Our passage of scripture tonight is Proverbs chapter 29, and I'm just reading one verse. Proverbs chapter 29, verse 18. Proverbs 29, verse 18. Where there is no vision, The people perish, but he that keepeth the law happy as he. Proverbs 28, 19. That's the King James Version from 1900. The New King James Version is where there is no revelation. The people cast off restraint. but happy is he who keeps the law. And then one other version I thought was interesting, the New Geneva Bible, actually not the New Geneva, the original Geneva Bible says, where there is no vision, the people decay, but he that keepeth the law is blessed. And the word here in Hebrew for vision is chazon. And it means a vision, or a word of revelation, it's referring to when a prophet was given a vision by God. And I think the reason that many of our modern versions of the Bible have exchanged the word vision for revelation is because too often people equate vision with vision. with human imagination. Today, that's what people typically think. If a person has a vision, we think he has a grand imagination of something can be, and it's kind of that idea kind of erases the idea of God giving a person a vision, giving him revelation. And so I think that the people who translate the Bible today, I think that maybe, I don't know, that may be why they say revelation rather than vision in these verses. And there's also other parts. It says the people perish. In the old King James, in the new King James, it says they cast off restraint. And in the Geneva Bible, it says they decay. And that Hebrew was also interesting because it literally could be translated all those different ways and still be correct. Because in the Hebrew, the people who have no vision or don't listen to the word of God, they perish, they do perish. Those who have no vision, they also decay. And those who have no vision, they cast off restraint, meaning they run into every kind of sin. That's what people who don't have the Bible do. All three of those are correct. All three of those are in scripture and the Hebrew actually communicates all of those. And it's hard to communicate all of those in English, but you know, that's why it's nice to have different versions of the Bible because we can see different aspects of a word like that. Well, number one, point number one, vision and revelation come from God's word. and are required, without them we are lost. Even in the church today, not just out in the world, but in the church, the word vision is too often confused with and replaced by imagination. as if imagination was some great positive thing. There's sometimes I think imagination can be good if we have a sanctified imagination, if we're constantly in the word and we're basing that imagination somehow on the word. But the Bible doesn't say anything good about imagination. One verse, Genesis 6, 5, also the King James says, and God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And so, and if you look at other verses, when the word imagination is used in scripture, it's never a good thing. Here the reading, preaching, studying, obeying, and keeping of God's word are called vision, they're called revelation, And it's without this that people are miserable. They perish, they cast off all restraint, or they decay. These are all things that happen to people when they don't listen to or read or study God's word. It can mean several things. And I looked up this Hebrew word and it was very interesting because even those three ideas that I've already communicated, casting off restraint, perishing, and decaying, were not the only things this word meant. It also meant that they were like a strip of clothing. And not just in an immoral way, but stripped of clothing like if it were 20 below zero and you had no clothes. It means being stripped of clothing when you really, really, really would like to have it. When you really, really need it, like in the cold. It means also being rebellious, as living without rules, especially in self-destructive ways. You know, when a person gets drunk all the time and they become self-destructive, especially if they're driving drunk, because they're likely to crash. Not only do they hurt themselves, but they can hurt somebody else. That word also can mean fast, absent-minded. as somebody who's not having a purpose in life, not knowing why they're created. And when I was working on this sermon, I thought of the furries. Do you understand what I'm talking about, the furries? In the schools nowadays, because people no longer teach children that they're created in God's image. They teach the children to use their imagination about who they are. And they tell them, you know, you might be a cat, or you might be a dog, or you might be a bird. And they have, they literally have This is a fact that I've heard that some schools, maybe even here in Northport, have litter boxes for kids who think they're cats to use instead of the regular bathrooms. That's how far they take this furry thing. And to me, it's just crazy. It's totally crazy, isn't it? Is there a board that is in charge of those schools? Well, it's the whole federal schools. The whole idea of, you know, having a, it's a federal thing. It's a national thing. What's that? Well, it is, a lot of the kids that are doing furries also consider themselves transgender. So, it's really, this is really crazy. Transgender