Proverbs 3:13-26

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So, for this evening, if you would, open your Bibles, and we will return back to the third chapter of the book of Proverbs.
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It's been a while since we've been together in the book of Proverbs.
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If you do remember, we had looked at, up to this point, the first 12 verses in chapter three, and I would like to continue on tonight, verses 13 through 26, and then, Lord willing, next week, to finish the chapter verses 27 to 35.
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I'm going to ask us to read from verse 13 through verse 26, and then just make a brief comment about what went on in our thoughts before, but not spend too much time, because sometimes, I have a tendency to try to go back and bring everybody up to speed, and by the time you get everybody back up to speed, it's the end of your time, so you just kind of don't get anywhere.
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So, Proverbs chapter 3 and verse 13, Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gets understanding, for her proceeds are better than the profits of silver, and her gain than fine gold.
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She is more precious than rubies, and all the things you may desire cannot be compared with her.
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And length of days are in her right hand, and in her left, riches and honor, and her ways are the ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.
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She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her, and happy are they who retain her.
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The Lord, by wisdom, founded the earth, and by understanding, he established the heavens, and by his knowledge, the depths were broken up, and clouds dropped down the dew.
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My son, let them not depart from your eyes, keep sound wisdom and discretion, so they will be life to your soul, and grace to your neck, and then you will walk safely in your way, and your foot will not stumble.
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When you lie down, you will not be afraid, yes, when you lie down and you sleep, and your sleep will be sweet.
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Do not be afraid of sudden terror, nor trouble from the wicked when it comes, for the Lord will be your confidence, and will keep your foot from being caught.
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Let's just ask God's blessing again.
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Our Father in God, again, as we come to your Word, we realize that without you, we can do nothing, that you are the God of your own Word, that you have disclosed yourself.
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This is your revelation, your truth.
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Help us tonight, Holy Spirit, to enter into your truth, to be taught by you, and to have our lives transformed and changed by the power of your Word, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by the power of your Word, and lead us in a way that only you can.
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May the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart be acceptable in your sight, for you alone are our great rock and our Redeemer.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
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I'm learning to swallow my pride a little bit.
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As I find myself, I have to pick up my Bible, and I don't want to do that.
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I want to be able to read it, but I have to bring it close, and so God is the great teacher of humility, is he not? Okay, so what I'd like to do is just to remind you, just go back to the opening verse in this chapter, because if you remember, when we did look at the first 12 verses, I said this before you, where in verse one, he says, my son, do not forget my law, but let your heart keep my commandments, that I sought to set before us that Solomon, to this point, and actually continually through the book of Proverbs, it has this great desire that his hearers would keep God's law, that we would not only be people who profess to walk by God's word, but people who truly do walk by God's word, that we would indeed keep God's word, and if you remember, I tried to show you how in these first 12 verses, there's these couplings, if you will, of truths, and they come more in a way of, don't do this, and if you don't do this, this will be the yield.
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If you do this, this will be the yield, and if you were to read through those verses, I hope you will see that, how it speaks about how we are being encouraged to constantly keep God's law and constantly bind his word on our minds and our hearts, and again, simple as it might seem, if we do not know God's word, it seems impossible to be able to keep God's word, and many will say that, you know, they don't necessarily need to read, to understand God's truth, and my response to that is, that's not really true.
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In order to know God's word, in order to meditate on God's word, you have to be saturated, if you will, immersed in the word of God.
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So, I sought to show us that in the first 12 verses.
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Now, in verse 13 through 26, which I hope to get through this evening, what I want to do is now take the next thought, and the thought is that in the first 12 verses, he speaks about how we ought to keep God's law, and how we ought to be mindful of it at all times.
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In verse 13 through verse 26, what he then moves to is the state of being, if you will, that comes to those who follow God's commands, and even as you look at the first word in verse 13, happy is the man who finds wisdom, and now he moves not only from the thought of keeping God's command, but what it yields.
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In other words, the state of being that comes from being one who is, again, as I have said to you, a will-continuous state, that there are only two kinds of people in the book of Proverbs, because there's only two kinds of people in the book of Genesis, there's only two kinds of people in all the word of God.
