Proverbs 3:1-12 (June 25, 2023)

Proverbs 3:1-12 and the Question of What We Owe God

Amen. If you have your Bible, you can turn to Proverbs chapter 3. Proverbs chapter 3, we're going to be in verses 1 -12 this morning. As we continue our summer study through the book of Proverbs, or through the first part of the book of Proverbs, we'll be in Proverbs 3, 1 -12 this morning.

And as we look at this, I want to ask you a question. What do you owe God? That's the question this morning. What do you owe God? The God who is supreme. The God who is high and lifted up. The maker of heaven and earth.

The God who is holy and dwells in unapproachable light. The one who made you. The one who directs all of your steps. The one who delivered you and saved you from Satan's sin and death. The one who gave His only begotten Son, that you might believe and not perish, but have everlasting life.

This God. What do you owe Him? I want us to see our answer in Proverbs 3, verses 1 -12. Let's read it together. And the words of the living God say this, My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments.

For length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you. Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart so you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil.

It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones. Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce. Then your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will be bursting with wine.

My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of His reproof. For the Lord reproves Him whom He loves as a Father, the Son, in whom He delights. Amen. This is God's Word to us this morning.

And what I want us to see from God's Word this morning is six things that we owe God. Six things that Solomon teaches his son to render unto God that we also are to render unto God. And those six things are this, obedience, faithfulness, trust, fear, honor, and submission.

Obedience, faithfulness, trust, fear, honor, and submission. This is what we owe God. And what we see here in Proverbs 3 is attached to each one of these duties, attached to each one of these things that we owe God is a promise of blessing for those who give God what is due Him.

There's a promise of blessing for obedience. That is, it's not just that God commands us to do these things and we owe these things to God. That is true, but it's also true that God is so generous. God is so good.

God is so kind that when we render unto Him what we owe Him, He then blesses us. Now one quick preliminary word on these blessings. I want us to note that as often is the case in the book of Proverbs, these are generalities and not formulas.

In other words, when we live in such a way that we obey God and we live in such a way that it cuts with the grain of reality of how God has made the world, things generally go well. But, we've all seen the wicked seemingly prosper.

And we've all seen the righteous suffer. And so it's not a mathematical equation if this then that, 100 all the time. There are exceptions according to God's wisdom. These are generalities. But we would even note though that even when the righteous suffer, we can trust the goodness and wisdom of God that in due time God will indeed turn it into blessing for that person, even if that's in eternity.

And in due time, the wicked will reap what they have sown. So these generalities are true. And so while life on earth might be a mixed blessing of both prosperity and adversity, in the life to come, all will be sorted out and all will be made well.

And those who by grace and faith render unto God what is God's, render unto God what we owe Him, what is due Him, they will receive in the life to come ultimate and eternal blessing. Now let's look at these six things that we owe God from Proverbs 3.

Obedience as Love, Authority, and Heart-Level Submission

First is obedience. We see that in verses 1 -2. My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments. For the length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you. We are not to forsake God's teaching, but we are to keep His commandments, what does Solomon say, from the heart.

So I want to make a few points this morning about obedience. And the first is that obedience truly demonstrates authority and lordship. Obedience truly demonstrates authority and lordship. That is, if God is truly authoritative, if He truly is our Lord, then we will obey Him.

Because we can't say that God is the highest of all beings, that God is the One who rules the world, He's the highest of all authorities, He's Lord of our lives. We can't say that and then disregard His Word.

That wouldn't make sense. If God is God, then we are obligated to obey Him. If He rules the world, if He is the highest of all authorities and the Lord of our lives, then this belief in that, this confession of that will be expressed in our obedience to His Word.

If He is truly authoritative, we're obligated to obey. Otherwise, we're disregarding His authority. Rejection of God's commands is a rejection of His authority and it really is a rejection of His being.

It is a rejection of His godness when we disobey His commands. So I ask, if you are confessing God as God this morning, confessing Jesus as Lord, are you obeying His commandments? Are you obeying His commandments?

