Daily Bible Nugget #191, Psalm 17:4

The Nugget:

Psalm 17:4 Concerning the works of men, by the word of thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer. (KJV)

Psalm 17:4 With regard to the works of man, by the word of your lips I have avoided the ways of the violent. (ESV)

My Comment:

The Scriptures are designed for keeping from destructive paths. Destructive paths take many forms, but they largely involve engaging in sinful actions. If we are Bible believing Christians, Satan is eager to see us fall. Satan lures just about everyone into dangerous snares. One of the greatest needs to revitalize our inner cities is to quell the violence that takes place there. Some political figures I have heard blame the many people who left the larger cities for the suburbs, taking, they say, their wealth and tax base with them. Well, just what would you expect? If a particular economic, social, or racial group seemingly cannot control the actions of their youth, so that crime rates soar, who in their right mind would stay there to become a victim? Now I hear on the radio in Detroit that the new police chief is seeking solutions to the problems the city is facing with its crime and its youth. Someone needs to send him a link to this site. I have given the solutions here to the problem.

I am not just speaking from a theoretical knowledge. I have lived and worked in Detroit for most of my life. I have been the victim myself of the terrible crime that goes on. On March 13, 1986 at 7:15 am on a Thursday morning I was shot at point blank range in the back of my head by an unknown black assailant wielding a nine millimeter handgun as I was crossing the teacher’s parking lot as I entered Southeastern High School. Did the police look for the criminal? Not at all. Since I was still alive, my case was never investigated, according to a front page Detroit News article just a week or so after I was shot.

But I have been working to improve the inner city streets of Detroit since well before 1961. I mention that date because I came upon a thank you letter today (tucked inside the front cover of a book I consulted) from one of the wayward youth I had led to the Lord while I worked with a group of young adults in connection with Dave Wilkerson’s Teen Challenge program or outreach.

I also worked with inner city youth at the Green Tree Coffee House in inner city Detroit. Several of the young people who used my reading program on Saturdays later entered the University of Michigan and were on the football team. But though I helped them academically at a critical age, I have since learned that they experienced moral failure which cut short their opportunity for further success. By the way, Pastor Emory Moss of Strictly Biblical Ministries in Detroit will certainly remember my work at the Green Tree Coffee House, for when he was a high school student, he came with me a few times. Many years later he said his parents would never allow him to enter that near west side neighborhood because it was too dangerous, but as long as he was with Mr. Smith, he could.

For students in my own public high school classes in Detroit I discovered how to guide my students toward positive, productive, moral values in my classroom by sharing themed units of daily proverbs and quotations. By having my students write weekly proverb interpretation and application compositions in my English class the students had the opportunity to deep-process the values and spiritual truths those proverbs and quotations contained. My students told me that this assignment revolutionized their lives. They thanked me for the help my assignment was to them, literally turning their lives around.

As an aside, the currently touted panacea, Common Core, promoted by the President and many others who are lacking in their knowledge about how students learn and what they need to know, will not work. Of course, the No Child Left Behind program, the previous panacea, has worked wonders. By year 2014 all students were to be performing in all subjects, especially reading, at grade level. The trouble is, that program left almost every student behind. But for all the money thrown at the problem, these solutions do not work and cannot work. The currently used Common Core materials and their associated goals are entirely untested. But there is big money in that stuff. Meanwhile I have written and professionally tested my own self-instructional program which does work for students of all ages, third grade through graduate school, for all ability levels, and my program works as a supplemental program any interested parent–or anybody else–can use with ease. Having problems with students learning English as a second language? The top official at the Detroit Public Schools years ago discovered my program worked as she saw by her personal observation, so she arranged to have as many of her ESL students at my high school enrolled in my English class in order to benefit from the program. Check out my statistics and the history of my Language Enrichment Program at www.readingsteps.com, if you don’t believe me.

Now where are the parents, the pastors, the leaders in the black community? There is no reason to have the kinds of behaviors I hear and read about in the inner city every day when the solution to the problem is so ready to hand.

When Trayvon Martin was in the headlines, I expressed on Facebook my opinion that had Trayvon Martin had the opportunity of being in my English class, or of another English teacher in his area with the same commitment to seeing to it that students were where they belonged, doing what they should be doing (my main classroom rule), the needless tragedy would never have happened. The black Christians I had addressed on Facebook disagreed with me, said I did not understand the situation Trayvon faced, and that I was expressing the usual white person’s prejudice against the black community. I told them frankly they knew me for many years, and knew better than to react to what I said that way. I emphasized that what they needed to be doing, and were not, was to seek solutions to the problem, not bemoan the tragedy further.

The answer and the solution, of course, is stated in the Bible verse which is today’s Bible Nugget, Psalm 17:4. Now, get busy and take steps to apply this verse if you have a heart for God and believe in His written Word. I can “lead a horse to water, but I can’t make him drink,” as the saying goes.

For those who desire to DIG DEEPER into this subject:

(1) Consult the cross references given in Nelson’s Cross Reference Guide to the Bible on page 541 for Psalm 17:4.

(2) Consult the cross references given in The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge on page 593 or in Logos 5 Bible software for Psalm 17:4.

(3) Lacking access to those two resources, consult the cross references for this passage as I have developed them as given below:

Psalm 17:4. works. Ps 14:1-3. Ge 6:5, 11. Jb 15:16. 31:33. 1 Cor 3:3, 15. 1 P 4:2, 3, 18. 1 J 4:5. of men. Adam:—natural men;—children of him, who transgressed (avar) God’s covenant (Kay). Ho 6:7mg. by the. *Ps 119:9-11, 105. Mt 4:4, 6, 7, 10. word. T#1046. *Ps 119:9-11, 105. *Pr 2:10-15. *Pr 6:22. Mt 4:4, 7, 10. *Jn 17:17. Ep 6:17. James 1:18. *Re 12:11. I have kept. Ps 18:21. 1 J 5:18. the paths. Pr 1:10. 7:6-10. +*Ga 5:19-21. destroyer. Jb 33:22. Pr 2:12. Jn 8:23. 1 P 5:8. Re 9:11mg.