An old Chinese proverb says this, “One generation plants the trees, and another gets the shade.” You and I are still living in the shade of some trees that were planted by our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. We are shaded, to some degree, by their moral standards, their spiritual commitment, their value system, their sense of right and wrong, their commitment to duty. We are shaded by what our parents and grandparents planted.

The question that faces us today is what kind of trees are being planted today to shade the future generation from what may well be the blistering heat of an Antichrist dominated world.

Are we planting anything or are we leaving our children totally exposed?

It is obvious or should be to every one of us that our culture as to morals, values, ethics, duty, commitment is disintegrating.
The very systems on which we base our life are convoluted, skewed and out of sync with God’s divine order.

We allow in our country the massacring of millions of unborn children while at the same time sentencing a man six months in jail for killing a hummingbird, which demonstrates to us that we don’t understand that man is made in the image of God, very different than any animal.

There was an article in Reader’s Digest about animal rights. One of the people quoted in the article was extolling the equality of all created things with this statement, “A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” The article went on to say that there are those people who are howling far and wide that the killing of six million roasting chickens is the modern equivalent of Hitler’s massacre of the Jews. What in the world kind of values is our culture going to have?

Where is our culture going? What kind of value system, what kind of morality, what kind of standard are we establishing to shade the next generation? Are we planting anything? Or are we leaving them totally exposed?

Well Scripture is certainly clear when it speaks of our responsibility to our children. God has set the standards. And any mother knows that children are supposed to be a blessing. And they are usually when they arrive. There are some mothers who don’t want them at all and so they have them aborted.

Reflections of a Mother

I gave you life, But I cannot live it for you.
I can give you directions, But I cannot be there to lead you.
I can take you to church, But I cannot make you believe.
I can teach you right from wrong, But I cannot always decide for you.
I can buy you beautiful clothes, But I cannot make you beautiful Inside.
I can offer you advice, But I cannot accept it for you.
I can give you love, But I cannot force it upon you.
I can teach you to share, But I cannot make you unselfish.
I can teach you respect, But I cannot force you to show honor.
I can advise you about friends, But I can not choose them for you.
I can advise you about your sex life, But I cannot keep you pure.
I can tell you about alcohol & drugs, But I can’t say “No” for you.
I can tell you about lofty goals, But I can’t achieve them for you.
I can teach you about kindness, But I can’t force you to be gracious
I can pray for you, But I cannot make you walk with God.
I can love you with unconditional love – all of my life. And I WILL.
– Unknown

The Righteous Are Bold as a Lion

Proverbs 28:1 “The wicked flee when no one is pursuing, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”

There is a correlation between wickedness and fear, and righteousness and courage.

Who of us feels righteous?

Our conscience tells us we are sinners. And the Bible tells us we are sinners.

So, maybe that’s one reason why there is not much boldness in the world. That is why so many people are timid, indecisive or cowardly, fearful or fainthearted or simply indifferent, and unwilling to take a stand in the midst of opposition.
What about it moms? Are there any mothers here who are bold as a lion?

You can read a description of this kind of mom in Proverbs 31:25: Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she smiles, literally you can translate it she laughs at the future.

Do you see what that means? Most people are anxious about the future. She laughs at the future. She looks in future’s face with boldness and says, “You think you can terrify me?

You think you can dangle all your terrors in front of me and all the sicknesses and all the calamities and all the enemies and all the miseries and all the losses and all the heartaches that the future holds and make me cower in the corner of life like a mouse on the kitchen floor?

No, strength and dignity are my clothing, and I laugh at your threats.”

The righteous woman is bold as lion. She hears the words of 1 Peter 3:5–6 and says, “Yes!” “In former times the holy women also, hoped in God,

And today , you ladies and Mom’s, can become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear.”
Women who hope in God are as bold as a lion.

Proverbs 28:1 “The wicked flee when no one is pursuing, but the righteous are bold as a lion.”

If there is a correlation between boldness and righteousness, I want to be bold, How do I become Righteous?

Romans 3: 21–22: “But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe.”

There is a divine righteousness, a God-sent, God-given righteousness, that is not through the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe. It is God’s solution to the problem of sin and condemnation.

1 Peter 3:5For after this manner aforetime the holy women also, who hoped in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands: 6as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose children ye now are, if ye do well, and are not put in fear by any terror.

Those Old Testament women who “hoped in God”, even though they did not know how God would take care of their sins or how God could count them as righteous and acceptable, nevertheless, were, in fact, justified by this faith in God and his promises.

The point of Romans 3:22 is that the message of justification by faith was there already and pointed forward to a time when somehow God would demonstrate his righteousness in passing over former sins, including the sins done by these hoping women and all other Old Testament believers.

