Be Still And Know

Proverbs 28:27 Whoever gives to the poor will lack nothing, but those who close their eyes to poverty will be cursed. The writer of Proverbs often refers to poverty. In his society, there was no welfare state, so poverty was an ever-present and terrible threat. If their family was unable to give support, a person could become totally destitute. Begging would be the only option. It’s not surprising that many proverbs speak of the vital importance of giving to the poor, and in chapter 19 the writer speaks of the spiritual significance of such giving. He writes: “If you help the poor, you are lending to the LORD – and he will repay you” (Proverbs 19:17). God loves to see people who are generous to the poor, and this theme runs through the whole Bible, from the law of Moses to the sharp and down-to-earth wisdom of the letter of James. God expects us to care for the poor and will reward those who do so. The reference to those who close their eyes to poverty strikes me with particular force. The writer bluntly s

Proverbs 28:26 Those who trust their own insight are foolish, but anyone who walks in wisdom is safe. The book of Proverbs has a great deal to say about fools. Time and again, the writer notes how stupid, ignorant and destructive they are. Many of his observations would be incredibly funny if they weren’t so serious and sad. In Proverbs 26, he wrote: “A proverb in the mouth of a fool is as useless as a paralysed leg…like a thorny branch brandished by a drunk” and “an employer who hires a fool…is like an archer who shoots at random” (Proverbs 26:7,9 and 10). His powerful descriptions of foolishness are, of course, his springboard for commending the importance of wisdom. Everything in life depends on the acquisition of wisdom, which leads to security, loving relationships, success and happiness. The writer is absolutely clear that the only one who can give wisdom is God himself. He teaches us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It is only by worshipping God and building a life based on him

Proverbs 28:23 In the end, people appreciate honest criticism far more than flattery. The first three words are crucial in this verse! At first, probably all of us would rather be overwhelmed by flattery than offered criticism. We all want to be loved and to have people tell us how wonderful we are. However, in the end, honest criticism is far more valuable, and we should be forever grateful for those words of wisdom that give us insight and enable us to live better lives. When I learned to drive, my driving instructor had a background in training police drivers and was very demanding. At the time, his words were strong and could even sound rather harsh, but I haven’t forgotten them and, as I look back now, I am so grateful for the guidance he gave. If he had showered me with unqualified praise, it wouldn’t have been any help to me or other road users! The problem with flattery is that it is like candy floss: it has no substance. Edmund Burke, the 18th-century politician, said: “Flattery corrupts both the

Proverbs 28:13 People who conceal their sins will not prosper, but if they confess and turn from them, they will receive mercy. Sin always tries to hide itself. It’s a pathetic process because it is always bound to fail. Sooner or later, the sin will be revealed. Given that we are all sinners and regularly do things that are well short of perfection, we all need to know what to do when we sin. The writer is clear that the best approach is to come clean. When we admit that we have done wrong and turn away from our sins, we will find God’s mercy. In Psalm 32, King David reflected on how grim life was when he refused to confess his sin to God. He said: “My body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat” (Psalm 32:3-4). The evil one will always try to persuade us that sin is fun and that we will easily be able to get away with it, but the truth is different. It is a burden that is difficult to carry and l

Proverbs 28:6 Better to be poor and honest than to be dishonest and rich. This is such a typical proverb. It’s punchy, it’s brief and it contains a massive amount of wisdom. Honesty is always the best policy. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States of America, said: “Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom.” It’s not surprising that the book of Proverbs has much to say about honesty. It speaks often of the importance of being reliable, telling the truth and never being deceitful. The writer saw these as crucial qualities of a godly person and was convinced that this was the most wonderful life to live. He wrote: “The life of the godly is full of light and joy” (Proverbs 13:9). Because God loves honesty, he detests dishonesty. The prophets often delivered messages of God’s hatred of those who twisted the truth, especially when they did so to exploit the poor and vulnerable. The prophet Amos described those who couldn’t wait for the Sabbath to come to an end so that they could g

Proverbs 28:5 Evil people don’t understand justice, but those who follow the LORD understand completely. The Bible has a great deal to say about justice. The reason for that is clear. God is a God of justice, so he wants us to share his passion. The writer of Proverbs is characteristically blunt on the subject. Evil people, he claims, just don’t get it. They don’t mind bending or breaking the rules because they are only concerned about their own selfish interests. They aren’t bothered if there is no justice in the world, so long as they get what they want. It should be a completely different story for those who follow the Lord. Justice should be so important to Christians that they devote their lives to acting justly and encouraging others to do the same, however difficult it may seem. Our society looks very different from that of the writer of Proverbs, but it has always been the case that the weak and marginalised are most likely to be denied justice. The elderly, the disabled, the uneducated, the poor

