Drink water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well.
16 Should your springs be scattered abroad,
streams of water in the streets?
17 Let them be for yourself alone,
and not for strangers with you.
There was a Barna poll announced last year. It was about worldviews in America. There has always been a large percentage of Americans that held to a biblical worldview. The number last week? 6%. That means 94% of our population disagrees with our values to some extent. To the majority of these Americans, the above proverb must look like a foreign language. “Why shouldn’t I drink from any cistern I feel like?”, they might ask. If it feels good, do it. That did no one any favors in the sixties and seventies when it was the popular proverb. Now, because of historical ignorance, an entire generation is making the same mistakes.
In my worst moments, I could fall into despair at ever reaching the lost for Jesus Christ. That is never the case, however. In the first century Roman Empire, the percentage of Romans who held a biblical worldview must have been microscopic. It was in this atmosphere that so many acts of the Holy Spirit took place that Luke compiled them in a book. The proverbs may be rejected and ignored by the vast majority of Americans, but that does not make it any less the truth. The joy inherent in a monogamous and faithful marriage cannot be denied. The covenant of marriage is binding. One plus one makes one. A man and a woman come before the Lord pledging obedience. They are soulmates, not strangers as in the proverb. Strangers don’t make covenants. That is why in this new covenant, we will be welcomed as friends. Strangers will hear…
I never knew you.
Pastor Brad Boyer
Cape Community Church