Proverbs 2:1  My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee;
2  So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding;
3  Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding;
4  If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures;
5  Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.
6  For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.
7  He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous: he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly.
8  He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way of his saints.
9  Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; yea, every good path.

There is a saying that has been around for a long time. It states something to the effect of: ‘if we will not learn from history, we are bound to repeat history.’ There is only one way to break the chain of depravity and its effects and that is through true Biblical salvation. It is interesting to watch how most people normalize sin and assume there is no way out of it. They assume we just need to learn how to manage it better.
This past Monday the news broke of a 15 year old girl who shot and killed two people and then herself. She also injured a number of other people. This all happened in a “Christian” school. A second grade student called 911 to report the shooting. This tragic event has been in the news since that time. The officials are still claiming they are trying to find a motive for what happened. The news agencies and the police force are blind to the facts. Many others are equally blinded by bad ideology.
It was reported that this 15 year old girl grew up in a troubled home. Her parents were divorced and remarried 3 times. This marriage saga was to each other every time. Their latest breakup was happening in 2021. That girl is responsible for her actions, but stop and think of the difficulties that girl faced. Children need parents. No child comes into this world without a man and a woman. The father and mother are not always married and they do not always live together, but the fact is, there must be a man and a woman to produce a child. It requires the seed of a man and the egg of a woman to produce a child.
God’s design for a family is for a man to leave his father and his mother and to cleave unto his wife. God commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. God repeated that command to Noah after the flood. God designed man to produce enough children to increase the population of the world steadily. Due to sin, the increase is not as great as it would have been prior to the fall. Death takes out many people in a year.
God’s design is for a husband and wife to have children. That makes them father and mother. The Bible tells us that a child needs godly instructions from the father and the mother. Most homes today never do that. In the case of this 15 year old, the father and mother could not sort out their own problems, let alone help their daughter to see the importance of a right foundation. The father was involved in the Abundant Life Church in that area. That church was a false church. It taught false religion. It catered to the brokenness of these parents. Children need help to be able to process things in life properly. The primary place for that help is in the home. When the parents do not have a right foundation, they cannot help their children to build on a right foundation. Due to God’s mercy and grace, children do not have to remain in the rut their parents choose for themselves. Children sometimes get saved, even though their parents are not saved.
This particular girl was stuck in a dysfunctional home, and in a dysfunctional school and church. She was not getting any good counsel anywhere. I do not know if the father and mother will finally look for the truth through this tragedy or not.
It is important for each person to understand that if you do not put God first in your life, you are in a mess and you will be helping others to be in a mess as well. Every child needs to come to the place of choosing who they will follow and what they will believe. It is up to parents to be careful to set the good and right path before their children.
This tragedy in Madison, Wisconsin should be a wake up call for every person. It should cause us to consider carefully what foundation we are building on. We all need to learn. We all need to be saved. After a person is saved, there needs to be growth. It is essential to be a part of a true church where you can grow properly. Since the completion of the Scriptures, God’s design is for every person to be exposed to evangelists, pastors and teachers who will rightly divide the Word of Truth to the people. The apostles and prophets are the Word of God. True evangelists, pastors and teachers are men who are saved and submissive to the faithful study of God’s Word.
Every person needs to read and study the Word of God personally. God says we also need the assistance of good leadership in a true church. That is not my idea. That is God’s Word.
In the Old Testament, God gave the law to Moses. Moses was to give it to the people. Aaron was to be the high priest and his sons were to be priests. They were to teach the law to the people. God never intended for a man to isolate himself and rely on his own study alone to guide him.
In Acts 17 we read that the Bereans were more noble than those of Thessalonica. What made them more noble? It was that they gladly received the apostles’ doctrine, but they also searched the Scriptures to be sure that what they were being told was true. They needed the apostles, but they needed to be sure they were only receiving the Word of God. There were many false teachers in the time of the apostles. The Bereans were warned of this and they believed that. They took the right steps to protect themselves from being deceived.
Today, the majority of people do not even care to have the Word of God. Any one of a number of perversions will do for them. They judge what they hear, not by the infallible Word of God, but by their fallible hearts.
There are many people who are hurting right now due to the tragedy of this past Monday. If they are going to rely on their corrupt church for help, they will not get it. They need to get real Bibles, and they need to get on their knees and ask God to open their understanding to the truth. If they are not saved, and most probably are not, they need to get saved and they need to find a true church that will help them to begin to be grounded in the truth.
Those who read these devotionals need to be sure to do the same. If you are not saved, that is the place to start. If you get saved, the Holy Spirit will come and take up residence in your heart. He will guide you into all truth. He does not do that as you live carelessly. He does that as you read God’s Word and seek to implement what He says. That is what the Bible teaches.
In Acts 8 we have an unsaved man travelling back to Ethiopia in a carriage. He “happens to have some Scripture with him”. He was reading from Isaiah 53. He was curious and the Holy Spirit was working on his heart to help him to see his need of a Saviour. The Holy Spirit was not living in this man at that time. He was working to convince him of his need to be saved. God sent Philip to meet up with that man as he was riding in that carriage. Philip obeyed God and he ran and caught up with that carriage. He asked the man if he understood what he was reading. The man admitted he could not understand what he was reading unless someone would teach him. Philip took the open door given to him by God, and he began at the very place where that Eunuch was reading, and he preached Christ to the man. That man received the truth and when they came to some water, he asked Philip what hindered him to be baptized. Philip told him what was required for Biblical baptism. The Ethiopian Eunuch answered:

Acts 8:37  And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

Philip had obeyed God and taught that man properly. The Holy Spirit was working in the heart of that Eunuch to help him to see his need to believe what Philip was telling him. Based on his right confession, they stopped the chariot and Philip and the Eunuch got out and went down into that water and Philip baptized that man there.
That Eunuch had been doing as Solomon wrote in Proverbs 2. He was willing to receive the truth. He was willing to incline his ear unto wisdom and he was also open to receive the truth. He wanted the truth more than silver and gold. He knew there was something lacking in his life and he was doing what he could do to fix that. He was reading the Scriptures. He did not have some perverted text. He had a part of the scroll of Isaiah. He did not understand what he was reading, but he did not put it away because he could not understand it. He was reading it and God sent Philip to help him to understand what he was reading. That is God’s way of dealing with us. Those who are saved need to be available to help others to understand the truth.
When a person subjects himself to a false religious group, they cannot get the help they need. They can feed their flesh, but not the soul. They can come away excited and feeling good about their “experience”, but their soul will be empty. That is the tragedy that is repeated over and over again in many people’s lives. Some grow accustomed to that emptiness. They shut down the Holy Spirit and they insist they have things figured out enough to get by. Yet they are not attending a true church and they are not reading the Word of God. They keep themselves willingly ignorant of the truth.
When they hear of a tragedy like this one in Wisconsin, they are scratching their heads and listening carefully to the media and trying to figure out how come, or they just shut it out and ignore it. Some will blame the gun. That gun just happened to jump into the girl’s hand and when she got to school, it just started shooting. We know Cain did not have a gun, but he killed his brother. We know that there were no guns used in Old Testament times, but many people were killed in battle as well as in murders.
The gun is not the problem. The heart of man is the problem. The only solution is to be born again and then to walk humbly with the Lord. That is the answer. Without that, there is no answer. Not everyone will go and kill someone to deal with their frustrations. However, everyone that builds their life on the sand will find their house crumble around them. The danger is in allowing the devil to convince you that a collapsing house is normal. The reason the house is collapsing is because you did not build on the right foundation.
In Proverbs 2:9 we find that if a person follows what God says in verses 1-8, they will understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; yea, every good path. That is not works salvation. That is listening to the work of the Holy Spirit as He seeks to draw you to the truth. Unless you are willing to get serious with God, you are part of the problem. You cannot help yourself, and you cannot help anyone else either. You will give bad counsel and will be setting a stumblingblock before others. That is a dangerous thing to do. Why not listen to God and be a vessel He can use to help others to come to know the truth.
Pastor Bartel