Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] It's good to see you all.
[00:00:02] This week, or today even, we have started feeding annie different foods.
[00:00:12] That's my daughter. She is six months old today.
[00:00:15] So shout out to Annie. It's her six month day.
[00:00:19] Yes. Yes. She rocks. So she's been trying different foods. Today she tried green beans.
[00:00:27] Wow. Raise your hand if you like green beans.
[00:00:31] Yeah, it's split. I wouldn't expect everyone to like green beans. I like green beans.
[00:00:37] Annie, this morning, we gave her a bite of green beans, and she did this.
[00:00:45] So we don't think she likes green beans. Well, at least that's what I thought. Part of me was thinking now, is she going to remember how much she hates green beans when we feed them to her again later, you might wonder that she's a baby. Babies don't have good memories. You might think, I don't know. That's my inclination. I didn't think babies had good memories, so I thought, maybe she'll love it for lunch.
[00:01:09] And it turns out she reluctantly ate it. And then she. Well, she reluctantly ate it again for dinner. Right. Or she liked it. She liked it by then. So the jury's still out on how good a baby, a six month old's memory is. But today, I want us to think about our memory. We shouldn't have the memory of a six month old, even though it does seem like she kind of remembered the green beans and remembers other things. Like, I think she remembers who her parents are and a few other familiar faces, even in the youth group. But we want to think tonight about remembering and holding a tight, holding fast, mentally and in our heart what we've been going through in proverbs. So today, as we start proverbs three, we're just going to cover the first part.
[00:01:58] As we cover proverbs three, we encounter the third lecture.
[00:02:04] So, as a reminder, we've been seeing the father or the parents in Proverbs, address his son, saying, my son, hear my son. When he does this, he is introducing a lecture, a sit down with his son to teach him a lesson. And so here's the third one, proverbs 3112.
[00:02:28] And what he's doing is he's taking what we've studied before and what we've been learning, and he's going a step further.
[00:02:35] He's going from getting wisdom and even treasuring it to keeping it. So it's a subtle change, but we are focusing on now keeping this wisdom. And so the idea is to hold fast to it, never let it go, wear it, memorize it, put it to your heart. You want wisdom and knowledge to become fused to your very being, like a tattoo that is stamped deep in the skin and can't be removed.
[00:03:06] That is the goal of this lecture.
[00:03:09] And it goes right along with our theme of proverbs that we've been repeating these first few weeks, which is. Choose the. Does anyone know? Choose the. What's this? First blank I heard path. This path of wisdom, which is the path of.
[00:03:31] That's a good guess. Christ. Good. Christ. I heard righteousness. That's also true. Christ is righteous. So that's our theme. And this theme fits well with the main idea of proverbs 3112, which is the learner should keep. Let me make sure I get the words right. Should keep wisdom on his or her heart and mind.
[00:03:56] So that's this one. The learners keep wisdom on his or her heart and mind by trusting in the Lord in all of life.
[00:04:08] By trusting in the Lord in all of life.
[00:04:13] So that's the main idea of proverbs 3112. 1st, we're going to. Well, we're going to go through two major commands of this passage.
[00:04:25] The first is to hold fast to wisdom. Hold fast to wisdom.
[00:04:36] And for this, we're going to read the first four verses.
[00:04:42] So look along as I read it. Proverbs three, 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.
[00:04:58] Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you. Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart, so you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.
[00:05:12] So first we want to hold fast to wisdom. Now, the very first charge of this passage or these first four verses is to not forget the teachings. It says, do not forget my teaching.
[00:05:26] Now, you might be able to relate to this. I forget a lot of things. I forget things all the time. Ask Katie, maybe don't. It's kind of embarrassing.
[00:05:37] I forget things all the time. She's gracious to remind me of them, even though she's reminded me of them ten to 15 times. Usually.
[00:05:46] That's just how my brain works. I'm imagining there are different things in your life that you often forget.
[00:05:54] The wisdom being imparted here in this book, as we discussed last week, is precious. Remember, we said it is treasure. It is something that is worth giving up everything to obtain and to keep. It is precious beyond belief. It is priceless, even.
[00:06:15] It's exceedingly valuable for you. But that raises this question, why then does the son need to be told not to forget it if it is so apparently valuable?
[00:06:28] Who would forget such wisdom?
[00:06:32] I think logically we think that. But really, if we're honest, we all understand how that happens because we've seen it in our own lives, ourselves. Forgetting wisdom.
[00:06:44] And more than that, even just remembering truths about God in general can be hard.
