Change Your City

“By the blessing of the upright the city is exalted: but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.” (Pr 11:11 AV)

Too many saints complain about the places in which they live.  I hate to be the bearer of reality, but mankind has always been wicked.  There has never been a time when the majority of citizens of any given location were regenerated.  It has never happened.  The saints will always live among the wicked.  How we choose to respond to that wickedness will determine the future of the place in which we reside.  The colon that appears in the middle of the verse gives us tremendous light in the application of the truth above.  The latter part of the verse tells us it is the speech of the wicked that will overthrow the city.  It is their language, and the willingness of the people to accept their words, that leads to their downfall.  Conversely, the blessing of the upright will bring the city from the depths of sin.  The blessing above is a verbal one.  Just like the city is overthrown by verbal influence, the city will rise out of the depths by righteous verbal influence.  The short and long of it is, if we don’t like where we live, cursing it will not help.  Rather, sharing hope and the gospel is the key.

Of special note is that blessing is the opposite of cursing.  Much of our preaching in days of old was much of the latter and little of the former.  There has to be a balance.  As the Spirit had me muse on this, a picture came to mind.  In the old days, we would street preach with God’s wrath and pending judgement as our theme.  There is nothing wrong with that.  Our LORD did that quite frequently.  But when He preached doom and gloom, He did so as the one who brought hope.  The gospel is about forgiveness, mercy, and affirmation.  The word ‘gospel’ means good news.  The picture that came to mind is working the streets during a time of public congregation.  Perhaps a fair, a festival, or a parade.  There is nothing wrong with protesting.  But protesting without offering hope is counter-productive.  I imagined a sandwich board sign with the words, “gospel = good news”.  The nest line would read, “mercy, forgiveness, affirmation”.  The last line would read, “Ask me how”.  Note again David’s use of the word ‘blessing’.  This is not standing on a street corner preaching doom and gloom without any mention of hope, mercy, forgiveness, and affirmation.

I know some who will read this will think me a compromiser.  Let me assure you, my preaching is balanced.  I speak of holy righteousness, judgment to come, and a hell to be shunned quite regularly.  In fact, this devotion is perhaps more for my sake than anyone else’s.  I repulse at the all-too-common gospel of self-affirmation and man-centered worship.  We live in a world of narcissists who think God was created for the pleasure and comfort of man.  It sickens me.  Modern churches are more of a shopping experience where the ‘worshipper’ comes for his or her own gratification rather than to surrender and submit to our almighty Creator.  Having said all that, I still need to balance this hard to accept truth with God’s mercy, love, and forgiveness.  I think our churches would do well to balance their presentation a bit more effectively.  Let us not abandon judgement and hell.  IN order for the sinner to come correctly to our Creator, he or she must understand their utter wickedness and lack of any standing before God.  They must acknowledge they are not entitled to the blessings of God, rather, have earned a place in the lake of fire.  We must see ourselves as we are.  Pure evil!  Then, we can appreciate the offer of mercy, forgiveness, grace, and affirmation.  But they must be included in our preaching.  Blessing must be the answer to the hopelessness that sin is.  Blessing, not cursing, is the key to exalting a city!