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God’s way doesn’t always look the most successful in the moment, but it is the path to true success.
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This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Well, good evening and welcome back to Proverbially Speaking here on Steadfast. I’m so glad to be with you tonight. I’m always excited to come to this time of year, because every summer our tradition is we go back to the book of Proverbs and look at a little bit more of God’s wisdom in that book. It’s a great way to explore a book that we often maybe read in little snippets, but we don’t often spend time delving deeply into. Too often we see Proverbs as something we can put up on the wall, but God wants us to apply them to our hearts.
Right now would be a great time if you could hit that like or that share button. Ideally both. Let someone know, hey, we’re going to be in the book of Proverbs this summer and I would love if you would join me. Post it on your Facebook, post it on your ex and your mastodon, and send out an email, whatever you’d like to do. Let somebody know, because there’s so much wisdom in this book and I think a lot of times people have questions about it, but they don’t even really want to ask.
Well, we’re going to think about that over the next few weeks as we look at Proverbs chapter 3, God’s straight path wisdom. I was getting ready for this series over the weekend, and it was late Saturday night. I had a little bit more I wanted to get done, but I also needed to pay my credit card bill. I know we all love doing that, right? It’s always exciting to go do that. It wasn’t due until Sunday, but Sunday’s busy getting ready for church. It was Mother’s Day. It was much better if I could do it Saturday night.
So I had one of those smart speaker alarms set to remind me to pay the bill. And I set it for hours away, and then I snoozed it, and then I snoozed it, and then, I don’t know, it went off around 1:30 or so. And I hear the timer and I think, what’s that for? Well, eventually it came back to me, at least once it told me what it was for. I’m not sure it would have come back to my mind at least for a while, but what did I do? I snoozed it again. Twenty minutes later, still fiddling with my sermon, getting ready for this new series we’re in, thinking about that and what needs to be covered and where we’re going tonight, and the piercing sound of a timer goes off again.
You know what I thought? I wonder what that’s for. How often is it that we lose track of things, even in relatively brief periods of time? It sounds sort of absurd to say that, but maybe you’ve done the same thing. You snooze a reminder, or you leave something out to remind you to do something in just a few minutes, and a few minutes later you think, why did I do that? I know I put this out right before dinner to remind me after dinner to do this, but I don’t remember what it is. And sometimes we forget because we’re doing important things, right? Something meaningful.
I love getting ready for a new series and exploring where we’re going to be going and trying to absorb everything that we are going to explore over the course of a summer, and so it was exciting and good stuff, but at the same time, I need to remember that due date, right? I need to pay that bill. And notably, that second part is really crucial too, right? It’s one thing to remember. It’s another thing to do.
Well, as we start in Proverbs 3 tonight, what we’re going to be reminded of is that we need to both remember and do something. Because if we just remember but we don’t do, that’s not going to, well, do. And if we try to do things but we don’t remember the truth behind them, that’s not going to work either. So let’s pray tonight that we both remember and do, and then we see how all that actually points not to God being a demanding taskmaster, but rather a loving Heavenly Father.
Would you pray with me, please? Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your Word. Would you help us as we explore the book of Proverbs over the coming weeks to absorb everything you want us to in this chapter, chapter 3, that all this wisdom pointing us to you and the life that you intend for us, that you would help us to have that truth applied to our hearts so that we remember it, and that through the strength of your Spirit, you would also help us to do it. We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Well, let’s go ahead and delve right in. We’re going to go to verse 1 to start. What do we read? “My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments.” Now, this first passage we’re looking at actually has two parallel phrasings of things, so we’re actually going to jump over a verse for now because we’re going to look at those two parallels, and then we’ll come to two more parallels. But verse 3, “Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart.”
Wisdom has a command to remember. If you want to be wise, if you say, I’d like to be wise. I want to be a wise person. Not a wise guy, but a wise person. What do you need to do? You need to remember. What do we need to remember? We need to remember the good things that God tells us to do. Not just sort of have it off in the periphery where we keep snoozing the reminder, and we’re kind of aware of it, and then we forget it again, but that we really remember it.
And here’s the thing that’s so important. We’re going to be doing things that are important and meaningful and maybe even good that can distract us from the core things we need to remember. When I was snoozing that alarm, it wasn’t because I was doing nothing at all or nothing of value. I was doing some final work on Proverbs 3. And, well, I’m supposed to remember this, right? So that’s a good thing. But I also need to do something at that moment, right? I need to go to that website, pay that bill. I need to do it.
