Two Kinds of Vision [A]

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Proverbs chapter 29 today. Proverbs chapter 29. For all the discussion about political correctness that we hear in our country today, and this is not a message about political correctness, but for all the discussion we hear about political correctness in our country today, I would much rather, I’ll tell you, I’d much rather be biblically correct than politically correct.

And honestly, we’re to the point where you can’t do both. You can try, but you will not succeed. You really can’t do both.

But biblical correctness has got to be what churches are concerned with, with what pastors and teachers are concerned with. And part of the commitment to biblical correctness means if I’m shown from the scriptures that I’m wrong about something, then that’s just the way it is. I’m wrong about it and I need to come back and correct it.

And to my knowledge, I haven’t taught you anything wrong here, unless it’s been a little detail or something we disagree with. You know, if I get a date wrong on, well, Moses was born this time, you know, that’s not really a doctrine issue, and if I’m shown, I’ll correct it, but to my knowledge, I haven’t taught you anything doctrinally incorrect, but I’d come back and correct it if shown. Well, there are some passages, though, over time that I’ve realized, you know, it’s not a major doctrinal thing, but I taught that wrong.

What I said about that was, it’s not that what I said was wrong, it’s just that that’s not what that passage means. There have been a few things like that. I mean, I’ve never taught salvation any other way than through the blood of Christ. I’ve never taught that you could lose your salvation.

I’ve not ever, to my knowledge, taught any major errors, but there have been some that, you know what, whether it’s a big thing or a little thing, let’s go back and correct it. And what we’re going to look at this morning, as the last several weeks that I’ve been here, we’ve been talking about some of these passages in the Bible that are often misinterpreted. Today, it’s going to be a passage that I’ve taught wrong, a passage that I know other preachers in our work who have taught wrong.

And God love them. It’s not that, honestly, I don’t think it’s that what we’ve said, the point that we’ve made was wrong, but that’s not what this scripture is talking about. There’s a verse, one verse in Proverbs chapter 29, that says in part that where there is no vision, the people perish.

Absolutely true. Good point. But it’s been taught for years as though we have to plan, We have to have a vision for where we’re going, otherwise the people perish.

I know when I came on as associate pastor at the church in Bethany, there was a lot of discussion about vision for the church, and folks, I think that is an important thing. I’m not going to tell you that the Bible is against planning. We’re going to talk tonight about some things that churches do need to plan on.

I just think this is not the passage that teaches this. This passage teaches something, I think, better. But when I came on as associate pastor at that church, we were talking about vision.

That church had had some real troubles before I came there, and to be honest, after I came there. But they’d had trouble, and there was the discussion that the church seemed to be dwindling. Where are we going?

We need to make sure we know what we’re doing, what God wants us to do, and we’re all on the same page, and we need to get a vision. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but I remember we had the big banner hanging over the stage behind the pulpit that had this verse, Where there’s no vision, the people perish. And basically the idea that we promoted, that we taught, and this is not something that was only taught there.

I’ve heard other preachers, other good preachers talk about this point, that if we don’t have a vision, if we don’t have a plan of what we’re doing for God, then everything’s going to fall apart. You know what? I think there’s some real sense in that.

I think there’s some real common sense in saying, let’s make a plan for where we’re going. You know, if you’re just out on a leisurely drive, it’s okay to say, let’s just go wherever the wind takes us. But if you’re trying to get somewhere specific, you better know which way you’re headed.

I think there’s some real sense in that, but that’s not what this passage is teaching. This passage is talking about something entirely different. We’re going to look at some of the verses around it.

I’ll admit to you, it’s hard in the book of Proverbs to always get context. Proverbs is really hard to get context because it skips around. It skips from one subject to another.

And there’s not always where you can go to another book and for one whole chapter he’s talking about this and then Paul transitions into something else or maybe spends three chapters on it. Throughout the book of Proverbs, you may get a verse or two on wisdom. Then you may get a verse on handling your money.

Then you may get three verses on keeping your mouth shut. I mean, it’s just, it’s a book of Proverbs, a book of short, wise sayings. So it’s a little difficult to get a context, but if we look at some of the verses around this, I think in this one, we can see a broader context of what he’s really talking about, and especially when we look at what the words in that verse actually mean.