Proverbs 28:2 When there is moral rot within a nation, its government topples easily. But wise and knowledgeable leaders bring stability. Every nation needs good leaders, but the pages of human history show that they have normally been in short supply. The Old Testament offers us a depressing procession of inadequate leaders, occasionally punctuated by one who was godly and able. In the prophecy of Hosea, God summed up the situation when he declared: “Burning like an oven, they consume their leaders. They kill their kings one after another, and no one cries to me for help” (Hosea 7:7). It was a tragic situation and led to centuries of moral rot, to use the colourful language of this proverb. There is plenty of moral rot in our own society. The massive amount of substance abuse, the breakup of families, the prevalence of child abuse, the phenomenal levels of fraud and the huge rise in knife crime would be just a few of indicators of a society that is in a poor way. In such a situation, we need to cry out fo

Proverbs 27:25-27 After the hay is harvested and the new crop appears and the mountain grasses are gathered in, your sheep will provide wool for clothing, and your goats will provide the price of a field. And you will have enough goats’ milk for yourself, your family and your servant girls. These verses give us a delightful insight into a rural way of life which has a rhythm that those of us who live in towns and cities can totally miss. The life of a farmer is an interesting interplay between God’s provision and sheer hard work. God graciously causes the grass to grow, but there is then a huge amount of work involved in drying it out and making the hay. The grass and hay sustain the sheep and goats who will provide wool and milk to clothe and nourish the family. It’s a wonderful cycle of life, but nobody should have any illusions that it’s a quiet life. Farm work is massively demanding. However far away we may live from a rural life, we all depend upon that relationship between God’s provision and human e

Proverbs 27:21 Fire tests the purity of silver and gold, but a person is tested by being praised. I wonder how you respond when someone praises you. Perhaps you are praised for your excellent work, your sporting skills, your kindness or your reliability. The writer of Proverbs makes the interesting observation that such praise is as critical a test of a person as fire testing precious metals. Praise will expose the kind of person that you really are. There are three things you can do with praise. The first option is to open wide and drink it all in. This is a dangerous path because it is likely to go to your head. It could inflate your opinion of yourself to the point that you become arrogant and unbearable to live with. The second option is to do everything you can to deny the plaudits and suggest that they have got it all wrong. This might sound like a humble approach, but it could easily come across as rude. The best way to handle praise is to acknowledge it gratefully and to use it as an opportunit

Proverbs 27:15-16 A quarrelsome wife is as annoying as constant dripping on a rainy day. Stopping her complaints is like trying to stop the wind or trying to hold something with greased hands. I’m not going to defend the pure sexism of this proverb. There’s absolutely no need for it. Anyone can be quarrelsome, whatever their gender! The writer is convinced that the quarrelsome person is very hard to stop. He makes it sound as if quarrelling has become their way of life. No amount of challenging will change them. Clearly, quarrelling is something that has happened since the dawn of time, and it’s not surprising that the apostle Paul was fully aware of the problem. He instructed Timothy that “a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but must be kind to everyone, be able to teach and be patient with difficult people” (2 Timothy 2:24). The sad truth, of course, is that any of us can be quarrelsome. It may be that we’re not feeling well, or we are generally unhappy with the state of things or we are feeling threa

Proverbs 27:14 A loud and cheerful greeting early in the morning will be taken as a curse! This might sound a bit harsh, but if you’ve ever lived with someone who is irrepressibly loud and cheerful, you probably know what the writer of this proverb is getting at! In life, it’s not so much what you say as how, when, where and why you say it. The writer is talking about people who are insensitive, and, let’s be honest, we all know people like that, and we’ve all done it ourselves. In the previous chapter, the writer referred to someone who was completely insensitive and totally misread the situation. He saw them as a serious liability. He wrote: “Just as damaging as a madman shooting a deadly weapon is someone who lies to a friend and then says: ‘I was only joking’” (Proverbs 26:18-19). Everything was wrong about this. He shouldn’t have been lying in the first place, and to try to pass it off as a joke was just pouring fuel on the fire. We all have something to learn from this. We need to learn to use our w

Proverbs 27:12 A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions. The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences. Prudence isn’t a word that we hear much these days, but it’s a wonderful word. The prudent person not only discerns the right thing to do, but does it. They make good plans and anticipate the problems that might occur. Our society is very safety-conscious, and that is obviously a good thing, although it can easily be taken to extremes. There was a well-publicised story of a headteacher who insisted that children playing conkers should wear goggles, and suggested that candy floss on sticks should be banned for fear of people tripping up and impaling themselves! Happily, the health and safety executive disagreed with both approaches. What we need is to live and make our plans carefully and sensibly. Jesus addressed the importance of planning when he talked about the person who proposed to build a tower. He pointed out that it was important to estimate the cost of completing the j

Proverbs 27:9-10 The heartfelt counsel of a friend is as sweet as perfume and incense. Never abandon a friend—either yours or your father’s. The writer Samuel Johnson once wrote: “Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.” I am sure we could all speak movingly of our friends. They are the people with whom we can laugh and cry, and be completely ourselves. It isn’t surprising that the writer of Proverbs had much to say about friendships. He recognised how important they were in a happy and fulfilling life. We see many friendships in the Bible, such as the friendship between David and Jonathan. There was an immediate bond between them when they first met, and the friendship sustained them through desperately difficult times. Words are a crucial part of friendship, and the writer of Proverbs observed how precious the counsel of a friend is. This doesn’t mean that a friend’s words are necessarily easy to hear. They may be deeply painful, but because they are motivated by love and care, the

