Proverbs 29:17 ¶ Correct thy son, and he shall give thee
rest; yea, he shall give delight unto thy soul.
Solomon makes it clear all through Proverbs that
it will delight him as a father if his son acknowledges the training he has
been given and grows up into a strong but gentle king, with wisdom and
understanding.
Unfortunately, as we read about Rehoboam in 1
Kings 12 we see that he was not very wise and lost a great part of his kingdom
as a result of his arrogance and being the kind of king who would listen to bad
advice. This is simply proof that children are independent moral agents and bad
ones can be raised by good parents and good ones by bad.
Other kings gave advice to their children. King
James, who did not have any part in translating the Bible that has his name
attached to it but merely commanded that the work on it begin, wrote advice to
one of his sons who never lived long enough to be king. The book, Basilicon
Doron or ‘The Kingly Gift’ was supposed to be private with only seven copies
approved to be printed and the printer sworn to secrecy but pirated copies got
out and eventually he ordered it published. It became a bestseller, printed in
several languages for 50 years, long after the king’s death. As it did not do
Prince Henry much good in regard to kingly duties he never assumed it has been
left to posterity for us to examine and to learn from. It is available free
online to read if you like.
No Christian parent should shrink from their
duty to raise their children in the nuture and admonition of the Lord.
Ephesians 6:4 And, ye fathers, provoke not
your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the
Lord.
Nurture and admonition here are placed together
as synonymous in relation to each other. The type of care and instruction a
parent is to give is explained all throughout the Bible and the verses that
deal with love, instruction, tenderness, and example far exceed the few
extolling physical discipline. A son who has been raised with correction,
instruction, example, admonition, and nurture will in all likelihood delight
his or her parents, the Rehoboams notwithstanding.
Proverbs 29:18 ¶ Where there is no vision, the people perish:
but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.
Although this verse can be and has been used in
a number of different ways, including preaching that without a view of who they
are, what their standards are, what they believe in, and where they are going a
nation, our nation usually, will fall.
The literal meaning here can be linked to
another verse that speaks of no vision from God.
Lamentations 2:9 Her gates are sunk into the
ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are
among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from
the LORD.
For a people who claim to belong to God, to
insist upon His mercies and His blessing, as in the putting up of “God bless
America” without any real devotion to God but just presuming upon Him and
assuming we’re special is a sick joke of monumental proportions and an insult
to the Creator of all things.
More specifically, for Christians to treat God
as no more than an idea, a force, or a vague standard for ‘sermon on the mount’ish
behavior if you’re left leaning and ten commandment style thus saith the lord
behavior on the right’ is an affront to God.
Americans have created at an American god,
dressed like the cartoon character Captain America, believing that a thing is
good just because we did it, following our government like sheep either to
moral bankruptcy at home or perpetual war abroad or both. America is perishing
not because of homosexuals or abortion or single mothers or Marxists but
because Christians sit numbly in the pews each week if they go to meet with a
church body at all and have no concept of the real person of God.
There is no real relationship with a risen
Saviour in the lives of many so called Christians, if not in the majority of
them. We are not ancient Hebrews under the Law, for certain, as Paul makes it
clear on several occasions, not the least of which is this one in his statement
on the ultimate equality of all Christians eliminating ethnic, social, and
gender distinctions;
Galatians 3:24 Wherefore the law was our
schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 25
But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. 26 For ye
are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as
have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor
Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye
are all one in Christ Jesus.
Even those who call themselves Fundamentalists,
who insist that they believe the Bible literally, act as if they are worshipping
a God out of a Hollywood script following someone who sounds strangely like
Charleton “Moses” Heston in a beard and sandals speaking very slowly and
ominously as the waters of the Red Sea close on the Pharaoh or a Max “Jesus
from The Greatest Story Ever Told” Von Sydow talking like he’s had too many
valiums and really, really just wants to take a nap.
The God of the Bible is alien to most American
Christians and they have no vision of who He really is. Ripping verses out of
context at the urging of some preacher they take Jeremiah 29:11 and say God’s
on our side regardless of our national sins, change the translation of the
church clearly announced in Colossians 1:13; Genesis 5:24 with Hebrews 11:5; 1
Thessalonians 1:10 with Revelations 6:17; 11:18 which has special meaning in
relation to how God created the universe with a non-Biblical word “rapture”
that has no connection with the rest of Scripture, and change the meanings of
many Biblical words and phrases like breeches, blessing, church, and house of
God to suit an agenda rather than to honor God’s word faithfully.
America is perishing because America is starving
from the famine of the word of God. There is no vision of God in America. There
is a vision of a Roman deity, a god of the state, whether he be right wing or
left wing, anarchist or totalitarian, but the God of the Bible, whom Abraham
Lincoln acknowledged was on neither side in the American Civil War but on His
own side, is not in our collective vision.
For want of it, the people are perishing.
America is perishing because Christians are not faithful. Happy is he or she
who loves God’s word, is in a constant prayerful state of reflection and
communion with God, and who loves the Lord Jesus Christ far more than sports,
their hobbies, their job, their material possessions, their political ideology,
or even their flag and country.
The time is coming when you will have to choose;
the God of the Bible or the god of the civil religion. Do you have a vision of
Christ or a vision from Christ? Do you even know what you believe and why?
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