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There are the wise and the diligent who keep God's word, and they are blessed, and then there are those who the Bible calls fools, and they despise, and they are so lazy that they won't even give any attention to the word of God, and therefore they suffer the consequences.
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And so this is drawn out, I believe, in these verses that we are looking at tonight, that the state of being is really for those and only those who are the wise, those being those who believe and trust and press on in this most holy faith.
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But it's interesting how he moves from the instruction of keeping God's law to the state of being that comes.
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You could just see it in the words, if you will.
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Look at in verse 13, he says, happy is the man, and then he talks about the proceeds in verse 14 that come to that man, and then in verse 15 he says, he talks about how precious it is and the preciousness of it, and then again he goes on and he talks about all the things that come to us as a result of it, and he says in verse 17, her ways are ways of pleasantness, and then again in verse 18 he goes back to, and happy.
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So really it's a state of being that he's addressing, and he's addressing it to those, again, who keep God's law, which is really what wisdom is.
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It's the application of truth in our lives, and of keeping, and it's a state of being.
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I really think that we sometimes think of it as, well, it's this law and this command and this statute and this testimony, but it really is the state of being that we are to have and to possess, and that that yields us a state of being, and that lays out before him.
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That's what really we need to consider.
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If you think about it, think about what the apostle says.
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He says that godliness is what? Great gain, right? Godliness with contentment is great gain, but if that is true, is not the opposite true? Then ungodliness has to be great loss.
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Again, there's this dichotomy that continually is presented in the Word of God, and it's not only as far as the eternal state, which of course we know to be true, the division of the sheep and the goats, and those on his right hand, and those on his left hand, and those that shall be with him forevermore, and those that shall be separated forevermore, but there's also a reality that even in this life, which is full of troubles and miseries and complexities and trials and tribulations, that we can still possess a happy state of being, and I want to, as we move along, address that a little bit over what really that means to be happy and what that state of being is, and some thoughts on that, because that is a very misunderstood or misused thought that many people will speak about.
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So, I do want to make a side note, and I guess probably because of recently, and I've been talking with Brother Keith and Brother Mike about it, I've been reading and just trying to establish my mind more and more on the law of God, particularly in the area of New Covenant theology and New Covenant thinking, and so this thought came to me, and I just want to set it out for you just as something for you to think about, how that even though there is differences among the brethren of which law we are under, if you know anything about some of the discussions that are going on today, there's this, and it's been going on for a long time, centuries and centuries, are we under the law of Moses? Are we under the law of Christ? And there's a lot of reasons for that kind of a discussion, and that's not my intent right now, but I did want to mention that regardless of how you present that, that there's an agreement among all that in order for us to have this happy state of being, we have to keep the law of God.
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We have to keep God's law.
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We have to bind it on our hearts again, and then we have to have it out working in our lives, and so whether you want to look at it from the reality of we're still under the law of Moses, and as it's presented that Moses leads us to Christ, and then Christ sends us back to Moses, which I totally disagree with, but nevertheless there is still agreement that you and I are under law, and that that law, I believe ultimately to be the law of the Lord Jesus Christ as he gives it to us in the New Testament, because he is, in that sense, the one who holds preeminence not only in his person but in his words.
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But I did want to make that point that you and I have to think about if we're ever going to have a happy state of being, then we have to be those who are keeping God's law and therefore enjoying the promises that come from keeping God's law.
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Again, I am not trying to talk about a work for salvation, a work salvation in any manner or of any sort.
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What I am saying, and what I will continue to say, and what I believe Solomon continues to teach us as we go through the book of Proverbs, is that although salvation is of the Lord, our enjoyment of that salvation many times is based on our walk with the Lord, and I believe I can certainly defend that from the Scriptures.
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Salvation is of the Lord, no doubt, and we cannot lose it.
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We couldn't gain it, so therefore we could not lose it.
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No man can pluck us out of our father's hands, Jesus said, out of his father's hands.
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But the reality is this.
