“My Thumb, My Pride, and Proverbs 28”
Why we shouldn't wait to deal with sin
Blessed is the one who fears the LORD always, but whoever hardens his heart will fall into calamity. -Proverbs 28:14
“This is so stupid,” I think to myself.
The physical therapist sits me off in a room by myself, with a paper in front of me of a few exercises I can do to fix my “problem”.
Off to the side I hear the unmistakable clank of metal weights. Then I hear the deep sigh followed by the load groan—a noise somewhere between a bear waking up from winter and a person not to cry in public. This dude is about as red as a ginger who left her sunscreen at home for that week in the Florida sun. His knee brace betrays the knee surgery and tells the story of why he’s there.
I take my seat amidst the groans and behemoths working to get their life back. But I’m off in a room to the side. I won’t be hitting the heavy weights. Nope. Yet, I’ll be sweating and grimacing with just as much fervor as Hercules doing his squats.
Exercise one.
Take your thumb and touch your pinky, ring finger, middle finger, pointer finger, then repeat.
“I can’t be in here for something super awesome,” I think to myself. “No, I’m in here wincing because I can’t move my stupid thumb.”
Exercise two.
Lay your hand flat on the table and lift the affected finger/thumb and hold it. Repeat 8 to 12 times or until you are unable. Not to be outdone by Charlie Atlas out there in the weightroom, I muscle out a full twelve reps—stud that I am.
The whole thing was really dumb. I was playing basketball with some of our teenagers at church. When I turned to do this super awesome spin move that would have had NBA scouts drooling, I clipped the belt buckle of my defender with my thumb. It was a confusing hurt, because I didn’t think I’d really hit him that hard. But the swelling and deep purple emerging through the skin told me otherwise.
I’d like to tell you that I went to the doctor afterwards. Or even the week after. Or the month after. No, it was about six months after when I found myself still having a harder than it should be time of gripping things or bending my thumb. (I still can’t bend it all the way some 12-15 years later). I decided to go to the doctor.
The verdict was in. They’d have to amputate.
Not really. The doctor told me that I’d had a substantial fracture on my thumb and that I was a complete idiot for not getting it dealt with when it happened. But now that I neglected it, the problem is that scar tissue or something has calcified through not using it as much as I should (that’s what you do when it hurts to squeeze anything). The only way to really loosen it up and also not make us homeless (lack of health insurance), was to do physical therapy. That’s how I ended up in that chair in that side room, working out my fingers while others were doing actual physical exercise.
This helps us understand Proverbs 28:14
First, you need to know that it’s really unfortunate that the ESV supplied the phrase “fears the LORD”. It shouldn’t have done that, because its not in the original and it’s likely connected to verse 13. The fear there is fearing sin. Now, it’s not entirely wrong because fearing the LORD will have you with a healthy understanding and revulsion of sin—but still, I think it’s important to think about this fear of sin specifically.
The one who does that, the proverb tells us, will be blessed. This is contrasted with the person who hardens his heart and thus will fall into calamity. This verse is really just an overflow of verse 13. What does it look like to conceal transgression? What happens when you cover up your sin and try to pretend like it’s not a thing? Hardness of heart. You eventually get numb to it. To not confess sin is to try to fool yourself into thinking its not such a bad thing.
And to truly fear sin is to confess it and forsake it. It’s the difference really between Adam and Eve trying to hide themselves with fig leaves, and then behind a bush for extra measure, and the clothing which the Lord provides for them. When we try to “cover” it never works. It’s not effective. Our nakedness always bleeds through. But when God covers us—it does the job.
What does it look like to harden your heart in the face of sin?
It looks like an idiot refusing to go to the doctor and dealing with his thumb when something could have been done about it.
I rationalized— “Doctors are dumb. They just want money and they can’t do anything about a broken thumb anyways.”
I justified – “I’ve been dealing with this for months now. I can handle it. It’ll eventually get better. No big deal.”
I got defensive when my wife encouraged me to get it looked at – “The purple just means its healing. You’re worrying too much.”
I altered my life to protect the problem. I had to use my left hand more than my left. I had to get someone else to open the pickle jar for a while. I avoided certain activities. I wore shoes I didn’t have to tie. T-shirts I didn’t have to button. On and on. Protecting my problem impacted by daily life.
Sin does the same thing.
Today I can use my thumb much better than I did. But it’s not 100%. And that’s also where sin become tricky. My thumb is no longer a presenting problem. It still impacts me sometimes but for the most part I’ve successfully adapted to its presence in my life. The physical therapy helped a little, loosened it up some, but it didn’t provide real healing.
And that’s what happens when we start managing sin rather than confessing and forsaking it. That’s really what it means to harden our heart in regards to sin. We no longer feel the internal weight of what we’re doing. We don’t hear the correction that could pull us off the destructive path. We’re not hardened toward sin but rather toward the voice that could rescue us from it.
Charles Bridges says it well:
Scarcely less pitiable is the man, who makes light of his eternal state: living without prayer; so much better in his own eyes than his more ungodly neighbours; and fully satisfied with a mere external preparation for eternity. Forget not--Christian Professor--we may be strong in confidence, only because we are sleeping in delusion, or hardened in insensibility. From all the mischief of self-ignorance and' hardness of heart, Good Lord, deliver us! (Bridges, Proverbs, 543)
The gospel answers our foolishness
Thankfully, sin has an answer whereas my thumb doesn’t (at least not until the resurrection). When we turn to the Lord, He provides real and actual healing. He covers completely. And He doesn’t just loosen things up so we can manage. He restores. Fully. Completely.
Proverbs 28:13–14 is not just about getting back on track; it’s about recognizing that the longer we wait, the harder it becomes to even want to. Hardened hearts don’t usually start that way. They start with pain. Then delay. Then self-protection. Then silence. Eventually, we adjust to life around the dysfunction. But Scripture doesn’t call that wisdom. It calls it calamity in slow motion.
Don’t wait six months—or six years—to deal with what God’s already convicting you about today. Don’t rationalize. Don’t justify. Don’t defend. Don’t adapt to dysfunction. Call it what it is. Confess it. Forsake it. Let Him cover it.