Sermon - Embodying Wisdom

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We're going to be in Proverbs chapter three, if you want to turn there, Proverbs chapter three.

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It's very good to be with you this week. Praise God that he's brought us here to worship him and to hear from him today.

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It's with an expectant heart that I pray that you approach in the same way the hearing of his word as we seek to hear from him and have his wisdom enrich our lives.

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I'm loving this series that we're doing in the book of Proverbs. Have you guys noticed it's been intensely practical, really?

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Very instructive, edifying. In chapter two of Proverbs, we were told when

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Pastor Jeff went through that whole section about the moral stability that wisdom brings.

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The son and that relationship there between pupil and teacher coming in the form of teaching from a father, the son is urged to receive wise words and put in the work to get the benefits of godly wisdom.

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The description, if you'll recall, is one that demands a passionate urgency, right?

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He's told to seek for wisdom like buried treasure. He's told to incline his ear, apply his heart to understanding, to lift up his voice, to cry aloud for wisdom.

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And yet, that's tempered with the understanding that this effort of pursuing insight, wisdom, and understanding, it's tempered by the reality that wisdom itself, right?

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Understanding how God made the world, how He created things to be and conforming our lives to that, and then living in this world in such a way as to build, rule, and bring peace like Jesus.

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That's all a gift from God. Wisdom is a gift that God grants, and yet it is something that we are called to pursue.

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And we're told in that section that God is the source of wisdom.

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That from His mouth come knowledge and understanding, which means that the starting point is and always has been divine revelation.

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Let's do a little bit of a refresher here. Proverbs 1 .7. The fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And fools despise wisdom and instruction, right?

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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. What does that mean? If you don't start with God and His revelation, you really can't truly know anything.

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You can have knowledge falsely so -called, but you can't know things in relation to the

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God who made this world and make wise application and have skillfulness in living.

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And the effects of this for the youth, we're told that when He does this, when

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He lifts up His voice, when He cries out for understanding, when He searches for wisdom as for buried treasure, there's an effect of this, and that is that He is preserved.

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His way is protected. He's shielded. And He understands righteousness and justice and how to live in God's world in relation to others in particular, right?

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Wisdom is inherently social. It has to do with justice, right? Not social justice.

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Justice is already inherently social. It has to do with how we love our neighbor, how we treat our neighbor.

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But in pursuing wisdom, the wise man, the son that turns his ear to this instruction, will be rescued from the crooked paths of evil men and the lustful enticements of the adulterous woman.

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We just talked about how this is intensely practical, right? Especially for young men, if you read that section, what are the two most common, most fundamental temptations that face every young man?

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Easy money and casual sex, right? How practical is the instruction?

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Keep away from men of blood and depart from the adulterous woman. And when he does that, he's told that he will be spared in that futility, and he, in paying the price of wisdom, will receive a far better inheritance than the wicked, who pay a different price, which is their expulsion from the land.

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That's reserved for covenant breakers who wouldn't have wisdom to rule over them.

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So now we'll read our reading from today, which is chapter 3 and verse 1.

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These are the words of God. My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments.

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For length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you.

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Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you. Bind them around your heart, 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.

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Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

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In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

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Thus far as the reading of God's word, please join me in praying. Father, we thank you for your word, and thank you for the privilege to occupy this pulpit today and preach it.

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Just pray that you would get me out of the way. We pray that as you open your word today to your people, it would be a blessing, it would edify, it would build up, it would strengthen, and it would encourage, and it would make us people that embody wisdom, that live it out in our lives as Christians, and it's in Christ's name we pray, amen.

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So as we move to chapter three, we really hearken back in a lot of ways to chapter one in the message that I preached before, there's a hearkening back here in this relationship that's presented to us again between teacher and pupil, in which the teacher is instructing the pupil to obey the commandments and the instruction of his father.

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And as students of wisdom, that's how we're to receive this, as from the teaching of a loving father,

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God our heavenly father. What I want to highlight, because I believe this section really does, is that the

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Bible nowhere allows us to separate truth, that is truth in theory, truth somewhere out here, from our practice, from real world application.

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We can't separate our religion, what we believe, from our ethics, how we live.

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If we genuinely believe something, that it will come out of us, people will see it in what we say and how we live.

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There are a lot of virtues in this text that the father calls upon his son to live out, giving him blessings along the way that God says will result from taking his word to heart,

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Notice even in what we just read that Solomon here ties these abstract ideas, these concepts that seem far out here like law, trust, honor, faithfulness, and he anchors them with very tangible physical realities, eyes, neck, tablet, bones.

