The things that urges us
[Proverbs 16:25-30]
Psychologist Abraham Maslow made three assumptions about human nature and developed Motivation Theory. The first assumption is that humans have unsatisfied needs. The second assumption is that human behavior is aimed at satisfying unsatisfied needs. The third assumption is that human needs consist of five levels, from basic needs (physiological needs, safety needs) to higher needs (the need for belonging and affection, the need for respect, the need for self-actualization). Humans have unsatisfied needs. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a kind of motivational theory, as follows: (1) Physiological need: The need to avoid hunger and sustain life, from the most basic need for food, clothing, and shelter to sexual needs. (2) Need for safety: A need that appears after a physiological need is satisfied, a desire to protect oneself from dangers, threats, and deprivation, and to avoid anxiety. (3) Affection/Affiliation Needs: The desire to make friendship with family, friends, and relatives, and to feel a sense of belonging by belonging to a desired group. (4) Need for respect: This is the basic human need to get along with people. (5) Self-realization desire: This is a desire that focuses on maximizing one's potential for continuous self-development. Unlike other needs, it tends to increase as the needs are satisfied, so it is sometimes referred to as the “growth desire”. These include cognitive and aesthetic needs to know and understand (Internet). When I think of Maslow's human needs, I have divided them into two needs for us, Christians. Those two needs are physical and spiritual needs. Here, the physical need can be close to the physiological need, which is the first need of the scalpel. For example, our basic physical need is the appetite to eat when we are hungry. Another need we have is a spiritual need. If we can briefly divide this spiritual need into two, we can say that it is the desire to do righteousness and the desire to sin (Internet).
If we look at Proverbs 16:26, the Bible is referring to our human needs: “A worker's appetite works for him, For his hunger urges him on.” What does it mean? What urges us is hunger. We humans eat in exchange for labor (Ps. 128:2). That is God's law (Gen. 3:19). Therefore, the Bible says that those who don’t work are those who are leading an undisciplined life (2 Thess. 3:11). And if we look at 2 Thessalonians 3:10, the Bible says, “if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either.” Evil thoughts will fill our hearts as long as we eat and play (Gen. 6:5). As a result, we have a lot of danger of committing sins against God . There is a saying that ‘The devil builds a nest in the heart of the lazy one’. Therefore, we the people must work diligently on earth (Park). The workers must work diligently. The Bible regards laziness as a sin and encourages diligence (10:4-5; 12:24; 14:23, 28:19). The Bible says that the worker who works diligently for himself (“A worker’s appetite”). Here, to work diligently for himself means to work for his own dietary life. And the Bible says that the reason why he works hard for hiw own dietary life is because his hunger urges him. In this way, our instinct is to look for food to satisfy our appetite when we are hungry. But if we don't have food, we try to make money to buy food. Mostly, we work hard to earn money to buy food. And some people even beg for money to buy food.
Sometimes while driving, I see people standing in front of traffic lights holding flat cards and begging for money. And the text on that flat card says “I am hungry”. Even as Proverbs 6:30 says, a man tries to fill his hungry stomach by stealing. In this way, hunger urges us to work hard. When I thought of appetite, which is our basic physical desire, I came to think of Deuteronomy 8:3 – “He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.” Why did God make the Israelites hungry in the wilderness? Why is God making us, who are living in this wilderness-like world, hungry? The purpose is to enable us to have everlasting life through faith in Jesus, who is “the bread of God” (Jn. 6:33) and “the bread of life” (v. 35). And God makes us hungry to let us know that we live by every word that comes out of His mouth. Therefore, Jesus, the bread of life, who came down from heaven, said in the first half of John 6:27: “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, ….” Those who heard that asked Jesus, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” (v. 28). Jesus' answer was this: “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (v. 29).
We must live by faith in God. Although the hunger of the flesh urges us to work, our spiritual hunger must be satisfied by being fed only with the word from God's mouth. Thus we must not live by what we see but by faith alone (2 Cor. 5:7). We must live a life of seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness (Mt. 6:33), rather than being worried about life, as to what we will eat or what we will drink or what we will wear (Mt.6:25, 31). In this way, even though we must live a life of faith that satisfies our spiritual desire to seek God's righteousness, the desire to sin, another desire within us, makes us to commit sin against God. I thought of the desire to commit sin in two ways, focusing on Proverbs 16:25-30:
First, the desire to sin within us is self-deception
Look at Proverbs 16:25 – “There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.” Obviously, to the people around us (especially seniors of faith), why do we think (believe) that we are walking the right path when we aren’t walking the right path right now? The reason is because we are deceiving ourselves. In other words, because of self-deception, we may be mistaken that we are walking the right path even though we aren’t walking the right path right now. There are 3 types of people who are prone to self-deception like this (Park): (1) The first class of people are disobedient people. Those who disobey the word of God think that their actions are right because they are spiritually darkened by sin. (2) (2) The second class of people are legalists like the Pharisees. Those show their own glory and boast by relying on self-righteousness and self-merit. It is because they practice religious rituals, thoroughly believing that their actions are right in their own eyes. (3) The third class of people are hypocrites. These are people who say and do different things. Even though they speak correctly, they think they are right even though they cannot do things right. If we look at James 1:22, the Bible says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” The Bible says that if we only listen to God's word and have no action, we are deceiving ourselves. In other words, if we say we have faith and there is no deed, our faith is dead faith and we are deceiving ourselves. If we are deceiving ourselves in this way, our spiritual discernment and judgment are already blurred and we have no choice but to lose our ability to properly evaluate our own lives. If we try to live a life of faith without this ability, we will have to pay the price by walking the path we choose in our self-deception. Maybe the price is “the way of death”.