And God’s saying here, whatever things, even things I’m commanding you to do, don’t forget the core truth that you need to know so that you can live the good life that I intend for you. And part of remembering is actually following. That’s the second part of verse 1. And again, we see that in that parallel of those two verses, verse 1 and 3. What do we need to follow? Well, God’s wisdom in this book. The way it’s phrased, it seems to be specifically talking about the wisdom in this book, and that’s why I make that distinction. We might be doing things God’s even commanded us to do.
But what’s this book talking about? It’s talking about the things that should be the average measure of our lives, the way we live day to day, right? There are lots of bits of wisdom throughout Scripture that might apply to a particular situation. Proverbs is more interested in, here’s how you normally operate on a normal, nondescript, generic day, right?
I heard a news anchor quip the other night that he forgot Mother’s Day once, but only once. I thought that was kind of an interesting observation, right? Certain days, you don’t want to forget things. He forgot it with his mother. He didn’t forget it a second time, because he realized that was a really bad idea. And there are special occasions, right? Mother’s Day, you should remember that it’s Mother’s Day. Christmas, well, it’d be nice if you remembered it was Christmas, right? If you show up a few days late, you might miss out on the celebrations.
We have certain things we need to do on certain days. Certainly certain days of the week, right? Sundays, we ought to go to church. Monday nights, well, no biblical command, but I’m sure glad that you come and gather together with me and we dig into God’s Word, but we remember those specific things. But here’s the question, what do you do every day? What do you wake up, and it doesn’t matter if it’s Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Sunday or Mother’s Day or Christmas or Easter or Fourth of July, it doesn’t matter, it’s simply a day. What do you need to do? Well, that’s what Proverbs talks about. It’s all this basic life wisdom. God says we need to remember it.
We’ll get to all the specifics, but don’t forget the big general picture first. Now, all this could be a very legalistic kind of thing, right? Okay, here are some rules you need to follow. We have lots of people telling us rules, right? We have various religious leaders telling us rules, various motivational speakers, here’s 10 ways to stay a motivated person or something, right? Those sorts of things. Ah, here, I will tell you how to be successful. We have all that.
Is that what this is? No, because note here, again, what it is that God tells us to do. He tells us to bind his steadfast love and his faithfulness to us, to write it on the tablet of our heart. It’s not normal legalism. No, not at all, because God’s telling us, remember how much I love you, remember who I am to you. And yes, Proverbs is going to tell us some things that we ought to do, but the foundation of it, the very beginning of even the instruction not to forget it, is hold on to God’s love.
So again, we’re talking about what should we do every day. That’s exactly where we should go. We’ve talked about this in other series. We think about what God’s commanding us to do. It always comes back to do we remember who we are in him. We’re talking about that on Sunday nights in Romans 6, right? Last night we talked about being in that new nature and not being enslaved to that old nature of sin. That’s exactly what we’re talking about here. Remember our new nature, our new status, that we are those who are loved by God.
Before we get into anything else, we need to remember that. That empowers everything else. And so often, that’s the part we forget, right? We might remember some of the things he says to do, or some of the things we want God to do, and we forget who he is and who we are to him.
I saw a picture a while back, a very striking picture. I can’t find the original person who took it, but it went viral because someone driving down the road ended up behind a big old black pickup truck that had some writing on it. Yeah, well, we see lots of those. They’re often advertising a business or something. But this one said, “My daughter needs a kidney.”
I don’t know the full story behind this pickup truck, but obviously this was a man who was desperate, right? His daughter needed a kidney. He needed to find someone willing to donate a kidney. And so as he drove around, he drove around with this need. And a lot of times when we’re struggling, when things aren’t going how we hoped, when we’re looking for a job, or our health is not going well at the moment, there’s something flaring up, and we’re just struggling, what do we do? Well, we remember that. We might even tell people about it.
The question is, what do we do when we actually see steadfast love and care provided? When we pray to God, “Lord, heal me of this ailment. Lord, show me where I’m supposed to go next. Tell me what I’m supposed to do.” And then he does, do we remember?
Well, this man, this man did. His little notification went off. And what did his notification say? Take a look. Look at that picture. He left his request on. He didn’t say, okay, I can take that off and put a different request on. No, he left his request on. He scratched over that his daughter needed a kidney. She got a kidney. He said, thank you, Willie, for your selfless gift of life.
