FBC Morning Light – December 28, 2022

Proverbs 31:8-9 and the Duty to Speak for the Voiceless

Well, a good Wednesday morning. Are you counting down the final days of 2022 and looking forward to this Lord's Day, New Year's Day? Well, I know I am. I'm always looking forward to the Lord's Day, but I just enjoy seeing one year pass away and a new year come.

I'm not necessarily interested in counting how many of those years I have survived necessarily, but nevertheless, I do look forward to a new year. Well, we're just halfway through this week and that day is coming pretty quickly.

Today we're again in Proverbs 31. Remember these first nine verses in this chapter are words of a mother to her son, who is a king. The last section of the book, verses 10 to 31, are verses that extol the virtuous woman, praise the good mother and wife.

But these first verses are advice, counsel of a mom to her son. As every good parent knows, there are some times you have to tell your children what not to do, but then you also tell them what to do. There's a negative and a positive.

Just like in a battery terminal, things are going to function well. There's going to be power and energy. You've got to have some of both. The other day we looked at the negative counsel or advice that King Lemuel's mother gave to him.

Basically, that advice was, don't give your energy to that which is going to suck life out of you. It's going to destroy your vitality. She mentioned that in terms of wasting your life on women and profligate living.

Then a couple of verses later, she said, it's not for you to drink wine, get intoxicated so it distorts your judgment, and so forth. But in verses 8 and 9, she switches from the negative to the positive and says, here are some things you need to do.

Those are some things you need to avoid. Here are some things you need to do. Specifically, because Lemuel is a person in authority and leadership, and he has the opportunity to make a positive, significant difference in some matters of justice, she says to him in verse 8, open your mouth for the speechless and the cause of all who are appointed to die.

I'm not exactly sure off the top of my head what the appointed to die would be, if that's necessarily those who are sentenced to death, or they're marginalized so much in society that it's just like their only purpose in living is to die, to move off the scene.

They are given no voice. Lemuel's mother advises him to give voice to the speechless. You be their voice. You speak up for them so that they don't just disappear, they don't just fall off the scene, that they actually have a meaningful life.

You be a voice the voiceless, is what she's saying to him. I think that's good advice to those of us who have opportunity and position to be that kind of a help to other people. Maybe that's you, maybe that isn't, maybe you feel like one of those who has no voice, and you need someone to speak for you.

If you are in a position where the speechless are marginalized, and you can do something about it, speak up for them. Parents do that for their children, and sometimes they rightly do that, sometimes parents need to not do that, but nevertheless, there's sometimes when our children are being wrongly abused and taken advantage of, or accused of things that they didn't do, maybe by a teacher or someone else in authority, then parents have to step in and be the voice for the speechless.

They say, wait a minute, hold on here, we need to hear the other side of this. That's one piece of advice she gives to him. The other one, in verse 9, she says, open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.

There is a sense in which verse 9 is synonymous parallelism, that is, it's saying basically the same thing as verse 8 is saying, but I think it actually expands upon it. Not just those who have no voice need to have someone speak for them, but those who are poor and needy, they're not treated fairly.

And Lemuel's mother says to him, listen, you need to be sure that you treat these people fairly. Even though they don't have a lot to give, they don't have much esteem in society, and socially they're on the lower rung of the ladder, if you will, they're poor and needy, they need someone to speak for them.

They really do. And if you're in a position to speak for them, if you're in a position to help them out and to judge righteously so that they get a fair treatment, then exercise that responsibility and be a voice for them as well, the poor and the needy.

Now I realize in this day and age, this is a difficult thing often to discern. I've been in many cases, places where those who claim to be poor and needy are really good scammers. We had a couple, a husband and wife, I think they were, in our area.

They were just like professional scammers, and especially on churches. They would go to a church and pretend to be in need, and they had a really clever way, crafty way of trying to weasel some money out of people, and it was very successful, very effective for them for a while, until word got around what they were doing.

But yeah, there's that kind of person, and we need to have discernment to be sure. But those who are really poor, those who are really needy, they need voices like the rest of us to speak for them and to help out in any way that we can possibly help them in their need.

May we have that kind of a heart, the heart that Lemuel's mother wanted him to have in the exercising of his duties. Heavenly Father, I pray that we wouldn't be cold and calloused and heartless toward those who are impoverished, those who are in need.

I pray that you would help us to do what we can in our power to help out, to be a gracious blessing to the poor and the needy. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, well listen, have a good rest of your Wednesday.

I hope the Lord will bless you in it. Good day.