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This sets up something that I want to spell out at the beginning. For us as Christians, we can never just really say things like,

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I love God, as if it's out there abstracted away from us, or I trust

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God, or I really have a heart for the lost, or I'm a forgiving person, or I'm generous with my possessions,

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I'm generous with my time. If that's actually true, then we'll see it.

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If that's actually true, if that's the reality, then you're going to carry that with you.

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You're going to be tracking it with you everywhere you go, because we can't separate our religion from our ethics.

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We can't separate the idea, the concept of something from putting it into practice, from action.

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We're either going to embody the virtues that we profess to hold or not.

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As I said in the message that I preached not too long ago, wisdom is covenantal. It's not neutral.

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It comes to us and it demands a response. It demands either make a choice or don't.

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But even in not making the choice, you've made a choice, because there's no neutrality. With wisdom, it's covenantal.

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It's either working all the time to bless you or to curse you, depending on how you implement it, how you flesh it out, how you put it into practice, how you live it, how you embody it, or not.

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If it's actually true that you believe something, then we'll see it. If mercy and truth are really around your neck, then we're going to see it.

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In the same way, negatively, you can't say about someone, yes, I know that he does things that are awful, but deep down, he's got a really good heart.

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He's a good boy. Anyway, we can't abstract sin out here away from the sinner any more than we can abstract virtue away from the person that holds it, that professes it.

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What does Jesus say? Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

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If it's in you, we will see it. It will be made evident to all. And yes, you can try to hide it at first.

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You can pretend like you have this, but sooner or later, the reality will come out in what you say, in how you live.

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Biblically speaking, this is because the spiritual and the physical are involved with one another. We're not purely spiritual creatures.

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In the same way, we're not purely physical creatures. We have an immaterial part of our nature, soul, spirit, heart, all of these terms that the

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Bible uses. And then we have the body that God has given us to flesh these things out, to live them out.

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And these things work together in harmony, the material and the spiritual, two sides of the same coin.

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And in Christianity, the Bible, of course, brings these together in a beautiful climax that we'll get to.

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But let's look at the section here, verse by verse. In verse 1, my son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments.

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For length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you. So the structure here that we see is even a covenantal structure.

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There is the admonition that comes, don't forget my teaching. Let your heart keep my commandments.

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And then there's the blessing. Length of days, long life, and peace will be added to you.

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So if you look at the structure of these verses, you see that in the odd verses, there's the admonition, there's the commandment, my son, do this.

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And then there is the blessing for the obedience in the even verses. And you see it all the way down through this initial section.

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And it's grounded in the covenantal nature of the reality of God's own name and character.

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It's actually quite rare here in Proverbs that you see God's covenant name in so tightly knit and well -organized a fashion, right?

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Yahweh, the Lord, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

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And so there's a very covenantal structure at work here with the admonition from the father, and then the promise that the father is using to motivate his son, to entice him towards obedience.

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He's placing this in front of him, saying, this is the way of life, this is the way of blessing and peace, now walk in this way, and if you do, here's the benefits of that.

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And if you don't, if you take the way of death, here's what happens. This is really the structure.

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And he speaks to him the way a father ought to speak to a son. My son. It's almost as if you can hear him saying, oh, my son.

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This is a father that wants to help his son. And the admonition is, do not forget.

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Now, we do this all the time, right? Remembering things, forgetting things, we tell our children to do something and they don't remember to do it, they forget, we're forgetful ourselves.

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But remembering here entails much more than just a mental recollection, right?

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More than just simply recalling facts to mind, to remember is the command of God.

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If you look at Deuteronomy 8, verse 1, the whole commandment that I command you today, you should be careful to do, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land that the

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Lord swore to give to your fathers, and you shall remember the whole way that the

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Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

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And then verse 11, jumping ahead a little bit, take care lest you forget the

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Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today.

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So remembering, right, recalling to mind the character of God, his promises, how he's expected us to live, what he's expected us to believe, that is much more than just mental recollection of facts.

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To remember the command of God and yet fail to obey it is actually disobedience.

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To remember the command of God and yet fail to obey it is disobedience.

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So the father says to the son, do not forget my teaching. Let your heart keep my commandments.

