Don't Join Murderous Gangs (Proverbs 1:8-19) Series

Introduction

Although my wife Heidi and I have been married for less than 5 years, we’ve moved a lot in that time period. We’ve lived in three states, 3 apartments, and two houses, and we feel a bit like gypsies without a real home. Heidi and I met up in Manitoba at Providence Bible College. After two years there, we both moved down to the Twin Cities—I went to Bethel Seminary, and my wife went to Crown College. We eventually got married and lived in the Twin Cities for a year before moving to CA. We lived in Pasadena for a year, and then a nearby suburb, El Monte, for another, before moving back to Jamestown, where we’ve been for a little over a year.

For some people, this frequent moving is a normal part of life—I work with a guy who’s never lived in one place longer than 4 years—but for me, it feels strange. I’m originally from Maple Grove, a suburb of the Twin Cities, and I lived on the same block, and in the same house for the first eighteen years of my life, and then a few more after that while at Bethel Seminary.

Many of you would probably hate to raise a family in an urban environment, but the city of Maple Grove where I grew up is a pretty good place to raise a family: they have really good schools, safe neighborhoods, great parks and biking trails, and lots of kids to play with. We locked our doors at night, but at the same time, we never really worried about something happening.

There are a few things that Maple Grove does not have, that I always just took for granted. For one thing, the city doesn’t really have any gangs and doesn’t have many of the problems associated with gangs. I never saw any drug deals go down; I never saw prostitutes soliciting anyone; I never saw gang-related violence. I’m not saying that there aren’t neighborhoods like this in the Twin Cities—I’ve seen people selling drugs in downtown Minneapolis—but my own little corner of the world was safe and worry-free. The closest I got to gang violence was seeing the occasional fight break out in junior high. The closest I got to drugs was occasionally smelling marijuana in some of the back hallways—but the students who used it were always long gone before I got there, and I was somehow sheltered enough that I didn’t realize for a long time what it was that I was smelling.

I’m guessing that most, or maybe all, of you here this morning had a similar school experience to mine. You maybe knew a couple people who got in a lot of fights, who got suspended or even expelled, or who used drugs, but for the most part these types of concerns were something that belonged to inner cities like Chicago or Los Angeles.

Although we tend to think of gangs and gang activity as a modern-day problem, they have actually been around for centuries. In fact, the passage we’ll look at today takes a very practical look at gangs—both at their appeal, and at their dangers. Although this whole topic may seem a bit foreign, especially for us here in rural ND, the passage turns out to be extremely relevant.

Before we jump into the text, it may help to know a few things about the background of Proverbs.

The first nine chapters of the book of Proverbs mainly consist of advice given from parents, the father in particular—to their son. This son is on the brink of turning from a boy to a man, and his parents are doing what they can to make sure that the path he takes in life is a good one—one that will please God and be good for him and others. Basically, the father wants what all of us want for our children, and what we try so hard to make sure happens. We want our children to succeed in all areas of life. In this particular lesson, the first one in the book of Proverbs, the father warns his sons about gangs, and we’ll jump in where he does in 1:8-9.

“Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction;

Neglect not your mother’s teaching,

For they are a graceful garland for your head,

And a necklace for your throat.

The parents begin their instruction here by telling their son to “listen,” or depending on your translation, to “hear.” The Hebrew word for this, shema, can also be translated as obey—Moses often tells Israel to “listen” to God’s commands, and we often just go ahead and translate it as “obey.” We find the same idea in English. When you see a frustrated parent in a store tell his child, “Listen to me,” we all know he means, “obey me”—that, and please stop embarrassing me.