Where There Is No Vision, the People Perish

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Today, we're going to be looking at a passage not from the words of Jesus, but from the book of Proverbs. Because the book of Proverbs is a book of wisdom, okay? It's not a book of formulas, okay? Do you understand what I mean? I took chemistry. I don't remember much, but I do know when you do chemistry, you add this at this temperature to this ingredient, do this, do that, and you always get a certain result, right? Hopefully. If you don't, you look back at your methods and go like, yes, something went wrong there, right? High school chemistry. How many of you have had chemistry? Yeah. Our high school in Michigan didn't have hood vents in the lab. Can you believe it? I think they probably do now. But back then, in organic chem, we were doing things like with toluene and other things. Oh, my gosh, the fumes. We'd get high just in chemistry class. Anyways, that's beside the point. But the point is, the book is not a book of formulas, of equations with guaranteed results. A lot of people try to treat Proverbs that way. It rather is a way of wisdom in general, kind of rules of thumb. You've heard that phrase before. When you live in this created world and you live according to God's design in this world, typically, often you get these results or these things happen. But we also live now in a fallen world, so it doesn't always work that way. Not everything is aligned to God's plans anymore. And you have throughout the Bible, not necessarily as Proverbs looks at it, but throughout the Bible, you have other books like Ecclesiastes, which will be our next series, by the way. You will find that things don't always work out, even if you are following God's design and God's plan. The righteous end up suffering in this world, right? And the unrighteous often get ahead in this world. Well, that's not the way it should be. Someday, this will all be worked out. But in the in-between time, we're in this time where we still want to learn and grow in wisdom from the book of Proverbs. But I can't give you, well, exactly. You know, it's always going to happen this way when you live this way. So the book of Proverbs is misquoted in that sense. It is not filled with hard, fast promises of God that you do this like the one. And I use this verse myself. Train up a child in the way he should go and he will not wander from it. But many of you have had children who have wandered, right? At least for periods of time. It's a general rule. We can still say, Lord, this is what we want to see. Have your way with our children, our grandchildren, our family members. But you can't just say, Lord, you've got to do this. OK. And but it's wisdom literature. And we need to we need to allow it to be what wisdom literature is. So the passage we're looking at today, actually, though, is one that I have misquoted myself. Most of the time, this passage today, we just quote the beginning of it and use it in a context that it wasn't intended. Often in the business world, it's used or the political world that if you have any vision, you need to have a vision. And when you have a vision, you create a strategic plan for that vision. And when you have that good vision, compelling vision, and you broadcast it, then things come together. But it isn't really this passage isn't really about vision, not the way that we're thinking of vision. So we're going to read the text and then get into it. OK, so it's very short today. And we're reading it of all places from the King James Version, because I think this is the one that is used as a misquote at times. OK, but he that keepeth the law happy as he. Now, we're going to follow the outline we've done. OK, so what Proverbs is not saying what Proverbs is saying and why it's important. What it's not saying. So I've heard pastors. Yeah, I'm one of them. And leaders explain this first and share it in general, saying you better have a vision. Come up with a vision that God wants you to have for your congregation, for your community, for your organization. Seek God's vision for whatever way. But you find a vision for it. And you need to then be the one who effectively communicates that vision. And when you are a type of leader that does all of this. Then things will happen. But the way that we're using that word vision here is not the what the word actually means. But I'm going to give you some examples, even from biblical, like from pastors that have used it. Bill Hybels, for example, wrote a book called Courageous Leadership. And in it, he says, we need to have a clear vision, as Proverbs 29, 18 says, because people can't focus. If they can't focus, can't reach their goal, can't follow their dream. I've seen it with my own eyes. Without vision, people lose the vitality that makes them feel alive. OK, Andy Stanley, who's a very successful pastor in Atlanta, says making your visio...