Someone named Willie donated a kidney. Perhaps saw that very back of a truck and did it. And the man driving the truck, what did he do? He remembered. He didn’t take off the sign. Okay, I’ve gotten that needed. Let’s see what next need I can put on. He said, no, I need to actually remember the steadfast care that I’ve been shown. And he put a testament now that’s gone viral over the internet thanking the person who gave.
And that is what this proverb is encouraging us to do. We say to God, we put on the back of us, “God, I need this. I need this. I need this. I need someone.” Maybe we’re not even directly—I need someone. Maybe we’re not even directing it fully to God. I need this solution in my life. We’re driving around with the tail of our truck with that on it. And then when God answers the prayer, when God’s with us, what do we do? We say, okay, I’ve received it. I’ll take that off. I don’t need it on there anymore. What we need to do is cross out “I need” and say “I received.” Thank you, God.
When we’re really talking about it, we can put that up right now because let’s talk about a life-giving gift. God’s the one who gave us our physical lives and also eternal life in Jesus. Right there, we have everything we should put up. What a different world it would be if we actually meditated on that.
But it’s funny, even this commandment has been twisted over time. God said something very similar, and this proverb is echoing it, but he said it back in Deuteronomy 6:8, telling them to remember his steadfast love, to write his law and put it on their foreheads and on their hands. What was he telling them to do? Don’t forget. Don’t forget my care.
But what did they do? Well, the rabbis came up with a tradition of exactly what kind of clothing items people should wear with God’s law written on it so they could wear it. And so what were they thinking about? Do I have the right number of things on that remind me of God’s love, rather than, well, being reminded of God’s love? How often did people observe that, but they’re so busy thinking about what they were doing, how they were observing it, whether they were measuring up to their neighbors observing it, that what the one thing was they weren’t actually remembering, or at least remembering well, was the fact that God actually loves them and that his commandments are given to them out of love.
And how often do we do that, too? We measure ourselves against our neighbors, we measure ourselves against the others in our church, we measure our church against other churches, we do all these different measurements, and notably it becomes where we’re the hero, that the focus is on us and not on him, and that’s what happens over and over again. We don’t forget the alarm and snooze it, we just forget to actually do it.
Say, ah, I didn’t snooze it, I didn’t make that alarm have to go off again. Great, good job me. And God says, well, but did you do it? Did you actually remember my faithfulness, my steadfast love to you? Oh, well. There’s the problem with legalism every time. Proverbs isn’t about legalism. Proverbs is about dwelling richly in God’s wisdom, soaking it up so that we can actually be the people that he made us to be, because when we remember God’s faithfulness, we see that wisdom has a promise to encourage us.
Verse 2: “For length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you.” These instructions. Verse 4: “So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.” These wisdom instructions that we’re going to be looking through over the next few weeks that we’ve looked at in past years, if you’re interested more in Proverbs, in fact, you can always go back in our archive and look at some of the past Proverbs we’ve covered. This is volume seven now. And there’s a whole lot more to go. There’s a ton of wisdom in this book. And what’s it about? It’s about encouraging us to better understand God’s care for us and better understand how we flourish as the people that God has made us to be.
Think about that pickup truck. How many people were encouraged, even us tonight as we see the picture of it, by not only the need, but the response. We’re encouraged by Willie responding, but also the man, the original person requesting the kidney for his daughter, remembering. We’re encouraged by that. That’s what God is calling us to hear. Live in my faithfulness. Don’t just move on to the next need. And don’t just move on to how you’re fulfilling what I’ve called you to do, because that’s not the point. The point isn’t look at what a good job we can do at fulfilling, and maybe we’ll actually get praise by doing that. But how do we live in it?
Now, but you might say, but it does say here, Tim, that we’ll live good, successful lives if we do these things that God calls us to do. What does that mean? Because I’ve tried following God’s way, and I’m trying to remember his steadfast love, but I try to do what he calls me to do, and then things just seem to go, well, poorly. It often doesn’t feel like there’s anything to remember. It feels like the opposite. I don’t want to remember it, because it’s bad. What does it mean when God’s talking about what happens when we follow his way?
Take a look back at Proverbs 2. We looked there last year. Verse 6. Notice what the good life looks like, according to God. It’s not how we picture it. It’s not getting really rich, always being healthy, not those sorts of things. Certainly preachers will tell you that, but that’s not what the Bible says. Instead, what it says is, we’ll start doing what we’re actually made to do. We’ll love justice and mercy. We’ll be walking with our God and experiencing fellowship with him in whatever circumstance we’re in.