Second thing we need to note is that God's commandments are not burdensome. God's commandments are not a heavy weight upon you. Therefore, you're good. We see that the commandments act as both guardrails and highway.

If you go down a major highway and you come to a place where maybe it's a bridge or maybe there's a steep incline off the highway, there's going to be guardrails there. God's commands are both the guardrails and the highway.

They're guardrails that keep you from driving off of a cliff and making a wreck of your life. And they're a highway that leads you to the good life. To how you're meant to live as one created in God's image.

God's commandments, they are not burdensome. Therefore, you're good. And third, we see that obeying God is how we express our love for God. Obeying God is how we express our love for God. You see, Jesus in John 14, verse 21 says this, Whoever has My commandments and keeps them, He it is who loves Me.

Whoever has My commandments and keeps them, that's the one who loves Me, Jesus says. And so we see that obedience to God and calls to obedience to God is not legalism. It's love. Obedience to God is not legalism, but love.

Obeying God is loving God. It's how we do it. Our obedience is the standard by which we measure our love for God. And so I would ask you, do you love God? Well, are you obeying His commandments? Are you keeping His commandments?

And then lastly about obedience, I would point out that Solomon says it is our heart that ought to keep the commandments of God. It is our heart that ought to keep the commandments of God. We are to obey God not merely outwardly, but inwardly according to our heart or from the heart.

You see, the heart is the center of the person. Your heart is the seed of all your emotions and all your motivations and all of your desires. It is the command center of your person, your heart. And whereas some religions are only concerned with external conformity to a certain set of behaviors, Christianity is concerned with the whole person.

Maybe we should say it better. God is concerned with the whole person. God is concerned with the heart because it is from the heart that the mouth speaks. It is from the heart that the body acts. Everything we do is from the heart.

The heart is the root of all of it. And so when Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount there in Matthew 6, that if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Or if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out.

One application of that teaching is actually Matthew 5 I believe. One application of that teaching is to rid yourself of external temptations and the presenting causes of your sin. And that's true. But at the center of what Jesus is teaching us there is that you really need a new heart because it's not your right hand that caused you to sin.

And it's not your eye that caused you to sin. Your sin was caused by your heart. And you need a new heart. And that's exactly what the Holy Spirit does in your generation. He takes out the heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh.

And the Christian life is one of sanctification. One of living out that newness of heart by obeying God and keeping His commandments from the heart. And so one application for you would be this. Do you ever find yourself trying to keep God's commandments begrudgingly?

Pray. Pray for the right desires. Pray for the right motivations. Pray that God would change your heart and that your heart would keep His commandments. And then we see the promised blessing is long life.

Length of days and years of life. And not only long life, but peace they will add to you. So if by God's grace and by God's Spirit you obey God, you're going to have peace with God. And generally speaking, peace with other people.

This is the blessing for our obedience which we owe God. That's the first thing. The second thing that we owe God, we see it in verses 3 and 4, that's faithfulness. Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you.

Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart so you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man. Now there's several things in these verses that ought to call to mind the covenant with God that He made with His people.

And so first we see steadfast love and faithfulness. This is how God revealed Himself to Moses in Exodus 34 when He gave Moses new tablets with the Ten Commandments on them. He's a God of steadfast love and faithfulness.

Second, we see the words, bind them around your neck here. This should recall Deuteronomy 6 for us where parents are to teach God's covenant commandments to their children by binding them on their hands and making them as frontlets between their eyes.

And then third, write them on the tablet of your heart recalls the stone tablets that God gave to Moses with the words of the covenant on them inscribed with the finger of God. And putting all of this together, Solomon is teaching his son and through him he's teaching us to live in covenant faithfulness with God.

We owe God our faithfulness. Faithfulness includes obedience which we've already considered, but it also considers loyalty. At its heart, a covenant is a defined relationship between parties and one important component of that relationship is loyalty.

