Thou Shall Covet

A Lucky Strike

In late August at a church youth camp, I didn’t have my Bible reading plan available and so began to wander aimlessly through the word during the dedicated morning devotional time. A random walk through scripture is not usually the most rewarding method, but sometimes you roll the dice and win. As an adult counselor at a youth camp, it pays to be on the lookout for Bible “nuggets” that you might use in conversation or when leading group devotions. On this particular morning it was Proverbs 29:3 that jumped off the page.

{{ < kjv > }} Proverbs 29:3 Whoso loveth wisdom rejoiceth his father: But he that keepeth company with harlots spendeth his substance. {{ < /kjv > }}

It was the second part of the verse that immediately connected my mind to the prodigal son. If you needed to condense the entire parable into one sentence, Solomon would win first place for brevity while sacrificing the minimum meaning with this verse. The prodigal did indeed ignore wisdom and keep company with harlots and as a result he spent his substance and caused his father sorrow. When the prodigal finally returned to loving wisdom, his father rejoiced.

We can’t give Solomon credit for publishing history’s first cliff notes because he wasn’t alive when Jesus gave the parable of the prodigal. If anything, we could give him points for prophecy instead. The striking parallelism between Proverbs and Luke 15 is evidence that both books, written thousands of years apart by different men, really did have the same author – God.

And what a great nugget to share with a young person! The prodigal would certainly have had access to this pearl of wisdom. He was the son of a wealthy jewish man who went to synagogue and heard the scripture read every week. It was possible that they even owned their own copies of certain portions of scripture. How on earth could the prodigal have made such poor life decisions when he had clear, scriptural guidance like this readily available to him?

The rest of the lesson writes itself. This young man either did not read his Bible, or if he did read it, he wasn’t heeding what he read. With all the major life decisions looming in front of teenagers, if their only resolution was to find just one Bible principle to guide each choice they could avoid innumerable mistakes. I doubt this young man was praying for God to approve his plan to leave the home and live it up. Can you imagine that prayer? “God, would it be ok with you if I took all my money and spent it on prostitutes, substance abuse, and just left you out of it?”

He certainly had a humility problem. James tells us that it’s only the person who lacks wisdom that needs to ask of God for some. Who doesn’t lack wisdom? James uses clever rhetoric to show us that when we don’t ask God for wisdom every day, it’s because our pride tells us that we don’t need it. You never once see the prodigal ask God or anyone else for wisdom. And that’s another problem. He refuses to seek counsel for his decisions. In short he just does whatever was right in his own eyes and we know how that worked out.

So I put this in my back pocket and waited for the right moment to unleash this torrent of wisdom. But there was just one small problem. After I bothered to actually read Luke 15, the prodigal son was actually a rebuke to the pharisees, not to the young and rebellious. And their big problem was not a lack of wisdom but a covetous heart. What!?

Welp

Luke 15 begins by declaring the audience and the cause for each parable.

Luke 15:1-2 Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. v2 And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.

The publicans and sinners were there to listen, but the pharisees scribes arrived to murmur their displeasure that Jesus would care about sinners. Our Lord chose not to respond with a lecture, but four parables intended not only to upbraid the pharisees but benefit all those who were in earshot.