Part of remembering is also remembering that God’s success doesn’t look like our success. Sometimes it does play out where it looks like worldly success, because God gives us the blessings that are in our lives, including the physical and material and necessary blessings of life. But that’s not really the measure. It’s more a bonus.
And yet, we could protest again. But it says here that men will look at us favorably. But when I do God’s will, when I do what he says is right, and when I speak for what God says is right, a lot of times people don’t look at me favorably. They look at me disfavorably. They don’t like me. They think I’m rude or I’m rigid or backward or all these things.
Well, there’s a couple things that we need to say about the Proverbs and about this in particular. But generally speaking about Proverbs, Proverbs are quite literally generally speaking. I’m not trying to be circular here, but rather you kind of understand the phrase I was saying here, right? I’m going to talk about what Proverbs usually do, so I’ll say generally speaking.
Well, Proverbs are sort of the generally speaking of life. They’re speaking about how things normally go, right? If we usually are upright, if we usually do what is righteous, if we don’t participate in injustice and wickedness, well, lots of times that actually is the better way even in immediate earthly benefit, right? You go steal a car, you might end up in jail. Probably more often than you don’t. You do other crimes, you might get away with it, but a lot of times you don’t.
And so there is a general aspect to this that’s true. Generally speaking in life, it will go better this way. But we all know the exceptions, right? There are times where committing the crime would actually maybe make life easier. That not speaking for God’s truth would make people like us more. At least for the moment. But you know, there’s something kind of interesting about that when you think about it. A lot of times people seem to like us more when we compromise. But over time they start to think of us as people who compromise.
How often do I hear people complain about Christians? And yeah, they’ll complain that we hold to the morality of the Bible, that we say that God says there are certain ways to live that are good and other ways that are bad. They’ll say those things. But you know what they bring up more than that is how Christians are hypocritical. Why? Because they notice when we’re inconsistent. They notice when we don’t actually live the things we say. Even when they criticize those things.
A lot of times, maybe this is you, maybe you’re trying to figure out this whole church thing and you think, well, I’m kind of intrigued by God, but it sure seems like Christians don’t do what they ought to do. This is not to beat up on you. I get it, and it makes sense, right? People notice inconsistency. And I think in that we see a little bit about what God is telling us here. That if we want people to actually respect us, yeah, the easy route is we compromise and say what people want to hear.
But you know, at some point, people are going to say, but you don’t seem to have any principle. Even when I agree with you, I don’t know why you’re saying these things or doing these things. Maybe you’re just doing it because you want me to like you and just saying what I want to hear, but then you say something else to someone else, and people actually respect when we stand for something, even if they don’t agree with it. People notice when we actually are consistent in both what we believe and what we do.
It looks like, as one commentator put it, competence. Yes, when we work competently, even the nonbelievers, even the ones who will disagree with us, maybe even you that are here tonight, if you’re not quite sure what you believe yet, you still might be here because you actually have seen a Christian who lives in a consistent manner, and you say, well, that looks competent. It looks decisive. It looks like someone who’s not just blowing with the waves of the wind, and that’s what we’re all being encouraged to do. Hold on to what’s good and what’s true, and don’t just be moving with the wind. It will rock us.
But God says, here’s something stable. And yes, sometimes people won’t like it. This is proverbially true. It doesn’t mean everyone always is going to look up to us if we do what God says. But we’ll encourage people when we’re consistent over time. When we actually live like we believe that God does things, when we actually live like we remember when he does, and thank him for it, and look like it’s not about us as soon as it goes well, but we thank him for his faithfulness, people notice that.
When we’re driving around with that pickup truck, and it says, thank you, God, for the life-giving gift, and people know we mean it because that’s how we live every day. Even if they don’t believe, they will notice it. You know what that does? It lets us see real success. It lets us see people actually maybe come to know Jesus, people to see something that’s meaningful for eternity, and not just for tomorrow or the next day or the next day.
What looks like success in the moment isn’t generally speaking success, isn’t proverbially success, just for the moment. I remember a few years ago, I have a file I keep of things I think are interesting stories or observations or photos or what have you that might come in handy for a sermon sometime, a whole file of sermon illustrations, and one that’s been sitting in there for a long, long time was a picture of a McDonald’s in Branson, Missouri that is now serving sushi, a giant banner in front of it.