And it should become clear to us what God is actually teaching us. And it has to do a lot with what kind of vision we’re talking about, and how we know what direction God wants us to go. Let’s start with chapter 29, verse 15.

It says, the rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. Now there’s truth in that. You know, you discipline a kid and it doesn’t mean that they behave perfectly from then on, but you discipline and you keep after them.

And eventually those lessons start to take hold a little bit. I still have a two-year-old and a four-year-old, so I can just say a little bit those lessons take root. But a child left to himself, left to his own devices, the Bible says, brings his mother to shame.

Now that could mean as a little kid, you let your child, your little child run loose and they’re going to do things they’re not supposed to. You let a big child run loose long enough, they’re really going to do things they’re not supposed to and really bring their parents to shame. I didn’t get in trouble a lot as a child, but I remember a story I had to have been about four or five years old.

And my family always took naps on Sunday. We still do. We can squeeze them in.

And my parents were taking naps. And I was supposed to be taking a nap, only I woke up. Had no supervision.

I was left to myself. And I got into the glitter in mom’s craft box. Got glitter all in the carpet.

It was everywhere. There’s so much glitter, I couldn’t clean it up. And I ruined a big patch of mom’s carpet.

Only thing I knew to do before she woke up was to call my grandmother and say, please don’t let my mommy get on to me. And so she called her and said, you know, I’ll just go over her head to her mommy. But you know what?

I was left to my own devices long enough and I did something very displeasing to my mother. So the verse here is saying you can’t just leave your children to run wild. That’s going to come back into play when we look at this verse on the lack of vision.

A child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increaseth, but the righteous shall see their fall. Okay, that is just, I mean, that’s wisdom from God’s word, but you can also get that wisdom right there from that verse just by thinking about it.

The more wicked people there are, the more wicked stuff is going to get done. That’s just, you know, I can only cause so much trouble on my own. Get 15 more just like me, we can cause a whole lot more trouble.

Or me or anybody else. Okay? When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increases.

When there are more wicked people, there’s more sin. It says the righteous will see their fall. Correct thy son and he shall give thee rest. Amen.

Don’t just let your children run amok. And guys, this is not really a lesson on child-rearing, but it all points back to what we’re going to see in this verse about vision. Correct your son and he will give you rest. It is exhausting sometimes to get off the couch and deal with every little infraction, every little transgression.

Sometimes it’s been a long day and I just want to sit there and can you please just not please just do what you’re supposed to do for ten minutes. Just let daddy sit down for ten minutes. But you know what?

You stay on top of them and you teach them and you know There was one day this week, I had to sit down and have a 20, 30 minute conversation with Benjamin about not throwing fits. The spankings weren’t working, timeout wasn’t working. Okay, we’re going to sit down and we’re going to get to the root of this.

Why are you throwing a fit? Why are you upset? Okay, maybe a better way to handle this would be to tell me you’re upset and why.

And you’re still not going to get your way, but at least you’ve got those feelings out and you’re no longer feeling the need to throw a fit. Now, I don’t sit down and reason with my kids every time, but nothing else was working. you know what it was exhausting to have to try to have to reason and work through logic with a four-year-old that is that’s exhausting I don’t know if you’ve ever tried that that’s exhausting but you know what he was calm the rest of the night then he woke up the next day it was a whole new day but you know what we dealt with it we corrected the problem and he gave me rest the rest of the night and god’s saying here don’t let your children run wild and then goes into verse 18 and says, where there is no vision, the people perish.

But he that keepeth the law happy is he. Now, there’s a contrast here between vision and keeping the law doesn’t make so much sense. Until you look at the original languages, and I’m not a Hebrew scholar, I’m even less of a Hebrew scholar than I am Greek.

At least with the Greek, I’ll try to pronounce the words for you and tell you how they correspond to our language. When it comes to Hebrew, I just have to glean the best from it I can because I mean their alphabet looks nothing like ours and hard to read. But when you look at the original languages, what I’ve been able to figure out by looking at translations and looking at various things is when it says here vision, it’s not talking vision as in my vision, your vision, where do we see ourselves going?