[00:06:49] I have had to relearn so many different concepts about God over and over and over. I probably heard the word justification 500 times when I was in high school, between school and Sunday school and youth group and all that, and I still couldn't define it when I went off to college.
[00:07:09] You need to hear and relearn over and over and over and over again. That's just how we are. But at the same time, while I couldn't remember things like that, I could memorize lines from poems for school or memorize verses for school. I could memorize lyrics from songs just for fun.
[00:07:31] I knew. I know things like the pledge of Allegiance.
[00:07:35] You know, I could memorize a lot of things for various reasons, but I couldn't remember things as simple as can I explain the gospel confidently? The gospel I claim to believe, and at that point had been baptized into my church proclaiming, could I explain the gospel confidently? Could I even know those basic truths of the faith, though I've heard them many times, or have I forgotten?
[00:08:03] And more than just forgetting facts about the Bible and about God, we forget things by our actions, by our sins. Here's what I mean.
[00:08:15] You know, certain habits that you have that are sinful.
[00:08:19] Each one of you right now are probably thinking of a sin. You struggle with something that you repeatedly go back to over and over and over again.
[00:08:30] When you do that thing, when you give in to that temptation, you are forgetting the wisdom of God by your actions, not just your mind. What you are doing is forgetting his wisdom.
[00:08:43] Your heart and mind, then, are closely related to one another in your actions, what you think and what is in your heart comes out in your actions, how you behave.
[00:08:57] And now, when we think about it, that's probably a pretty scary and sobering thought.
[00:09:04] What do my actions say about my heart? What do my words say about what's going on in my head?
[00:09:12] I want you guys to look at this first verse. He says, do not forget my teaching. And a lot of times, that second line is kind of a parallel. Sometimes it's not, but it's a parallel. And he's paralleling, not forgetting his teaching with keeping his commandments.
[00:09:29] So to not forget what you've been taught is to also obey.
[00:09:33] And moreover, verse three then commands that the learner also do whatever he or she can to keep steadfast love and faithfulness on your side.
[00:09:43] This is incredibly important. And so the way you do this, according to the father lecturing his son, he says, bind them around your neck so you wear them, that you shouldn't forget them.
[00:09:57] Now, of course, you can't literally wear all of the commands of the Bible on your neck, even if you, like, wrote them out on something. I mean, if you put your bible on a necklace, that'd be a little bit heavy. Probably you wouldn't want to do that.
[00:10:12] But you can remember them. You also can't literally write something on the tablet of your heart.
[00:10:20] But these phrases mean that the keeper of God's wisdom must find some way to keep the commandments of God in his or her memory forever. Hold fast to it in your mind.
[00:10:34] Now, practically one way you can do that is by reading and memorizing the Bible.
[00:10:41] Now, you may not memorize the whole Bible, that's okay. But you can memorize verses or passages and gain on that over and over and through time.
[00:10:52] One way to do that is just by writing a verse on a note card, having the reference on the other side, quizzing yourself. And not just doing that till you get it once, but do it until you can wake up. And you can say that verse without looking at it at all for 50 days in a row.
[00:11:09] And then put it in another pile and do it once a week for a year. That's 52 more times. You can do it 50 weeks, put in another pile after that, and do it once a month for another year.
[00:11:21] You will have it in your heart. That's one way you can memorize verses. There are many other ways. And you could probably ask your small group leaders. Many of them have probably tried different things.
[00:11:33] But whatever you need to do, try to get that word in your mind. It will be incredibly helpful for you, because you can and you must do what you can to never forget the teachings of God and his word.
[00:11:48] But there is another level of meaning. So I don't want us to just stay on this. How do we do this? How do we do this? How do we obey what proverbs is teaching us? Because you might notice this theme a lot of times in proverbs, there are kind of two levels of application. It is twofold. You could say, so there is one in doing this, but then on another, you ultimately are being pointed to Christ. So, yes, you pursue wisdom literally. You literally, do the things of God and remember his teachings. But ultimately we need to be pointed to Christ in this. He's here in the text. I mean, verse three says, write them on the tablet of your heart. How are the teachings of God written on your heart?
[00:12:38] Jeremiah 31 33 tells us, God says, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts just a chapter ago in proverbs 210, for wisdom will come into your heart.
[00:12:55] The book of Hebrews quotes Jeremiah 31. And after quoting Jeremiah 31, it says, therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith.
[00:13:12] And so faith in Christ is what writes God's word on your heart. That's what we're seeing here in proverbs. It's pointing us to Christ.
[00:13:23] That's why if you are in Christ, you know when you sin, it is written on your heart.
