Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Sermon scripture is found in the book of Proverbs, the 30th chapter. Proverbs 30, beginning at verse 11, read to verse 17. Proverbs 30:11-17.

There’s a generation that curseth their father and have not blessed their mother. There’s a generation that are pure in their own eyes and yet is not washed in their filthiness. There’s a generation, oh how lofty are their eyes, and their eyelids are lifted up.

There’s a generation whose teeth are as swords and their jaw teeth as knives to devour the poor from off the earth and the needy from among men. The horse leech hath two daughters crying, “Give, give.” There are three things that are never satisfied. Yay, four things, say, say not, it is enough. The grave and the barren womb, the earth that is not filled with water, and the fire that saith not, it is enough.

The eye that mocketh his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.

Okay. At this time, the younger children may be dismissed to go down to their Sabbath schools if their parents would like them to do that.

We’re going to basically conclude the series of sermons on the seven deadly sins which we began the first of this year. So we haven’t taken quite the whole year on it. And as you can see in your outlines, we’re going to be essentially just doing two things. First, we’re going to look at the text that we just read from, of course, from the book of Proverbs, describing what I’ve called the destructive generation. And we’re going to look at the root of pride in that text and then look at three specific actions that come, I believe, out of that root of pride that correlate to three things we talked about last week and three really of the seven deadly sins.

And then we’re going to kind of use that and say that we don’t want to raise a destructive generation. So we’re going to review the seven deadly sins and I’ll try to just give you an overview of all of them. And at the same time I provided memory verses that you might want to think about doing with your children or in your home for each one of them in the outline. So that’s basically the plan today is to sum all this up and do it first by looking at this destructive generation pictured in Proverbs 30:11-17.

In Proverbs 30 we see in verse 13 a description of this generation and that’s the repeated theme there: “there’s a generation is a generation is a generation.” So that’s the structuring device here, and this generation in verse 13 is one that is marked by lofty eyes and their eyelids are lifted up. If you remember, of course, our discussions on pride way at the beginning of the series, we talked about, you know, the camel with its nose and head up in the air as a picture of pride, and the eyes lifted up, lofty eyes and eyelids lifted up are a picture of pride.

And that’s the root, I think, although it’s structured in the middle of this series of verses. We talked about the illustration that six of the seven deadly sins flow out of that root of pride. Pride, remember, being the exaltation of self, the debasement of God, and that takes its actions and it takes a lot of different forms. But all sin ultimately comes from pride: rejecting God and instead exalting self, turning away from the Creator to the creature and giving it worth and glory above God.

It’s interesting in this context because a couple of verses earlier in verses 8 and 9 of Proverbs 30, you remember there’s that prayer that we’ve talked about before. Agur prays, “Remove far from me vanity and lies. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with food convenient for me.” Verse 9, he says, “Lest I be full and deny thee, and say, who is the Lord, or lest I be poor and steal and take the name of my God in vain.” And so, he’s afraid that if he’s given too much food, he’ll forget God and deny him and say, “Who is the Lord?”

Now, I think there’s other places in scripture we could turn to where we see that same basic truth taught: that frequently it’s the blessings of God that people end up counting as blessings of their own. “We have done this thing” and as a result of that they become prideful. They get lifted up, as it were, because of the blessings of God. And that then manifests itself in this context in three different ways.

I think that reminds us, of course, that we’re going to make application to what I think has been a destructive generation the last couple of years in this country, the last 10 or 20 years. And this country is, of course, greatly blessed by God and ended up then people having grown up in the context of many blessings from God and being lifted up in pride saying, “Well, we have done all these things ourselves and who is God after all that we need him?” And so in our context it’s quite important to recognize that it’s important for us in this church to recognize it too because after all we believe that scripture teaches that as we understand and apply and obey God’s law we’ll be blessed. That doesn’t mean we’ll all be millionaires but we will, covenantally as it were, and over time procure blessings from God on the basis of obedience to his word.

And we’re raising children right now in the context of many of those blessings in our households. And so in terms of teaching our children, it’s quite important to recognize that those blessings will be temptations to them to sin and to sin by way of pride.

How does pride manifest itself according to Proverbs 30 in such a wicked generation that would deny God? Well, first they reject God’s authority or glory.

Verse 11: “There’s a generation that curses their father and does not bless their mother.” So this generation that is prideful turns into a generation that rejects the God-given authority of parents in this case in verse 11. They actually end up cursing father and not blessing the mother. And of course that’s in direct violation of the case law of Exodus 21 that says that if you curse father or mother you shall be put to death.

