Proverbs No.8 The National Health

The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days, the word of the Lord was rare. There were not many visions.

One night, Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called Samuel.

Samuel answered, Here I am, and he ran to Eli and said, Here I am, you called? But Eli said, I did not call. Go back and lie down. So he went and lay down.

Again the Lord called, Samuel, and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am, you called? My son, Eli said, I did not call. Go back and lie down. Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord.

The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. The Lord called Samuel a third time, and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am, you called me? Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy. So Eli told Samuel, Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.

So Samuel went and lay down in his place. The Lord came and stood there calling at the other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel said, Speak, for your servant is listening.

Turn with me in your Bibles, if you will, to Exodus chapter 32. In the NIV this is entitled The Golden Calf. When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered round Aaron and said, Come, make us gods who will go before us.

As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him. Aaron answered them, Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing and bring them to me. So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.

He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt. When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.

So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterwards they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry. Then the Lord said to Moses, Go down, because your people whom you brought up out of Egypt have become corrupt.

They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, These are your gods, O Israel, who you brought up out of Egypt. I have seen these people, the Lord said to Moses, and they are a stiff-necked people.

Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation. But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God.

O Lord, he said, why should your anger burn against your people whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say it was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth? Turn from your fierce anger. Relent, and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self, I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.

Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. The nations are slipping in hopeless despair, though many have come in your name. Watching while sanity dies, touched by the madness and lies.

Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus, pour out your spirit, we pray. Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus, pour out your spirit on us, we pray. May now your church rise with power and love, this glorious gospel proclaim.

In every nation salvation will come to those who believe in your name. Help us bring light to this world, that we might see your return. Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus, pour out your spirit, we pray.

Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus, pour out your spirit on us, we pray. Great celebration on that final day, when as of the heavens you come. Darkness will vanish, all sorrow will end, and rulers will bow at your throne.

A great commission completes, then faith to faith we will be. Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus, pour out your spirit, we pray. Come, Lord Jesus, come, Lord Jesus, pour out your spirit on us, we pray.

I'd like you to have your Bibles open at Proverbs in chapter 29 and verse 18. We come to the final address in this series from this often little read book of the Old Testament. You know the word Proverbs, it's not just a book of the Bible, it's also a term which speaks of certain expressions that we have with us in our English language today.

For example, what does a stitch in time save? Somebody out there, what does a stitch in time save? And too many cooks spoil. And if you, young people, listen, if you marry in haste you repent at. Take careful that you get the right one.

Now, you get Proverbs that have worked themselves into that type of example that I've given you from the Bible, what we've just quoted were not. But there is a proverb that actually has worked its way into the general speech patterns of we people here in England, and it really owes its origin to the authorised version of the Bible. And it says, where there is no vision, the people perish.

Where there is no vision, the people perish. It's this particular expression here that we find translated, where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint. I want to speak to you this evening about what has been dubbed the national health.

And there is a sense in which the national health of our country is physically, literally in great problems. For instance, the Guardian newspaper, which sometimes gets things right, perhaps more often than most quality newspapers, and certainly more than the tabloids, it tells us on Saturday's edition, yesterday's edition, that the NHS service is in real difficulty. Virginia Bottomley, bless her heart, is really having migraines, trying to cope with some of the rare problems that are breaking across her desk.

There's an attempt to try to preserve and develop the ministries of Guy's Hospital in London. And there was a six million pound donation given by one tycoon towards a specific project. But the government have changed their course and Sir Philip Harris reasonably requests that his money should come back.

And Arran Bevan is a name that some of the older friends would remember. He was the architect of the health service. He's a Welshman, a brilliant, eloquent brain.

And it was his idea that in this country, and it was a very wonderful idea and for a while it came into a full realisation that in this country, at the point of receipt, medical services would be utterly free. So you didn't buy your health simply because you had money. Anybody was able to go to the general practitioner or to the dentist and get the necessary treatment or subsequently go to the hospital services.