is usually a man or a woman. Yes. Yeah, so that's where, they figure kids will like this better. Not every kid wants to change their sex, but they could change their nature. They could decide, I wanna be a cat or a dog. So they say, basically they're saying, you're not, there's nobody, nobody has a right to tell you who you are. You make your own decision. The Bible pushers will say, you are created in God's image. And that's an imaginary person in the sky, according to them. But there's real things that you can be. like cats or dogs or rhinoceroses or things like, you know, whatever you want. You can be. Yes, there are all those things. And so I kind of got off. I didn't mean to get off that much, but that's something that's happening or happened. scattered as having no unifying principle. That's part of this terminology too, to be scattered. If you don't have vision, if you don't have revelation, there's nothing to keep people unified. And then point number two, point number two, keep God's word. or God's law, this is the secret to happiness. Keeping God's word or law is the secret to happiness. That's the second part of the verse. It says, but happy is he who keeps the law. And we see the same thing, it's like a shorter version, Solomon's version of Psalm 1. Psalm 1 says, blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. That person is said to be blessed who avoids those bad things and delights in God's word. Later, the verse passed, someone says, he will be like a tree planted by the rivers of water. Well, what's a tree? It's stable. It has life, it has a purpose, it gives fruit and shade and all those nice things. And so it says the godly person will be like a tree and the ungodly is like the chaff, which the wind blows away. And so Psalm 1 basically says the same thing as Psalm 29, 18. You could say it's a shorter version of Psalm 1, Both passages show the negative, the miserable aspect of sin, not keeping God's word, and both show the blessedness, the happiness, and delighting in keeping God's word. And you could ask, then, why is it repeated? Well, we need it. We need to hear the same thing again. We hear it in Psalm 1. We hear it again in Proverbs 29. Deuteronomy 8.3 talks about, man shall not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. That's Deuteronomy 8.3. Jesus, when he's talking to Satan, when he's being tempted, he says the same thing. He says, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And so we see in scripture certain themes are repeated either by somebody else quoting the Old Testament or by sometimes the Old Testament using something more than once but it's repeated. Why? Because we need certain things. It helps us to repeat and this idea of basically not having vision not being taught by God's Word is going to lead to all kinds of destruction and decay and chaos. That's something that's taught through Scripture. The fact that God's Word teaches us that we will have life, we have stability, we have blessing. That's something also taught throughout Scripture. Well, I spent a lot of time talking to you, and this is, I mean, before the service, and this is a short sermon, so we'll get done on time anyway. So application number three. Let us aim to delight in God's word, his law, and pray God will give you a taste for it and for him. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who trusts in him. It's kind of what I talked about this morning too. Having that sense that God's word is something worth going after. Let us give God's word the time and he meditates And in his law he meditates day and night, meaning at all times he loves the word and studies it. And let us study to get the best degree, the AUG degree, again in the King James Version, 2 Timothy 2.15, study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Jim Elliott, the famous missionary who died when he was ministering to the Akha Indians, him and four other men, went to these Indians that were known to be killers. and they went and presented the gospel to them and they were all killed. Then his wife, Elizabeth Elliot, and some other women went back to the same people and shared the gospel and basically told them, you're the ones that killed our husbands, but we want to still share with you the love of God and the forgiveness of Christ. And they were able to see the conversion of many of these Akha Indian people. And if you've seen, I don't know if you've read, but Elizabeth Elliott's written many books. And some of them were about that particular thing happening. And then number four, be doers of God's word. but be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror, for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was, but he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, This one will be blessed in what he does. And we should aim to be doers of the word. When we read it, when we study it, when we see the revelation that is there, we are blessed when we actually try to live according to it. Well, let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the things that it teaches us, the things that it helps us with. And Father, I pray that you would be with us as we go our separate ways, be with us as we sing our last song, be with us as we pick songs for next week if we get together again, and be with us in all that we do. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.