If there were ever an incitement for parents to teach, train and discipline their children in their youth while their character is pliable it is Proverbs 27:22.

Proverbs 27:22 – “Though thou shouldest bray [pound; bruise; shatter; break in pieces] a fool [silly, perverse man; thick-headed; morally stupid] in a mortar [hollow place where grain is pounded into flour] among [in the midst] wheat [grain] with a pestle [tool with a rounded end used for crushing grain], yet will not his [the fool] foolishness [silliness; folly; act of denying God’s Law in actions] depart [remove; turn aside] from him.”

What a telling warning to parents who see evidenced in a child’s character the silly, foolish bent of an undisciplined, unbridled, rebellious fool.  Solomon warns his son that waiting to discipline a child until foolishness has become his way may surely sentence him or her to a life of hardship that not even a heavy-handed rebuke or punishment can dissuade.  Crush a thick-headed, immoral fool as one pounds grain into flour, but you will teach him nothing!

Mom and dad, train your children while they are young and tender or prepare yourself for a life of sorrow and heartache! “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

Proverbs 27:23 – “Be thou diligent to know [comprehend; recognize; see and know by observation] the state [face; countenance] of thy flocks [i.e. cattle, sheep, goats], and look [consider; regard; state; fix] well [heart=mind, feeling; lit. to think about] to thy herds [animals; flocks].”

A wise man or woman understands you cannot leave to chance the care and oversight of your possessions and investments any more than a shepherd or rancher would dare fail to investigate and review the state of his flocks and herds.

Business owners, professionals, managers and pastors would do well to heed this principle and consider their care and responsibility for the lives and souls providentially entrusted to their care by God.

Proverbs 27:24 – “For riches [strength; treasure; wealth] are not for ever [perpetual; always]: and doth the crown endure to every generation [i.e. posterity; i.e. from generation to generation]?”

Following the exhortation to be diligent about business we read a warning that life is fleeting, riches are temporal and positions of power and influence do not last forever.

I close with a summary verse of this truth found in the New Testament.

James 4:13-14 – “Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: ¹⁴  Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”

Copyright 2015 – Travis D. Smith