GOD’S WISDOM FOR YOU
Now that Paul has completed his Second Missionary Journey, we will turn for a few days to some verses from the Proverbs.
PROVERBS 28:9-10
9 If anyone turns a deaf ear to the law,
even his prayers are an abomination.
This is a tidy and terrible little verse. In essence it says: If a man doesn’t listen to God, then God won’t listen to that man. But of course, this is more severe than God closing his ears to the man’s prayers (God does not hear the prayers of unbelievers). If a man pretends to be a believer and yet rejects the word of God, whether the law or the gospel, then his prayers are an abomination. That is, they are not merely ignored, but such prayers are actually a sinful abomination. The man who rejects God’s word but tries to make demands of God will suffer for it.
10 If anyone leads the upright along an evil path
he will fall into his own trap,
but the blameless will receive a good inheritance.
Leading someone else into sin, or an entirely evil path, is constantly condemned by Jesus. “Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least” (Matthew 5:19). “If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6). And there are more passages like these (Matthew 15:7-9; 23:15; Mark 7:6-8).
These are hard words for a parent or a spouse to hear. They terrify the conscience of the Christian man. He looks into the mirror of the law and wonders, “Do I, in my weakness, indulge my children too much? Have I instructed them well enough? Are they ready to face the world with a true heart?” We pray like Job begging God’s forgiveness for what his children did when they were out of his sight: “Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, ‘Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts’” (Job 1:5).
And then there is the husband, the head of his family. He may wonder, do my actions betray my temptations? Am I truly a Christian leader in my family? Or do I fail, day by day, question after question, crisis after crisis, to be a spiritual leader with the people I love?
The Christian parent and spouse can rest easy. Their struggle with conscience and with failing under the law of God shows them to be repentant sinners. It helps if there is a child or a wife who can ask, “Is this right?” But the mirror of law is warning enough. Being frightened by the Law of God “accuses them all and convinces them that they were sinners in order that they might know how they stood before God and recognize themselves as lost men. In this way they were prepared to receive grace from the Lord and to except and accept from him the forgiveness of sins” (Smalcald Articles, 3,3,5). We can set aside our terror and look to Christ. Moses promised: “When atonement has been made for him, he will be forgiven” (Numbers 15:28), and John proclaims: “Jesus Christ the Righteous One is the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 2:1-2).
Solomon’s proverb also condemns the wicked who reject Christ, who reject God, and who set themselves up like divine idols so that their true worship happens when they look into the mirror to see the one whose will is their only law. But such wicked men do not read Solomon’s proverbs with faith in their hearts. Let us rejoice in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Then we will apply Solomon’s wisdom and the rest of God’s word correctly, with Christ at the center of everything we say, think and do.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: www.wlchapel.org/connect-grow/ministries/adults/daily-devotions/gwfy-archive/2020
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Wisdom for You – Proverbs 28:9-10 God does not hear the prayers of unbelievers