Proverbs 11:26, Freedom from Hunger!
May 24, Proverbs 11:26
Amos 8 “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4).
Freedom from Hunger!
Our Proverb reaffirms the second part of vs.24 in an antithetic form. Perhaps the main thrust of the verse is to remind all, rich and poor, to be sensitive to the needs of others. It condemns the greed that ignores the material famine all around us, but who will raise the cry against those responsible for the Spiritual Famine in our churches today?
1. A Material Famine: He that withholds corn, the people shall curse him. The withholding here (different word in v.24) deals with miserly business practices rather than miserliness itself. Those who expect the blessing because of their charity are probably the very ones who have made their wealth on the backs of the poor. God, however, won’t let them have it both ways. Those who withhold their corn to force up the price, merit the people’s curse, while those who sell it at a fair price receive their thanks, and their prayers. This is God’s Law of the market place. Men may do as they please with their corn, but they cannot escape the result of their actions in either cursing or blessing. This should warn us to dread the curses more than the loss of our coveted profits. Surely, those who are guilty of a contrived famine, for personal profit, merit the curses of God (Jas. 5:4). This, too, is as up-to-date as today. How much of the world’s economy is driven by withholding (supply or production) to force up prices, or genocide? The horrific pictures of famine-ravaged countries, shown on TV, have torn at all our hearts, and the international response to these appeals is well known. Yet, are not these also contrived famines? Are they not primarily the result of man’s inhumanity to man? Such famines will never be erased until the hearts of the perpetrators are changed.
2. A Spiritual Famine: The words of Amos (8:4-14) remind us that something more than physical bread would be withheld from Israel, with results far more dreadful than lack of bread-corn. The poor were constantly in debt to cheating merchants and grasping moneylenders. They were traded like slaves to be bought and sold for a song! The Lord took a solemn oath to remember the sins of this apostate people in a coming judgment. Vs.11 speaks of a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. They would be deprived of God’s guidance, counsel, power, and providential care. How tragic is the picture of Israel’s plight? They shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. That is disaster indeed, but it is not something buried in the long-distant past. It is a famine, a spiritual famine that is at crisis point today! We are seeing the forces of secularism, materialism, ecumenism, and hedonism sweeping across the world. While not indifferent to the physical hunger of the world’s starving, we are speaking, not of an economic, but of the far more serious spiritual famine of hearing the words of the Lord. Your writer once had an old deacon who would say, as he entered worship, “I am hungry today for the Word of God.” Man has a thirst that can’t be quenched at any earthly spring, a hunger that can’t be satisfied except with the Bread of Life.
Thought: “Nothing can keep back the man who hungers after Christ” (CHS).
Prayer: Give me a hunger for the Bread of Life stronger than for perishing bread!