Queen's Road Cell

  12  The words of a wise man's mouth win him favor,      but the lips of a fool consume him. 13  The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness,      and the end of his talk is evil madness. 14  A fool multiplies words,      though no man knows what is to be,      and who can tell him what will be after him? 15  The toil of a fool wearies him,      for he does not know the way to the city. 16  Woe to you, O land, when your king is a child,      and your princes feast in the morning! 17  Happy are you, O land, when your king is the son of the nobility,      and your princes feast at the proper time,      for strength, and not for drunkenness! 18  Through sloth the roof sinks in,      and through indolence the house leaks. 19  Bread is made for laughter, ...

I shared that this was a difficult study to prepare for, not just because the passages and ideas seemed to be all over the place, but because there were so many areas in which I felt I fell short. My introductory comment was that we Protestants tend to think of righteousness solely as something we recieve by imputation from Christ (2 Cor 5:21), not necessarily something we seek to develop and achieve through effort. And yet Scripture encourages us to "strive... for...holiness, without which no one will see the Lord" (Heb 12:14). If we do not exhibit practical as well as positional righteousness, then, we place ourselves at risk of "losing our salvation" (if you are Arminian), or proving that you were never one of the elect (if you are Calvinist). Hebrews 12:5 and James 1:14-15 remind us that sinning starts in small ways, but then grows to destroy our lives and the lives of many others. We spent a great deal of time talking about sins of speech mentioned in Col 3...