Proverbs 29:1-27
1 Whoever remains stiff-necked after many rebukes
will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy.
2 When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice;
when the wicked rule, the people groan.
3 A man who loves wisdom brings joy to his father,
but a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth.
4 By justice a king gives a country stability,
but those who are greedy for[a] bribes tear it down.
5 Those who flatter their neighbors
are spreading nets for their feet.
6 Evildoers are snared by their own sin,
but the righteous shout for joy and are glad.
7 The righteous care about justice for the poor,
but the wicked have no such concern.
8 Mockers stir up a city,
but the wise turn away anger.
9 If a wise person goes to court with a fool,
the fool rages and scoffs, and there is no peace.
10 The bloodthirsty hate a person of integrity
and seek to kill the upright.
11 Fools give full vent to their rage,
but the wise bring calm in the end.
12 If a ruler listens to lies,
all his officials become wicked.
13 The poor and the oppressor have this in common:
The Lord gives sight to the eyes of both.
14 If a king judges the poor with fairness,
his throne will be established forever.
15 A rod and a reprimand impart wisdom,
but a child left undisciplined disgraces its mother.
16 When the wicked thrive, so does sin,
but the righteous will see their downfall.
17 Discipline your children, and they will give you peace;
they will bring you the delights you desire.
18 Where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint;
but blessed is the one who heeds wisdom’s instruction.
19 Servants cannot be corrected by mere words;
though they understand, they will not respond.
20 Do you see someone who speaks in haste?
There is more hope for a fool than for them.
21 A servant pampered from youth
will turn out to be insolent.
22 An angry person stirs up conflict,
and a hot-tempered person commits many sins.
23 Pride brings a person low,
but the lowly in spirit gain honor.
24 The accomplices of thieves are their own enemies;
they are put under oath and dare not testify.
25 Fear of man will prove to be a snare,
but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.
26 Many seek an audience with a ruler,
but it is from the Lord that one gets justice.
27 The righteous detest the dishonest;
the wicked detest the upright.
In justice we see God...God is sprinkled throughout Solomon's Proverbs...In this Proverb, we read about justice, and right and wrong...We learn the righteous care about the justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern...A king's justice gives a country its stability, while the greedy and those who bribe tear a country down...But if a king can judge the poor with fairness and righteousness, his throne will reign forever...And when the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; but when the wicked rule the people groan...
C. S. Lewis talks about man naturally somehow believes in justice...And Lewis thinks how mankind views right and wrong is a reason to believe in God...And I believe Lewis is right...If we have a Designer and a Great Creator of the universe, then He would want us to know instinctively about the rights and wrongs of the world...Lewis said in Mere Christianity that "My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust...But how had I got this idea of just and unjust?...A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line...What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?...If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it?...A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet...Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own...But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too -for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies...Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist -in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless -I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality -namely my idea of justice -was full of sense."...
The idea of justice is one of the reasons we believe in God...It is also a reason to trust Him, because He is just...He has created our world where we expect the world to want justice, and to long for justice...And justice would be in our thoughts and in the thoughts of everyone in the world...If God does exist, we would expect the world and everyone in it to believe that there is justice for all...People of the world would want the righteous to thrive and the wicked to be brought to justice...Instinctive justice to be in our minds gives us the idea that our God is a Personal God...Why would He want us to have justice and act in a righteous way, unless He is a Personal God?...He has created the world in such a way that we see these glimpses and slices of Him in this organized and quite precisely created world...