Well, we've moved considerably away from that, as was in a painful fashion at two levels experienced by me the other day, going to the dentist and not only submitting to his alleged treatment, but also paying the bill at the end. I don't know which of the two experiences was the most painful, but if Arran Bevan had been back there would only have been one painful part of that particular Monday morning. And yet, it's not so much the health service that I'm concerned about, though literally and physically I am, and I think Christians as citizens have a right to be.

I'm also concerned, and so the Word of God gives me the right to be, about the spiritual health of our nation. You see, this book of Proverbs, it speaks about wholeness within a community. Righteousness exalts a nation.

That means that a nation is never more strong than when it has spiritual moorings. A nation is never more able to cope with all the economic problems of the rest of the world as when it has built itself upon those commands which God gave to us through Moses, inscripturated in the Old Testament, summarized and underlined by our Lord Jesus. And now it's Mr. Major, for whom we ought often to be praying, who really brought to the attention of the nation, albeit perhaps not in a deliberate, thought-out fashion, the fact that spiritually we are very unhealthy.

And he diagnosed the condition and he prescribed the right remedy. And at the moment of so doing I was filled with respect. My problem is, as with our current Archbishop of Canterbury, he tends to be backpedaling on some of the things that he originally said.

He called us back to basics, and my understanding of basics is, well, what was communicated to Moses from the Lord three thousand plus years ago? Love the Lord your God. Worship the Creator, not created things. Respect the name of God.

Keep one day a week for rest and worship. Treat your parents well. Uphold the sanctity of human life.

Uphold the ideal of marriage. Respect the property of others. Speak the truth.

Develop an attitude of generosity. A reasonable rendering into modern language of those eternal commandments which God gave Moses yesteryear. Now, when a nation bases its life on this revelation, then it can be adjudged to be spiritually healthy.

Or if it's prepared to return again to this basis, then without being a prophet you can predict that the nation will return to full health. So I bring you once more to this word from Proverbs, as found in the Authorized Version. Where there is no vision, the people perish.

What does the word vision mean? Well, let's talk about what it doesn't mean. The writer of Proverbs does not say where there is no television, the people perish. In fact, the inverse of that arguably is true.

Neither is the writer of the Proverbs speaking in terms of a natural vision. This is not Bartimaeus waiting for the Lord Jesus to pass through Jericho in order that he might receive his sight, though there is nothing amiss in a person with defective vision wanting to have full sight restored. This is not something to do with mere intuition.

You know, some people have that particular gift. They are intuitively able to think through problems and to recognize difficulties. They are people of sagacity, people of wisdom.

But when the Bible says where there is no vision, it's not referring to understanding at that level. Then what does it mean? Well, when the Bible uses this particular word, it really has the connotation that you find here in the NIV's rendering of the verse, where there is no revelation. Revelation and vision are actually saying the same thing.

But revelation is not something that you discover for yourself. It is something that is dropped down into your mind, so to speak. In other words, what the Bible here is referring to is nothing less than the communication of God.

It is not looking ahead. It is rather looking above. It is not referring to something that is horizontal.

It is referring to something that is vertical. You say you haven't understood? Listen. There was a man by the name of Jacob.

You read of him in the early chapters of Genesis. On one occasion, he finds himself asleep and he has a dream. The dream, well, there's a ladder.

The ladder starts on earth and it goes into heaven. Up and down the ladder, descending and ascending are angels. And the symbolism is this.

There is traffic between heaven and earth. There is communication between God and man. Traffic, communication.

That is the same as vision and revelation. And the Bible is here anticipating a time when there is no communication from God to men and women. And it says of any category of people, these are in the lowest division.

It says of any circumstances in life, this is rock bottom, to be in a place where God is not speaking. I have here the authorized version of the Bible and I want to read to you from Psalm 147 and verse 17. And this is what it says of God.

He casteth forth his ice like mussels. Who can stand before his cold? Did you hear that? Who can stand before his cold? What does it mean? It means that God gives a cold shoulder. It means that God no longer is talking.

Martin Luther was one of the greatest men that Europe ever saw born. He was in the vanguard of a reformation. With John Calvin he suffered a great deal for his faith.

