Scripture: Proverbs 3:1-12
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.” I actually memorized these words way back in July of 1984… right here in Toccoa, Georgia… at the old Georgia Baptist Conference Center, where my church youth group went that year for summer camp.
And these words from verses 5 through 7 will be the focus of today’s sermon. I am going to make three main points about trusting in the Lord in this way: Number One: an apparent problem with today’s scripture. Number Two: three principles for Christian living. Number Three: our Father’s love for us.
But Point Number One… we immediately run into an apparent problem… potentially: How can we trust in the Lord the way this scripture tells us to, if we don’t trust that these words from Proverbs 3 are true?
I mean… Let’s face facts: Solomon, the author of these words, makes some ambitious promises about good things that happen as a result of living a faithful Christian life… Are they true? We have to deal with this problem right up front!
By the way, you’ll notice in verses 1 through 10 that Solomon’s command or commands come in the odd numbered verses and the promised result comes in the even numbered verses: So, in verse 1, the command: “don’t forget” these words and obey these words. If we do that, what’s the promised result? See verse 2: The “length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you.”
That pattern repeats throughout the passage…
But I hope you can see the problem: Don’t we have so many examples of faithful Christians not receiving these promised, tangible, measurable results? Gosh, nine years ago, for instance, my conscience was stricken by the news of 21 Egyptian Christians being led by ISIS terrorists to a beach on the coast of Libya. These terrorists were each armed with swords, and they beheaded each one of these faithful men—having given them the opportunity to renounce their faith in Christ! Not that I saw it… God forbid! But these wicked men captured it on video and shared it online for all the world to see. And what onlookers also saw was each of these 21 Christians praising Jesus by name, glorifying Christ by name, before the sword came down on their necks!
Were these young men not being incredibly faithful to God? Of course they were! And yet, far from “adding” to their length of days; their days were cut short. And to say the least, their faithfulness to God hardly helped them enjoy the favor of their captors! On the contrary!
And that’s just one of thousands of examples… and then we have the examples of the apostles and other disciples in the New Testament… not to mention the example of Jesus! And of course, elsewhere Solomon himself, especially in Ecclesiastes, talks about the righteous suffering while the wicked prosper. The authors of the Old Testament are acutely aware of the unjust suffering of righteous people!
So… again… given that reality, how are the promises of Proverbs 3 true?
I like what an English theologian, Christopher Ash, said, in a sermon on today’s scripture. 1 He said that just as God created a well-ordered physical universe—governed by predictable, repeatable laws—he also created this universe with a moral order. So in general, we can say that if you behave according to the moral order that Proverbs describes, then—in general—these good results will follow.
And why aren’t these moral laws as predictable as scientific laws?
Because of human sin… Sin has disrupted this moral order. Ash compares the promises of today’s scripture to a map of a large city, with avenues running east and west… Numbered streets running north and south… Laid out neatly in a grid. Very predictable, very easy to follow. Not at all like Atlanta, Georgia, by the way… The city he’s describing is well ordered—like Denver, Colorado, if you know that city.It’s very easy to find your way around in Denver. But then let’s say an earthquake happens. Suddenly there is debris from fallen buildings and bridges… Torn up asphalt… Gaping holes in the ground.
Is the city map still true and useful? Yes. It still says, in general, how to get where you’re going—even if, for the moment, you have to bypass certain streets or bridges.
The promises that are described in today’s scripture are like that… after sin comes in like an earthquake and disrupts the moral order of the universe.
Let’s also bear this in mind: We know far more about God and the gospel of his Son Jesus Christ than the authors of the Old Testament. Because of what Christ has done for us through his atoning death on the cross and his resurrection, each of the promises in these verses is true in a far deeper way than Solomon likely imagined. For example, we Christians have eternal life, which includes but goes far beyond the “length of days and years of life” described in verse 2. Those 21 Egyptian Christians I mentioned earlier lost nothing and gained everything when their lives were taken from them!
Several years ago, I was deeply moved by a 20-year-old young woman named Maggie, a friend of my daughter’s, who died after a long battle with cancer. Shortly before she died, as she lay unconscious in hospice care, her parents posted the following on their blog about their daughter’s imminent death, which her parents rightly described as a transition. They wrote, “And it is, after all, a transition. We’re walking her home as far as we’re allowed. Her faith is firm and secure. Her mansion is ready…” Now listen to this: “We know her healing is close. Closer than any treatment or surgery could ever bring her. Her healing will be complete. Her future secure.”
Amen!
Try telling Maggie’s parents that these promises haven’t been fulfilled in the deepest way imaginable… far beyond our imagining! Solomon described success and prosperity in terms of “barns being filled with plenty” and “vats will be bursting with wine.” Well, Maggie’s got a “mansion” in heaven, as the King James puts it in John 14:2, built especially for Maggie by God himself! And Solomon talks in verse 8 about “healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.” Who can possibly say that now, at this moment, Maggie hasn’t experienced the deepest healing imaginable! Plus, on the other side of the Second Coming, she will also get the resurrection of her physical body—except her new resurrected body will no longer be capable of suffering from diseases like cancer… This new body will be incapable of suffering death, which will be a thing of the past!
So that’s healing like verse 8 describes, except even more so!
And that’s Point Number One: These promises are generally true in our world today… and true in the deepest way possible in the world to come… Thank you, Jesus!
Point Number Two: Because these promises are true, how can they serve as principles to guide our lives today?
I want to highlight three principles from this scripture… It will help me if you have your Bibles in front of you, as I talk about them. Principle Number One: the central importance of God’s Word in our lives.
See verse 1: “My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments, for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you.” Let your heart keep my commandments. I guess we could say that Solomon is referring in this case to the commandments found in the Book of Proverbs, but, as always, we ought to interpret this scripture in light of other scripture and say that these words apply equally to the rest of God’s Word.
In fact, the Old Testament scholar John Goldingay says that when Solomon speaks of “wisdom” in the Book of Proverbs, he means the same thing that Moses means he refers to “Torah,” or the Law—the first five books of the Old Testament… In Moses’ day, the Torah was the Bible. One scholar even argues that the Book of Proverbs is the practical application of the Torah to our everyday lives… Goldingay goes on to say that, for Solomon, obeying “wisdom” meant the same thing that obeying “the word of the Lord” meant to Old Testament prophets.
All of which—fortunately for us—is contained in our Bibles.
Also notice the command of verse 3: “Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.” These two Hebrew words for “steadfast love and faithfulness” are words that appear together frequently in the Old Testament—and they almost always refer to God’s covenant love for us. For instance, in Exodus 34:6, “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness”—those same two words!
And of course we want to love others with that same kind of love… Solomon commands us to do so in this verse… And Jesus commands us to… but how do we know what “steadfast love and faithfulness” looks like apart from God’s Word?
So if we’re going to obey this command, we need the Bible.
Finally, one important part of “trusting in the Lord and leaning not on our own understanding” and “not being wise in our own eyes” means leaning on God’s understanding, rather than our own, committing ourselves to God’s wisdom, rather than our own… which, of course, is impossible apart from knowing God’s Word, the Bible.
There’s no getting around it: we “bind [steadfast love and faithfulness] around our necks” and “write them on the tablet of our hearts” by reading, studying, and meditating upon examples of steadfast love and faithfulness in God’s Word—even, dare I say it, by memorizing God’s Word!
As a personal aside, I’ve preached on this passage one time before… way back in 2015… and I wrote in my notes at the time—which I reviewed last week—I wrote that I wanted to start the discipline of memorizing scripture in response to my sermon on Proverbs 3. And I did! And I have! And it has made a profound difference in my pastoral ministry, for sure… and even more, it has also helped me to “treasure Christ above all.”
I promise it can do the same for you! Memorizing scripture would even be an excellent “Lenten discipline” to take up in these next six weeks!
That’s Principle Number One: Trusting in the Lord with all our heart means placing God’s Word at the center of our lives.
Principle Number Two: It also means making prayer the most important thing that we can do..
But where do we see this? There’s no reference to prayer in today’s scripture, is there?
Well, not directly… But prayer, like scripture, is implicit in the kind of trust that Solomon describes here. Verses 5 through 7, after all, imply a very deep kind of humility: I simply can’t rely on myself to know what I’m supposed to do. My own understanding is limited. Even if I know all of scripture perfectly, and God gives me the wisdom I need to apply it, infallibly, to every specific situation in my life, I still won’t always know what God wants me to do… apart from prayer.
I must often pray… we must often pray… in order to discern God’s will for our lives. There’s no other way.
Of course I’ve talked recently about the power of intercessory prayer—praying for ourselves and others—but here I’m referring here mostly to prayers for guidance…for discerning God’s will for a specific situation.
Consider this…
Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, fully human but also fully God. He is the Second Person of the Trinity, the only begotten Son of the Father; he is perfect and sinless in every way. When he walked the earth, he enjoyed a more intimate relationship with his Father than any other human being who ever lived. Yet Jesus needed to rely on prayer the same way we do.
I mentioned Jesus’ prayer for guidance in the Garden of Gethsemane last week: “If it be thy will, take this cup from me.” He prayed that God would reveal to him his will. But what about Jesus’ call of the twelve apostles? How does Jesus choose these twelve among his many disciples? Luke’s gospel tells us in Luke 6:12 and 13: “One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night. At daybreak he called together all of his disciples and chose twelve of them to be apostles. Here are their names…” He was up all night praying to his Father, that his Father would reveal to him who he should call to be his apostles!
Meanwhile I’ve never been up all night praying about anything… I’m like Peter, James, and John: “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” 2
Yet throughout the gospels, we find Jesus going off, by himself, to pray. He simply wouldn’t have succeeded in his mission—he wouldn’t have known what to do—apart from prayer.
At the risk of saying the most obvious thing imaginable, if Jesus needed to pray for guidance and discernment—rather than “leaning on his own understanding”—how much more do sinners like us need to pray for guidance?
Jesus lived out the commands of Proverbs 3 perfectly. He didn’t lean on his own understanding. He wasn’t wise in his own eyes. He acknowledged God in all things. He demonstrated this by prayer.
Lisa and I are going on vacation after worship today. Pastor April is completely in charge of everything next week. Call and message her only, please. But we’re going to visit my daughter and to Disney. I saw a funny T-shirt at Disney to which I can completely relate: “But first… Coffee!” “I look forward to having so much fun today with my family at Disney today, but first, coffee!”
We should have T-shirts made that say, “But first, prayer!” And while we’re at it, we still need the T-shirts that say, “But God… [dot, dot, dot]
And speaking of “But God… [dot, dot, dot],” let’s talk about the third principle…
To illustrate this principle, I invite you to turn with me to Exodus chapter 4. God has just appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and Moses begins raising perfectly good objections about why he’s not the one who should go and lead Israel out of bondage in Egypt. And in chapter 4, verse 1, Moses asks, “What if they won’t believe me or listen to me? What if they say, ‘The Lord never appeared to you’?”
Why does Moses ask this? Surely it’s in part because of his own past experience with the people of Israel. Back in chapter 2, he tried to break up a fight between a couple of fellow Israelites. And one of them says, in Exodus 2:14, “Who appointed you to be our prince and judge?” 3 So Moses’ fellow countrymen had already rejected Moses’ words and authority over them… decades earlier. So of course Moses is deeply skeptical that the people of Israel will believe him or accept his authority today. What if they reject him again?
So this objection of Moses seems perfectly reasonable, right?
But notice what God does next: He tells Moses to throw down his staff. What happens? It becomes a snake, which startles Moses. We’re told that he jumps back in fear. God says, “Reach out and grab its tail.” 4 And what happens? It becomes his staff again.
I’m sure Moses was terrified to pick up that snake by the tail! He had been a shepherd for decades. He met plenty of venomous snakes in the wild… I’m sure he had defended his livestock from snakes. From previous personal experience, Moses knew very well that it’s not a good idea to pick up potentially venomous, deadly snakes by their tail. Snakes don’t like that! And it’s not good for your health!
But what is God showing him? Surely one thing God is showing him is… big and scary things… even big, scary things like venomous snakes… are nothing in the hands of Almighty God!
Moses has learned from personal experienced in his past that being near snakes is dangerous. He needs to un-learn that… Because God has the power to transform every big, scary thing that seems so threatening to us—like venomous snakes—into something that will actually end up helping us—like a staff, for instance… which we can lean on… which gives us support… which protects us… which helps us walk.
This means that in God’s hands, you and I are not simply victims of bad things that have happened in our past… things that have shaped us, for better or worse… things that have harmed us. Because God has the power to create new things… God has the power to re-create old things… We may feel limited by our past, we may feel stuck in our past, we may feel stuck in ruts that have been created through years or decades of painful personal experiences…
Those things are nothing to God! He can and will overcome them… if only we do what? “Trust in the Lord with all our hearts.”
And an important part of trust means understanding that while we often feel trapped by events in our past, God is not trapped by our past… He can and will do new things!
And that’s Principle Number Three of Point Number Two… Trusting means remembering that God has the power to change things… and to change us…
And that brings us, finally, Point Number Three…
I said earlier that in verses 1 through 10, there’s a command in the odd verses and a promise in the even verses. Sort of the same pattern follows in the last two verses of today’s scripture. Verse 11:“My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof.” That’s a command, I guess. But there is an implied promise in verse 12: “for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.”
This implied promise sounds something like this… If you have been made a child of our heavenly Father through faith in his Son Jesus, you can be confident that no matter what difficult trial he’s allowing you to go through, it isn’t because he’s mad at you, or he no longer loves you—that you’ve sinned and sinned and sinned, and disappointed him, and let him down… and now God fed up with you, so now he’s letting you have it.
No! That interpretation of suffering in your life is never the correct one… It couldn’t be further from the truth.
God promises that that’s not the reason you’re suffering!
God promises instead that the reason that he’s letting you endure this difficult trial—far from being a sign of his displeasure with you—is actually sign of his great love for you, his child. In fact, it’s a sign that our Father delights in you. I love that word “delight.”
Our Father does discipline you, by all means, but it’s always only because he loves you. Commentator Bruce Waltke writes the following:
C. S. Lewis illustrates the truth by noting that an artist may not take much trouble over a picture drawn to amuse a child, but he takes endless effort over his great work of art that he loves. Lewis argues that were his magnum opus sentient [if it could think and feel] as “the artist rubbed and scraped off [paint] and recommenced for the tenth time” the [painting itself] would cry out in pain. [Lewis] drew the conclusion that when we complain of our sufferings we are not asking for more love, but for less. We are asking God not to take us so seriously…
There are a couple of places in the Book of Job, when Job says, in so many words, “God, why can’t you just leave me alone… give me a few moments to myself… so I can just die in peace?”
But God loves us too much to leave us alone. He wants us to experience more and more of the many blessings that today’s scripture describes. But because we still have destructive and sinful habits and dispositions, God has got to change us from within to enable us to experience these blessings!
Changing us like this, through discipline, often hurts… But God makes a promise in verse 12: He does it because he loves us, “as a father loves the child in whom he delights.”
So good news! Our Father delights in you!
Amen.