FBC Morning Light – December 26, 2022

Well, a good Monday morning to you, and day after Christmas. How was your Christmas celebration yesterday?

Were you able to go to church and worship the Lord, the newborn

King? I trust you did, and I hope you had a good day, and just a wonderful Christmas celebration.

Of course, you may be, like many of us, who have your celebration at a different time other than on Christmas Day.

I know in our family, it's not happening until later this week, so just because of a variety of circumstances.

Well, anyway, whenever you celebrate, I hope you have a wonderful time together.

Let me ask you this, too. Are you one of those that's kind of given to kind of the post -holiday blues?

Well, I hope not. I hope that you can just rejoice in the time that you're able to have, and not allow the letdown to let you down.

Anyway, we're also winding down our Bible reading plan. We've been working on it for two years, and it'll all come to an end on Saturday with the end of our reading through the

Bible. But today, we're in Proverbs 31. The last section of Proverbs 31 is very, very familiar to most believers.

It's the section about the virtuous woman. The first nine verses of the chapter are not quite as well -known and not quite as popular, but there is some interesting advice that is given in that section of Proverbs 31.

What's also interesting about the 31st chapter is that the last half of the chapter focuses on praising the virtuous woman who is a wife and a mother of children.

The first section, it's about a third of the chapter, deals with the advice that a mother gives to her son.

The mother is the mother of King Lemuel. Who's that? We're not even really sure who

King Lemuel is, but his mom gave him some pretty good advice. One of the things she said, and I want to focus on it this morning, is in verses two and three.

She says, what, my son, and what, son of my womb, and what, son of my vows, do not give your strength to women, nor your ways to that which destroys kings.

Here is wise advice from a woman. Don't give your strength to women, she says to her son.

Every wise mother would give the same counsel to a son that she loves.

Don't allow your strength to be dissipated by profligate, immoral living and behaving with women.

Certainly give yourself to your wife, but that's not what his mom is saying here. She's warning him against a profligate life, a life that is spent going from lover to lover, that just dissipates one's strength.

We could broaden the application of that to really not giving your strength away to anything or anyone that will gradually eat away at your vitality and your ability to function optimally in the calling that God has given you to do.

Lemuel was called to be a king, he's called to rule over a people and to exercise good judgment and justice, and a man who is living a profligate life, living in dissipation and constantly looking for pleasure, seeking to pleasure himself, is not one who's going to be a very good leader, a very good ruler, a very good judge and helper of other people.

This is sound advice, this is sage advice from Lemuel's mom. Don't give away your strength to that which will just suck the vitality right out of you.

She says, don't give your ways to that which destroys kings. What are some things in our modern culture that can seek to dissipate vitality and to destroy a person?

One of the things that comes to my mind right away, that is really a problem with a lot of young men today, is that of this whole video gaming thing.

I'm not suggesting that it is a sin to play video games and so forth, but what

I'm getting at are those young men who have so given themselves to this gaming craze that they don't have time for really anything else.

It's almost like they're addicted to that gaming, and what's happening is they are giving away their lives, their strength, their days, their energies, to that which has absolutely nothing to show for it.

You think about it, if a guy spends two or three hours a night after he comes home from work, if he actually has work, playing video games, and does that five days a week, and spends half the day on Saturday playing video games, and Sundays as well, so 21 hours, 15 hours

Monday through Friday, and then another 12 hours on the weekend, that's more than a day, more than a day, 52 days a year that are just lost to this activity.

Again, I'm not saying that it's not suitable or acceptable to have a measure of a diversion for a little bit, but that's not what we're concerned about, and I think everyone listening today understands that.

When young people give themselves to such a thing, it just ends up robbing them of their vitality.

It will eventually destroy them in some way, it will destroy their opportunities, it will destroy their capacity for deep thinking.

They may be very good and very adept at moving their fingers and fighting in a video game, but what does that translate into real life, is the question.

I'm sure somebody could send me an email and say, let me tell you how it's beneficial. I know the arguments, but I also know what it's doing to a lot of people.

I know people who have pretty much given up on church because they're so absorbed with video gaming and things of that nature.

That's just one application, and many, many others could be applied to this.

This is sage advice, sound advice from a mother who loves and cares for her son.

Don't give your strength to that which is just going to suck it away from you, and that which is going to destroy you.

Heavenly Father, we do thank you for a good mother who will look out for and look out for the best interests of her son.

I pray that the moms listening today would be that kind of mom, and I pray that the sons listening today, the children, would heed the advice of good and godly mothers, and this we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. All right. Well, listen, as you continue on in your holiday celebrations this week between Christmas and New Year's, I hope you have a wonderful week, and hope it gets off to a good start today.