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Now this is truly remarkable here because modern evangelicalism doesn't typically consider the

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Bible between Old Testament and New Testament laid out in this way, right? We have a false way of thinking, an incorrect,

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I believe, way of thinking about this and that is that, you know, in the Old Testament, God is a

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God of law and wrath, but in the New Testament, Jesus is about grace and love and he's just all concerned about the heart.

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That's typically how you see the two described today. There's this artificial separation between the two

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Testaments, Older Testament and Newer Testament, and Jesus in the Newer Testament is concerned with heartfelt obedience, but not the

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God of the Old Testament. But listen, listen. Let your heart keep my commandments.

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What is the father after in the son? Merely outward conformity?

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Merely professing the standard? Yes, I agree and I obey, dad.

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I'm going to come along with that. Or is he after what we ought to be after as mothers and fathers and that is heartfelt obedience, the hearts of our children.

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Let your heart keep my commandments, right? Let these things be internalized within you.

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Not just adherence to the standard, but an affection for, a delight in, and a glad obedience of these teachings and my standards.

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They should be the things that you glory in, that you meditate on. They should fill your thinking and your understanding.

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They should be the source of your desire to please God. Heartfelt obedience demonstrates that we haven't really read our

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Bibles carefully when we make these splitting statements like this. God has always been after heartfelt obedience.

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And why? It's not just obedience for the sake of obedience.

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It's love for God's ways because that's where the blessing, the joy, the peace, and the freedom come from.

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So that ought to be where our affections are. That ought to be what we treasure, what we value, which leads us into the next verse, right?

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Because the father is talking about keeping my teachings. What does that word mean?

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It means to guard, to protect. You take my teachings, son, and you treasure them up.

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You guard them, right? We guard what is most precious to us. We guard what is most valuable to us, don't we?

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What we treasure the most is what we protect. Or the way that Jesus puts it in the

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New Testament is, where your treasure is, there your heart will be.

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You see the parallel between the two? What you value the most is what you will protect.

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It's what you will guard. And the Bible is clear, the father in this passage is clear, because it goes on to tell us, son, keep your heart, son, guard it.

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Why? For from it flow the springs of life. He knows that if he can not just secure the external obedience, but the inward desires of the heart, if he can capture the heart of his son, then he can direct the course of his life.

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He can set the trajectory. That's why he's after the heart.

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And that's why our father in heaven is after our hearts. Not just our external obedience.

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Every day, you and I have thieves attempting to steal our hearts away from God and his word.

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Every day. It never stops, it never ends, the enemy never relents or lets up.

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There is something constantly vying for the affections of your heart to be the greatest treasure that you hold dear every moment of every day.

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And the fight of the Christian life is to constantly see

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God in Christ Jesus as the greatest treasure that you possess and his word as the thing that you keep safe.

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You will treasure what you value the most. Now, it's important here because when you hear these blessings that are coming, someone without this understanding would hear this and say, sounds a little prosperity gospel -y to me.

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Right? Life, wealth, length of days. But is that what's in view here?

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Is that what is being talked about? It's not a life free from trouble, trial, and turmoil.

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It's a life that will not be cut short by being filled with the unnecessary and self -inflicted sufferings of an ungodly life.

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In an ultimate sense, we understand it as the good life, the life that Jesus refers to in John 10,

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I came that you may have life and have it abundantly. It's the abundant life in fellowship with the living

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God that never ends. And of course, in an ultimate sense, it's about eternal life, right?

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Never -ending life with God. But there's also a very real and temporal sense here in which he's speaking, having to do with longevity.

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So generally speaking, in principle, son, if you treasure my word and keep my commandments, you will live longer than the fool who forsakes wisdom and chooses futility.

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This is testified to in Scripture itself, Exodus 20, 12, honor your father and mother that your days may be long in the land that the

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Lord your God is giving you. Children, you want to make an investment in your physical well -being, your health for the future?

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Honor your father and mother. Honor your father and mother.

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Long life, right? This fellowship with God, this longevity, and peace is the other blessing here.

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And this word is simply just too rich to limit, but its essential meaning, its ultimate meaning is a peace with God, of course.

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Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, peace, eirene, in the

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New Testament, which is the equivalent of shalom, right, in the Old Testament, peace. So it's peace with God, but it also has to do with overall well -being, social harmony, prosperity, health, and safety.

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And this peace has to do with a happiness and a wholeness, whole, happy, wholesome, a wholesome life.

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A life of shalom is rich and meaningful and filled with deep contentment in God because of the center is a heart completely satisfied in God, whether or not there's money in the bank account, you see?