It’s talking about revelation. It’s talking about a word from God. I preached a message last Sunday night out at Tallahassee about not hearing from God and talked about Samuel when he was first under Eli’s care.

And the Bible says that it was during a time when there was no open vision. And what that means is that God wasn’t regularly speaking through his prophets the way he had at other times. So there are several places in the Bible where this idea of vision is used, not for what’s your idea of where you’re going, what’s your goal, but where vision is used to mean God speaking to the people.

So where there is no revelation, where God’s word is not heard, says the people perish. Well, that word perish, again, I think that’s true. Separated from God’s word, we get ourselves in bad trouble.

But what that literally means is they run amok. So read that verse, where there is no vision, the people perish, and understand it the way the original Hebrew readers would have understood it, to mean that where God’s voice is not heard, the people run amok. Doesn’t that fit really well with the verses before that that we’ve already looked at?

Where God is, I’ve said before, y’all probably get tired of hearing me say this, having kids has helped increase my understanding of God’s Word. It’s not by accident that he calls himself a father so many times, that he relates himself to us that way so many times. And I look at things that I really used to just not understand and say, but that’s okay, that’s just how God does things, to now look at it and say, oh, okay, I understand a little better why he does this, because I’m a father, and this is what I would do, and he’s a better father than I’ll ever think about being, and that’s why he.

. . Okay, it makes a little.

. . Again, I’ll never completely understand the mind of God, but things once you have kids suddenly that whole fatherhood of God starts to make a little more sense and that’s why God through all the rest of these verses before this has likened this back to our children and disciplining them and not letting them run amok and instead you need to speak correction into their lives you need to remind them of the rules you need to you need to discipline them and not let them run run wild to their own devices because then he comes back in verse 18 and says where there’s no revelation, where there’s no vision, where the voice of God is not heard by the people, they run wild.

And then suddenly the contrast in verse 18 becomes clear. Where people don’t hear God’s voice and don’t obey his law, they run wild. But he that keeps the law is happy.

And that word, the words for happy and blessed are sometimes used interchangeably in the scriptures. But there’s blessing that comes with keeping God’s law. There’s chaos that comes from ignoring it.

So really all of this has been about the idea that when we stop hearing from God and we start ignoring what He’s taught us, we’re in for trouble. We just are. As individuals, we’re in for trouble.

As families, we’re in for trouble. As churches, we’re in for trouble. As a nation, ladies and gentlemen, we’re in for trouble.

And I submit to you in our day and time, it’s not that the lack of hearing from God is not because God is not speaking. I don’t believe God is normally still speaking the way he did through his prophets all those years ago, but he’s given us his word and his Holy Spirit. We can still hear the voice of God today.

Any lack of hearing from God is not because God’s not speaking to us. It’s because we’re not listening. It’s because we ignore him.

We’re sort of like, oh my goodness. Yesterday I got home, my kids got home, trying to talk to them about things. You know, you need to pick up the toys.

Turning their heads, acting like they can’t hear me, they can’t see me, I’ll just go away. they’re no match for me they don’t seem to realize what parents I was raised by so I’m not going away ignoring me is only going to make me louder uh but but they turn their heads and they try to pretend like I can’t see you I can’t hear you that’s sort of what we sometimes do with god it’s not that he’s not talking to us it’s not that our father’s not speaking it’s that we’re acting like stubborn children he says in verse 19 a servant will not be corrected by words for though he understand he will not answer. Sometimes that’s true.

We can try to correct with just words, and sometimes people won’t hear or won’t answer. Seest thou a man that is hasty in his words, there is more hope of a fool than of him. So you can be a wise man, you can be a brilliant individual, but you can be hasty in your speech, and God says there’s more hope for a fool than for you.

Be slow to speak, swift to hear, and slow to wrath, James says. He that delicately bringeth up his servant from a child shall have him become his son at the length. And it’s talking about a servant that you deal with after he’s grown and somebody works for you and he’s grown and he’s stubborn and you try to correct him may not work out well, but if you lovingly and diligently correct him and point him in the right direction from early days, said he’ll be like a son to you.

