Proverbs 23:24 The father of the righteous shall greatly
rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him. 25 Thy
father and thy mother shall be glad, and she that bare thee shall rejoice.
Here, at both ends of the passage it is said
that a father and a mother of a righteous child will rejoice. That may be hard
to imagine in America as this country has always appreciated a financially
successful child rather than a child who is faithful to Christ and to His
standards of morality. Parents who can even acknowledge the wisdom of their
children, it must be assumed, must be wise themselves.
Parents who were raised themselves on the values
popping out of their television sets, movies, or pop songs would probably have
a hard time realizing that their child was righteous. They’d be more concerned
with his sports stats, his income, and his education along with what kind of
job he or she held. If they’re religious, chances are they are more concerned
with his political views, how often he’s in church, and how he or she dresses
and acts than what kind of walk with Christ they have.
But, a child who stands out as believing the
Bible, uplifting and loving the Lord, and living with the fruit of the Spirit flowing
from his or her behavior would be a treasure to righteous parents. It starts
with how a young person s hears their parents.
Proverbs 13:1 A wise son heareth his father’s
instruction: but a scorner heareth not rebuke.
How he or she treats and views his or her
parents.
Proverbs 15:20 A wise son maketh a glad
father: but a foolish man despiseth his mother.
And the converse of this Proverb is also true;
Proverbs 17:25 A foolish son is a grief to
his father, and bitterness to her that bare him.
If you want to rejoice over a wise and righteous
child then you need to be the person that you want them to be. The old saw “do
as I say, not as I do” coming from a parent’s mouth, is wickedness and
nonsense. Look at your child, imagine what kind of person you want them to be,
and then YOU be that person.
Proverbs
23:26 My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways. 27 For a
whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit. 28 She also lieth
in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men.
Solomon pleads with his son to give him his
heart, as in to pay attention, and for his eyes to look on the father’s ways.
Are you living your life in such a way that your child, son or daughter, can
look on you, observe your ways and grow in the grace of the Lord?
Here, Solomon warns, as he has warned other
times about the danger of consorting with an immoral woman and a woman of
another people, of another, a foreign religion. The Canaanite religion was
filled with incest, child sacrifice, bestiality and all manner of wickedness.
The worship of Baal was the worship of Satan. The Greek historian, Herodotus,
tells us that Baal is the same god as Bel in Babylon and Zeus in Greece. We
know him as Jupiter in Rome, Viracocha in Peru. Jesus calls him Beelzebub in
Matthew 10:25 among other verses which Strong’s dictionary claims means “lord
of the house”. This name, lord of the house, bears some ominous similarity to
other claims to godhood of other religions in history.
It’s important to note that in the Bible the
word, whore, like the word, sodomite, carries with it a religious connotation.
In Canaanite religion, according to Daniel Snell in his Life in the Ancient
Near East a woman’s coming of age was to go into the temple to the goddess,
Ishtar, and to wait for a stranger to drop a coin in her lap and to have sex
with him. There were temple prostitutes of both heterosexual and homosexual
variety, and a “dog” is still within certain parts of the gay community a
reference to a male prostitute as it was in ancient Babylon. Thus, we get this
verse;
Deuteronomy 23:18 Thou shalt not bring the
hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God for
any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
And why we have curious religious practices that
the apostate Israelites mixed in with their worship of the true God.
2Kings
23:7 And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of
the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the grove.
Regardless of the historical context, these
verses explain the danger of a young man being taken in by an immoral woman,
particularly a young Christian man trapped by the allure of sex and
pornography. Is it any wonder that the states that rate the highest usage of
internet porn are in the so called Bible Belt of the United States?
The immoral woman, pornography, the vulgar pop
star, the nasty movie diva, and all the other temptations thrown out in the
modern world with regard to improper sexual behavior act almost like the
proverbial lion and lie in wait for a man, as the lion would the prey he is
about to devour. Many young Christian men have gone down to that house and
never returned.
If
you are addicted to pornography or improper sexual appetites you probably need
to plead with God, not only for forgiveness but for deliverance from the devil
that possesses you. Inordinate affections (obsessions), concupiscence, and
other chains probably bind your heart and you need God’s saving mercy to
retrieve you from the deep ditch and the narrow pit in which you have fallen.
You must swim in God’s word, bathe yourself in it, and pray for Him to save you
from being added to the list of transgressors which the strange woman, the
whore, has made. Sex is a great and wonderful gift from God for a husband and
wife to be enjoyed throughout their life without shame, or guilt, as the
marriage bed is undefiled (Hebrews 13:4) but God will judge everything that is
apart from that righteous bond.
In a culture that is broiling in sexual
obsessions and perversion, this is a great struggle for many, particularly
Christians, because Satan aims to destroy your testimony, your flesh seeks only
that which pleases it now, and the world wants you to turn away from Christ. Be
warned.
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