The Sinful Fail to Act Wisely or Do Good
We read yesterday how David said of sinful people “the words of their mouths are wicked and deceitful”, and then he goes on to say this in the latter half of Psalm 36:3 – “they fail to act wisely or do good.”
Failing to Act Wisely
This is quite a deep one actually. I wonder if you have ever considered that it is sinful to fail to act wisely. Perhaps we might excuse our unwise actions and not really take them seriously. But God has given us a great responsibility as His children to live wise lives. Take a moment and consider what you have done this week that you could say was unwise. Why did you do that? Is it time to change your course of action and get wise?
To make it a bit more practical, here are some thoughts: are you wise with your money? With your management of time? With your eating and exercise habits? Your entertainment habits? Your dealings with people? The way you run your household or your business or the board you’re on or some other responsibility you’ve been given?
This verse stopped me in my tracks as I read it. I wondered if I have “failed to act wisely” as David said it. And as I analyzed my life and lifestyle, I realized: there are areas I need to improve for sure.
Failing to Do Good
But what about the next part of the verse? David says that the sinful fail to do good. I had a conversation with a friend the other day about churches who speak a big game but don’t help when people are in need. Now of course, the church isn’t a charity. The church can’t just hand out to everybody all the time. But each church should have some sort of plan in place to help those in need who come knocking on their door. Because in the end it is sinful to fail to do good.
There are all sorts of good things you might do. Too many, in fact, for each person to do all of them. But here’s a question: have you had an opportunity to do good, which you ignored, recently? Have you had something obvious come up that you could contribute to in some way, and you decided not to? I know there are many reasons that we might have for this, but friends let it not be said of us, the people of God, that we had opportunities to good and we didn’t do them.
Living Our Calling
You and I have a calling on our lives as God’s people, and it’s to act wisely and do good. I pray that we will have our eyes open to the opportunities that come our way in both of these areas, and don’t ignore them or fail to act on them, like the sinful ones in David’s day.