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So it's not the health and wealth teaching, right, you see the plastic smile, you see the phone number on the evangelist's screen, the stadium's filled saying, give, give, give,

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God will bless you with these things because you're giving and that's what you do. But the father here instructing his son in the blessings of heartfelt obedience to wisdom's command is longevity in his life, happiness, wholeness, satisfaction in God, regardless of circumstance.

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Think for a moment that when we do the benediction here, what do we say at the end of the service?

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May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you.

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May the Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you what? Peace, shalom.

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What does that mean? What are we saying when we say peace be with you? When God grants someone shalom, he shined on them and smiled on them with all the benefits of his grace.

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And if you really believe and have

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God as your sufficiency, then your life will be characterized by that peace, that deep and inner contentment, that richness and wholesomeness.

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Treasuring God's standards leads to richness and wholesomeness in our lives. And in verse three, let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you.

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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.

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Now this hearkens back in many ways to passage that we're all familiar with in Deuteronomy 6, where the

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Shema is, right? Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and these commands

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I'm giving you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children.

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And it goes on to say that you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

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So Solomon here drawing from Deuteronomy in the language. Now these two words are massively important, steadfast love and faithfulness.

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We don't really have a direct English equivalent of chesed, right?

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Exercise the throat a little bit there, chesed, right? Loving kindness of God, covenantal faithfulness of God, Pastor James has that on his license plate.

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Chesed comes from right here, God's own description of his own character. Abounding in chesed, abounding in steadfast love.

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It's such a unique word referring to God's loyal covenant love, his unfailing kindness, right?

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We hear it as steadfast love, mercy. A good way to remember it is tender -hearted kindness.

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God is tender -hearted. It's often translated as mercy.

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In Wolfkie's commentary on Proverbs he says, essentially the word means to help the needy in which the helper does so freely apart from any compulsion based on his own nature and instincts.

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Isn't that beautiful? That's God's character right there in a nutshell, acting freely by grace to rescue needy sinners like us because of his own instinctual nature.

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That's how he is. He is merciful. He has tender -hearted kindness and he expects us to be kind.

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So how do you know if you're a kind person? Is that how people would characterize you as a Christian? He's kind.

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She is a kind Christian. Are you compassionate? Do you care when others are hurting and seek to share in that suffering?

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Are you thinking about what others need and that desire that you have because of your fullness in Christ is to supply that need with no thought of how that can be returned for you, right, or be reciprocated, right?

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That's a good inventory. Am I a kind person? Am I the kind of person that has internalized the chesed of the

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Lord, the covenant faithfulness, the mercy of God? Am I a giving person?

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And I don't just mean financially giving, financially generous. Are you generous with your time?

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Are you generous with your love? Are you generous with the faults and weaknesses of other people? Do you give to your own hurt and lay yourself down and put others first?

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Is that a description of you? Is that a description of me? That's how

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God is. He's oriented towards others. He loves liberally. He gets walked on, and then he loves more.

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Another inventory check. Do you forgive others? Are you a forgiving person?

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Well, if so, it'll be evident in the way you live, right? We're going to see it. Do you forgive others as God in Christ has forgiven you?

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When you're wronged, we can ask ourselves, how can we take steps to be more kind, more tenderhearted

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Christians? What relationships in my life do I need to internalize the commandment of God to such an extent that it affects the kindness, the tenderheartedness that I show as a

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Christian in my relationships? Taken together with this word for steadfast love is emet, or truth, right?

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It has to do with faithfulness, God's faithfulness, his reliability, his dependability, his integrity.

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God is truthful, right? So we have mercy and truth. To sum it up, mercy and truth, mercy or love, steadfast love, is always to be balanced by truth.

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The Bible tells us in the book of Ephesians that Christians are to be the kind of people that speak the truth in love.

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And we all know that it's easier to do one or the other, right? It's easier to cut someone down, to tell the truth and not have any care for how you expressed it, in the thoughtfulness and consideration in which you could have brought it across, but you didn't, or on the other end to be a complete compromiser and never get to the heart of the matter because you're worried about the level of awkwardness and uncomfortability that's in the situation and you're worried about what's going to happen to you and the risk that you're taking, right?

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Doing both at the same time is what makes a wise person.

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The ability to do both, to balance the two, because honestly, we put ourselves in situations sometimes where maybe it was a necessary stand for the truth that you had to take.

