June 25, 2025 - Proverbs 28-31

“Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law strive against them.        Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the LORD understand it completely” (28:4-5).  I got to thinking about this only to realize how precisely Solomon has described the situation in our country, today.  First, it is important to remember, though governments can be unjust in their dealings, governments have been established by God to rein in evil and to promote good:  “Rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad” (Romans 13:3).  When people forsake the good law themselves, they tend to give ground to and make excuses for others to do wrongly.  For a wrongdoer, to point out the wrong of another, in effect, is to point own his own wrongdoing.  And so, wrong begets wrong as one, and then another, in cahoots, encourage wickedness.  The one who truly knows God, on the other hand, lives not as a tyrant and bully, always pointing the finger at others (Remember Jesus’ warning about speck in the eye of another and the lumber in our own eye!); rather, the person who knows God, honors his Word, and seeks to live by it . . . well, that person understands justice.  For the person of the world, “justice” is pretty much just whatever he or the larger culture determines it to be.  Divorced from God’s Word, the world promotes anything but real uprightness.  Things don’t change, do they?  And, then, there is this.  Ultimate justice is found in the cross, our debt by Jesus fully paid!

All my sin I lay on Jesus:

He doth wash me in His blood;

He will keep me pure and holy;

He will bring me home to God.

All in all I have in Jesus:

Poor, yet rich as cherubim;

Ignorant and full of weakness,

Heav’n’s own store I find in him.   --John C. Morgan (1875)