So the point of this whole passage, ladies and gentlemen, the point of this whole passage, it speaks to the need to lovingly, consistently, and patiently discipline your child or your employees or those who are under your authority. And it reminds us of the way that God does that with us. He lovingly, consistently, patiently corrects and directs us with his word.

But we have to be willing to hear it. We as his children have to understand the importance of hearing it. We have to be willing to listen to our father when he speaks.

We have to be willing to listen to what his word says and to heed it and to follow it. And not just stand there like a stubborn child with our fingers and our ears and our head turned and saying, I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you. And the importance of it is because he points out, and we know this to be true, that when we wander away from God’s word, when we are not willing to hear the voice of God, when we stop hearing from God and listening to him, we run amok.

The people run amok. You cannot divorce your way of life from God and his word and expect to end up with the right kind of results. And I’m not saying that everybody who lives apart from God’s word is as evil and wicked as they possibly could be.

I know plenty of, by human standards, good people who do not study God’s word, who do not follow God’s word. And they’re perfectly nice people. But in terms of our lives being everything that God intends them to be, everything God created them to be, everything that frankly we should desire for them to be, We cannot divorce our way of living from God’s principles and expect our lives to turn out the way that He desires them to.

I want a peaceful life. I want my children to make good decisions. I want this.

I want that. All of these are good things. What are we doing in order to see that happen?

Are we making godly choices? Are we trying to live according to God’s Word? And I’ll submit to you that the further and further we get from God’s Word, the worse the chaos gets.

Folks, watch the news. I can’t watch the news anymore, very often. I think the last time I sat down and watched an entire national news broadcast was the day of the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, and my parents were getting mad at me because I’m sitting there screaming at David Muir on ABC about the 10th Amendment, or whoever it was doing the report, screaming about the 9th and 10th Amendment, and my parents were like, can we hear the news?

Would that be okay? My blood pressure. I can’t watch the news.

There’s just too much that goes on in our world that’s just, folks, it’s just wrong. Just 15 different kinds of wrong. If I want to hear the news, I usually go look it up on the internet or listen to the radio.

It keeps my blood pressure a little bit lower, it seems. But you watch the news and you see how things just seem to be falling apart. People are killing each other in our country over the color of their skin. And I know that’s gone on for years.

But it just seems like things are at a boiling point right now we haven’t seen since the 60s. I use the term we loosely because I wasn’t around until the mid-80s. But that this country hasn’t seen since the 60s.

Tell me, is that a result of doing what God’s Word says or ignoring it? Does God’s Word teach that we’re supposed to hate each other based on race or anything else? It’s not a trick question.

No, it doesn’t teach that. As a matter of fact, it says that from one blood, he created all mankind. He created all the races.

It says that there’s neither Jew nor Greek. There’s neither male nor female. There’s neither slave nor free.

For we are all one in Christ Jesus. The chaos we see is a result of ignoring what God’s word says. Folks, I’ve not watched all the videos because quite frankly, I know what abortion looks like.

I’ve seen videos before and my heart can’t take it. But I’ve listened to the audio of the Planned Parenthood videos, which was bad enough. Right now in our country, there are people combing through bins of organs and limbs to sell human beings like they are stuff.

Folks, I thought we got that settled in 1865. Human beings aren’t stuff to buy, sell, and trade. And we’re talking about evil on a scale.

I’m sorry. I don’t deliberately try to offend anybody, but if you’re opposed to what I say on this, you’ll just have to fire me. I tell you that in all due respect.

We’re talking about a level of evil with Planned Parenthood that has not been seen since 1945. Is that a result? Is that a result of following God’s Word or ignoring it?

I can tell you God’s Word teaches that all life is precious. Let me give you one that’s maybe a little harder for us in the Bible Belt to sympathize with, but I think it’s important that we do. In the Middle East today, people are being beheaded.

They’re being beheaded and thrown off of buildings for being homosexual. Is that what Jesus taught? No. I don’t agree with homosexuality, but folks, we as believers, as followers of Christ, we ought to be standing with the oppressed.

Folks, there is evil all over this world today, and it’s a result of ignoring what God’s Word teaches. When God’s voice is not heard, the people run amok. Now sometimes it’s in the world at large where we’ve got racial violence and we’ve got Planned Parenthood plying their trade and we’ve got ISIS and we’ve got, and we could look at those and say they’re running wild because they’re rejecting God’s principles.

