Stop It
Scripture Reading: Psalm 74; Proverbs 30-31; Ecclesiastes 1; 2 Corinthians 6-7
If you have been foolish, exalting yourself, or if you have been devising evil, put your hand on your mouth. For pressing milk produces curds, pressing the nose produces blood, and pressing anger produces strife. - Proverbs 30:32-33 -
The book of Proverbs is about gaining wisdom – practical insights for life. We might think of wisdom as some kind of “I never thought of that before,” or a wise person as someone who comes up with amazing ideas and insights that blow us away and they seem to be someone who, like Moses, have just come down from a mountain where they met face to face with God Himself. But, as this proverb demonstrates, wisdom often comes to us dressed up to look like common sense.
Here are a few common sense takeaways from this proverb:
You can’t undo what you have already done. As our own proverbial saying goes, “There’s no use crying over spilled milk.” The person in view here had been arrogantly self-promoting and wickedly planning evil. They couldn’t change what they had done, but…
While you can’t change the past, you can change your future direction. “Put your hand on your mouth,” is the way this proverb expresses it. Your past failure has consequences, but it doesn’t own your future.
If you have been messing up, some of the best advice you might get is just stop it. If you are old like me, you will remember comedian Bob Newhart. In one skit he did he played a psychologist. People would come in, sit down, and tell him about their bad behavior. They would ask, “What should I do.” He would say, “Stop it!” It was much funnier than what I made it sound like. Look it up sometime. It made a great point though. Often, we don’t need complicated advice. We need to just stop it. “Put your hand to your mouth.” Just stop it.
Think about the consequences of your actions. Consider what the outcome is going to be. “The pressing of anger produces strife,” is how that is framed in this proverb. And it is framed as the obvious outcome. It is as obvious as the way “pressing milk produces curds.” Okay, that may not be obvious if you don’t know anything about curd making, but you do know about bloody noses. The point that is being made is you know this is what is going to happen, so think about what your actions are leading to and what the outcome is going to be, and then stop it.
Now, none of this is earth-shattering, ground-breaking insights. It is all common sense. Which leads me to my final point this morning.
You might have more wisdom than you realize because a lot of wisdom is called common sense. The key here is wisdom isn’t just about knowing stuff, it is about applying that knowledge to everyday life. You can have common sense in the sense that you understand stuff, but if you don’t do what you know then you fall short of being wise.
Be wise today. Put your common sense to use. Maybe start by just saying to yourself, “stop it.” Put your hand to your mouth.