God is loyal to us and we are to be loyal to Him. We are to prioritize God over all other relationships and in all other relationships. God and His Word are to guide our lives and in this way, we are faithful to the covenant that He's made with us through Jesus Christ.

And so I would encourage you to remember your covenant obligations to God as God's people. So love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. And remember God's covenant promises to you that He will be your God delivering you from the evil one, cleansing you from all sin.

And in all of that, live faithful and loyal to God, forsaking not His steadfast love and His faithfulness. Don't forsake it through sinful and selfish living. And then we see if you remain faithful, the promised blessing is that you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.

So covenant faithfulness is the way to live well in God's world. Faithfulness. Third thing we owe God is trust. See this in verses 5 and 6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths. What does it mean to trust God? Do you ever have trouble trusting God? What does it mean? It means having a deep reliance on God and His goodness, His care, and His providence.

Trusting God means having a deep reliance on God's goodness, care, and His providence. Let's break down that definition a little bit. First we see deep reliance. You see, trusting God is not just intellectual assent in God's goodness, care, and providence.

We're not just checking off the box saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe that. But when we trust God, we are submitting our whole being. We're submitting our emotions, and our thoughts, and our future outcomes.

Our very being to God. Relying on His goodness, care, and providence that all is going to be well. So trusting God is writing a check to God, but it's a blank check. He gets to determine how many zeros are written on that check.

And we can do that because we know that we have God's goodness, care, and providence in the bank to cover whatever He writes there. Whatever it is He writes for our life, whatever hardship, whatever affliction, whatever uncertainty, we have God's goodness, care, and providence in the bank to cover that.

This is trusting God. In other words, when we trust God, we don't just say it, we live it. We live according to it. We see it's a deep reliance upon God's goodness. This is the reason we trust God because we know that God is good.

It's like the psalmist says, God, You are good and You do good. God is good and He does good. God's not going to do anything bad or evil because that would be contrary to His nature. Therefore, He'll do what is good.

So trusting God means trusting that what He is doing is good even if I can't quite see how it's good. I trust that it is. Trusting God means remembering God's signature move which is so well captured in Genesis 50 and what Joseph told his brothers when he said, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.

Or how Paul says it in Romans 8 .28, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose. Trusting God is a deep reliance on His goodness.

It's also a reliance on His care. 1 Peter 5 .7 says, Cast your cares on God because He cares for you. Or Matthew 10 .29 -31 say, Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.

That even the hairs on your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows. And that reminds me of the old song. The lyrics go like this, Let not your heart be troubled.

His tender word I hear. And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears. Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see, His eye is on the sparrow. And I know He watches me. God cares. Friend, I want you to hear this this morning.

God cares for you. He sees. He knows. And He cares. If you are in Christ, God is not against you. God is for you. He is your Father. He delights to give you good gifts. And He knows how to give you good gifts.

And so you can trust God's care. Thirdly, we see that trust is a deeper reliance not only on His goodness, not only on His care, but on His providence. What do we mean when we say God's providence? Well, providence refers to God upholding, ordering, governing, and leading all things according to His holy will in such a way that all things happen not by chance, but by His fatherly hand.

And that nothing happens in this world without His orderly arrangement. God is in control of all of it. And He is orchestrating all of it to His purposes according to His will. I read an affirmation of faith that says it like this.

It says, We believe that God upholds and governs all things from galaxies to subatomic particles, from the forces of nature to the movement of nations, from the public plans of politicians to the secret acts of solitary persons.

He governs all in accord with His eternal, all-wise purposes to glorify Himself. Yet, in such a way that He never sins nor ever condemns a person unjustly, but that His ordaining and governing all things is compatible with the moral accountability of all persons created in His image.

In other words, everything that happens, it happens under God's control. He governs all things. And so relying on this fact, standing on that ground, you can trust God with everything because everything is under His hand.

He truly has the whole world in His hands like the kids song goes. Not only is He good, He has the power to bring about good for you in His care for you. And so we can trust the Lord. We can trust Him with all your heart.