[00:13:31] Faith then helps you to remember his teachings and to keep his commandments. And through faith, the steadfast love and faithfulness of the Lord is with you. And the Lord will never leave you nor forsake you when you have placed your faith in him.
[00:13:48] You can't. I want you to hear this. You can't wisdom your way to heaven. You can't wisdom and obey your way to a relationship with Christ. So even though we focus on how can we practically and literally do what proverbs is teaching, if you don't first do that, you won't be able to. Or if you are able to do some of the things God has taught, and you're able to memorize stuff. If you have Christ not in your heart, none of it matters.
[00:14:18] You can't work your way to the Lord. You can't work your way to wisdom. So you need wisdom with a capital w. You need Christ himself. You need a relationship with him through faith, if you have any hope of doing anything in this book. And so remember this twofold application of obeying wisdom.
[00:14:41] And when you do this, verse four tells us you will find favor in his sight. You will find good success.
[00:14:49] Now, in one sense, the promises to have many years of life and peace in life are given to those who obey the Lord. That is what we call a generally true statement.
[00:15:03] If you are wise, you are more likely to live long and to prosper.
[00:15:08] You will almost certainly find favor in the sight of man in many cultures, not everywhere.
[00:15:15] But we must remember when we read this that in a broken and sinful world, even this may not be a reality.
[00:15:22] We all know, to varying degrees of closeness, that tragedies happen.
[00:15:27] Tragedies happen to good people, may have happened close to you or not so close, but we know that these things can happen.
[00:15:36] But these promises that we're reading, that length of days and years of life and peace will be added to you, are completely true in eternity.
[00:15:46] They are completely true in Christ. They're generally true here, but they are totally and eternally true in heaven. So through faith in Christ, you will be given many years, eternal years of life and peace with God.
[00:16:01] God will overlook your sins on earth, and you will have favor in his sight.
[00:16:08] The righteousness of his son will belong to you through faith.
[00:16:12] You only need to trust him.
[00:16:16] Keep reading verse five.
[00:16:19] Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
[00:16:26] In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
[00:16:30] Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.
[00:16:39] Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce. Then your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will be bursting with wine. My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father, the son in whom he delights.
[00:17:01] So here we encounter this second command, our second point, which is trust the Lord.
[00:17:08] There's a spoiler of it right here at the top of the board if you didn't see it.
[00:17:13] Hold fast to wisdom and trust the Lord.
[00:17:19] Now, these first two verses of that part, verses five and six, probably two of the most memorized verses in all the Bible. A lot of you guys may have memorized this. I don't know if there was ever, like, an awana here or anything, but there was. I grew up going to Awana, and I memorized this verse early on. You guys might be familiar with it. My dad has always called this his life verse. It is important.
[00:17:43] And so maybe if you want to side note, if you want to start memorizing, maybe start right here. Wouldn't be a bad place to start.
[00:17:51] But look here what we just read. I want you guys to compare what we're talking about with trusting the Lord, him giving you a new heart and faith in Christ. Think about that as I read this passage from deuteronomy. This is deuteronomy six, four, nine. If you're keeping notes on it, hear, o Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
[00:18:21] And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.
[00:18:26] You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates.
[00:18:48] Do you guys notice that this is from Israel's inception after coming from Egypt, being given the law a second time after their wandering years before entering into the promised land, God is reminding them, here's what you do. You teach these things to your children as we're seeing it modeled in proverbs. That you must love God with all your heart and you must remember these things. You must bind them, you must write them down, talk about them everywhere you go.
[00:19:18] If we love the Lord with our hearts, we will do this and we will trust him.
[00:19:24] Now, let's not skip over the wonderful grace and mercy of this command. Though you're a sinner and you have offended God by your actions, by treating him as your enemy, he will love you anyway. He grants you access to him.
[00:19:42] This is an amazing truth for us that those of us who have been far away can have a relationship with Christ that we don't have to wisdom our way to heaven, we don't have to work our way there.
[00:19:56] If you've ever begged for forgiveness or seen someone do it, or if you've begged someone for something else, like, oh, a secret, please never tell. I will do anything. If you've been in this sort of position, you have some understanding of how incredible this is that you don't even need to do that. You need only to trust the Lord.
[00:20:20] All you need is to love and trust him. You cannot merit it in the first place. Even if you said no. Actually, I do want to earn my salvation. You can't. It's not even an option for you.
[00:20:33] But the Lord is happy to give you this if you trust him. And so trust him today, trust him every day. This is not something to delay to put off to a more convenient time. That more convenient time doesn't exist.
[00:20:48] Don't put it off. Trust him even today.
[00:20:54] It's so easy for us to lean on our own insight and wisdom when the text says, be not wise in your own eyes. It's so easy for us to do that. Anyway, in fact, by nature we like to be independent. Typically, a lot of you are probably starting to feel like, you know what? I could use a little bit more independence. I remember feeling that when I was your age.
[00:21:22] But independence from God is something you should never seek. Independence from God will sink you deeper and deeper and deeper into sin, like quicksand. The more you struggle against it, the deeper you will go.
[00:21:41] But if you trust the Lord and you put out your hand, he will scoop you out of it. He will do all the work. In fact, he has already accomplished that.
[00:21:53] Trusting the Lord, though, should lead us to action.
[00:21:59] So though all these things are true, we need to know Christ first, the text does give us ways to obey his word. So here are four ways that we can trust the Lord in this second section, four ways we can trust the Lord. And I have those partly typed out on that handout. First, you must acknowledge him.
[00:22:23] You must acknowledge him. We see that in verse six, in all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths.
[00:22:32] The word used here for acknowledge more precisely means that we ought to know the Lord intimately.
[00:22:40] Knowing God intimately is also connecting or connected to the writing of his word on our hearts. Because if God renews our heart and writes his word on it, you will know him intimately. Therefore, if we know God through faith in Christ, we will have straight paths by means of the spirit guiding us in what is right and wrong. And so you must acknowledge him. You must know him intimately.
[00:23:09] Second, you must not be wise in your own sight.
[00:23:17] We see this in verses seven and eight. Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.
[00:23:26] So here is really a call to humility.
[00:23:30] If you want to trust the Lord, you must be humble, and how we know that this is needed. Not being wise in your own sight means that you acknowledge that the Lord knows wisdom and that he is wiser than you.
[00:23:47] And of course this is true. The apostle Paul writes, where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
[00:24:11] For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to gentiles. But to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. That's one. Corinthians 120 25.
[00:24:39] The wisdom of God is true wisdom. It is the only true wisdom, and it's revealed through Christ crucified. That is wisdom epitomized.
[00:24:50] Though this appears foolish to the world, the world looking in sees that as foolishness. Your whole belief system is based on a man who died.
[00:25:02] It is foolish to the world. But we humbly trust and fear God, and we know what his word says. We know Christ is is alive, and so we humbly trust God.
[00:25:14] And we need to. Because at the root of all sin is pride. At the root of every sin is pride. If you cannot humble yourself before God, then you are still enslaved to sin.
[00:25:28] Anytime you choose a sin, you are choosing your own wants, your own desires over that of God's. You are doing the most prideful thing possible, and so be humble. Trust the Lord and his free grace.
[00:25:44] And then notice here the promise of verse eight when we read it will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.
[00:25:54] Humbly trusting the wisdom of God over your own will bring healing to your flesh is what the text says.
[00:26:02] Now, I want us to deal with this verse, because in the greater Tulsa area, we are surrounded by churches who proclaim that enough faith will literally heal you of your current ailments.
[00:26:17] But I want to declare that this is a wicked twisting of verses like this one. This is not a true teaching. This is not supported anywhere. In fact, you can often tell, because I've seen many of these preachers wearing glasses.
[00:26:34] They go to doctor's appointments.
[00:26:36] They have insurance for a reason.
[00:26:41] They don't believe what they're saying, and it's not true.
[00:26:46] See, proverbs works in interesting ways. We can't read a verse from proverbs and read it the same way as you read a a verse in exodus or a verse in Matthew or a verse in revelation. These are different genres. We read them differently, and we'll understand this more and more, especially as we study the later parts of proverbs. Proverbs ten and on, mostly.
[00:27:09] But proverbs speak of general truths.
[00:27:13] A proverb is true in a given context, not necessarily in every single context, though that could sometimes be the case.
[00:27:25] So, again, I reiterate, there are two levels of wisdom. There is the practical, and there's the philosophical, as we'll call it.
[00:27:37] We learn the practical first. Because it's practical, it's easy for us. Be wise, do this, don't do that. Those are the practical things we read. But there are exceptions that are mysterious to us. And this is when we need that other end of wisdom, the philosophical. So you can think of a biblical example.
[00:28:01] Job, that's another book in the wisdom literature category.
[00:28:07] Job was a wise and honored Mandehead, a man of great faith, but he still suffered. God allowed him to suffer, to lose everything he had, even his own physical health.
[00:28:23] Everything was taken from job, despite him being a man after God's own heart.
[00:28:30] Now, you might be curious if you hear of job and think, why isn't he healthy and wealthy? Why doesn't he say that way? And really, by the end of it, job is never told the answer.
[00:28:43] He doesn't sin. He doesn't do anything to warrant it. But God had a plan, and it was for his own glory, to show the faith of job to the watching world.
[00:28:55] And job had to wrestle with that fact.
[00:28:59] And so we too must realize that this is how our world works.
[00:29:05] We do not see what happens in the mind of God. We can't understand or comprehend the entirety of his wisdom.
[00:29:15] We must put the gospel before prosperity, not prosperity before the gospel.
[00:29:22] The third way we can trust the Lord. You must honor the Lord with your wealth.
[00:29:28] So in verse nine, you honor the Lord with your wealth. There's a parallel statement with the first fruits of your produce. This means that we honor God with our wealth. And that means we give to God first.
[00:29:43] The first, the best of what we have, we give to God. Now, a lot of you will understand this more and more as you get older. Some of you in the room work and understand. Even now, it is tempting to keep for ourselves and to use what we feel we need and then see if there's leftover for God.
[00:30:02] God is calling for a faith that gives him our first fruits.
[00:30:07] God is calling us to have faith and so give to him first. And if you're in a stage where I don't really make money, give to him your time, your efforts. Serve the church.
[00:30:20] And he promises in that next verse that you will ordinarily be provided for. You will have all that you need.
[00:30:27] Even if you come up a little short, you can trust the church to take care of you. You can. I know this because my family is a living testimony of how the church provides for you when you are in need. When we were in Louisville, we had members that provided housing for us when our power went out in the winter for five days.
[00:30:49] And we could have stayed at three different houses a day for those five days. And we would have had leftovers.
[00:30:56] Our church in England also provided us a free place to stay in the beautiful english countryside so that we could serve the church and I could learn from their pastors for a summer.
[00:31:07] Then we moved to Atlanta. Our church in Atlanta provided housing for us for six months in a place which, frankly, we still probably couldn't afford to live. Elena is an expensive place. They took care of us. They were hospitable.
[00:31:20] And then our church in Broken Arrow, this one. We arrive and we are showered with gift cards which we lived on. We actually really needed those that helped us in our move.
[00:31:36] There are far more ways not mentioned that the church has cared for and provided for us.
[00:31:42] But I make no mistake. I know and Katie knows that God provided for us through all of those people.
[00:31:50] And so if you honor the Lord with what you have, you could bless someone like that. You can be committed to the church and the church will provide for you, too.
[00:32:03] The fourth way we can trust the Lord. You must love his discipline. You must love his discipline.
[00:32:12] See that in the last two verses, eleven and twelve your trust of the Lord will be most tested when you are disciplined. Discipline can come in different forms of difficulties, trials, sufferings. These trials can be caused by your own sin. Or they could just be to pull you closer to goddess.
[00:32:34] It's okay if we learn the reason for our sufferings if God gives you a clear lesson. But sometimes you don't get that. Like job, you never learn. And in those cases, all the more. Trust the Lord with all your heart.
[00:32:51] And you can do this because you can rest easy knowing that when you suffer the Lord disciplines the one whom he loves.
[00:33:00] He's not disciplining you because he hates you. You aren't going through hard things because he hates you. It's the opposite.
[00:33:07] It's because he loves you.
[00:33:10] It's because he loves you. I repeat that because we need to learn that. And it's hard to learn that when you are suffering. The discipline of the Lord.
[00:33:22] The illustration given here is a beautiful one. As a father, the son in whom he delights.
[00:33:29] A father should never discipline his son out of anger or bitterness. I recognize in a fallen world this happens. But this is not what should happen. This is sin.
[00:33:45] But a father can and must discipline his children righteously. And when he does, he's doing it out of love. He's doing it out of love, friend. How much more then does our perfect heavenly Father discipline the one whom he loves? He does not sin. He is not angry and bitter toward you.
[00:34:10] His discipline is from love.
[00:34:14] I'm not promising that it's easy or that you'll ever know why you're suffering. But you only need to trust the Lord with all your heart, and he will guard you, he will guide you, he will bless you. And so trust the Lord. Trust Christ, and through Christ pursue wisdom and hold fast to it. Let's pray.
[00:34:36] Father God, we thank you for your word and that through Christ we can be empowered to hold fast to wisdom. Help us in our groups to think about how we can hold fast to wisdom. And Lord, I pray that those of us in the room who have not trusted in you, those of us in here who maybe aren't quite sure if we truly have God, I pray that you would humble such persons, call them to yourself, that they would trust you and have faith in Christ. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:35:08] I.