He was an emotional man and in this respect I think I can identify with him, though alas I don't have his spirituality or his insights. And on one occasion in utter terror, because his prayers did not seem to be reaching heaven, he said, Lord, send me pestilence, send me plague, send me disease, but great God, do not be silent before me. When God fails to communicate, Luther says, that is the darkest night that the soul could ever go through.

You need to hear your creator speak. And when there is no speech, the individual is in dire distress. And when a nation has no vision, that nation spirals downwards and all the ingenuity and the cleverness of the politicians and the philosophers and the educators combined cannot stop that nation from hitting the abyss.

Where there is no revelation, individuals, societies are in great difficulty. And indeed that's what the second part of the verse goes on to say, isn't it? Where there is no revelation, where there is no vision, the people perish. What does that word perish mean? When I was a lad, it was before the days of electric blankets and so on.

And occasionally when the winter was cold in the north of England, my mum would give my brother and I hot water bottles and we'd take them to bed. And next to the teddy bear, they were the most welcome intruder. But be careful with hot water bottles.

They are not designed to last forever. And the degree of discomfiture that comes upon you when the hot water starts to be more generously applied to the bed than you intended. Well, those of you who've been born in the last 20 years, you don't really know what hardship was like.

A hot water bottle can perish. And the Bible uses this word. Falling apart.

Separating. Deteriorating. The people cast off restraint because there's nothing to control them.

One of the things that has been a great blessing to the British people has been this, that the inauguration of our monarchy in all its several stages has taken place at Westminster Abbey. And the monarch has been offered a Bible and has been declared the defender of the faith and has been commissioned with the responsibility of seeing that in this country of ours, the Protestant gospel shall be heralded in the pulpits of the Church of England and the Church of Scotland. And when our monarchy has acknowledged the truthfulness of scripture, our country has known periods of greatness.

But when that acknowledgement is soft peddled, even to the point of denial, then there are no restraints placed upon the monarch or placed upon the royal family. And the net result is splintering. The net result is breakup.

The net result is individuals doing their own thing. I had a great respect for the man who will one day presumably be the King of England. One of my great regrets is this, that when Charles was just in his late teens and early twenties, he did not continue with the advice given to him by the Reverend John Start and others of evangelical persuasion.

For when Billy Graham was over in this country decades ago, he was asked by Her Majesty where she could hear people preach as he preached. And the Rector of all souls was made one of the preachers before the royal family. Alas, Charles was to move away from the influence of that particular man representing that particular part of the Church of England and became involved with Mervyn Stockwell.

There's a book called Charles and the Paranormal and it will tell you a little bit, a copy of which is in my library. It will tell you a little bit about Charles's dabbling with the occult and moving more towards a new age position. Flirting with people who were semi-Christian in their philosophy, but not completely so.

And as a result, he distanced himself from the learning of those early years. And this was repeated and has been repeated amongst other members of our royal family. I think it was not accidental that Her Gracious Majesty, in her last Queen's speech, for the first time in my recall, quoted scripture.

Following the horrible year, as though she was recognizing afresh. When there is no revelation, nothing to hang on to, family life breaks up. You know, it's a strange business to me that you can have such a video as Child's Play 3, influencing the mind of two young boys who are found guilty of the murder of James Bulger.

The way that they connive to bring about his death was so parallel to the plot in that video that you don't need to be a psychiatrist to realize where the stimulus came from. And yet, cable television showed that same video to 181,000 people, 40,000 of whom were calculated to be under the age of nine. Where there is no revelation, where there is acknowledgment of no basics, restraint goes out of the window.

Do you know how much it costs our government per year in the mopping up process of broken marriages? Not just hundreds of thousands or millions, it's running towards billions. The cost of seeing the basics but not living by the basics. Where there is no vision, the people perish.

It doesn't say the people are eliminated, it doesn't say the people are annihilated, it says the people perish. Society disintegrates. And when the Bible talks about the human soul, it never says that the human soul can ever move into a state of non-being.

It says God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish. For the ultimate destiny of those who die without the basics, without an acknowledgment of the revelation of God through Jesus Christ, as well as the revelation that he gave to Moses on the Ten Commandments, is not oblivion. It is an eternity without God.