They don’t know yet fully how God can be just while justifying sinners by faith, but they trust.
when they hoped in God, God reckoned it as righteousness. They were justified by faith.

This is why so many of them were fearless and bold. The righteous are bold as a lion. The righteous women laugh at the future with all its threats.

But who is a righteous woman, or a righteous man or a righteous teenager or a righteous child, before God?

The answer of the Old Testament: those who hope in God. The answer of the New Testament: those who hope in Christ who is God.

When you come to the end of a day feeling miserably guilty, because you have been crabby all day and have spoken carelessly to the children or because you wasted your mind and time on some TV or internet nonsense, or because you have flirted with the idea of leaving your husband because your anger is like a raging fire, or because the memories of your defiant youth condemn you, and you surely don’t feel righteous,

THEN, then cast yourself helplessly and hopefully on the mercy of Jesus as your only hope, and God will count it as righteousness.

When you do that you will be able to sleep in purity and rise as bold as a lion. “Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies” (Romans 8:33).

It means that in general there is something about wickedness that leads to fear and something about righteousness that leads to boldness.

The point is not that the wicked can’t ever act in bold and reckless ways. In fact for the sake of more wickedness there is often an utterly foolish willingness to take crazy risks mind-altering drugs, dirty needles, dangerous speeding, Russian roulette, all kinds of criminal acts.

Proverbs 28:1 doesn’t have in mind that kind of boldness when it says the righteous have it and the wicked don’t. The boldness in view is the boldness required for a just cause.

What Is It About the Wicked That Makes Them Flee?

The answer is: a bad conscience. When you see a police car ahead, is your response one of confidence and peace, or is it one of fear and avoidance?

We flee when we’re not even being pursued because we have a bad conscience. There are enough stored up bad things we’ve done, that a voice inside tells us someone is after us even when they are not. Guilt is the parent of fear.

The earliest example of this is Adam in the garden of Eden. He sins against the Lord. He acts wickedly, believing the serpent instead of God his Father. Then Genesis 3:8 says that Adam and Eve “heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” Not stalking, just walking. He is not pursuing. He is there, as he often was for the good of his people.

But things were not the same now. Adam and Eve now have a bad conscience.

Verse 8 Adam said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid.”

“The wicked flee when no one is pursuing.” What this is teaching is that you and I have a conscience given by God, and that our conscience is committed to getting our accounts settled, to making things right when we’ve done wrong.
Wicked people will not make right what they have done wrong nor set their face to do good. And while the grace of God persists, they flee when no one pursues. But woe to the wicked who cease to hear the footsteps of God in the garden.

Who Are the Lion-Hearted Righteous?

Psalm 32:1–2 David says, “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man against whom the Lord does not impute iniquity!”

The righteous ones are the ones who trust in the Lord, the ones who have faith and bank their hope on the mercy and power and wisdom of God. These are the ones against whom the Lord does not impute iniquity and whose sins are forgiven. They are righteous not with a righteousness of their own, but with the imputed righteousness of God.

These are the ones who are free from fear. Their consciences are “sprinkled clean from an evil conscience” (Hebrews 10:22).

Their hearts no longer condemn them (1 John 3:21). They are right with God, because of his grace, not because of their merit.

What Is the Root Cause of a Woman’s Greatness?

The answer is given in verse 5: “So once the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves and were submissive to their husbands.”

1. First, these holy women hoped in God.

2. Second, because they hoped in God, they adorned themselves in a certain way, namely, with a gentle and quiet spirit.

3. Third, by hoping in God and adorning themselves with this spirit of tranquility, they were submissive to their husbands.

Because of these three things, Peter calls them “holy women.” Their spirit and their demeanor are distinct from the world and are precious in the sight of God v 4. And not only are they precious in God’s sight, but they are also powerful in the sight of unbelieving husbands. Peter’s desire is that women in his own day would follow the example of the holy women of old, and that they would win their husbands to Christ by their reverent and chaste behavior.

The boldness to stand and do the right thing.
Martin Luther

Luther was a monk who could not find peace with God because of his sin. In the fall of 1515 Luther was lecturing in the University of Wittenburg on the epistle to the Romans. The most decisive event of his life happened. Here is the way he tells it:
I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, “the justice of God,” because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.

Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that “the just shall live by his faith.” Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on new meaning, and whereas before the “justice of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven.

His life was one long act of lion-hearted boldness against the abuses of the Roman church and for the glory of the gospel.
His most famous stand was taken in 1521 at a kind of trial in the city of Worms before the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Charles, the local governor, Fredrick the Wise, the Archbishop of Trier named Eck, and a host of lords and princes. The power of the assembly was enough to banish or execute him for heresy.

The prosecutor cried, “Do you or do you not repudiate your books and the errors which they contain?” Luther replied,

Since then Your Majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. [Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.] God help me. Amen.