Devotional - 98-01-27 - Planning a Tragedy

Proverbs 24:8,9 He who plans to do evil, Men will call him a deviser of evil. The devising of folly is sin, And the scoffer is an abomination to men.

The devising of folly is sin. My first inclination here was to think that this means that when we plan ahead to do something wrong, it makes "doing it" extra bad. Just as pre-meditated murder carries a stronger sentence in the courts. However, this is not what the verse is saying. No where in either verse are the plans to do evil spoken of as being carried out. The issue at hand here is planning to do evil. Even this is called sin. Even if the evil is never carried out, the planning of it is sin.

Therefore, just as Christians are not to be evil doers (1 Pet. 4:15), they also should not be evil planners. All sin, for the Christian, serves but one end. Sin un-gods God. Early in the Christian church sin was called Decidium, or God-murder, God-killing.

"As God is holy, all holy, only holy, altogether holy, and always holy, so sin is sinful, all sinful, only sinful, altogether sinful, and always sinful (Genesis 6:5)." Ralph Venning

James 2:1-13 gives us one example of devising evil by showing preference to one person over another. In (2:4) the passage says that this is done because the motives, in the one showing preference, are evil.

The classic Biblical example of the folly of evil planning is found towards the end of the book of Esther. This is the story of Haman and Mordecai. Haman was King Ahasuerus' right hand man, set above every other prince in the empire. But he had a real problem with one person, Mordecai, a God fearing Jew. Haman thought Mordecai was not giving him the respect he deserved. So Haman tricked King Ahasuerus into agreeing to a slaughter of all the Jews on a single day and in preparation for this day had a special set of gallows, fifty cubits high, built for Mordecai. In the end, as you all know, Haman hung from those very gallows. Mordecai, the man of God, was honored.

Prov 26:27 He who digs a pit will fall into it, and he who rolls a stone, it will come back on him.

The fool digs a pit only to fall into it. So are those who devise evil, their sin may not always find them out, but invariably, given time, sin shows the fool and deviser of evil to be an abomination to men (as the above verse concludes).

"Actions speak louder than words, but, with God, motives speak louder than either." Arthur Neil

"Man sees your action, but God your motives." Thomas a Kempis

Soli Deo Gloria,
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