Therefore, we have to think once more about the Korean proverb, ‘Before cross the bridge, make sure it’s okay.’ What does it mean? It means no matter how well we know, we must be careful and make no mistakes (Internet). Considering this proverb in connection with Proverbs 16:25, we must check it again and make sure that we don’t make any mistakes even though we may seem to be on the right path now. In particular, even if we are so confident that we believe that the path we have chosen is really right, we should look back on ourselves once more and reflect on ourselves whether we have chosen that path, whether we are now disobeying the word of God, or whether we are acting like legalists, or whether we are living differently in words and actions. Although the road that we are walking seems correct to us because our judgment is blurred, we must rethink it at least once, and must consider whether the road we are walking on is right in God's eyes.
Second, the desire to sin within us is evil.
Here we can think of “evil” in three ways:
(1) The evil desire within us to sin is worthlessness.
Look at Proverbs 16:27 – “A scoundrel plots evil, and his speech is like a scorching fire.” Here, “a scoundrel” literally means “a man of belial” (6:12). When we say that a person is “a scoundrel”, it refers to a worthless and wicked person (Walvoord). What this worthless man does is to conceive evil. He sins against God by digging a pit into our lives, as if a hunter digs a puddle to catch prey, causing us to fall into that trap. In particular, Proverbs 16:27 says that this worthless man tries to overwhelm us with his scorching fire like speech. Satan keeps making us to sin with our lips. Satan is making us sin against God and our neighbor by causing us to speak useless and evil words. We must not sin with our lips like Job (Job 2:10). In no distressing circumstances, we should not sin by blaming God like Job (1:22).
(2) The evil desire within us to sin is perversity.
Look at Proverbs 16:28, 30 – “A perverse man spreads strife, And a slanderer separates intimate friends. … He who winks his eyes does so to devise perverse things; He who compresses his lips brings evil to pass.” Here, the term “A perverse man” is “a liar” (Park). Such a person has rebellion in his heart and always devises evil, causing contention (6:14). The Bible says that such a perverse man devises perverse things (v. 30). And the Bible says that he not only closes his eyes but closes his lips to come up with an evil plan. The reason he closes his eyes is to devise an evil plan. And the reason he closes his lips is to carry out the evil plan with determination or strength (Park). Such perverse man not only lies but he also spreads strife among brothers (6:19). And he is a slander who separates intimate friends (16:28). In the end, it means that the perversed man separated between brothers and close friends because he lies and gossips. Satan keeps breaking the relationship between brothers and sisters in Christ. Satan hates us when we love our neighbors. So he makes us to break relationship with our neighbors, make us to quarrel, and end up distancing each other and make us to hate each other. We must fight this temptation of Satan. In order to do that, we must not have perversity in our hearts. We must not make evil plans or devise evil. Rather, we must have truthful heart and obey the Lord’s command to make a good plan to love our neighbors.
(3) The evil desire within us to sin is violence.
Look at Proverbs 16:29 – “A man of violence entices his neighbor And leads him in a way that is not good.” Here, “A man of violence” is a wicked person who harms others. He leads other people by tempting them to “a path that is not good”, the road of destruction (Park). As we meditated on the Book of Proverbs, we saw this violent man. For example, in Proverbs 7, we thought of “an adulterless” and “a harlot” who flatters with her words (vv. 5, 10). With her many persuasion she entices (v. 21) “the naïve” (v. 7) until it costs him his life (v. 23). In order to make us lose our lives like this, Satan continues to tempt us who believe in Jesus. Satan is diligently deceiving us in an attempt to harm our souls to give up our faith and to betray the Lord. What should we do? We must overcome this spiritual battle with the word of God. Look at the psalmist. In Psalm 119:11 he says: “Your word I have treasured in my heart, That I may not sin against You.” Like the psalmist, we must keep the word of the Lord in our hearts in order not to sin against the Lord. Therefore, we must overcome Satan's temptations with His word. May we all become victorious with the word of God!
Today we have considered the physical and spiritual needs within us. Thinking of hunger, which is the physical desire that urges us, we must spiritualize that desire and diligently eat the word of God for our spiritual appetite. Therefore, our faith will continue to grow, so that we will be drawn to the word of God and be able to overcome the self-deception and evil that urges us to sin against God. May this blessing be upon us all.