1 John 5:21 Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts. Every day, we are all bombarded with influences. Family, friends, television, internet, advertising, books, social media and radio are all trying to claim our attention and suggest different ways in which we should be thinking. Much of the time, we don’t even notice it’s happening, but we cannot stop the process. Most of those influences are not inherently bad, but they all have the potential for distracting us from serving God. Idols come in many shapes and sizes. They will never announce themselves as idols, but they are, as this verse so clearly states, anything that takes God’s place in our hearts. It could be your family, your hobby, your football team, your garden or your job. Anything which takes first place in our lives pushes God into second place at best. Our families, our hobbies, our sporting interests, our gardens and our work are all wonderful gifts of God and they can bring enormous enjoyment an

1 John 5:14-15 We are confident that God hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him. And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for. Prayer is of absolutely crucial importance to our lives. It has been wisely said that you and I are as strong as our prayer lives and no stronger. Every part of our lives depends upon prayer, so it is really important that we are clear about the Bible’s teaching on this subject. One of the most important things to recognise is that prayer is never a matter of simply saying certain words to God. Bishop Ryle said: “We have learned a great lesson when we have learned that ‘saying prayers’ is not praying.” Prayer is all about a relationship with God in which we talk to him and open our hearts so that he can work in our lives. The Old Testament prophets often observed that people said prayers that were completely unacceptable to God because their lives showed that they had no interest in serving him. God sp

1 John 5:11-12 This is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life. Sooner or later, everyone is bound to ask what life is all about. Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, one of the most successful rock groups of all time, asked the question in one of his last songs: “Does anyone know what we are living for?” It was a genuine cry from the heart. In human terms, he had everything. He had money and fame on a colossal scale, but, shortly before his death in 1991, he admitted that he was desperately lonely. He said: “You can have everything in the world and still be the loneliest man, and that is the most bitter type of loneliness. Success has brought me world idolisation and millions of pounds, but it’s prevented me from having the one thing we all need – a loving, ongoing relationship.” John would have totally agreed with Mercury. A “loving, ongoing relationship” is what we all need,

1 John 5:4-5 For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith. And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God. We need to be clear that whenever John talks about the world in this passage, he is talking about the world without God. When humankind rejects God, the world is a terrible place full of sin, death and destruction. We are all called to live in such a world, but John wanted to make it clear that we don’t need to be scared of it because in Christ, we have the victory. On Good Friday, Jesus died as the evil world unleashed its worst on him, but that wasn’t the end. On the Sunday morning, Jesus rose from death and proved that he had the victory. This has very practical implications for us. It affects our daily lives in a very profound way. Day by day, we head into a world where God is not respected by most people. The news is full of accounts of abuse, violence, brokenness and disorder. On the face of it,

1 John 4:11-12 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. You cannot see the wind, but you can easily see the effects that it has. Equally, you cannot see electricity, but we have no doubt that it exists because of all that it does. No one has ever seen God, but we know that he exists because we see his love reflected in the people around us. The more we love people, the more they will have the opportunity to see the living God. Tertullian, one of the early Church Fathers, wrote of how the pagan Romans were struck by the Christians’ way of life. “See how they love one another,” was their response. I would love to think this would be the response to each of our churches, and I believe it often is. People see churches setting up food banks, debt advice services, parent and toddler groups, listening services and many other activities. They are wonderful e

1 John 4:10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Most of the love that we experience in our lives is reciprocal. We love other people, and they love us. Sometimes we have taken the initiative and, on other occasions, they have done so. It is very different with God. There is nothing that we could ever do to win his love. However hard we might try, we could never get to a point where God was forced to love us. The fact that he has chosen to love us is entirely down to his own initiative. This is an incredibly important truth because the whole of our Christian life needs to flow from it. In his letters, Paul often used the word grace to describe God’s relationship with us. Forgiveness and salvation are a matter of sheer gift. There is nothing we could ever do to contribute towards them. When we take the step of faith and accept Jesus into our lives, we are simply responding to his incredible generosity to us. Paul wrote to the

1 John 4:1 Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world. There have always been false teachers, but they must have been particularly difficult to face in the early Church. Many Christians would have come from completely different religious and philosophical backgrounds, and few of the church leaders would have had much education. It would have been extremely easy for articulate people to creep into the Church and lead people astray. Anyone can claim to speak by the Spirit, and it is not surprising that many young impressionable Christians simply accepted what they were saying. What John wanted to do was to encourage every Christian to test what they heard. Jesus himself was well aware of the challenge from false teachers. In the Sermon on the Mount, he said: “Beware of false prophets who come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves. You can identify