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If we are going to possess a happy state of being, and if we are going to enjoy our salvation, which God certainly intends for us to do, that you and I are going to have to realize that there is a responsibility on our part to walk intimately with God.
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And so again, I think that would answer some of the discussions that could be had where some people would say, you know, I just am not happy.
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Well, if anybody should be happy, they ought to be the children of God.
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Again, unless you misunderstand what happy is, but as we look through Proverbs here, and as I hope to show us rather quickly, that happiness is not just a feeling or emotion, it's a state of being, and that therefore you and I need to pay attention to it and seek it, and as he will show us here, because it's worth more than anything else, and that you and I would press on in that direction.
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I thought about what Jesus said.
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You remember when Jesus said that if we know his commandments, happy are we, what? If we do them, right? Again, there's a great difference between head knowledge and heart reality.
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There's a great difference between professing Christ and possessing Christ, right? And certainly the Scriptures make a very great, give us a great amount of instruction in that area, but the reality is, as the Lord Jesus said, that happy are we if we do them.
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Again, is that saying if we don't do them, we're going to lose our salvation? No, not necessarily, but what he is saying is the reality is if we've been changed, if we've been renewed, if we've been created anew in Christ, and we are to enjoy that salvation that's been so freely and fully given to us, then there's a responsibility on our part, and that responsibility is to walk in wisdom, and in order to walk in wisdom, we have to keep God's law.
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In order to keep God's law, we got to know God's law.
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Again, we could have all the discussion around exactly which law that is.
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I thought about this verse in Psalm 144.
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You don't have to turn to it.
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It says, happy are the people who are in such a state, happy are the people whose God is the Lord.
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And again, the thought not just being the God of our salvation, but our Lord and our master.
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Happy is that people.
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Happy is that people.
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And again, if you wanted to flip it, the negative would be very unhappy are those people who do not have the Lord, would explain much of what we see in the world today.
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In Proverbs, it says, happy is he who keeps the law.
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Happy is he who keeps the law.
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And I think it's important for us to really try to drill down just a little bit on what that means to be happy.
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Is it just a feeling? Is it just something that comes upon us, and then we lose it? Because many times that's all it is to people.
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It's an emotional feeling, and those feelings come and they go like the weather, don't they? The sun comes out, and then the clouds come out, and then we're somewhere in between, and then the sun comes out, and the clouds come out, and the rain, and it goes on and on and on and on.
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Is that the way we ought to be? Is that what God intended us to be? Up one minute, down another minute, sideways this minute, straight the next minute? No.
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God would have us to be his children, and that we would have a happy state of being.
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And again, that's why I say to you that I believe that true happiness is not necessarily a feeling or an emotion, but it is a state of being, and it's a state of being that only comes from walking humbly with our God.
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And that if we find ourselves unhappy, perhaps we need to look inward before we start looking upward.
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Or maybe to say it this way, we need to look upward, because if we look upward and then look in response to that inward, then we would see that the deficiency is where? In us.
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It certainly isn't in our God.
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Certainly it is not in the one who has given us life and has created us for his own glory.
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I thought about what Jesus said, even in the sense of this is what life is.
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Remember what Jesus said? This is life eternal.
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What? To know you, to know you, to know who you are, to know who I am because of who you are.
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And again, many times we are just, well, I'll show it to you as we go through this, how we contrast how many people in this world seek to find happiness in the things that he goes on and speaks of.
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Let's look what he says in verse 13.
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Happy is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gains understanding.
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And then he begins in a set of contrasts again to draw this out to us.
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For her proceeds are better than the profits of silver.
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Her gain in truth is better than fine gold.
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She is more precious than rubies and all the things you may desire cannot be compared with her.
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She's more precious than rubies and all the things you may desire cannot be compared to her.
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And then he goes on and he lists for us some of them.
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Lent of days are in her right hand and in her left hand, riches and honor and her ways are ways of pleasantness and all our paths of peace.
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And she is a tree of life to those who take hold of her and happy are all who retain her.
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And again, by contrast, he lays this out for us and he tells us that the things of this world that cause our eyes to twinkle and cause our senses to be alerted, that in reality they will never bring us to a state of happiness.