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Maybe not. Maybe you didn't give careful consideration, maybe you were spiritually lazy in the way that you could have explained the truth to this person that would have been much more effective rather than just cutting them down, apart from any charity, apart from any grace, and saying, yeah,

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I was faithful. But were you really completely faithful? If you could have brought the truth across in a way that ministered to the person in a more appropriate fashion, or if you really are in a position in which you're having to stand for truth, did you get put into a position where you passed it up because you were afraid of what people would say, what they would think, how you would be perceived?

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You see, we really have trouble with one or the other, and the wise person knows how to wed the two together, mercy and truth.

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Doing both is what takes wisdom. You notice in this passage that the text parallels the virtues with the blessings.

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Mercy and truth favor with both God and man. Once again, we tend to divorce the two in our ministry, in our application of these things.

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We can be so intent on pleasing God that we give no care to the person, the heart of the person, and we destroy them, we cut them down.

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Or, we don't uphold the truth when we're called upon, and we don't please God in the way that we do that.

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So it's equally important that we not be loving and tenderhearted at the expense of our principles and become so agreeable that we sacrifice our principles.

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Both are important, truth and grace, truth and mercy. Are you truthful?

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Do you have integrity? Do you keep your word? We're not saying anything profound today.

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These are quite foundational, basic things. When you make a promise, do you keep it? When you make an oath, do you follow through?

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Do you swear even to your own hurt? You made the promise, you didn't realize what it would cost you, now you're in the middle of it, do you follow through?

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Do you keep your word? Are you reliable? Are you dependable? The Christian faith is built on promises.

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God makes promises to us, and if those promises go away, there is no faith.

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They're built on the certainty of God's character, and so we need to be truth -tellers like God is.

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There's an imperative that we be truthful people of our word. God swears to His own hurt, and so should we.

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The blessings here in this passage, favor, referring to the favorable disposition of heaven and earth, right?

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Having heaven and earth favorably disposed towards you, and then good repute, or having a good name, or to be regarded by men.

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Now, this isn't man -pleasing, because there is a social dimension to shalom. When we're putting wisdom in practice, when we're living how

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God has called us to live, when we're being faithful, when we've internalized these virtues, and we're living in God's world, there's blessing.

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It blesses other people. When we have sound judgment, and discretion, and wisdom, and wise dealings, we know what's just, we know what's right, we know how to settle a dispute, we know how to do these things.

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There's a level of competence there in how we live the Christian life. The point is that the eyes of others will see that, and they'll recognize that competence.

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And that's really magnetic, isn't it? When you see a person that is able to do those things, that is filled with mercy and truth, that shows discretion, that shows sound judgment, goodness, just that can make a decision in today's world, that's the kind of person that you want to follow.

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That decisiveness. Even if someone doesn't agree with you, do they respect your loving and holy stand for the

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Lord? People are looking for these kind of people, men in particular, to follow.

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These are the kind of men that stand before kings and give them counsel. Do you see a man skilled in his work?

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Proverbs says, he will not stand before obscure men, he will stand before kings. That's sorely lacking in our land right now, amen?

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Christians that can give sound counsel, that have wisdom, that have mercy and truth that have come together in them.

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Which leads us here to something that I want to highlight here in the message, and that is that these virtues, loving kindness, faithfulness, can be summed up in those words, mercy and truth.

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And really you see them together in Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, you see in 21 instances, these concepts together, steadfast love and faithfulness, mercy and truth.

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In Psalm 25, verse 10, all the paths of the

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Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness. All the paths of the

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Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep

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His covenant and His testimonies. Proverbs 16, verse 6, you don't have to turn there, if you want to, write them down.

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By steadfast love and faithfulness, iniquity is atoned for.

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That's really strong. By steadfast love and faithfulness, iniquity is atoned for.

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And by the fear of the Lord, one turns away from evil. And then in the Psalm that Tim just read before the sermon started,

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Psalm 85, 10, steadfast love and faithfulness meet, righteousness and peace kiss each other.

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So we see them together. The teacher says, take these virtues, son, and bind them around your neck.

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Write them on the tablet of your heart. In other words, love or mercy and faithfulness or truth should make up who you are.

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They should characterize you. They should inform every decision that you make, every action that you take.

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If you're a picture of God's steadfast love and faithfulness to sinners, if you have God in you, then people will see it.

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If you embody this, then people will actually know. But the question is, as we're talking about mercy and truth, we're talking about embodying these virtues, living them out, fleshing them out, putting legs on our theology, if you will.

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How do we actually do that? Right? We're told that we need to internalize these things, but how does that take place?

