Commit yourself to instruction; listen carefully to words of knowledge. (Proverbs 23:12)I was listening to someone talk about the Bible the other day and they didn’t know what they were talking about. The worst part of it was that with a little study, they would have.
I guess that was the worst part. Maybe the worst part was that they were willing to go out in public and say things that were not true and didn’t know the difference.
A man I worked with thirty years ago had this problem. He would hear something and it sounded relatively logical to him so he would use it in his sermons. The problem was that it was blatantly wrong.
For instance, he said that the word Gentile means literally dog. It doesn’t take more than thirty seconds to read in a book that Gentile means nation and it is the word we get our word ethnic from. He was wrong and if you knew anything you knew he was. So he looked foolish.
The writer of Proverbs says to commit yourself to instruction. In other words, be a learning person. Keep on learning, keep on studying, keep on being fresh. Don’t say foolish things under the guise of scholarship. If you are going to pretend to knowledge, then be knowledgeable.
Listen to people. You can learn from anyone no matter how old you are. The real student does this. He always questions, always checks. He will ask anyone no matter who they are or their age if he doesn’t know what they are talking about. He has a thirst for knowledge.
To this kind of person, knowledge is not something they accumulated back in school and now just automatically have. It is something that is life-long, continual. And it is something that is a joy, to learn new things.
Do it. Make yourself a learning person and listen.
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