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They might bring us to an emotional happiness or they might even be extended over a period of time, but in reality they are worthless, aren't they? Is that not the reason that Jesus said, for which all the profit of man? If you think about that, if there was any profit to it, certainly Jesus would have told us, wouldn't he? If there was profit to the things, the rubies and the gold and the silver, if that really was that which was going to give us happiness, then he would have instructed us on it.
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Then the pharaohs are right in trying to take all their toys across the veil, but of course they couldn't.
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So when you and I think about it, and we think about what Solomon is saying, and if there's anyone who had tested that truth, it was Solomon, right? Remember what he says in Ecclesiastes? He says, I didn't keep anything back from myself.
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He says, I had manservants and maidservants and I had gold and silver and houses, and he said, I did it all.
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I tried mirth, I tried this, I tried that.
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Ultimately, friends, if we are going to have this happy state of being, then we're going to have to give up the very things that the world says brings true happiness.
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It's interesting how you very seldom will hear anybody in this world that has those things come forward and say, well, those things really don't make me happy.
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Ultimately, perhaps at the end, they realize the vanity of it and the temporary status of it, but those people who seek to acquire these things, rubies and riches and abundance, they think that that's what it's going to take to get them to this state of being.
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If you read through some of the biographies of some of the richest people, they died some of the most miserable lives.
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I think of Howard Hughes.
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He died a mile.
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How could you have that much money and die a miser locked up into your own self? The word of God is so true, friends.
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It works out in lives over and over and over again.
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That's the thought for us about this state of being of happiness and how we are to get to that point and what it takes on our behalf to seek after real wisdom and understanding.
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Then the more we gain in wisdom, the more our state of being will be one of happiness and contentment and intimacy and fellowship and communion with God.
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There again, we have to ask ourselves, where's our treasure? Is that what we really want? Is what you and I really, do we really want to just be happy in the reality of knowing God and being known by God? Or do we want that plus we want all the toys too? And I'm not saying they're in and of themselves wrong.
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Again, if I have my choice to die a rich Christian or a poor Christian, I'll die a rich Christian as long as I'm a Christian in the truest of senses.
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Now, I want to say something about the next few verses, because as you read through these words that we just read, and he's talking about wisdom, he's talking about instruction, he's talking about God's law, he's talking about keeping it, and he's talking about the things that come from it.
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If you look at verse 19 and 20 at first blush, it almost might seem out of place.
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Look at it.
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Because after that, he's going to go right back to this thought of the yield of wisdom, what wisdom brings.
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And you could see it, it says in verse 21, it says, let it not depart from your eyes and keep sound wisdom and discretion, and there'll be life to your soul and grace to your neck, and then you will walk safe.
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He goes back into what he started in verse 13, but verse 19 and 20 might seem out of place, because look what it says.
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The Lord by wisdom founded the earth, and by understanding he established the heavens, and by his knowledge the depths were broken up and clouds dropped down the dew.
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It's almost as if Solomon stops, and now he's going to cause us to take a step back from thinking about all the things that he had just said, and he brings into focus the wisdom of God, and how God is the true wisdom, the only wisdom, and that in order for us, listen brothers and sisters, in order for us to really have true wisdom, that wisdom can only come from the all wise God, right? And again, that's the great error that so many people fall into, is they seek for wisdom just as much as they seek for happiness in something that will never give them happiness, and they seek for wisdom in someone or something that will never really bring them true wisdom.
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And so Solomon, in my mind, he stops here, and he brings into focus, if you will, of God's wisdom, of God's creative power, of God's infinite wisdom, not just the wisdom of the world, or not just the wisdom of men, but the wisdom of one who is the embodiment of wisdom.
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God is the embodiment of wisdom, and that's what it says, right? The Lord by wisdom founded the earth, by understanding he established the heavens, by his knowledge the depths were broken up, and the clouds dropped the dew.
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Do we not really grab that? Do we not fully understand that? That not only does the heavens declare the glory of God, the heavens declare the wisdom of God.
