Text: “Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint; but blessed is he who keeps the law” (Proverbs 29:18, ESV). In the older KJV translation from the Hebrew, it’s translated, “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” 

Context: Solomon wrote many of the lines of Proverbs using the form of literary parallelism. Basically, it’s where the first half of a verse expresses a truth one way, and then the second half of the verse will express the same truth in either a synonymous or antithetical way for emphasis. So in verse 18, for example, Solomon uses the opposite word picture in the second half of the verse to parallel the same truth expressed in the first half of the verse. 

The first half pictures a culture of people who have largely cast off restraint, who are unhinged, who are lawless. And the second half of the verse pictures the opposite type of culture, one in which blessing is the picture because people are characterized as being righteous, law-abiding, and under godly rule. 

Connections: It has been said that the problem with many preachers today is that no one wants to kill them. What does that mean? Simply that, the office of truth-speaker has been abandoned and largely replaced by vanilla pop psychological TED Talks that are so dumbed down and devoid of substantive doctrinal preaching that we sinners are not confronted with the power of the Word of God as revealed in Scripture. Instead, we are left comfortable in our sin, convinced that we’re pretty good people, at least not as bad as the next guy, and that God loves us unconditionally. 

This is, in short, a result of cowardice. The church, which should be a witness to the culture, a prophetic voice calling us to hear and attend and conform to the Word of God, is instead anemic, spinelss, a picture of sheep without a courageous and biblical shepherd. The church is more akin to a wall broken down, and the people characterized as without restraint. If the prophetic vision is lacking, it should not surprise anyone the sheep scatter and look for nutrition elsewhere.

You don’t have to read or watch your news sources very long to see that the West is undergoing a cultural revolution. It’s in your face and coming to your door, too, but many people don’t want to admit it until it’s too late. That’s the picture here in Solomon’s words. We can attend to the ways of God and be ultimately blessed from heaven, or we can jettison the ways of God and fall into moral breakdown and divine judgment. 

In Amos 8, God reveals His plan through His prophet Amos: “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine o bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it” (Amos 8:11-12, ESV). 

It’s the same principle as in Proverbs 29:18. God has spoken, but will the people hear and obey, or will they cast off restraint and perish? When you survey the world’s goings-on, how do you answer that question? Where are the truth-tellers? May I suggest that we don’t need more spiritual-sounding TED Talks but men of courage and conviction who know the Word and are willing to expound and live it? 

Encouragement: One of my very favorite writers is Flannery O’Connor, and in one of her masterful pieces she wrote, “To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility.” 

How may we heed Solomon’s wisdom from Proverbs and Amos’ words in his truth-telling? How may we learn from O’Connor’s wisdom? How may we inculcate a culture of blessing rather than of unrestrained evil? By returning to the truth of God, by humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God, by not falling for the lie of serpent all over again, that we shall be as gods.