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How does that actually happen? Maybe you're here today and you're thinking to yourself,

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I'm not as kind of a person as I thought I was. I don't have the integrity that I thought

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I did. I'm not very firm and reliable. I'm not very forgiving.

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I'm not very merciful. How does that change?

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How do we get there, if you will? How do we write mercy and truth on our hearts?

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Well, the Father tells us, having secured His Son in His teaching, this is what

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He gets to in verse 5, and these are some of the most famous words in all of Scripture, so we can't afford to be jaded to them.

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Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

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Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. Trust is to be given to the

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Lord, who is the source of the teaching. What kind of trust is in view here? The word literally means to lie face down, spread -eagled.

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It's a pretty graphic picture, actually. To lie face down completely, helpless.

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To throw yourself on something, you think of a belly flop, someone jumping off a diving board, fully committed to that impact, laying themselves down on this with full trust that what is underneath them will support them, will hold them up.

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That's the kind of trust, wholehearted commitment, that we're to have to God and His Word.

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It's the kind of trust that doesn't leave yourself an escape hatch, doesn't leave yourself an out.

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It's all in on God's promises. It's all in on God's Word to uphold the fruit of these virtues that we internalize, that we live out, that we flesh out.

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It's a trust in God to make good on His promises. It's the kind of trust that says,

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I'm staking everything I have on the Lord, His Word, and His promises, and if He fails,

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I end. That's how committed, that's the level of commitment that we're called upon to have.

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It's a childlike dependence where we're seeing God as our ultimate sense of security.

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He's our refuge, not trusting in ourself, because you might ask, how do I trust in the

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Lord with all my heart? How do I do that? I'm glad that you asked. Do not lean on your own understanding.

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Do not lean on your own understanding. How do you trust in the Lord with all your heart? Don't lean on your own understanding.

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Trust exclusively and exhaustively in the Lord. Don't trust in your own sufficiency.

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Don't trust in your own ability, your own righteousness. Trust in Him.

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His ways are not like your ways. His thoughts are not like your thoughts.

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We can fool ourselves into believing that our ways are better, that our ways are higher, that our thoughts are higher.

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And so we get put in a tight spot, we get in trouble, and rather than trust in the Lord, we rely on our own understanding.

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We trust in ourselves. But God says, how do you make mercy and peace, mercy and truth be what is bound around your neck and written on the tablet of your heart?

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Trust in Yahweh. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge

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Him. And the word here is very intimate, it's knowledge. Know Him. The Lord knows the way of His saints.

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In all your ways, in everything you do, know God. In everything you do, in all your ways, in all your paths, know

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God. In other words, do not exempt Him from anything. Don't live life independently from Him in any realm of your existence.

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Or as we're told in 1 Peter, sanctify Christ the Lord in your heart. Don't do anything apart from Him.

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In all your ways, know God. And the promise is that He will make straight your paths, or that He will make all of your ways pleasing to Him.

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Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don't lean on your own understanding. In everything that you do, know

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God. And He will make all of your paths pleasing to Him. So not only does

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He work all things together for the good of those who love Him, He makes all our paths pleasing to Him.

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But you still didn't answer the question, how do we actually bind mercy and truth around our necks?

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How do we write them on the tablet of our hearts? We lay hold of and cling to Jesus Christ, our

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Lord, in whom mercy and truth meet. Remember what

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I said about virtues that we must embody? These ideas, these abstract concepts that God intended for us to actually flesh out?

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When we look to Jesus, we see the definition of embodied virtue.

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Embodied love, kindness, truth, and wisdom.

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Or to put it this way, when the Word became flesh, the love of God, the truth of God, the power of God, and the wisdom of God all became intensely personal and practical.

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We see in Jesus the love and forgiveness and peace and life and wisdom and all of these things that seem abstract to us are not just ideas out there somewhere.

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They're meant to be embodied. As surely as God has taken on flesh and shown us how to live.

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Shown us how to embody these things. So only to the extent that we hear this

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Word and join ourselves to it by faith and cling to Jesus will we embody these things in our lives.

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You know, you think for a moment in the Old Testament about the tabernacle, right?

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Mercy and truth, mercy and truth. You think about these things. It's almost like a shorthand for the covenant.

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Steadfast love and faithfulness. Mercy and truth. Mercy and truth.

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Why is that? Why do we see it in repetition in the Scriptures? If you think about the tabernacle, think about what was constructed there.

