Welcome to Wisdom Today with Bill Kelley. Today we will be going Proverb 19. I will then key in on verse 8 - He who gets wisdom loves his own soul; He who keeps understanding will find good. This verse goes well with Proverb 16:20. I believe a good example of these two verses is Matthew - the writer of the gospel of Mathew. Mathew had been a tax collector and was despised by the majority of the Jewish people (including his own family). He was very wealthy - because he had overcorrected taxes from many people. Prior to becoming a disciple of Jesus, he had watched Jesus closely and, I believe, was envious of his disciples and was secretly hoping that he would be asked to follow him. Mathew is well known for his "Beattitudes" - found in chapters 5-7 of his gospel. These are a summary of Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. We will take a closer look at Chapter 6: verses 38-42 - but we began by looking at the same account of this in Luke's gospel - found in Chapter #6: verses 29-31. Verse 31 is what we now have come to know as the "Golden Rule." Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you. After reading Mathew's account of this story in verses 38-42 I came up with three points: 1. Verse 38 goes over an Old Testament law known as the "lex talons (the law of retaliation). This law covered what punishment should be meted out when there was a crime committed; 2. Jesus basically told us to do the opposite of what this Old Testament law told us to do. He comes up with four examples for us: a. physical attacks (verse 39); legal suits (verse 40); government demands (verse 41); and financial requests (verse 41). 3. I then go over the law of impressment (the Roman government had the authority to insist that anyone (when asked to do so) temporarily work for the Roman government and people wound have to walk up to one mile with any request the government asked that individual to do). An example of this is found in Mathew 27: 32 - where a man of Cyrene (Simon by name) was asked to carry the cross of Jesus for him up to Cavalry.
