Proverbs 29:18

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

The improvement of the ministry of the Word

What makes a people very unhappy with respect to the concerns of their souls? The want of vision puts a people in very unhappy circumstances. By vision is understood prophecy. By prophecy is meant the preaching, expounding, and applying the Word of God. Doctrine: Though the want of the ministry of the Word makes a people very unhappy, yet it is not the having of it, but the right improving of it that makes them happy.

I. Deplorable is the case of those who are deprived of the ministry of the Word. What makes the case so deplorable? The original word means, the people are naked, they are left in a bare condition (Exodus 22:25). They are stripped of their ornaments, to their shame. They are stripped of their armour, left naked in the midst of danger. They are stripped of the means of their defence. Hence they are exposed in a special manner to the subtlety and violence of their spiritual enemies, without the ordinary means of help. Where there is no vision the people go backward. They leave their first love, their first ways in religion; they fall into a spiritual decay and apostasy. The people are drawn away: from their God and from their duty. The people are idle--they give over their work. The people perish--die for lack of instruction; are destroyed for lack of knowledge.

II. The mere having the ministry of the Word is not sufficient to make a people happy. The people may have it, and yet get no saving benefit from it. Outward privileges make no man a happy man. The mere having the Word will aggravate the condemnation of those that have it and walk not answerably to it.

III. A right improvement of the mercy of the Word will make a happy people. This improvement consists in two things--

1. Faith in Jesus Christ.

2. Holiness of life.

This improvement will make happy souls here and hereafter. Here, in peace with God, pardon of sin, all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus; and hereafter in eternal salvation. It bids fair for prosperity in earthly things. It gives happiness under the crosses and trials of this world. It puts a happiness into the relations in which we stand. Directions for improving the ministry of the Word:

1. Pray much for a real benefit from ordinances.

2. Diligently attend upon ordinances.

3. Meditate upon what you hear, and converse with one another about it.

4. Set yourselves humbly to obey the truths delivered from the Lord’s Word, embracing them by faith.

5. Put your hand to the Lord’s work in your several stations in your families and among those with whom you converse, to prosecute the great ends of the gospel. (T. Boston, D D.)

The vitality of vision

I. Where there is no vision of the present working of Christ in the world, charity and hope fade. The progress of the age is Christ’s work. Beneficial operations of all kinds are His present-day miracles. The sympathy of the age, its mission, its humanity, its sacrifice, its enthusiasm for progress, is Christ’s doing. Let us see Him in the past and in the present. Then we shall have a nobler faith, a larger charity, and a radiant hopefulness.

II. Where there is no vision of the Divine Fatherhood, devotion decays. Our devotional life accords with the conception of God we hold up to our attention. If we think of God as stern, arbitrary, partial, we cannot experience love, worship, trust, sacrifice. The human heart is constituted to love only the lovable; to worship only the perfect and benevolent; to trust only the just and true.

III. Where there is no vision of Divine providence, practical energy declines. Give up the idea of a Supreme Mind caring for all, and life is not Worth living. Let the vision of the all-embracing providence of God be clear, and life will be transfigured. All Christian workers are thus sustained. Failure, loss, rejection, may be the record on the visible side; but faith sees on the unseen side an all-comprehending spiritual kingdom, and says, “All things work together for good.”

IV. Where there is no vision of truth and fact, knowledge decays. As tradition and conservation prevail truth becomes a dead carcase. The hour for revival, for reform, is come, and the minds that see the truth lead the new movement. The dreams of seers renew the life of the world’s thought.

V. Where there is no vision of the possibilities of human nature, sympathy decays. Man has instinctively recognised his fellow as spiritual, as free, as immortal, as possessing unlimited capacities of progress, and as the object, consequently, of intense interest and of unlimited love. The vision of that ideal of man is the inspiration of all philanthropy.

VI. Where there is no vision of duty, holiness declines. Man is the subject of relations. The highest relation he maintains is to Christ. His life-care is the duty he owes to Christ. As we have that vision before us, we shall ennoble all we do. VII. The vision of heaven saves hope from perishing. The inspiration of all progress is hope. The most fruitful hope we can cherish is the perfection of mankind in the celestial life in fellowship with Christ. Such a vision ennobles, sanctifies, vitalises, lights up the present with heavenly radiance, and makes death the gate of life. (T. Matthews.)

Divine vision essential to human salvation

I. True vision is a revelation from God. A communication not furnished by nature; not the product of human intellect, or imagination, or fancy; not the “tradition of the elders,” however venerable; but a special unfolding of the Divine nature and government, adapted to the moral exigencies of the race. Such a communication is possible. Such is probable--

1. From conflicting indications of the Divine character furnished by nature.

2. The universally felt moral necessities of man. Such is actually accomplished, as the whole body of Christian evidence attests.

II. There many places where, as yet, this vision is not. Where it is not known. Where it is not published. Where it is not believed.

III. Where it is not, the people perish.

1. It alone reveals a Saviour and a salvation adapted to man.

2. It alone is associated with spiritual power to deliver man from the bondage, and misery, and guilt, and doom, of sin. The vision of God is to them that possess it a most precious thing. They who possess it not ought to be the objects of the deepest compassion. They who do possess it are bound, by every consideration of gratitude and pity, to send it to those who do not. (J. M. Jarvie.)

Divine revelation

The text presents two facts concerning redemptive revelation.

I. Its absence is a great calamity. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The word “perish” has been variously rendered: some read “will apostatise,” others “are made naked,” others “are dispersed,” others “are become disorderly.” All renderings agree in expressing the idea of calamity, and truly is it not a sad calamity to be deprived of the Bible?

II. Its regulative experience is a great blessing. “He that keepeth the law, happy is he.” This “vision” is not an abstraction or a speculative system--it is a “law”; it comes with Divine authority; it demands obedience; it is not the mere subject for a creed, but the code for a life; its aim is to regulate all the movements of the soul. It is only those who are ruled by it who are made happy, those who have it and are not controlled by it will as assuredly perish. It is not the hearers of the law who are just before God, but the doers of the law. Who is the happy man? Not the man who has the “vision” and does not study it, nor the man who studies it and never reduces it to practice: it is the man who translates the “vision” into his life. “He that keepeth the law, happy is he.” There is no heaven for man but in obedience to God. (D. Thomas, D.D.)

The soul perishing for lack of vision

The vision here is acquaintance with God and the things of the invisible world. Vision became almost synonymous with revelation Where there is no Bible, there can be no vision. To talk of preparing a nation for the reception of the Bible, by first of all civilising that nation is to betray ignorance of what has produced the degeneracy of humanity, and mistrust of the engine which God has placed in our hands. The civilisation must and will follow the reception of the Bible. Notice the marginal rendering, “the people is made naked.” The people is stripped, the people has no clothing in which to appear before God, if you take away revelation. They may attempt a righteousness of their own, and think to cover themselves with a covering which their own hands have woven. But the text is most emphatic in denouncing such schemes and hopes. We must put on Christ, and be clothed with His righteousness. If we would make s right and full use of the disclosures and statements of our Bible, we must, it would seem, have the things of redemption and futurity presented with the same distinctness and vividness to the internal organs, as the things of the world are to the external. This is the great triumph of spirit over matter. Speak to those whose religion is more than nominal, who do behold Christ with the eye of the soul. We account for much of that slow progress in piety, which you both observe in others and lament in yourselves, on the principle that you are but seldom occupied with contemplations of the invisible world. Let us not be wanting in diligence in using the telescope that has been entrusted to us to aid us in seeing the unseen. (H. Melvill, B.D.)

No vision

The question suggested by the text is, Can we see? Were we made to see? Is all else related by law of adaptation to man on this earth save God Himself who made the earth and man? It is vision that decides our scale in this world, and our honour and glory in the world to come. For “ages men have believed that they were made to see and know God in His works and in His Word; that we have not only eyes, but objects; that we can hold intercourse with God--love Him, trust Him, and pray to Him. The peril of our age is no new peril. Materialism is as old as Sadducean Judaism. This is the great vital difference in men--vision. This it is that decides their principles, their ethics, their characters.

I. Materialistic ideas of life blind us to the true vision. We are in a world of material things. But we, Christians, build temples to the invisible Lord. We seek and we worship a Saviour whom, not having seen, we love. We judge morality to be more than utility. We walk by faith, not by sight. There is no true vision without the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

II. Christ is the revealer of life and immortality. These words contain two distinct truths. Life is the spiritual view of all things. Immortality is life in Christ beyond the grave.

III. Character is decided by our visions of truth. The right life comes from the right thought. If my life is to be redeemed and moulded by Divine influences, then my vision is all in all to me.

IV. Perishing is seen in this present life. Men do perish! Compared with what you might be, you are now perishing. Woe to that nation that has no eye to see the face of God in Christ! (W. M. Statham.)

The beneficent influence of heavenly visions

Man has spiritual wants as well as bodily wants, and he must have spiritual things to satisfy them. Temporal and visible things meet and satisfy all the wants of the body, but the soul must receive its sustenance from the invisible and the eternal. The spiritual world is a fact to the senses of the soul as truly as the material world is a fact to the bodily senses. Visions are as necessary for the soul as food for the body, and so heavenly visions were not God’s gifts to one nation and for a limited time, but are to all countries and for all times. Godly men in our days are having visions exactly in the same sense as the seers and prophets of old; the difference is in degree, not in kind. But a distinction must be made between the seer in the highest sense and seers in a general sense. God inspires and gives special visions to a chosen few in different ages and countries. Note the powers of inward vision to which we give the names of insight and intuition--insight into human character, intuition of Divine principles--clear knowledge of what man is and how God will act. The original meaning of the word “saw,” is to cleave, or split; then to see into, to see through, to get down beneath the surface of things and discover their real nature. What characterises the bulk of Hebrew visions is “penetrativeness.” All the seers of the world are hard workers, and are active in their visions. Sometimes the seer does valuable service to the world by rediscovering some great revealed truth which had been hidden by the accretion of ages of erroneous human ideas and creeds. Luther was such an one. And we are to thank Heaven for seers like Carlyle, Ruskin, Beecher, Browning, and Tennyson, who fearlessly cleave old customs, shams, conventionalisms, dogmas, and creeds, and proclaim to the world, like the prophets of old, eternal and unchangeable truths. Note the mighty influence of heavenly visions on the world. What would have been the moral condition of the world if God had given no visions to holy and inspired men?

I. The restraining power of visions. In the days of Samuel there was “no open vision.” God mercifully raised him up, and gave him visions to enable him to check and restrain the ungodliness of his age. Our great want is more men of visions as political and social reformers and preachers.

II. The sustaining power of visions. Men are sure to perish socially and spiritually if God does not mercifully grant them visions.

III. The ennobling influence of visions upon men’s characters. The tendency of God’s visions to men is to purify their thoughts, to elevate their spirits, to ennoble their characters. The objective in the visions gradually becomes subjective, as a part of the character. But you are not to expect these heavenly visions by sleeping and dreaming, but by holy meditation, fervent prayer, and strenuous effort to live the life of the Son of God.

IV. The blessedness of obedience to the heavenly visions. If we would know the highest joy of visions, we must obey them. (Z. Mather.)

Ideals

Man talks to God; that is prayer. God talks with man; that is inspiration. According to the sensational philosophy there is no vision, there is no invisible world, or at least we cannot know it directly and immediately. This takes all the glory out of life. Take out from man the power of perceiving the invisible and the eternal, and all life loses its life. God is no longer a Divine reality. He is only an opinion. The same philosophy which robs the universe of its God robs man of his soul. This philosophy is equally fatal to morals. There are no longer any great, eternal, immutable laws. Take vision out of religion, what have you left? You had a Church of Christ, now you have a Society of Ethical Culture.

I. Ideals are realities. What we call ideals are not conceptions we have created; they are realities we have discovered. The great laws of nature are not created by the scientists. They only formulate and express the laws of nature. The laws of harmony are eternal; and when the musician finds a new harmony, he finds what was before. In the ethical realm, the great laws of righteousness are not created; they are eternal. Moses did not make them, he only found forms in which to state them. God is not a thesis, an opinion, a theory, a supposition, created to account for phenomena; He is the great underlying reality of which all phenomena are the manifestation.

II. Imagination is seeing. Science owes its progress to this power of vision. All the greatest men of science first saw dimly and imperfectly the invisible realities, then followed, tested, and tried their visions, and proved the reality of them. The great seers and prophets of all time have not been men who have created thoughts to inspire us; they have been men with eyes that saw, and they have helped also to see.

III. Ideals being realities, and imagination seeing, scepticism is ignorance. By scepticism is meant the doubt that scoffs at the invisible and eternal, not the mere questioning of a particular dogma. We are not to measure the truth by our capacity to see, but our capacity to see by the truth. The world needs nothing so much as men who will carry the spirit of vision into every phase of life. There are two classes of men in this world--drudges and dreamers. The man who works without vision, who is not lifted up by his thoughts out of mere material things, he is a drudge. (Lyman Abbott.)