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You had the courtyard and then you had the inner sanctum, the sanctuary, and then within that you had the

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Holy of Holies or the most holy place. And what was in the most holy place? What was in the

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Holy of Holies? The Ark of the Covenant. And what was in the Ark of the

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Covenant? The Ark of the Covenant had the Ten Commandments in it, had the law of God, it had truth,

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God's unbending and unyielding and unchangeable standards of righteousness.

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Truth was in the Ark. And then on top of that you had the mercy seat, right, the lid, the mercy seat that was over the

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Ark of the Covenant. And then on one day of the year, the high priest would go in and he would sprinkle blood on the mercy seat and the

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Ark. And so you see a picture there, all pointing to the full, final, and finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, where mercy and truth kiss.

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Because at the cross, the truth about our sin was told, wasn't it?

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Doesn't the cross communicate what our sin actually is? It's wicked, it's shameful, it's awful, it's horrible, it's vile, and it deserves to die.

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And so it did. And God's righteousness, the unchangeableness of His character,

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His unfailing standards were upheld in Jesus, who is the Lord our righteousness.

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So in Jesus we see the righteousness of God. But also at the cross, we see the loving -kindness of God on full display.

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We see His mercy. We see His desire instinctually to help needy sinners like us.

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To draw near to us and show compassion. We see the

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Lord our righteousness, and then we see the loving -kindness on full display. We see the

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God who freely rescues needy sinners with tender -hearted kindness.

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Mercy and truth kissing, meeting. So here's the question we need to hold before ourselves.

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Can the world tell, can those around you tell, that in you there is a place where mercy and truth have kissed?

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Can the world tell that within you there is a place where mercy and truth have kissed, have come together?

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Because all of this begins with the heart. My son, don't forget my teachings, let your heart keep my commandments.

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Inward transformation, how does that happen? Trust in Jesus. Faith in Jesus.

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Faith in His perfect righteousness on your behalf to be your substitute.

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And faith in His unfailing mercy and tender -hearted kindness. His grace.

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And that's how it happens in the Christian life from beginning to end. Trusting in the

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Lord, not trusting in ourselves. If we really believe these things, they'll come out of us.

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We can't separate them out, but that's exactly what we do. It's exactly what we try to do, isn't it?

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Our natural tendency is to get jaded about the things of God. We start to do

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Christian things out of duty rather than delight. Why do we read the

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Bible? Because that's the Christian thing to do. Why do I pray? That's the Christian thing to do.

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Why do we do family worship? Why do we get on our knees? Why do we give in the offering? Why do we clap after the prayer?

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Why do we take communion together? Why do we clap in the baptisms? Why do we do these things?

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Well, because we're Christians and that's what we do. That's the Christian thing to do. That's the right answer.

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It is the Christian thing to do, but the point is this. If living the

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Christian life is not something we do because we've actually made it our own, because we haven't internalized the

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Word of God, mercy and truth, haven't kissed within us, then we're really just keeping up appearances.

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We haven't internalized any of these things, and ultimately that will come out. We can try to pretend for a little while.

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We can say things like, I love God, but in this case we're actually better off just coming out and saying,

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I don't really love God. I don't really trust Him. His Word isn't my greatest treasure.

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It's better to confess these things. It's better to bring them out into the light so that these things can become internalized.

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You notice what the Father, He has no qualms whatsoever about putting

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Himself in the place of God. What is He saying? He's not even saying,

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Son, keep the commandments of God. He's saying, keep My commandments. Keep My teaching.

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What does Paul say in the New Testament? This is My Gospel. How could he say that?

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Slow down, Solomon. Don't you mean that these are the commandments of God, that this is the law of God?

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And yes, it is. But the Father says to the Son, keep My law,

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Son. The normative way that these things come to us is this. The Father is calling on the

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Son, saying, righteousness and mercy have met within Me.

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And He's calling the Son to that heartfelt obedience and trust in His law, which is the law that is dependent upon God's standards, being disseminated in the home.

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And so we should also have no problem about standing in that same place, even as imperfect as we are, as much as we fail, and calling others to honor

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God, to fear God, to observe His statutes. Why? Because it's our

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Gospel. It's the Gospel that saved us. The reason that you need to have righteousness and peace, righteousness and mercy kiss within you is because that's what

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God did for me. And I'm calling on you to have that done in your life.

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I'm calling on you to turn from your sin and to put your wholehearted trust and commitment in the

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Lord. We might be able to keep up appearances for a time, but that is what's being demanded of us in the text.

