Proverbs 31:17 She girdeth her loins with strength, and
strengtheneth her arms.
The work of the church, ministering to the
physical needs of its members and the spiritual ones, requires a day-to-day
determination and strength. Church in the modern world is nothing like it was
in the first century. There was no public welfare not associated with pagan
temples, societies, or heathen religious groups. The church had to take care of
its unemployed, its elderly, and the sick if those people had no family to care
for them and were willing to work but weren’t able to do so. A simple reading
of the book of Acts and the letters from Paul show that if one church in a
distant city was suffering from a local famine then other churches would raise
money to send relief.
The work of the early church included caring for
the helpless, the weak, and the infirm. In the average church today you
wouldn’t even know if a senior citizen needed to have their furnace replaced
and had no money to do so or if the floor in one of their rooms was rotting out
and needed to be rebuilt. It’s more of the modern church’s concern to organize
a volleyball game for Christ or have a youth rally and concert to try to draw
in customers, err, I mean potential members. The modern church is a consumer
church. It is more concerned with the church growing in numbers on a weekly
basis than the members growing in grace on a daily basis.
How many modern churches equip their members for
a daily walk with Christ and daily worship by teaching them how to read and
interpret the Bible with the help of the Holy Spirit, particularly in a day
when education is so uneven across the board? We have a wonderful opportunity
today. In the first century it would have been rare for a household to have a
copy of the Old Testament, the scriptures that were available and literacy in
the first century Palestine would have been limited to males and focused on the
reading of the Torah in the Synagogue or learning by disciples of a particular
Rabbi; a teacher or a Master in Bible terms.
No matter how literate the Jews were in the
first century it is most certain that they did not have several Bibles laying
around in every home, collecting dust or being used to prop open a door. We
have widespread literacy, even for women, who are no longer relegated to
demanding answers to questions in a church meeting in someone’s home and being
told they need to learn in silence and ask their husbands those questions at
home.
We have the Bible, almost a billion in print,
God’s word for all ages of man, present in every Christian home, at least, to
the number of several copies. Just as there is no excuse for any person in your
assembly to be hungry, to be sitting at home sick without anyone to sit with
them, to have no heat in their homes, no transportation to work, etc. there is
also no excuse for anyone in your church to not know how to read and understand
the Bible by prayerfully cross referencing, reading parallel phrasing, key
words, understanding dispensational order, and Christian versus ancient Hebrew
doctrine. There is, in addition, no excuse for one person to leave a church
service confused because the preacher gave a confused, doctrinally mixed-up
message that kept the member from reading and understanding the Bible on his or
her own.
The church girds up her loins, the foundational muscle, by
which an athlete does squats and deadlifts, with a daily heavy dose of the
Bible reading and hearing, so that their arms, the physical workers of the
church, can perform their work without failure and with true strength
ministering to the physical needs of her members that can’t be met otherwise
and to the spiritual needs that won’t be met otherwise.
Proverbs 31:18 She perceiveth that her merchandise is good:
her candle goeth not out by night.
We have another insistent reference to night,
and again underscoring the reason why I believe that night is so significant.
Just read my comments on verse 15.
Merchandise, more importantly than just being
something you sell, as in Proverbs 3:14 it is something of great value. There
is nothing of greater value than the gospel of salvation through faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ.
The candle is the light that the church emits and
as it shows in Revelation as Christ talks to the church at Ephesus, which has
left its first love, He has power to remove the candlestick by which the light
has a sure place if the church wanders from its mission. American Christianity
went off the rails in the 19th century when government became to be viewed as a
means to an end and eventually the government began to take over the role of,
first, as God’s agent on earth rather than the church, and then, second, in
place of God Himself. This is a heresy of both the left and the right, of both
liberal and conservative. You look at government, rather than God, to make all
crooked places straight and bring all hills to ground level, or you look at
government rather than God, to enforce religious dogma, your own personal
convictions particularly. American pastors, whether they preach a feelgood
gospel or stand in the pulpit and curse the government from the left or the
right, have placed government in the position of God and as an excuse for not
shining in the world themselves as examples.
Remember, there can be no law made against the
fruit of the Spirit named in Galatians 5:22. It’s impossible to prevent the
church from shining in the world no matter how anti-Christian a government can
be.
The church’s merchandise is good and her light
shines through the night. When it stops shining and Christians have no impact
on the world around them it is a sad day.
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