And if there are some things that seem rough in our society now, hear me, they are just a shadow of the roughness to be endured in an unending age outside of the presence of God. But you see, how clearly the flip part, the underside of this text spells out a contrasting situation. Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint as the Hebrews did in the wilderness years ago when Moses was up on Mount Sinai.

Here he came back and discovered the people worshipping gold, making materialism their God, and with no ethical standard they moved away into immorality of the most indescribable circumstances. But over against this is highlighted for us the happiness, the blessedness of those who keep the law. Here's the young Samuel.

The situation in his day is similar to the situation that there is today. There were restraints cast aside, even the sons of the clergy were living in a way which brought dishonor to the name of Yahweh, the name of God. And Samuel, he hears at a time when not many people are hearing the voice of the Lord.

He hears God speak to him and he responds. And you can distinguish Samuel from many of his contemporaries and especially the older generation because Samuel is a man who will be blessed by the Lord. Why? Because he acknowledges revelation.

He has a vision. He has an understanding of eternal truth. Now he's only a young lad.

He's not been to theological college. He doesn't have degrees. You don't need any of these things whatsoever.

They don't prevent you from coming to an understanding of God. God speaks to you. God gives His revelation.

God will envision you as you come to Him and you ask Him to make His word understandable, to drop that ladder from heaven so, so to speak, the angels descend and ascend. And into your life the great glories of the Lord have been forgiven. You can know what it is to have purpose and meaning in your life.

You can know what it is to be happy. For Jesus said, I have come that your joy might be complete. Unfortunately Mick Jagger is my contemporary.

Also Cliff Richard. And I have forgiven the person who sent me a birthday card contrasting my looks with those of Cliff Richard and questioning that we were born virtually the same year. But back to Jagger.

He's had it all. Among the ten most wealthy men in our country. Couple of marriages, half a dozen confessed, concubines.

And at the age of 51 he says, I am still unsatisfied. I am still unblessed. What can help our nation? What can restore us back to the health that we ought to know? Listen to Solomon.

As in a better time in his life, he speaks in the name of God. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear them from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. And in the book of Revelation, speaking of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, albeit with symbolism, it says that the cross of Christ, the leaves of the tree, are for the healing of the nations.

You say you've known what it is to be unrestrained. You've tasted the forbidden fruit until it's turned sickly sour and it makes you vomit. You ask, can you know cleansing? Can you know the recovery of health? And the answer is yes.

As your vision is focused, as the revelation of the gospel is dropped into your mind, as you apprehend the truths of why Jesus came into the world, you can find yourself in the blessed category of which our proverb speaks. Blessed is the man who finds in the law of God his delight, whose life is brought back into alignment with him. Let us pray.

Father, as we take our leave from this place, may something of the abiding message of your word live on in our hearts and minds. Restore vision. Grant revelation.

May we not perish in this life nor the eternal age. May restraint be imposed upon us by your Spirit and may we discover that the road marked back to basics also has the title back to dignity and happiness. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for making this possible through your atoning death and resurrection.

Thank you, Holy Spirit, for being prepared to enter into the hearts of people and confirming that they belong to the Father. And now may the blessing of Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit rest and remain with us and please God, our nation, now and always. And the people of God thoughtfully said, Amen.

Amen. Amen. Though many have come in your name, Watching while sanity dies, Touched by the madness and lies, Come, Lord Jesus, Come, Lord Jesus, Pour out your Spirit, we pray.

Come, Lord Jesus, Come, Lord Jesus, Pour out your Spirit on us, we pray. May now your church rise with power and love, This glorious gospel proclaim. In every nation salvation will come To those who believe in your name.

Help us bring life to this world, That we might see your return. Come, Lord Jesus, Come, Lord Jesus, Pour out your Spirit, we pray. Come, Lord Jesus, Come, Lord Jesus, Pour out your Spirit on us, we pray.

Great celebrations on that final day, When out of the heavens you come. Darkness will vanish, O sorrow willing, And rulers will bow at your throne. Our great commission completes, And face to face we will meet.

Come, Lord Jesus, Come, Lord Jesus, Pour out your Spirit, we pray. Come, Lord Jesus, Come, Lord Jesus, Pour out your Spirit on us, we pray.