Leviticus 20:9 says, “Everyone that curses his father or mother shall surely be put to death. He hath cursed his father and mother. His blood shall be upon him.” That’s interesting to relate because we’re going to see in a couple of minutes that the ones who curse their father or mother here think they’re clean, but they’re not washed from their filthiness. And Leviticus 20 says that if you do curse your father, your blood will be upon you, indicating, of course, the punishment to come, but also indicating the filth that comes with that kind of rejection of God-given authority.

Proverbs 20:20 says, “Whosoever curseth his father or his mother, his lamp shall he put out in obscure darkness.” And we’re going to see at the end of this passage where their eyes are plucked out and the eye is the lamp of life, that’s where our light is, as it were. And so that eye is put out in relationship, in coherence with Proverbs 20:20.

Deuteronomy 27:16 says, “Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother, and all the people shall say, Amen.” And you know, we do that once a year when we’re having our service of addiction or imprecation for abortionists in this church and we’ll do it here coming up in January. We repeat these curses from the Old Testament where we have a series of things that were said and the people say Amen to that curse.

And this curse is interesting. Did you notice it’s a little different than the last three verses. It doesn’t say “Curse be he that curses father or mother.” It says “Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or mother.” What does that mean? Well, the scriptures tell us what are we supposed to do to our parents? We are supposed to honor our parents. What does that word honor in the fifth commandment mean? It means to give weight, or another way to put it is to give glory to whom glory is due, to give weight or tribute to whom it’s due, and that’s your parents and God’s structure of authority.

The word actually means to be heavy, to be weighty, and also is the same word that is another root word in another form, in a variant form, talks of the glory of God. God is glorious. He’s weighty. We’ve talked about this in terms of currency before in this church: that gold and silver are God’s means of currency and gold reflects the value of God, the weightiness of God. It has glory to it. And that’s how we’re supposed to esteem our parents. They’re supposed to have weightiness to us.

When we reject God’s authority, we turn that weightiness into a light thing. We take it very lightly what our parents tell us. And that is very wrong. And that leads to the curses of God.

So this relates back. Remember last week we were talking about the three incidences of cravings for strange things. And remember Korah craves strange authority. He didn’t want Moses’ authority. He wanted him and his guys put in their place. And the wicked son as a result of pride says he doesn’t want his parents’ authority. He wants to be in their place.

Now it’s not wrong to want authority. Everybody, all of God’s people share the glory that God gives to us in the particular structure which he gives it to us. I was listening to a tape by James B. Jordan this last weekend and it was interesting because after I talked last week about the three things in the ark, Jordan talked about those three things as well and related them to what I’m going to be talking about here and really back to what I was saying last week.

And when I talked about authority last week, that the prideful one or the one who is craving after something illicit, craves after illicit authority or power. He used the term glory. And I think he’s right. Weightiness is involved in authority. And so the rebellious child, the prideful child wants to reject his parents’ authority. And he wants to set the rules for the household. For instance, by doing that, he’s saying he rejects all of God’s authority.

Now, this is very important for us to realize. There’s also a progression that’s going on in Proverbs 30. You know, it really starts with this one here. And yes, we’re told later that pride is the root of this, but there’s a progression that goes through here with rejection of parents, not being holy, seeing your own sin, not recognizing the sin in your life, your violation of God’s law. And then also, it then ends up with a destructive eating up or devouring the poor from off the land.

There’s a progression going on there. And it’s important that we recognize that in our children’s life, that progression starts or manifests itself, that pride manifests itself with the rejection of parental authority. So, we’ve got to be very careful how we structure the relationship between our children and us, because they’re learning about God through all of that.

And now today, God is the big buddy for a lot of a lot of people, even in churches. You know, he’s the big friend you talk to. And so the model for parents today is one primarily just being a friend. And see, there’s something wrong with that. Now, you should be friends with your children, and God is our friend in that sense. But he’s an authority figure. He is to be given weight and glory. And you don’t want to let that diminish in your household with your children and then teach them something wrong about their relationship to God because that’s what you’ll end up doing.

Everybody wants to have people listen to what they say and to have authority and respect and people give weight to what they are. That’s okay. But this is perverted because it seeks to go around God’s system of authority and establish strange authority, strange glory.

Secondly, this manifests itself in a rejection of God’s law.

