12/25/2023
MERRY CHRISTMAS
Early Morning Devotion, December 25
Dr. David N. Smeltz
Voice of Victory,
Do not choose the ways of the oppressor
Proverbs 3:31-32 (KJV)
31 Envy thou not the oppressor, and choose none of his ways.
32 For the froward is abomination to the LORD: but his secret is with the righteous.
The oppressor: — He is a common character. There is the political oppressor, the social oppressor, the ecclesiastical oppressor.
I. HIS CHARACTER IS NOT TO BE ENVIED.
1. Because envy is in itself an evil.
2. Because there is nothing in the oppressor to be desired.
II. HIS CONDUCT IS NOT TO BE FOLLOWED. Stand aloof (Ps 37:1).
The oppressor is not to be envied: — Whether public or private, the man who "grinds the faces of the poor" by severity and extortion, may succeed, may prosper; may, by this means, amass a fortune, and rise to still higher honor. He is not to be envied; not only because envy is in itself wrong, but also because there is really nothing in his character and career to produce it. His prosperity is not to be envied even by the poorest and most suffering victims of his oppression. And while he is not to be envied, far less are his ways to be imitated for the sake of obtaining the envied results — the same wealth, the same greatness, the same power. (R. Wardlaw, D.D.)
(v.32) Pastor and commentator John A. Kitchen writes a sobering warning in this verse:
This is not tasteful to those who are fully immersed in our cultural worship of tolerance. Even the most morally stout among us often water the hatred of God down to a platitude about God hating the sin, but loving the sinner. Yet, that is not what this verse teaches. God hates the one who commits the sin and He loathes the one who turns from Him. We should let the extreme to which this truth goes on the one end inform our understanding of how far the promised intimacy of God with the upright projects in the other direction. Thoughtful reflection on the possibility of this level of relationship with God should create in us revulsion at the ways of the violent, rather than envy over the short-term outcome of their ways. These folks will never know the delights of being the friend of God. “Abraham believed God…and he was called the Friend of God (James 2:23). Only the righteous—those who strictly adhere to God’s ways—experience the privilege of having God reveal Himself to them. Only the upright enjoy intimacy with Him.