Trust the Lord with all your heart. Rely on God's goodness and His care and providence. Not merely, not in a cursory way, but with your whole person. With your heart. Cast your whole person upon God. He's reliable.

He's trustworthy. Solomon then goes on to say, lean not on your own understanding. You see, God's understanding is perfectly wise. Is your understanding perfectly wise? God's is. His understanding is informed by His omniscience, His all-knowingness.

Our understanding is cloudy. We don't know everything. We're not all wise. We're not all knowing. God is infinite. We're finite. And so do not lean on your own understanding. Self-reliance is folly. It's not wisdom.

It's folly. And so we lean on God who is good and powerful and wise. And then Solomon says, in all your ways acknowledge Him. I would encourage you to acknowledge God by prayer. Pray about the big things.

Pray about the small things. Nothing's too small for you to pray about. He says acknowledge God in all things. You can pray for a parking spot at the grocery store. You can pray for your work day. You can pray for a conversation that you're about to have that it would go well.

You can give thanks for the breeze on a hot day. Acknowledge God in everything by prayer. And acknowledge God in all your ways by considering Him in everything that we do. And so what does God say about fill in the blank?

That's a question we want to ask ourselves. What does God say about that? We acknowledge that He has authority in every area of life. And so we acknowledge God with our money. We acknowledge God with our time.

We acknowledge God with our entertainment choices. We acknowledge God with our education choices. We acknowledge God with our relationships. We acknowledge God with what job we work. How you spend your retirement years.

How you spend your Sunday mornings, even when you're on vacation. How you spend your time in the evenings, throughout the week. Whatever it is, we acknowledge God in everything. Because He has authority over everything.

And then we see the promised blessing. He will make your paths straight. Your way will be smooth. This is the way to the good life. Trust God and acknowledge Him. We not on your own understanding, but His.

Fear of the Lord and Turning Away from Evil

The fourth thing we owe God is fear. Verses 7 and 8. Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. He will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones. We've talked a lot about fear of the Lord in recent weeks, so I'll be quick on this point this morning.

But I do want to note two things. First, notice that the fear of the Lord is in contrast to being wise in your own eyes. If your wisdom does not come from God, but it comes from yourself, it's not wisdom, but it's folly.

In other words, true wisdom, it comes from the outside to us. True wisdom comes from God to us. That means that we have a standard that exists above us. And that standard is God's Word. And so if you fear the Lord, you will submit to God's Word.

And the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Second, I would also point out that the fear of the Lord goes along with turning away from evil. The fear of the Lord calls us to fear sin. I'll paraphrase Charles Bridges here where he says, where the fear of the Lord is present, sin is hated, loathed, and resisted.

If you fear God, you won't love sin. You turn away from it. And so do you fear God this morning? Turn away from sin and evil. Flee from it. And the promised blessing is that you will be healed and refreshed.

I want you to think of a really hot summer afternoon. You're probably getting ready to have one this coming week. Like a cold cup of water on a hot July afternoon, fearing the Lord will bring refreshment to you and healing.

Honoring the Lord with Wealth and Firstfruits

The fifth thing that we owe God is honor. 3 verses 9 and 10. Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your produce. Then your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats bursting with wine.

We are to honor God with what He has given us. We are to honor God with our money, with our wealth. This means giving the firstfruits to God. In other words, firstfruits is an agricultural term where one would bring the first of one's crops and give it to the Lord in sacrifice.

Giving of the firstfruits, it implied that the whole belonged to God. The firstfruits are a representation of the whole. And so not only the whole crop, but also the giver, the worshiper. When we give of the firstfruits, we're implying that all that we have is God's anyway.

Even our whole being. We live our lives as living sacrifices poured out to God. It's a representation that all of us is devoted to Him. We generally do that today through our regular giving to the church and our tithes and offerings.