Proverbs 30:12: “There’s a generation that are pure in their own eyes. And yet they’re not washed from their filthiness.” The term pure is the same word for clean—clean animals, unclean animals. A generation that are pure, they see themselves as clean without spot or wrinkle as it were. And yet they’re not washed from their filthiness. Filthiness is a strong word here. It can have the connotation of excrement even. And washed is the word, the Hebrew word that is the normal, the normal technical term used for Old Testament ceremonial washings.

Now, this word for filthiness—it’s not used a lot in the scriptures, but in Zechariah 3, verses 3 and 4, remember we have in that the picture of Joshua and Satan is accusing Joshua before God. Remember, we talked about that a few weeks ago. And Joshua has on filthy garments. Same word, filthy garments. And Satan says he’s terrible. And God says, “Well, don’t you know, Satan? This is a brand plucked from the fire.” And God then takes off the filthy garments from him and clothe him with clean garments—a picture of our own righteousness, filthy rags being replaced with the righteous, the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.

So what I’m pointing out here is you got three terms here: filthiness, washed, pure, all having relationship to God’s laws of holiness and his laws of cleanness and uncleanness. And so the one who is prideful rejects parental authority and he rejects God’s law, the knowledge of what really is. He is really unclean. He is really filthy. But he rejects God’s law which gives us a knowledge of who we are and the world around us. And instead he wants strange knowledge as it were. He rejects God’s knowledge and creates his own knowledge. He rejects God’s law and creates his own ethical system.

Just like last week the Baal Peor incident. Sexual relationships have a big relationship in the scriptures to God’s law. It’s one of the summary statements of God’s law in the Council of Jerusalem. And additionally we talked before with the Hebrew word in the Old Testament for sexual relationship with your wife is to know somebody—knowledge. So it is linked to knowledge and law, and the ones who have this rooted pride and who reject God have given us a culture that is in rebellion against the God-given authorities in the family, in the church, and in the state.

And certainly the last 30 years in this country has seen that. If you’ve forgotten what it was like 20 years ago, hopefully you watched the newscast yesterday and you remember what it’s like because we have demonstrations in the streets again. These people have not gone away. They’ve taken other forms. But believe me, the rebellion is still there. Rebellion against authority and also against God’s law and an attempt to subvert the law order that God has established and look for strange knowledge as it were.

And then third, it’s manifested in a rejection of God’s provision.

Verse 14: “There’s a generation whose teeth are as swords and their jaw teeth as knives to devour the poor from off the earth and the needy from among men.” To devour, to swallow up, to eat. And there’s lots of references in the scriptures to this going on in relationship to the wicked. They are seen as always wanting to eat up other people.

Psalm 10, which we’ll look at in a couple of minutes, relative to pride, talks about the prideful one lurking in secret places in the village. “Secret places he murder the innocent. His eyes are privy set against the poor. He lies and wait secretly as a lion in his den. He lieth and wait to catch the poor. He doth catch the poor when he draweth them into his net.” He’s compared to a lion. It’s a frequent picture in the Psalms and other places of the Old Testament of the wicked who are trying to catch the poor.

What does a lion do with his prey? He eats it up. And so we see this in Proverbs 30 that they’re eating the poor.

Psalm 14: “Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge who eat up my people as they eat bread and call not upon the Lord?” In order to get life, they try to steal life as it were from other people, eat up other people instead of eating God’s provision of life, his manna as it were, life coming from Jesus Christ.

I could go through a bunch of references about that, but I won’t take the time.

Job 29:17: Job says, “And I broke the jaws of the wicked and plucked the spoil out of his teeth.” And what he’s talking about there is how he defended the fatherless and those that didn’t have a defender in court. And the picture he’s given us is that he breaks the jaws of the wicked and plucks the spoil, that is the poor people, out of the teeth of the wicked. The wicked are always pictured as rejecting God’s provision for life, his food, his bread, and instead eating up other people instead—cannibalistically, I guess, in a sense.

Now, so these three indications of pride are what we have in our culture today. And interesting book which I’ll talk a little bit about, probably several times over the next few weeks: Keith Hansen loaned me a book called “The Destructive Generation” and it describes the radical movement of the 60s and 70s. Excellent book. The two men who wrote it were with Ramparts magazine. They were part of that revolutionary establishment, as it were. They came out of it, recognized its religious roots, and now blown the whistle on all their old friends.

And it’s interesting that again this three-fold pattern here of provision or life—manna—and authority, Aaron’s rod, glory, and then knowledge or law with the tablets in the middle of God’s temple. He talked about how in the second chapter of the book, “The Destructive Generation,” they’re talking about the Weatherman, and that was the group of radicals within SDS back in the 60s who were white upper middle class kids, yippies, that sort of thing, who are actually revolutionaries committed to blowing things up, killing people, etc.

And basically he—they talk in the book about it. They like they were into three things: sex, drugs, and violence. And that relates to those three things I’m talking about. Sex relates to knowledge and law. They wanted to smash all the old laws. Smash monogamy was a big deal for a while. Nobody was supposed to be married to anybody else. Smash monogamy. And the cycle that we see in Romans 1 cycled on down to orgies where they would actually be forced to participate in communal sexual activity. Smashing God’s knowledge and God’s law and attempt to anyway and move beyond it.

Drugs. Instead of eating God’s food and getting life, then we find life coming instead from drugs. And authority—instead of respecting the authority that God has placed in the land and the glory we’re supposed to give to our parents and the other authorities in the land, they smashed all that and wanted to blow things up and kill parents, etc.

Same three aspects because that’s central to man’s nature. And we live in a society because of their giving in to these strange cravings have resulted in a very destructive generation. And death and the results of death are everywhere around us in increasing forms. All these things spring forward from the proud look and the lofty eyes.

It’s interesting that “lofty” in the Hebrew has the connotation of being a fountain and can be used that way. The word can and so things flow out of as it were either having a clear eye or an impure eye. If we got a lofty uplifted eye, it’s an impure eye and we then put out garbage into the culture around us. And that’s what’s happened. We have a destructive generation in America because of giving into deadly sins that spring forth from that root sin of pride: pride, strange laws, knowledge, strange life, food, provision, strange power, authority, glory. These all result in death and destruction in the society around this generation.

That death comes forth from God’s judgment on those who exalt themselves. And specifically, the text tells us here of two different ways in which that’s worked out.

First is the loss of satisfaction in verse 15: “The horse leech hath two daughters. ‘Crying give, give.’ There are three things that are never satisfied. Four things say, not it is enough.”

So he said the horse leech there is an actual leech that was found in Israel, probably still is. It had two ends that would attach itself to your body and were found in river sort of areas, damp areas. These two ends would attach themselves to your body and suck blood out. And so the horse leech actually did have two daughters sucking on your body trying to get all the blood out. Never satisfied as it were.

And here in the book of Proverbs they talk about other things also that are never satisfied. The grave—the grave swallows up man. It’s never satisfied. The barren womb—the wife who cannot have children and can’t get children either through normal sexual relationships or through adoption. Always wants that, craves that, the desire for children. The earth that’s not filled, not satisfied, same word. Doesn’t have enough water in it. And the fire that saith not “it is enough”—a picture the fire is an apt one for what we’re discussing. Some song this year, I think, by Billy Joel, “We didn’t start the fire”—the fire of revolution, the fire of chaos, the fire of destruction burns in our land. It burns bright and it’s the result of God’s judgment with the loss of satisfaction upon those people that reject him and instead turn to strange things. They can never have enough. So you have this continual cycling down, whether it’s in whatever form of rejection of God’s provision, authority, knowledge, or provision that never get enough.

MC Jagger, of course, his anthem is really the anthem of the generation: “I can’t get no satisfaction.” And they can’t get satisfaction because they rejected the source of true satisfaction, which is Jesus Christ and his provision, his life, his glory, his power, and his authority and standard for our lives.

But the judgment goes further than that and continues on as it were into the specific full curses of a sovereign God pictured in verse 17.

“The eye that mocketh his father and his mother, or mocketh at his father rather, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.”

Here we have a picture of the curse of God in Genesis 15 when the covenant is cut with Abraham and Abram cuts the animals in two except for the birds, the sacrificial birds. After he does this thing, birds come down and he has to beat the birds back from eating the things slain on either side that are laying out there. The birds there are a picture of God’s curse coming upon slain men who react in disobedience to God and to the covenant.

So in 2 Samuel 21, some descendants of Saul are given to the Gibeonites. Saul had violated God’s treaty at the Gibeonites and in judgment for that some of his descendants were given to the Gibeonites to be killed. And those descendants then were left by the Gibeonites out on the wall as it were and Rispa, their mother, some of these men’s mother, came out and took them down for the specific reason—it says in the text—so that the birds of the air wouldn’t rest upon them by day because that’s a picture of the curse. That’s why you want the bodies buried so the birds won’t come down and pick at it. That’s a picture of God’s curse.

In Jeremiah 16, when God is discussing the curse that he’s sending upon his people, it says in Jeremiah 16:4, “They shall die of grievous deaths. They shall not be lamented, neither shall they be buried, but they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth”—filthiness as that prideful generation are. “They shall be consumed by the sword and by famine, and their carcasses shall be meat for the fowls of heaven and for the beasts of the earth.”

So we see this analogy drawn out throughout scripture.

In Revelation 19, there’s two suppers pictured. Hopefully, you know those suppers and what they are. One is the supper that we have a picture of every week, and the marriage supper of the Lamb. When Jesus returns, there’ll be a final consummated marriage supper which a great feast with him. And a picture of that is our rejoicing time downstairs and then the communion feast. But there’s another picture of another feast at the end of Revelation 19, in the second half.

Those men that Christ wages war against with the sword that comes out of his mouth are slain. And the text says that they lay out there and that the angels of God then call for all the fowls that fly in the midst of the heaven to come and gather themselves together under the supper of the great God “that you may eat the flesh of kings and the flesh of captains and the flesh of mighty men and the flesh of horses and of them that sit on them and the flesh of all men both free and bond both small and great.”

All men who reject God suffer the curses of the covenant pictured in the book of Revelation, 19th chapter, as birds tearing apart and eating men, plucking out the eyes. Another picture of curse. We talked about Samson giving in to one of the seven deadly sins of lust and his resultant weakness by God. By God weakening him and his eyes were plucked out. That light goes out as it were.

But it’s interesting here in the text, I just mentioned it briefly. It says that the ravens of the valley will pluck the eye out and the eagles will eat it. The word eagle means a large bird of prey. It doesn’t necessarily mean eagle; it could be a vulture. The ravens of the valley will pluck it out. Well, the only other place where those words are put together is when the ravens by the stream come and feed Elijah. The valley and stream are the same basic word in the Hebrew. This valley is created by a stream.

And so, we’re reminded there that the birds are not just a picture of curse against God’s enemies, against the destructive generation, and a sure word to us that the destructive generation in this country will suffer God’s judgments. But we also see hidden behind kindness, as it were, a reminder that ravens bring blessing to God’s people. The way that the ravens brought meat and bread to Elijah and the stream—the ravens of the valley, the ravens of the stream—the stream brought him water.

So, the ravens are pictures of God’s emissaries, either for good or ill. And so, even in the context of this statement of tremendous curse from God against those who reject him, against the destructive generation who give in to the seven deadly sins, we have a statement of blessing upon those who obey him. The ravens of the valley don’t pluck out our eyes. They feed us supernaturally if needed, if needed at God’s command.

Eagle, same thing. Remember, God’s described as an eagle fluttering over his nest, taking care of his young, feeding his young. So instead of the eagle eating our flesh, God pictures the eagle to his covenant keepers as providing food for his young, protection.

I wanted to mention just briefly, and I won’t spend much time on this: but again, that book, “The Destructive Generation,” the very first chapter describes a woman named Faith Stender who was an attorney in the 60s for what became known as the Soledad Brothers. She first worked with a guy named Charles Garry with in the Huey Newton trials trying to get him freed. He was the leader of the Black Panthers. Probably for some of you younger people, none of this means anything, but believe you me, if you were alive and could read during that period of time, you’ll remember the Black Panthers. You remember Huey Newton and you probably remember the Soledad brothers.

Faith Stender was a liberal attorney, raised Jewish, rejected the religion of her parents and authority of them, married and then got involved in radical politics at a fairly early age. Became on the defense team for Huey Newton, then left and began her own work specifically for a man named George Jackson, who had spent most of his life in prison and who Faith Stender turned into a media hero, as it were, talking about what a great man he was and how unjustly he had been treated by the civil justice system, criminal justice system. She began what was the prison reform movement, which really resulted in a failure of prisons to be able to control their populations.

I want to just read you. She painted this image to the media and to the American people of this George Jackson as a literate fellow who really was a good guy and had just been worked over by the system, but a good guy basically. Here’s something in his letters that she omitted from the book that she had published, the prison letters of George Jackson. And this shows you an indication what this fellow was really like.

Jackson said, “There are thousands of ways to correct individuals. The way is to send the armed—to send one armed expert. I don’t mean to out shout him with logic. I mean correct him, slay him, assassinate him with a gun, by silenced pistol, shotgun, with a high-powered rifle shooting from 400 yards away and behind a rock. Suffocation, strangulation, crucifixion…”—goes on and on and on.

This was not a nice dude. He was the baddest of the bad according to the other men in Soledad prison who knew him. Mean fellow. And this is the one whose cause Faith Stender in her rejection of true knowledge from God turned to try to promote and get out of prison.

Now she manifested in this first chapter of this book, “The Destructive Generation,” many of the seven deadly sins.

Lust. She actually engaged in sexual relationships with Huey Newton and George Jackson while they were still in prison and actually had to be dragged out of a waiting room in which she was with George Jackson, kicking and screaming.

Envy. There was a gal named Angela Davis who George Jackson really liked a lot more than Faith Stender. And when she was arrested and caught by the police, Faith Stender had for the first time in many moons dined on good china that evening in their home because she was so happy that this rival of hers was now caught and was going to be punished by the authorities. You see, her loyalty to the cause was not so much loyalty to the cause as it was to the sin that was driving her. And that particular sin was the sin of envy, deceit—as I said, the attempt to make George Jackson into something that he never was, some kind of hero.

I bring her up because it’s another picture to us, it’s a good thing to remember, of God’s judgment upon such people. Faith Stender couldn’t get satisfaction out of the relationships she had with those prisoners. She eventually turned to lesbian relationships in spite of having a husband and children and spent the last years of her life as a lesbian. She spiraled down as it were in that sense.

The very people that had helped her, Huey Newton ignored her when he got out of prison, wouldn’t speak to her. George Jackson was killed in prison, but many years later, several years later, he sent—or he didn’t send, but somebody who knew George Jackson in prison, a Black inmate, was out on parole or something and came to Faith Stender’s house in the middle of the night. She was sleeping with her lesbian friend, and I think her son was in the house as well.

He locked both of the other two of them up in a room someplace, took Faith out into the hallway, accused her of not doing right by George Jackson. And remember what George Jackson said about crucifixion. This fella shot Faith Stender once in each hand, chest, stomach, and another bullet grazed her head. This was God’s judgment. It wasn’t right of the man to do it. Very sinful for him to do it. But you see what happened to Faith: she was immobilized from the waist down. She could no longer involve herself in a lesbian relationship.

And here was the very people that she was trying to get out, driven as she was by envy and lust and rejection of God’s knowledge and pride and everything else. All that coming back and God says that those swords will come back and stab themselves. And indeed the sword that Faith Stender tried to unleash on society came back as it were in the form of a friend of George Jackson and stabbed her and shot her.

She tried to live with it and cope with it the last year of her life, been in pain almost perpetually and depression, and finally at the end of a year she killed herself. God’s judgment is real. It’s in our land and if we don’t teach our children…

The thing that amazed me about the book—not amazed, but was very poignant—was that in both Faith Stender’s case and another gal named Bernardine Dohrn, who was one of the radical Weatherman, the gal who was sort of the head of them, both those cases, the authors did pictures of their life as children, and kind of brought it back to that at the end of each of their stories.

And it’s important for us to recognize that people don’t just end up that crazy apart from being actual little kids at some point in time. They’re part of a destructive generation. Now, we don’t have absolute authority over our children. They’re in God’s hands. But we should take whatever steps we can take to make sure that our little girls and our little boys don’t have—don’t end up being Faith Stenders and George Jacksons and Huey Newtons.

And how can we do that? Well, the scriptures tell us how we can do that. The scriptures give us this picture of the destructive generation fueled by pride so that we’d raise our kids not to be prideful and not exhibiting those seven deadly sins.

So, let’s move now to a review of the seven deadly sins. And I’ll just give you some scripture verses as we go here that you might—they’re already on the outline—that you might want to use in a program of memorization perhaps in your home school even this year. Be a good thing to think about doing a course on a regular basis teaching your children about the seven deadly sins, how to avoid them, scripture verses to memorize about why we shouldn’t engage in these things, and proper attitudes toward the things we’ll be talking about. Okay?

And the way I’ve structured it, and you can do it a lot of different ways. Remember we said before that some people talk about the three—pride, envy, and anger—and then sloth is the middle one, and then the last three, greed, gluttony, and lust. I’ve chosen to organize a little bit differently to emphasize this fact of pride being the root, and then there are six sins that flow out of it.

I think I mentioned before that I was at a Bill Gothard seminar, pastor seminar this last year, and he said, “Really what you want to do with your kids is help them to recognize pride in their lives. That’s really all you want to do.” I think he’s right. And so when we teach our kids about the seven deadly sins, the six that flow out of the one, we’re teaching them this is how you’re manifesting pride against God: the exaltation of yourself and the debasement of God. You’re being envious about somebody else’s toys. You’re getting angry about this. That shows that you’re exalting yourself and debasing God. It shows you’re being prideful here. And God hates lofty looks and he’s going to cut that off.

So these are ways to help ourselves and ourselves in our own selves and the lives of our children to recognize this so that we don’t raise a destructive generation but a reconstructive generation. Okay.

Pride. In Proverbs 23 we won’t turn to it but Proverbs 23 has them listed. Six of the seven deadly sins are found in Proverbs 23. And I won’t bother to take the time now to read it, but you might want to read it this afternoon and see how many of the seven deadly sins you could find there. There’s at least six that I found.

And all these things, as I said, we’re going to talk about as the root of pride.

Turn to Psalm 10, and we’ll look at that a little bit. Psalm 10.

This was the psalm we preached on for a couple weeks and it pictures pride in this very well.

Verse 2: “The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor. Let them be taken of the devices they have imagined. For the wicked boasteth of his heart’s desire, and blesseth the covetous whom the Lord abhoreth. The wicked through the pride of his countenance will not seek after God. God is not in all his thoughts.”

And so, if we want to teach our kids not to be prideful, we got to make sure that God is in all of their thoughts. We have to teach them to think biblically and to think in terms of a Christian worldview about everything that they do. And that’s why we’re homeschooling many of us, so we can help our kids to have God in all of their thoughts. And that’s why public schools are such an abomination. God is in none of the thoughts in public school. And that’s pride according to Psalm 10.

Verse 5: “His ways are always grievous. Thy judgments are far above out of his sight. As for all the enemies, he puffeth at them. He puffs at his enemies.”

Verse 11: “He hath said in his heart, God forgotten he hideth his face, he’ll never see it.”

Verse 13: “Wherefore does the wicked condemn God? He has said in his heart, thou will not require it.”

So why are people prideful? Psalm 10 says that one of the strongest reasons why people are prideful is because they don’t know the judgments of God. If we teach our children the judgments of God in Faith Stender’s life, Cole Porter’s life—I mentioned that before—the lives of some of the biblical characters that we’ll use to illustrate some of these points in a couple of minutes. If we teach them God’s judgments and if we remind them of God’s judgments through spanking, through discipline in the home, then we’re going to prevent them from being proud and puffing themselves up and saying, “God doesn’t require anything.”

If you don’t require anything of your kids, they’re going to think that God doesn’t require anything of them. And that’s the essence of pride. People then exalt themselves because they have a debased, a low view of who God is.

Some of the ways that pride manifests itself is to trust in one’s strength. This is all pretty much review here now. You trust in one’s strength. You can be prideful about riches, about your strength, about your knowledge. All these things are potential sources of pride. And we should recognize that Satan will try to take whatever we’re good at and cause us to be prideful about it.

Pride is manifested in inappropriate speech. I believe it was Chaucer in the Parson’s tale talked about the three things necessary to avoid pride: our humility of heart, tongue, and actions. Heart is what we’ve been talking about—the exaltation of self, the basement of God. We got to correct that in our kids. Give them a high view of God and of his judgments. But their tongue also is very important for indicating to us pride.

The tongue is a sure sign of a prideful person. If somebody talks a lot about themselves, don’t want to listen to what anybody else is talking about, that’s a sign of pride. And if we see that in our children, we should correct them. We should teach them to be slow to speak as it were and we want to hear what other people are having to say and we should help them recognize that’s a sign of pride—inappropriate speech.

Pride is destructive of community. We talked about that before too. Pride holds itself back from community life and as a result produces that destructive generation, the deformation of society instead of the reformation of society.

Pride obviously rejects authority.

In terms of memorization verses for pride I picked a couple. You might want to pick other ones. Psalm 131—a wonderful three verse psalm that kids can memorize. They have a whole psalm memorized. “Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty, neither do I exercise myself in great matters or in things too high for me.” Wonderful verse. Set the before our children the right attitude.

Verse two of Psalm 131: “Surely I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that’s weaned of his mother. My soul is even as a weaned child. Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and forever”—removes prideful thoughts and helps us to rest and rely upon God which is the essence of true humility.

Jeremiah 9:23-24: “Let not him that—but let him that glory—let’s see—thus saith the Lord, ‘Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches but let him that glorieth glory in this: but he understands and knows me that I am the Lord which exercises loving kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight,’ saith the Lord.”

Again, it helps him to see, don’t glory. If God’s given you strength, wisdom, riches, don’t glory in those things. Glory in God and who he is, knowing him.