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That's why it's so like to him, this is my father's world, and it won't understand, all nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres.
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That even nature itself just just continually cries out of the wisdom of God, and of how he is the one who is worthy of all honor for that wisdom, as much as the one who builds the house is considered greater than the house itself.
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Right? And so you and I have to think about that, and ask ourselves, if we truly are seeking after wisdom, is that not in many ways synonymous with seeking after God? That everything is of him, through him, to him, and for him.
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And again, how everything speaks to that.
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The thought of God speaking the world into creation, it boggles the mind.
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That God spoke the world, as it says in Hebrews, what? Out of nothing.
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I asked myself this question, so I'm going to ask you.
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If I give you a handful of nothing, and tell you to make something, you're going to tell me that I'm crazy.
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Because you see, you and I cannot even understand nothing.
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Give me a definition of nothing.
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And yet God, in his wisdom, spoke everything into existence out of nothing.
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In his infinite mind wisdom, he made everything out of things that never existed before.
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And that's why I believe Solomon, in the middle of this teaching, if you will, about how you and I are to pursue wisdom, he sets before us the wisdom of God.
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Listen, men are wise in this world.
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There are people who are so wise in so many things.
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There's doctors, and the lawyers, and the people in technology.
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But I say this to you in absolute truth, and I hope you would agree with me.
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You could take all the wisdom of all the men who have ever lived, women who have ever lived, who have ever walked on the face of this earth.
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You can get all their wisdom, put it all together, and you couldn't put one drop in the ocean of God's infinite wisdom.
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Not only do I believe that, but I believe he adds this because God's wisdom acts.
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In other words, God is not only infinitely wise, God's wisdom brought everything to pass.
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Again, that's the way it should be with us.
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Our wisdom should not just be something we have, it should be something we possess, something we are, something that that comes out of us.
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Even as it was in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.
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I just love to quote, so I'm just going to quote, I'm not going to tell you where, so you don't stumble around trying to find it.
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It says this, and I'll tell you it's from Job.
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Job says this, by the breath of God ice is given, and the broad waters are frozen.
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Also with moisture he saturates the thick clouds, he scatters his bright clouds, and they swirl about being turned by his guidance, that they may do whatever he commands them.
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And on the face of the whole earth he causes it to come, whether for correction, or for judgment, or for his mercy.
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The all wise God.
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In wisdom not only did he create, but in wisdom he rules and judges.
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He does whatsoever he will, in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, and who could stay his hand, and who could say to him what are you doing.
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Job also said this, he said God is wise, and hard, and mighty, and strength, and who has hardened himself against him and prospered.
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He removes the mountains, and they do not know when he overturns them in his anger.
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He shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble, and he commands the sun, and it does not rise, and he seals off the stars, and he alone spreads out the heavens, and treads on the ways of the sea.
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Is there any doubt in your mind of why Paul said in first Timothy, Now unto the king eternal, immortal, invisible to God, who alone is wise, be glory and honor forever and ever.
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Brother Keith brought it up as he concluded Jude last week, didn't he? Now to him is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless, before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, who alone is wise.
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Be glory, and majesty, dominion, and power both now and forever.
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So you see I really believe that Solomon puts this in that position, because we need to understand that that's that that's the stake in the ground that we have to to look to.
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Not just look to our own wisdom, not just look to worldly wisdom, not just look to the things of this world, to possess a state of being, but we ought to look up.
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We ought to look to him.
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We ought to look to the only wise God.
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Let me ask you to look a little bit further as we move through these last couple of verses.
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Verse 21, he says this, my son, let them not depart from your eyes.
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Now again, I believe he goes back to that that formula that he's been using.
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Remember in verse one, and I read it to you in verse one, he was, do not forget.
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And then there was almost this thought of, and we leave the in Pyrrhus chapter one, it was an if and then situation.
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It was, do this, this will come, do that, that will come.
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And again here he presents this to us in that sense, my son, let that not depart from your eyes.
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Don't move away from it.
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Don't allow it to escape you.
