How to Conduct Your Life I

Monday, August 8, 2022

Restrain Yourself

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23 1-3 When you go out to dinner with an influential person,

    mind your manners:

Don’t gobble your food,

    don’t talk with your mouth full.

And don’t stuff yourself;

    bridle your appetite.

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4-5 Don’t wear yourself out trying to get rich;

    restrain yourself!

Riches disappear in the blink of an eye;

    wealth sprouts wings

    and flies off into the wild blue yonder.

-Proverbs 23:1-5 The Message

When you sit down to eat with a ruler,

    observe carefully what is before you,

2 and put a knife to your throat

    if you are given to appetite.

3 Do not desire his delicacies,

    for they are deceptive food.

4 Do not toil to acquire wealth;

    be discerning enough to desist.

5 When your eyes light on it, it is gone,

    for suddenly it sprouts wings,

    flying like an eagle toward heaven.

-Proverbs 23:1-5 ESV

Verses 1-3 studies: This proverb is a warning. Be careful when you eat with an important or influential person because they may try to bribe you. Don’t get caught up in over-indulgence in pleasure with a ruler when eating. At that point, no good will come from the meal. Control yourself.

Verse 1 study: This is an emphasis on greed. Do not allow a meal to cloud your judgment, or it will enable you to be attentive to a ruler and not the food.

Verse 3 study: Being greedy with food can deceive your relationships and the advantages.

Verses 4-5 studies: We heard of people who won millions of dollars and have nothing to show. It’s not worth ruining someone’s health for riches in the habit of disappearing. An average person can quickly spend an inheritance or a paycheck and have nothing to show for it. Spending your time chasing momentary earthly treasures is a waste of time. Store your treasures in heaven; those will never be lost.

33 Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. -Luke 12:33-34 ESV