OBEY THE LAW: A DEVOTION FOR THE YOUNG AND THE YOUNG AT HEART

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Young people who obey the law are wise; those with wild friends bring shame to their parents.

Proverbs 28:7 NLT

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

In this life, we have laws to follow and we have officers whose sole job is to enforce many of those laws, particularly the laws that have to do with public safety.

Indeed, it’s against the law to do many things and anyone who chooses to willingly violate those laws will typically find themselves in the midst of consequences when they are caught.

One of the sets of laws we are probably most familiar with is the set of traffic laws we are expected to know and obey. We’re not to speed. We’re not supposed to drive recklessly. We’re never supposed to drink and drive or even text and drive in many states. Some have also banned the use of handheld devices (namely cell phones) while driving.

These laws were put in place to keep us safe on the roads but just one drive around a metropolitan area like the one I live in (Hampton Roads, Virginia) and you will find people breaking the laws all over the place. People know the laws but they don’t feel the need to comply with them. And this applies to many other instances involving laws people are to follow. I hate to say this but we are ever more becoming a lawless society, a collection of people who simply don’t want to play by the rules.

In many instances, you can trace this disobedience all the way back to youth. We lived under the roof of our parents or care providers and were expected to follow the rules of the house. Our parents would give us the do’s and don’ts as they sought to teach us to do right and be responsible. But let’s all be honest. Didn’t we look for opportunities to break those rules as often as we could get away with? It’s sad but you know I’m telling the truth. Satan has been working on us for a long time with the hope of taking us to a place where we don’t see laws as mattering anymore, to a place where we just do what we want to do, even if it’s wrong.

The danger with this attitude is that it crosses over to other parts of living like our spiritual side.

Now, some people may not be believers in the first place but where a lawless attitude hurts them is that they love that lifestyle so much that they wouldn’t even consider giving it up for a life that would be regulated in any way. After all, it’s so much fun just doing whatever you want. This is obviously the unwise decision to make.

Believers, when adopting a lawless attitude in their earthly lives, will find themselves less compliant with the laws of the scriptures. Violating the word of the Lord becomes a routine as sin and its pull takes a foothold and anchors a person in the world and its ways, far away from the righteousness and goodness that the Lord desires from all His people.

Solomon touched on this matter of complying with the law and youth in our proverb for the day. And although the verse mentions youth, I believe he is speaking to all of us. In other words, it’s a timely word of God for the young and the young at heart, a polite term for those who are older. Look at these words:

Young people who obey the law are wise; those with wild friends bring shame to their parents. Proverbs 28:7

The message here is clear. Obey the law and you will be wise. This is because you have allowed the Lord, the creator of wisdom, to lead you to a life of right living or righteousness, a life that will always be in compliance with the laws of the scriptures.

Of all those laws, the ones that are probably most widely known are the Ten Commandments. You can find them in the 20th Chapter of Exodus as God gave Moses a series of commandments to share with the people, commandments that would dictate how people were to relate to Him and how they were to relate to each other. For today’s discussion about obedience and the law, I would like to use the fifth of the Ten Commandments which simply says this:

“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” Exodus 20:12

The message here is clear and it applies to young and old alike. We are to honor our parents with our behavior. There is no exception here, no room for interpretation. What we do in life isn’t just about us. There are often more people who suffer in the midst of disobedient behavior and its associated consequences and those people can often be parents.

Our scripture today cautions us to watch who we associate with for if we run with the wrong crowd, we’ll often find ourselves doing wrong and often those wrongs come back and haunt the very parents who raised us as they experience shame in the aftermath of our dishonorable behavior. If only we would have just obeyed the laws of the Lord and honored our father and mother instead of disgracing them. This is a common lament of those who have opted for disobedience and experienced the destructive repercussions of those actions.

Friends, life would be so much better if we would just choose to obey the Lord’s law and remain steadfast in our compliance to it. For in a life like that we all would choose wisdom over sin, righteousness over wickedness, and discernment over folly. Even more so, we would live in ways that would make our father and mother proud, ways that would make God, our heavenly Father, proud as well.

Isn’t that where we should want to be in life, living in a way that honors our Lord which in turn will honor our father and mother?

Our answer had better be, “Yes.”

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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