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We must, we must, my friends, we must always have in our mind and in our hearts to look to God for everything and in everything.
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We ought to constantly fill our minds, our lives, and our hearts with his truth.
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Now, does that mean all you do is sit around the house 24 seven and read the Bible? Well, if you could do that, great, but none of us can, right? But here's the reality.
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If we, if it's bound in our hearts and on our minds, it will follow us in our lives, right? And therefore we will be able to be in a happy state of being.
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Again, remember what Paul says, I can abound.
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I could suffer loss.
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I could have everything.
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I could have nothing.
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I've learned to be content.
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I think what he's really saying is he learned to be happy in the state he was in.
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He'd learned that it was well with his soul because God was with him.
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And Paul had God's word constantly on his mind.
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It's interesting how he says this in the way of my son, let it not depart from your eyes.
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Keep sound wisdom and discretion.
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Like I stopped for a minute and I asked myself, what does that mean? Discretion? What does discretion mean? And I, in my own mind, I came, it's the ability to separate things in order to make right decisions.
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That discretion is the ability in wisdom to make the right decisions.
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And that in making right decisions, there will be a state of happiness and well-being regardless of the outcome.
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See, again, we sometimes, many times are tricked into thinking that the outcome is what really makes us happy.
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Is that really the answer? Or is it that we have indiscretion walked before God according to his law and that that is the state of being that brings happiness regardless of the outcome? Do we really want to have discretion? Do we really want to be considered as those who understand the way that we ought to go? And it will not depart from our eyes.
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I thought about what Jesus said.
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He said, the lamp of the body is the eye.
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If therefore your eye is good, your whole body is full of light.
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But if your eye is bad, your whole body is full of darkness.
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And if therefore the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? Just think about that.
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If our heart's full of wisdom, then everything that happens will be able to bring us into this state of happiness and contentment.
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Look what he also says.
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He says that it's verse 22.
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My son, in verse 21, let it not depart from your eyes.
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Keep sound wisdom and discretion and look at it so they will be life to your soul and grace to your neck.
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Life and grace.
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Life and grace.
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Isn't that great? We desire eternal life with God, and God has given to us in his great mercy eternal life with him forever and ever.
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But God desires we have life now also.
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Listen, if we have grace, it's because we've been given life.
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And if we have life, it should be the result of God's grace.
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Life and grace.
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Isn't that what seems to be so often missing in so much of the world we live in? There's just so much, if you will, deadness around us and gracelessness rather than grace.
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And you and I would really set our minds, what are we really seeking for? Is it just gold, silver, and maybe we'll be so spiritual we'll say, well, that's not what I'm looking for.
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I just want to be at peace.
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Well, would it be better to be in a state of happiness before God, if we understand what true happiness is? Even if we have to forsake peace, we have to ask ourselves these things.
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And so when he says this, it will be life and grace, life to your soul and grace to your neck.
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And now look, as he finished this, how he goes back and he begins to show us more of these great, if you will, these great promises.
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And these are great promises, friends.
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These are the things that Peter says, remember what Peter says? God has given them to us great and exceedingly precious promises.
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Look at it.
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Then there it is again.
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We had the if and we have then, by the way, I know I'm weird and I study differently than maybe some other people do.
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But I went and I looked up in Proverbs how many times the word if is spoken of.
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Because it seemed to me that as I've been thinking through this, that that seems to be one of the ways in which Solomon communicates the truths that God has laid on him.
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And I found it 25 times, 25 times in the book of Proverbs, it is set up in that sort of a framework of if and then.
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And as I said to you, salvation is of the Lord, but there is a great truth in the reality of if and then, as far as our intimacy and our walk with the Lord.
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But nevertheless, look what it says.
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Verse 20, then you will walk safely in your way and your foot will not stumble.
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These words are so comforting, aren't they? When you lie down, you will not be afraid.
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You will lie down and your sleep will be sweet.
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And do not be afraid of the sudden terror nor trouble from the wicked when it comes, for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being not great.
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Aren't these promises that come not only great and precious promises, but they're freely given to us.
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I often think of what Isaiah says, thou will keep them in perfect peace.
