trying to teach us with the parable of the ant? Go to the ant, you lazy lout. Consider her ways and be wise. She doesn't have any guide, overseer, or ruler, and yet she does her work. What is it? Zeal? Diligence? Well, not exactly. The lesson of the parable is that the ant is able to work without a supervisor, to be a self-starter. Now, with the ant, this is not a matter of character. It's a matter of genes. It's written into the ant's very being. But now imagine the value of writing this idea into your children's character. Let's see if we can understand why this is so. Imagine for a moment that you've got a job working in a factory manufacturing. I'd like to come up with a better name for it, but let's call them widgets. That's what everybody who uses illustrations like this calls them. And you make these widgets, and the widgets sell for $10 apiece. You can make so many widgets in a day, and as a consequence, you can earn so much money. Now, if you were reliable enough to come to work, set up your machinery, do all this stuff yourself, and carry it out and put it all out and get it ready for mailing and everything, and didn't need a supervisor, Why, you could have, let's say, a dollar each out of all the widgets you could make in a day, and that would make you a very good living. A hundred bucks a day, shall we say. Really good. But on the other hand, supposing you can't work like that. Supposing you've got to have a supervisor. Somebody's got to organize the work schedule. Somebody's got to solve your problems for you. Somebody to see to it that you're at work on time. Somebody to get you back from breaks on time instead of letting you linger at the coffee pot and so forth. Well, you see, if you have to have a supervisor, the $100 a day that you might have been going to make, some of that money is going to have to be given to the supervisor because the output isn't any higher, right? We're only doing so many widgets a day, right? And so consequently, if you have to have help to do that, well, then you've got to give up some of what you make. One of the reasons why we don't have any more than we do is because we have to share so much of what we produce with the people who help us produce it. So if you can teach your children early in life to do the right thing without being told, To be diligent in their work without having to have somebody make them go do it. To get up in the morning without having to have somebody kick them out of bed. You have put them a long way down the road to being wealthy. Because in the long run, if you can work without a guide or an overseer or a ruler, you'd only be working in a factory. You need to be working for yourself.
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in your own business. And tell us the call letters of this radio station. How long will you sleep, you lazy lout?
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When will you get out of bed, asks Solomon. Well, let me sleep a little longer, you say, a little slumber. Let me fold my hands and snooze a bit longer. And Solomon says, so your poverty will come like a traveling man and your want like an armed man. Cause and effect, folks. Laziness, sleeping a little too long, loving slumber leads to poverty. Now, this isn't to say we don't need sleep. It's a follow-on to the parable of the ant that says we've got to be self-starters. We don't need to have somebody else wake us up and get us to work, not if we're going to be successful and fairly well-to-do. Well, I'm sorry, but that's the way of life. You've got to be able to get yourself moving. And unless you somehow teach your children that, well, you're neglecting your duty as a parent. A naughty person, Solomon continues, a wicked man. He walks with a twisted mouth. He doesn't just tell you the truth. He puts a spin on it. He's got to be clever in the way he puts things. He winks with his eye. He speaks with his feet. He teaches with his fingers. He's got all kinds of secret signs and symbols and movements. He's a fidgety kind of guy, these deceivers. Perverseness is in his heart. He devises mischief continually, sows discord. Therefore, his calamity will come suddenly. Suddenly, he will be broken without remedy. I think this is here to tell us to get away from people like that. Don't get sucked in by them because they really are smooth oftentimes, and they can offer you this fine little dinner. You know, they say something about swindlers and con men. The saying is you can't con an honest man. And the fact is that this type of man that's going out there looking for somebody to swindle is looking for someone who himself is trying to pull a fast one, trying to get away with something. And so he comes in and uses our own little criminal instincts against us, and we learn the hard way. Now, you may be under the impression that God loves everybody and everything. Well, it's not quite true. There are some things that God hates. In fact, there are some of them that he says are an absolute abomination to him. Now, I don't know about you, but it seems to me it would be a good idea that if there is something that God hates, that we knew what that was. Well, Solomon is kind to us. He gives us a list. These six things, he says, does the Lord hate. Yea, seven are an abomination to him. Absolutely despicable. Number one, a proud look. Second, a lying tongue. Three, hands that shed innocent blood. Four, a heart that devises wicked imaginations. Five, feet that be swift in running to mischief. Six, a false witness that speaks lies. And seven, he that sows discord among brethren. Well, you've got some attitudes here and some things that people do. And what's disturbing? You know, you always hear these people say, well, you love the sinner, but you hate the sin. Well, unfortunately, we get down to the fact that God also hates some sinners, I guess, because that's the way it's listed. First of all, he talks about the things sinners do, proud look, lying tongue, and so forth. But then he says, first of all, he said he hates a lying tongue. Then he comes back around to it and says he also hates the false witness that speaks lies. That's disturbing. And finally, he hates the man that sows discord among brethren. Now, I know that we could defend ourselves by saying, well, I was just telling the truth. But, you know, there is a time when telling the truth to somebody is going to separate chief friends and will actually do no good. I don't think we can justify ourselves in splitting up people or causing discord between people with the excuse, well, what I was doing, it was just the truth, and I guess people need to know the truth. I think the lesson in these six things, the seven that God hates, is pretty important. It is possible to get on the wrong side of God, and you do it with having a proud and haughty look about you. You do it by having a lying tongue. You do it by giving testimony that might lead to the shedding of innocent blood. You do it by devising wicked imaginations in your heart, so you ought to really give attention to your fantasies. You do it with feet that are in a hurry to run into some kind of mischief. And then the speaking of lies and the sowing of discord among brethren. These things are really important to God, and we ought to regulate our lives taking them into account. Solomon continues, My son, keep your father's commandment, and don't forsake the law of your mother. Tie them upon your heart. Tie them around your neck. When you go, it shall lead you. When you sleep, it shall keep you. And when you wake up, it will talk with you. You got these things in your mind, and they're so deeply ingrained in you that when you wake up in the morning, they come to mind. Folks, that's a recipe for staying out of trouble. For the commandment is a lamp, and the law is a light, and the reproof of instruction is the way of life. Only a loser looks at the commandments of God as shackles and the law as chains. The winners, well, the winners see them as a light in a dark place. Until next time, this is Ronald Dart.
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And you were born to win. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1-877-7000.
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