We’re in the second week of our sermon series
“The Bible’s Greatest Hits”, looking at the favorite Bible verses as determined
by the people at biblegateway.com. Today we look at number eight on the
list, our reading from Proverbs Chapter Three.
The book of Proverbs is one of my favorite books of the
Bible. So some of you may be thinking, “Then how come you never preach on
it?” And the fact is that I don’t. In fact, this might be the first
time I’ve ever preached a Sunday sermon on the book of Proverbs. I’ve
preached from it at funerals, especially the closing verses about the woman of
noble character. That one gets used a lot. But the rest of the book,
not so much.
There is a reason for that. A proverb, by definition,
is “a short, and expressive
saying in general use, stating a general truth or piece of advice.” And
that’s what most of the book of Proverbs is: short sayings that contain
truth. Many of them are just one verse long. And a lot of them are
really good. The trouble is that, quite often, the verse you’re reading
has nothing to do with the next verse, and that verse has nothing to do with
the verse after that. So it can be very hard to find a group of verses
with a common theme that you can actually preach on.
To an extent, that’s true of our verses
today, too. But I think there is a common theme, at least to an extent,
and I think it can be summed up this way: when we are faithful to God,
God will be faithful to us.
Verses five and six tell us to “Trust in
the Lord with all your heart...in all your ways submit to him, and he will make
your paths straight.” Verses seven and eight tell us that if we “fear the
Lord and shun evil”, God will “bring health to your body and nourishment to
your bones”. Verses nine and ten say that if we “honor the Lord with your
wealth...then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim
over with new wine.”
Well, that all sounds good. But
you know, it kind of starts to sound like a quid pro quo, does it not? It
sounds like we’re making a deal with God. “Okay, God, I’ll submit to you
and I’ll shun evil and I’ll honor you with my wealth. And now, in return,
you have to make things easy for me, to give me good health, and to give me
lots or material goods. That’s our contract. You live up to your
side of the bargain, and I’ll live up to mine.”
And we know that’s not the way life
works, don’t we? We’ve all known people who were wonderful people, who
were faithful Christians, who at least as far as we can tell had submitted
their lives to God and shunned evil and gave generously. And they did not
have things made easy for them. They did not get good health and
prosperity. And that does not seem fair. It does not seem right.
It looks to us like God did not follow through on God’s end of the deal.
And sometimes, when that happens, our
faith can be shaken. Because we’re thinking, “Wait a minute. This
is not the way it’s supposed to work. I’ve been trying to serve God all
my life. I’ve been trying to do what God wants, I’ve given up all kinds
of things I could’ve done, I’ve given to the church, I’ve done all the things
I’m supposed to do. And for what? What did it get me? How has
following God made me any better off?”
We know, in our heads, that we cannot
make deals with God like this. But in our hearts, sometimes we think we
can. It’s easy to do. Even though we know better, there’s a part of
us that feels like if we’ve done things for God, then God owes it to us to do
things for us. And it can be really easy to read a section like the one
we read today as backing up that feeling.
But let’s look at this a little closer. We talked
last week about what the Apostle Paul said about love. He said that it
does not matter how great our spiritual gifts are if we don’t act out of love.
In other words, it’s not just what we do that matters. Our feelings
and motivations and attitudes, the reasons why we do the things we do, matter,
too.
So let’s look at these verses with that in mind. Our
verses told us to submit to the Lord and not to lean on our own understanding.
Well, if we act in a certain way because we want God to do things for us,
we’re not really submitting to the Lord, are we? We’re not trying to
follow God’s will. We’re not being faithful to God. We’re trying to
manipulate God, to make God follow our will. Submitting to God means
living the way God wants us to live just because it’s the way God wants us to
live, with no expectation of anything in return.
Now, there is a certain level of trust in God that’s
involved in that. But it’s not trusting God to do what we want God to do.
It’s trust that if we submit ourselves to God’s will, then God will do
what’s right and things will go the way God wants them to go, the way they’re
supposed to go. In other words, our trust in God is not that if we follow
God, God will do things our way. Our trust in God is that if we follow
God, God will do things God’s way, and God’s way will be better than our way
ever could be.
In fact, if we’re doing things because we want God to do
things for us, we’re doing the exact opposite of what those verses say, right?
We’re leaning on our own understanding. We’re trying to be wise in
our own eyes. We’re saying, in effect, “I know what God should do here.
So, I’ll do this and this and this, and God’ll see that and God’ll do
what I want God to do in return. I’ll get God to do it my way.” And
in fact, I suspect there are some of us who have tried that a time or two in
our lives. We probably did not spell it out that way, we did not put it
quite that bluntly, but that really is what we were doing. We were trying
to manipulate God into doing things our way. And it probably worked about
as well as you’d expect it to, because God does not just know what we’re doing,
God knows why we’re doing it. And our feelings and motivations and attitudes
matter to God.
It works the same way with the other verses we read.
We cannot truly be said to “fear the Lord” if we’re trying to manipulate
the Lord. In fact, the whole idea of trying to manipulate God is very
disrespectful of God. It’s incredibly arrogant of us to think we could
trick God or fool God in that way. And yet, we still try.
And how about honoring the Lord with our wealth? Are
we really doing that if we give with the idea that God will give us something
in return? That’s not honoring God. That’s trying to bribe God.
Again, it’s very disrespectful. And I’m pretty sure God can tell
the difference.
When we spell these things out in this way, none of them
make a whole lot of sense. And yet, a lot of us have had times when we’ve
tried to do them. And I have, too. We try to make it look like
we’re trusting God, but we’re really just trying to make a deal with God.
So why do the verses put it this way? Why do they
make it sound like we’re bargaining with God, and that if we do the right thing
God will respond in the right way?
Well, remember what a proverb is. It’s a short
statement that express a general truth or piece of advice. It’s not
something that is true each and every time, no exceptions. It’s something
that’s good advice for us because it’s generally true most of the time.
And the fact is that, if we follow God’s rules, if we live
the way God wants us to live, if we rely on God rather than relying on
ourselves, if we shun evil and give generously to God, and if we do those
things with willing hearts, out of love, rather than doing them because we want
something in return, the chances are that things will go better for us.
Our paths will be straighter. We will tend to be healthier.
We will tend to be more successful. Not because God owes it to us
to make things turn out that way, but because God knows more about how we
should live than we do. God gave us certain rules for living, but not to
set up a reason for punishing us when we don’t follow them. God gave us
rules for living because God loves us, and God knows that if we follow God’s
rules, things will tend to go better for us. Not always. There will
be exceptions. But it’s the percentage play. It’s the best way to
go.
And remember, too, that God’s idea of success is not always
the same as ours. Humans tend to look at success in terms of numbers.
We look at the size of someone’s bank account, or the number of square
feet in their house, or the number of friends they have, or things like that.
Those things may define success on earth, but they do not define success
the way God sees it.
And we get back to where we started: to faith.
God sees success in terms of our hearts. God sees success in terms
of the trusting God, being faithful, and showing love. When we do those
things, God sees us as being successful, regardless of what the numbers show.
So let’s stop trying to make deals with God. Instead,
let’s trust the Lord, and not ourselves. Let’s shun evil and honor the
Lord, with our wealth and with everything else in our lives. We may or
may not be successful in terms of numbers, but we will be successful to God.
Let’s be faithful to God, because God will always be faithful to us.
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