Now in the law, all sorts of things were spelled out really precisely for Israel, right? That included the various things that they were to offer as sacrifices and the amounts that they were to offer as sacrifices.

And the reason God spells it out in such precise detail is because the old covenant was the childlike covenant. And so in the same way that parents of small children, they will dictate the menu for the kids, the nap times for the kids, the bed times for the kids, the screen times for the kids.

They set all of that, right? That's what parents do. They determine everything for their kids. In the same way, God set all sorts of things very specifically for Israel. The new covenant is the adult-like covenant.

And God here treats His people as grown-ups. And so He doesn't specify in the New Testament the exact amount that we are to give. Instead, He uses concepts like sacrificial generosity. This is what God calls us to, is sacrificial generosity in the New Testament.

But He leaves the amount up to circumstance, principle, and conscience. Now with that said, I would remind us that when we train children with those bed times and nap times and how we feed them and all of that, when we train children, we do it so that they will be responsible adults.

They will build on that discipline. They will build on that training that they received as children in their adult years. In other words, you don't train your kids to eat vegetables so that they can abandon that when they grow up and just eat chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese.

No, you train them for adulthood. And so I believe that the tithe that we see in the Old Testament is a great guide to New Testament believers that we ought to build on, not regress from. And such generosity, it honors the Lord with what He has provided to us.

And then we see the promised blessing that goes along with that. And the blessing is that your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats bursting with wine. That is, God will bless your generosity by making your work more fruitful.

He will bless your generosity by giving you more. As Proverbs 11 .24 says it, One gives freely, yet grows all the richer. Another withholds what he should give and only suffers want. We should honor the Lord with what He has given to us.

This is one thing that we owe God. And then the last thing that we see in verses 11 and 12, we owe God submission. We owe God submission. It says, My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of His reproof, for the Lord reproves Him whom He loves as a father, the son, and whom He delights.

We are to submit to the discipline of the Lord. So if we back up to verses 9 and 10 for a minute, by our generosity, we honor and trust God in prosperity. And we come down to verses 11 and 12, in submission to God's discipline, we honor and trust God in adversity.

And so no matter what we face, prosperity or adversity, we're to honor and trust God. And by submission to His discipline, we honor Him in adversity. Because we know that God controls all things. He governs all things by His providence.

Knowing that when things go hard, we ought not to despise it. We ought not to loathe our difficult circumstances. We ought not to resort to complaining about them. Rather, we submit to them. Knowing that they're for our good.

Knowing that as Romans 5 teaches us, our sufferings produce endurance. Endurance produces character. Character produces hope. And hope doesn't put us to shame because of the love of God that's been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who's been given to us.

And so when hard things happen, let me ask you, do you look for what God may be teaching you in those difficult circumstances? Do you search for that virtue that God may be instilling in your character?

Are you eager for your trials to conform you into the image of Jesus? Or do you despise the rod of the Lord? I would ask you to remember, God disciplines the ones He loves. We see that in Hebrews 12 as well.

God disciplines the ones He loves. A father who does not discipline his child hates his child. He cares not what the child becomes. But the father who loves his son will discipline him and will train him into righteousness.

And so, do you find yourself under the discipline of the Lord? If you do, congratulations! You found yourself in the very love of God. And maybe you're not in hard circumstances right now. But when they come, remember God disciplines the ones He loves.

And He uses it. He turns all things, we read from Romans 8 earlier, all things for good. You'll find yourself in the very love of God. And so in those circumstances, we owe Him submission, not rebellion.

God is the maker of heaven and earth. He's the ruler of all things. And we depend on Him for everything. And that means also that we owe Him everything. Specifically, obedience, faithfulness, trust, fear, honor, and submission.

Make it your ambition this week to render unto God that which is His. Let's pray together. Father, by Your grace and by Your Spirit, we ask that You would teach us and that You would help us to give You what we owe, what is due to You.

Obedience, faithfulness, trust, fear, honor, and submission that You might be glorified by our lives. We ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen.