All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. (2Timothy 3:16-17)
In Junior High, each Wednesday after school I went to my aunt’s house and did some work for her before she gave me dinner and sent me off to our church’s Wednesday evening youth program. At the time, “Aunt” Gail was in her eighties and I remember her promise box. This was a small box a little larger than a package of 3″ by 5″ cards, open at the top and containing a stack of little slips of paper with Scriptural promises. It was the centerpiece of her dining room table.
If you picked out a slip of paper, it always read something like:
Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. (Deuteronomy 31:6)
But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)
Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. (Isaiah 41:10)
There were at least a hundred similar promises in that promise box. These boxes were popular among Evangelicals back in the early sixties and we smile condescendingly at such simplicity.
Even as a Junior Higher, I was uncomfortable with this Scripture diet. It didn’t match the Scriptures Dad would repeat to us at home. Here are three he repeated so often we knew them from memory:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)
A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. (James 1:8)
When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8)
No matter how many slips of paper you picked up and read, every last one was positive. Negative promises were banished. One never read descriptions of God’s people’s tastes and sin such as this God spoke to His people through His prophet Isaiah:
[T]his is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD: Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. (Isaiah 30:9-11)
Terrible rejection of God’s word by God’s people, so what did God promise them?
Wherefore thus saith the Holy One of Israel, Because ye despise this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness, and stay thereon: Therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant. And he shall break it as the breaking of the potters’ vessel that is broken in pieces; he shall not spare: so that there shall not be found in the bursting of it a sherd to take fire from the hearth, or to take water withal out of the pit. (Isaiah 30:12-14)
These are God’s promises to His people who reject His Word and prophets; who demand, “Speak unto us smooth things.”
Stop and ask yourself: should our children not have the privilege of growing up hearing us say to them, quoting God’s warning through Isaiah: “Speak unto us smooth things.” Should they not grow up knowing this by heart? Should we not quote words of God which help them tremble before our Holy God?
We don’t have promise boxes, now. We have promise pulpits and promise bestsellers and promise social media posts. Still, we are the same people of God needing the same diagnosis as God’s people Isaiah warned.
This particular text from Isaiah 30 is instructive to us because what is quoted above is immediately followed by this:
In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. (Isaiah 30:15)
For sure this was in every promise box, and still today it is endlessly repeated so that many of us know it by heart. But is that what Isaiah 30:15 actually says?
No. Rather, here is the entire verse:
For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not. (Isaiah 30:15)
How is it that we repeat everything but this final phrase? Is this final phrase not every bit as helpful as what precedes it? Why do we delete the negative and sobering and warning words of God? Is this not proof of our spiritual condition? Our complacency? Our presumption?
This meditation is written as my Bible reading has recently been in Isaiah and I’ve been overwhelmed with such warnings and terrors filling this prophetic word from our merciful Father to His Own people. The book is filled with such hard-edged and rough things. If our children need to eat vegetables and fruit as well as cake and candy, do they not need such a balanced diet of Scripture?
Have faith for all of Scripture being the only proper diet for the souls of your children. All of it—every last word.
God never flatters us. Why would we want to flatter our children? Flattery gets their souls nowhere but Hell. Teach them to run from that horrible place where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.
This is an act of faith that you, father and mother, will never regret.
