Page 116 - The Poetic Books - Student Text

there are many different careers that could be in God’s will for your life. What God cares
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about most is that whatever you do, you do in a Christlike manner.”

God’s interest is not casual. Proverbs uses strong, emotional language about God’s stake in our choices,
words like “detest,” “hate,” “curse,” “delight,” love,“
and “pleased.” Yahweh detests the perverse and
curses the wicked, but he takes the upright into his
confidence and blesses the righteous (3:32,33). These
are powerful words. He detests dishonest scales and
favors accurate weights along with the people who
use them (11:1). Yahweh’s emotion is personal. He
either detests or delights in hearts (11:20; 16:5), lying
lips (12:22), thoughts (15:26), and, actually, any part
of a wicked human (6:16-19). “We often hear the
biblical-sounding phrase ‘God hates the sin but loves Figure 57: Wrath of God
the sinner.’ The dilemma is that sin cannot be
abstracted from the sinner. Without the blood of Christ, what is sent to hell – the sin or the sinner? Hell
is not a housing project for abstractions, but a place where sinners are left to live out the consequences
of their unpardoned sin.” 194

Yahweh either detests or is pleased with religious activity (15:8). He either detests or loves the entire life
direction of an individual (15:9). He detests human choice toward evil in general (17:15) or for something
as specific as false weights (20:10, 23). For this reason, he invites humans to trust in Yahweh with all your
heart (3:5, 6), listening to the teaching he gives through the wise people around us (22:19). To those who
trust him, Yahweh promises understanding (28:5), prosperity (28:25), and safety (29:25). There will be
times when he disciplines us for the poor choices we make, but he does so out of love (3:11-12). He is a
refuge (10:29), constantly at one’s side (3:26) giving both favor (8:35; 12:2) and blessing (16:20). God’s
favor is described in the book of Proverbs as intense, like that of a parent for a child.

On Sunday, August 16, 1987, Northwest Airlines flight 225 crashed just after taking off
from the Detroit airport. One hundred fifty-five people were killed. One survived: a 4-
year-old from Tempe, Arizona, named Cecelia.
News accounts say when rescuers found Cecelia, they did not believe she had been on
the plane. Investigators first assumed Cecelia had been a passenger in one of the cars on
the highway onto which the airliner crashed. But when the passenger register for the
flight was checked, there was Cecelia’s name.
Cecelia survived because, as the plane was falling, Cecelia’s mother, Paula, unbuckled
her own seat belt, got down on her knees in front of her daughter, wrapped her arms
and body around Cecelia, and then would not let go.
Nothing could separate that child from her parent’s love – not tragedy or disaster, not
the fall or the flames that followed, not height nor depth, not life nor death. Such is the

193 Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 177.
194 Allender & Longman, Bold Love, 148.
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