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Internalizing the things of God. Internalizing the law of God. You might say, as a

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Christian, I believe these things because that's what Christians are supposed to say. But is it how you live?

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Is it embodied in your life or not? Because it will be found out.

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It will be made evident sooner rather than later. And if that's the case today, if that's you,

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I want to encourage you as your brother, confess. Acknowledge it.

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Repent of just keeping up appearances, of just doing the Christian thing that we're supposed to do, that we're supposed to believe, that we're supposed to say.

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Repent of it. And commit yourself to laying hold of the

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Word of God and joining yourself to everything in it by faith. Because that's what it means to be a

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Christian. It means that God has taken hold of us. What does Paul say in Philippians?

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I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me His own.

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See that? I press on to make it my own because Christ has made me

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His own. That's what it means to be born again, isn't it? Christ has made me His own. If we haven't internalized the faith for ourselves, then the

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Lord will not be our trust. And if He's not our trust, something else will be. And whatever that is, brothers and sisters, in your life, it will not be able to hold you up.

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It won't be able to support you when you put your weight on it. It'll be like a broken crutch. And we won't be able to say to our families, our friends, the world, these are my commandments.

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These are my teachings. This is my gospel. You can tell here, the

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Father has so embraced these things that as He's pointing to God, He's saying, write these things on your heart.

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Be changed from the inside out. Just like I was. And that's the reason

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I live these things out, is because that's what's in my heart. That's the greatest treasure of my life.

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God did this to me. So follow me as I follow

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Christ. That's what the world needs. The world needs Christians that know who we are in Jesus.

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Because they see that there is a place within us where mercy and truth have come together, have kissed.

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So may the Lord help us to grow in wisdom and favor every day.

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Remember what Luke's gospel records about Jesus. He grew in wisdom and favor every day.

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Jesus is the embodiment of perfect wisdom. He is the embodiment of mercy and truth.

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I want to implore you, lay hold of Him. Lay hold of His Word. Lay hold of His promises.

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Trust in Him with all your heart. Don't lean on your own understanding.

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And one other thing. This trust, how can you diagnose it in your life? How can you say,

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I'm a person that trusts in the Lord? What's a good diagnostic? How can you run that inventory?

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Well, how about this? Do you allow God's Word to correct you? Do you allow

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God's Word to correct your thinking? Do you allow a faithful brother or sister bringing it to you to correct your thinking?

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Or is your first instinct to fall back on your own understanding and say, no, this is how

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I feel? Trust and obey.

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For there's no other way to be happy in Jesus. We get it backwards. That doesn't make me happy, so I'm not going to trust.

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And God says it's the other way. Trust and obey. That's the only way to be happy in Jesus.

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To trust and obey. And something else you can ask yourself is, have you taken a risk for God lately?

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Have you put yourself out there and left yourself no escape? What is

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God calling you to do? Where is He calling you to go? What's He calling you to serve

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Him with? And what have you not taken a risk in obeying Him with?

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It's a good way to see if you trust in the Lord. Or if you're simply leaning on your own understanding.

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So may the Lord help us to grow in wisdom and favor every day as we seek to embody the virtues that bring life and peace to the world.

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In the words of Matthew Henry, let us remember that the great affair of our salvation is so well contrived, so well concerted, that God may have mercy upon poor sinners and be at peace with them without any wrong to His truth and righteousness.

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If you don't know Christ today, let me introduce you to the One in whom mercy and truth meet completely and perfectly.

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He is the Word made flesh. He is the Son of God. He is the Righteous One who paid for the sins of His people on that cross.

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He rose again from the dead. He's ascended and seated at the right hand of God the Father. And He calls you to repent today.

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He calls you to turn away from sin and to put your wholehearted trust and faithful obedience in Him.

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And the promise? You'll have life. Does it mean that you'll have a life free of travail?

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As we'll see when we get down later in this passage here, we get into the Lord's chastisement, His discipline.

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How He's actually preparing all of those who have turned from sin and put their faith and trust in the

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Lord Jesus to receive their promised inheritance. How does He do that? By correcting us.

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By chastising us. By disciplining us. That's for another

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Sunday. Please join me in prayer. Father, I thank

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You for the Word that went out today. I just pray that You would have it find its mark in the hearts and minds of Your people.

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Please let it not be anything within me that ministers but purely Your Word. And God, I just ask

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Your blessing on our time now as we continue to worship You. It's in Christ's name we pray.