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What? Whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusted me.
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You and I would think about these things, especially, you know, we live in this whole thing with this, the war and the invasion and the misery and the human suffering.
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And if it doesn't affect you, my friends, then I don't know what's wrong with you because I don't care how you break it out.
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It's horrifying.
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It seems so sorrowful and so terrible and so meaningless to see people being destroyed and things being devastated over someone's desire for more.
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And yet God says that we don't have to be worried about that.
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In that truth, he says we can look to him and that there will, when we lie down, we won't be afraid.
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I think about this.
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I think about a lot.
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I saw someone again the other day walking down the street.
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There wasn't a person within, I don't, wasn't a person anywhere near to be found.
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And they had two masks on.
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I saw someone this week, I was at the beach earlier in the week, and I saw someone jogging on the beach with a mask on.
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And I'm thinking, they're afraid of everything.
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What wisdom, not only that, but worldly wisdom is involved in that thinking.
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And yet that's the way it is.
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We live in a world where we're so afraid of this and we're so people are afraid of that and inflation and crime and the border and all of a sudden.
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Here's the truth.
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You and I as the people of God, doesn't mean we won't be affected by those things.
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Doesn't mean we won't even have to go through many of those things.
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But here's the reality.
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If I, in wisdom, will walk with God, then God promises me that I can lay my head down and know that he is God, that you and I can find rest.
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And that's what he says to us.
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He says that, that we will find rest and we will find quietness.
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That should be one of the characteristics of God's people, a sense of quietness.
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That doesn't mean that you never talk, but it means that there's a settled reality in your soul and it manifests itself in your life that you are God's and God is yours.
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And that when I awake, I'm still in his hand.
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And I find myself more and more every day, being that being one of the first thoughts in my mind, Lord, you gave me breath.
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Here I am again.
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Let's go.
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I don't know what's going to come, but I know you're with me.
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So, and then they can lay down at the end of the day, regardless of what took place in the day and say, Lord, you have in wisdom made me, you in wisdom are keeping me, you in wisdom will yet bring me to yourself.
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The Word of God is meant to settle us brothers and sisters.
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And all too often we swallow a camel and strain it in that.
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Or we strain it out and swallow a camel.
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That's the way it is, by the way.
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But that you and I can, and I really believe again, as I close it, that that's what Solomon is really laying out to us.
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That ultimately, when everything gets boiled down, when it's all the craziness is set aside, that there really is only two people, two kinds of people.
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There are those who are wise because they have come to the reality of their sinfulness, have run to Christ and have found in him there all in all.
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And then there are those who are running and seeking to find salvation in everything and anything other than what God has given us.
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And that being, as he said, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
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And by the way, as I close, even in that verse, which is probably the best known verse in all the world, right? Even in that verse, there's the truth of that dichotomy.
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So many people miss it, but God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish.
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What is that teaching? It's not only teaching that there are those who will not perish, it's teaching that there are those who will perish.
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Again, those that have life, those that shall never see life, and that God is our great confidence.
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And so may God bless us as we go through this in the book of Proverbs.
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And again, as we work our way through the book of Proverbs, and it starts to break down into the individual Proverbs and riddles and sayings, let us never lose sight of the fact that it's still the great communication of God to us of what it means to walk with him and of the blessings that come from him, what it means to despise him.
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And in that sense, the judgment and the curse that comes from that also.
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So may God bless us.
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All right, let's just close the word of prayer and brother Keith's going to come up here and lead us into prayer before we leave for the night.
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Let's pray.
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Our fallen God, again, we thank you for your word, Lord.
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Your word is such a light unto our path and a lamp for us.
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And no God, give us grace to, give us grace to come to your word and to sit under it, to have it work in our lives in a way that we shall be changed.
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Not only that we would be with you forever, but that your glorious truth might be exemplified in our lives.
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Oh God, help us.
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We are weak.
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We often are so weary.
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We are often so, so foolish.
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Take from us our foolishness and give us the wisdom of Christ.
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Thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ who so loved us that he gave himself for us.
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Amen.