So, well, I’m not quite sure what the illustration is here, but I know at some point this is going to work because that’s kind of weird, right? McDonald’s? Sushi? Supposed to be some big trial. But part of the reason I let it sit there besides the fact that I wasn’t quite sure when it would come up is that I couldn’t find anything to verify it. At the time, that just seemed strange. But then over time, I realized, as it’s become more prominent, that that photo wasn’t real at all. It was one of those AI-generated photos, and this was right when that was just starting to happen. You weren’t really expecting it yet.
Now I go onto Facebook or X or wherever, and I fully expect that most of what I see is going to be fake. But at the time, I didn’t. So for the moment, it grabbed my attention. And probably that same feed, in fact, I’m pretty certain that same feed that produced that picture had some other ones, and they’d grab my attention. I’d go and click on the link, and I’d try to find out about it. But you know what happened once I realized it was fake, that it wasn’t really consistent to reality? At some point, I actually blocked that feed. I said, I don’t want to see this anymore. I have no interest in this.
And for all I know, some of the things they were posting were real. But they’re certainly not going to get me viewing them anymore because I realized the inconsistency. Momentary success. They got some clicks. Long-term? I think we’re going to see more and more that as we all realize this, what do we do? We’re going to block those feeds. We’re going to quit clicking on them. Or we just scroll past them because they don’t even grab us anymore. Ah, there’s another fake thing. It doesn’t really matter.
What Proverbs is saying here is there’s something real that we can hold on to in God. He’s not AI-generated. He’s not fake. He’s not just something we hope for. He is, and He does, and we can find it in His Word. We can see His track record there very clearly. It’s right here. Now live in it so that people also see there’s something else real. It’s His people who are living in His love.
The unwise path, the path of compromise, the path of cutting the corner and putting up the AI fake image of a fake thing and claiming it’s real so that you can get some clicks and some attention seems like a pretty good path to kind of boost things. You say, oh, I’ll do that once in a while, and it’ll help me with the stuff I’m really working on. And you do it again, and again, and again. And imagine some of the creators that have gone down that route, some of the different social media folks that have gone down that route had a reasonable amount of success before and will ultimately have zero success because we’re going to say, I have no interest in this.
How often do we have some success where we’re following the Lord, He’s working in our lives, and we say, but let me just generate this one inconsistency here because it will help in the moment. I’ll cut this moral corner. I’ll support those who cut this moral corner. I’ll do this because I have to get someplace. I have to do something.
I think right here at the beginning of Proverbs 3 what we’re being encouraged is don’t give people a reason to tune us out. Do we want to know what real success is? It’s not that everyone always loves us. It’s not that everyone always hates us because we’re obnoxious either. It’s that we’re consistent to God, and we let God and His work speak through us. That we’re not getting in the way. That we’re not trying to help it out.
Because the world’s way is to look at those initial clicks. If we’re really looking for true, eternal, permanent, unchanging, dependable, you can count on an everyday success, that’s what we find when we bind God’s steadfast love to our hearts. And that’s what directs us.
Would you pray with me, please? Father, thank you for your word, for the truth that we find in it, that you are the one who is good and faithful every day. And as we go through this series, Lord, would you help us to remember it’s not about us being heroes, us accomplishing so much on our own, but rather just holding consistently to your truth, to your love, so that you speak through us. So that we experience what it is to be used by you as your instrument.
As we were talking about last night, Lord, would you help us to be those people. Help us to realize we don’t have to prove anything, we just need to quit trying to prove something on our own, and hold on to something. Your truth, your love. We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
I hope this has been an encouragement to you today. It’s always great to be with you. If you have any comments or questions, maybe there’s a place you’re struggling to figure out how to actually live God’s wisdom, well, you can always use the number on screen or the comments below, 833-356-4032. That’s 833-356-4032. And through that, we’d be glad to pray with you, talk through with you. If you don’t mind sharing with everyone, jump in that chat, and we as a church family can talk. If you’d rather speak privately, just use that texting line. Once again, 833-356-4032. That’s 833-356-4032.
Hope you have a wonderful and blessed rest of your evening. And I can’t wait to go on the rest of this journey with you, so I hope to see you back here next Monday for the next part of Proverbially Speaking, Volume 7. I’ll see you soon.
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