And finally, Habakkuk 2:4, coming up on Reformation Day. This is the Old Testament quote used by Paul in the book of Romans. “The just shall live by faith.” But listen to the first half of the verse: “Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him, but the just shall live by his faith.”

See, the opposite of the true Christian position of justification by faith and true humility by God accepting the righteousness of Christ, the opposite of that according to Habakkuk 2 is your soul is lifted up and as a result it’s not upright in you.

So those are three verses that your children may want to memorize or you might want to memorize in terms of the sin of pride.

But now let’s look at some of the roots—not the root that is the root—look at some of the fruit now. And we’ve done it in three groups.

First, envy. And your children should be able to and you should be able to differentiate between envy, jealousy and covetousness.

Jealousy says it can be a good thing. It’s an attempt to guard what God has given to us in terms of our wives. For instance, it’s a good thing. Covetousness says I want what somebody else has and I’m going to try to take steps to get it—illicit steps, fraud, stealing, whatever it is. That’s covetousness. Envy says I want what somebody else has. I can’t have it and therefore I want to destroy it.

So Faith Stender says I want what Angela Davis has—a better relationship with George Jackson than I have. I can’t have it. So I hope Angela Davis gets thrown in jail or killed or disfigured or something else. That’s envy. And our children should recognize that right away. They should recognize when they exhibit envy in the home when they, for instance, want a toy taken away from another person just because they can’t have it. They’d rather have it put up totally away from the family. That’s a sign of envy. And that should be pointed out to them that’s a result of pride in their lives, rejecting God’s property rights. He’s given certain people, benefits that we don’t have, and we should rejoice in those things.

Here you got a lot of Old Testament examples to rely upon. Abel and Cain. Cain couldn’t have what Abel had, so he killed him. Isaac and the Philistines. The Philistines didn’t like Isaac’s wells. Did they steal them? Do they make their own wells? No. They stop them up. Their envy. They try to destroy what he has. Joseph and his brothers, they’re envious of Joseph’s position and the glory that God really had given Joseph in terms of authority. And so, they kill him or at least they try to get rid of him.

One of the best examples, of course, of the two prostitutes with the baby that they’re fighting over. And the envious woman, she can’t have the baby. She knows that she may not be able to get it. She’d rather it was dead than that the other mother had it. Good picture of envy to our children. And how little things teach them—little things like bickering over toys and whatnot can turn into tremendous character flaws that will wreak havoc in society as they get older.

Jesus, of course, was envied by the Pharisees and the Jews envied the apostles. And it’s important to bring that up because it’s important to teach our children that other people will envy them. They’ll be envied by people. They have to understand that at work in the world around us.

We talked about the destructive influence of envy on society. Envy and egalitarianism—the drive for a leveling downward of all things.

Envy doesn’t—if you can’t have what somebody else wants—if you can’t be rich, well then let’s at least soak the rich. Let’s tax them real heavy. And we see the politics of envy this last week in our own Congress driving toward legislative action now in an envious seeking to take away what the rich man has. It’s wrong to do that. It’s wrong to penalize those people that by and large are the hardest working, the most innovative and the most productive in our country.

What sense does that make in the life of a nation to cut them off at their knees? It may give you some satisfaction because they’re paying their fair share. But it’s envy pure and simple.

I see again this last weekend they had riots again in London because Margaret Thatcher was trying to move them back to a poll tax, a biblical tax, head tax where the rich and the poor pay the same price for civil services. And envy is being whipped up there to defeat that proposal.

Envy is the core of revolution—that leveling downward effect.

Some verses that you might want to have your children memorize in terms of envy, and I put there a subtitle, “no other gods before me.” In other words, if you’re a bigger, bigger god than me, I want to destroy you. No other gods but me is what envy says.

The biblical examples are important to teach our kids in this context—ones we just went through. But then I’ve also got Proverbs 21:2 through 4 and verse 10.

“Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord pondereth the heart. To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice. And high look and a proud heart, and the plowing of the wicked is sin. The soul of the wicked desireth evil. His neighbor findeth no favor in his eyes.”

I picked those four verses together because it points it back to pride again. The end of that pride in the first three verses is verse 10: “The soul of the wicked desires evil. His neighbor findeth no favor in his eyes.” Remember we said that envy is normally toward a neighbor, a brother, a sister. It finds no favor. They want to hurt the neighbor and bring them down because they can’t have what they have. So that’s a good one to teach our children about the dangers of envy and to help them to see that it comes from pride and from an improper view of themselves. Okay.

Anger. Anger. Anger says, “Why can’t I be God? Why do these things keep happening to me? Why is…”

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