And that’s absolutely true. They’re rejecting what God’s word teaches. And chaos and barbarism follow.

But I stop sometimes to think about why that’s been possible. why it’s been possible for that to happen. And I can’t help but feel like we as Christians, I can’t help but feel like I as a Christian share in some of the responsibility for that.

Because we tend to sometimes ignore what God’s Word says and run amok a little bit ourselves. And I’m not talking about amok like that. I’m not talking about running wild like that.

But don’t we sometimes get so busy running after and chasing our own goals and what we want out of life that we forget about focusing on what God’s Word says. Forget about what’s the right thing. What does God want us to do here?

What does God expect from me? And I don’t know that it would solve everything tomorrow, but I can’t help but feel like this world would be a little bit better place if God’s people would get our act together and speak with one voice. I’m not saying we’re going to ever agree on everything, but if we’d speak with one voice and say, God’s Word matters.

How we live our lives matters. Not just you outside the four walls were pointing fingers at you and saying how you live according to God’s Word matters, but how I live my life in light of God’s Word matters. Because when we ignore what God’s Word says, when we ignore what God’s Word says, chaos and evil are not far behind.

I have some points here this morning in my notes that we’re just going to skip. I just want to tell you this verse, this whole passage, It teaches that God’s Word is there to get us in line and to keep us in line. Like a loving Father.

And we can look at it and we can resent it and we can fight against it. And folks, nothing I’ve said this morning is meant as a jab at you all. I’m just saying, for me, for each of us, we need to look at ourselves and say, where do we stand in light of God’s Word?

This is not a, you’re doing it all wrong message. This is a let’s each take inventory here of where we stand and what we’re doing. We can receive the correction from God’s word or we can fight against it.

And we can think it’s harsh, it’s there to ruin our fun. Kids don’t always like it when you tell them don’t play in the street because it looks like so much fun. And yet that 18-wheeler barreling down the highway isn’t going to be so much fun.

And so as a loving parent, we issue correction and wisdom and say stop that. The child can either take it as loving correction or the child can fight against it. Where do we stand with God?

Do we look at His Word as a source of wisdom? Do we desire to hear His voice? What does God say on the subject in how we live our lives?

And I know most people in here probably are not involved in what we would look at and say are big things. To my knowledge, nobody’s in here going out and participating in any of the things that I’ve talked about this morning. Nobody in here is out participating in race riots in Baltimore or Ferguson.

Nobody is out gunning people down in the streets. Nobody in here, to my knowledge, is selling human body parts. Nobody is in here beheading people overseas.

We could very easily look at it and say, well, my life’s together before God. Folks, let’s take a look at even the little decisions we make. Are we running to God’s Word for revelation, for correction, for wisdom?

Because when we stop listening to God, chaos is not far behind. When we stop listening to God, even in the little things, chaos is very likely to follow. We cannot, we cannot divorce our lives from God’s principles and expect anything good to come out of that.

We just can’t. So my question to you this morning, my question to myself, my question really for all of us, do we have vision? Do I have vision?

And by that, I don’t mean goals and plans. I mean the way the Bible uses this word. Do I hear God’s voice?

Am I looking for God’s voice? When I hear God’s voice through His Word and through His Holy Spirit, do I listen to it? Or am I in the latter category where I’m running wild?

Because the Bible teaches that where God’s voice is not heard, the people run wild. And we can blame the world outside for the evil, and you know what, we should. Don’t take this as, well, let’s just let them off the hook because we’re the Christians and we need to get our stuff together.

Now, we can condemn the evil outside, and we should. I would like to think it should be evil to. .

. I’m sorry, I would like to think that it wouldn’t be controversial to condemn blatant evil when we find it. Whether it’s ISIS, whether it’s Planned Parenthood, I don’t care.

If it’s evil, it’s evil. But folks, it’s very easy to condemn evil outside these four walls. It’s a lot harder to look inside of ourselves and see whether we’re running wild in small ways.

Folks, in big things and in little things, we need to look for the wisdom of God. And we need to apply it to our lives. We need to live according to the words and according to the directions and correction that He’s given us.

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