Proverbs 12:15 “The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice.”
As you look through the pages of Proverbs, it is addressed to his son. His teenage son. King Solomon is addressing his teen son because in that time, you were beginning your own journey in life. Now, kids are living at home at the age of 24. Weird. I am not sure why girls don’t find that a repulsive factor in dating. What? You live with your mom? Oh, well, maybe you should be dating her? Idk. Jk.
I moved out, essentially when I was 18 I went of to college and didn’t look back. But Solomon is writing because he doesn’t want HIS son to make the same mistakes that he did or that he saw going on around him.
Tonight at the Manatee Civic Center around 200 to 300 Seniors are graduating from LRHS ad Saturday from BRHS and from Palmetto High School and starting a new phase of their journey.
But all of us are on SOME part of that Journey, whether in Middle School or High School we need wisdom, we need direction, there are choices that need to be made. So how do we make these decisions in such a way to honor God? So we are going to take a look at one of MY favorite verses. Proverbs 3:5-6.
Solomon uses a literary structure that is called inclusio. A negative command sandwiched between two positives. If you want to land successfully you have to follow some rules right? You must stay stiff and you have to fall straight back. This will help you to be successful. But what is our temptation? We want to bend our legs, we want to put our hands back, we are leery to trust what we cannot see.
Solomon is saying that if you want to be safe, you have to follow these three commands I am giving you, you have to trust that I am going to cause you to land safely.
Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”
1. TRUST in the Lord
So the first thing we are told to do is what? TRUST. Trust who? In the Lord. When we read this verse, it appears as though they are talking about your physical heart right? Girls, Oh that’s wonderful, the heart will go on. That’s our Western way of thinking but to the Hebraic way of thinking the heart means with your mind.
Chuck Swindoll says that the idea here behind Trust that the root of this Hebrew word is one of throwing yourself down and lying extended on the ground csting all hope for the present of the future and just laying there.
We can pass this idea on t the Trust Fall experiment. That instead of trusting instinct of self preservation and survival at all costs that we believe in the process that says, if you fall back in the way that you were instructed, you won’t get hurt.
What do WE do in these instances? We ask friends, “Hey what do you think?” “Oh NO WAY! I wouldn’t do it, they’re going to drop you, they’re not going to be able to hold you up.” But this simply is not true.
When we go through difficult times in our life, what do we typically do? We ask friends, we opst stuff on Facebook and we look for support and sympathy there and only when things get REALLY bad we might turn to prayer or get to a place we look into God’s Love Letter to us to find proper direction and strength.
What God is saying is, “Trust me from the beginning. Know that I have MY best interests at heart, I am not going to let you down.” We think that He has OUR best interests but that just isn’t so, unless our interests are in line with His and this often isn’t the case. When we make decisions, we look for the most profitable; we look for what is going to help US out best.
· Trusting in God means that with 5 stones and a slingshot, we know that we can slay the Giant. That’s David.
· Trusting in God means that despite a speaking problem that know we can still convince a tyrannical leader to free over a million slaves. That’s Moses
· Trusting in God means that me and my armor boy will face an entire army and win. That’s Jonathon
We serve a God though who wants to build within us, character, strength, and integrity. So God doesn’t give us what we WANT, but what is best. The problem with this mindset is that it brings us to the second command He gives within this verse to:
2. Do not lean on your own understanding.
I was talking to a student today who was telling me about how closely the viola is to the guitar. I know a little about guitar, but I can tell you right now, you do NOT want me to handle your viola. That would not be a good thing. You wouldn’t be able to call it music. It would be the OPPOSITE of that Charlie Daniels commercial you see where he just shreds that bow to pieces.
DO you remember us talking about the trust fall experiment. The whole thing is based on fighting what comes most natural. There is this idea that as we are falling backwards, our arms say, “YO” I don’t know about you but my arms are ghetto, “YO! If you don’t catch us, we are going to end up with a MAJOR pain in my butt.” If you don’t do something other than just FALL then you are going to hit flat and be in some MAJOR PAIN!
What comes natural in our mnd when we are faced with taking a hit of E or Roxies or Oxy? What comes natural is to avoid it at first, but when you continuously put yourself BACK INTO that situation day after day, you know what you are going to do? You’re going to give in. You will. It’s just a statistical fact. I really can’t tell you just HOW MANY kids I have talked to over the years who swore they would never take that they could stay strong in the face of peer pressure. They started out well, but they eventually gave in to what is natural.
Our own understanding is what gets us into so much trouble. It’s what leads us down the wrong paths, leaning on our own understanding is what leads us further into slavery and what causes a painful butt!
You remember when we talked about Moses? In Numbers 20:11 God tells Moses to speak to the rock and it would gush forth water. Talk to it. By our own thoughts, we are thinking, all these people watching are going to think that I am crazy. SO instead he hits the rock twice. I mean hitting a rock is good, right? It is more likely to produce a result. But that’s not what God told him to do.
He hits the rock and water comes out. But God says, “Because you did not trust me enough to show me as holy before the Israelites, therefore, you will not enter into the Promised Land.
You had better believe that God is serious about obedience. It means EVERYTHING to Him. That’s why Solomon tells us not to trust in our own abilities, not to trust in ourselves and what we know, but rather he gives us this final direction:
3. In ALL your ways acknowledge Him.
It was early one morning and the sleep was still pretty heavy in my eyes. Lucas taps me on the shoulder, he is about 7 years old or so. I am NOT a morning person, at all. A little more than my wife, Kristin. She’s the one you can ask, like, Mommy can I have the car keys to get some pokemon cards at WalMart and she’s like, Sure Candace go ahead. She’s kind of out of it in the mornings, but I am right there with her.
SO at 5:30 or so, I feel a tap tap tap, it’s Lucas, he wants something. Now, it’s MY goal to find out what it is a to resume sleep as quickly as possible. So I ask, “What is it little buddy? What do you need?” I made this for you and he slides something under my hand which is more like a mitt this early in the morning.
My fingers are still trying to figure out just what their job and function is. I groggily say “Okay buddy…” and turn over.
I fall back asleep and now it is an hour or so later so still sleep deprived and groggy I try to slide out of bed and step on something. It is this card that Lucas has made. Written in large letters is: “world’s greatest dad, I love you so much.” Now, I don’t expect you to get this just yet, but fro any dad, this is big, but for Lucas, this is tantamount to being given the crown jewels. Lucas has a hard time expressing himself and saying “I love you.” I don’t know why, but he does.
By the time I had gotten to him later that morning, he had already gotten his feelings hurt. Daddy, I felt like you didn’t care about my card. Crush my heart. All he wanted was a “Thank You” Maybe a hug. He just wanted to know at that moment that he mattered, that he counted.
Our lives are full of those moments with God, moments in which the Creator of the Universe says, let me know how much you enjoy me, tell me that you love me, tell me that our relationship matters. Don’t forget, our worship, our acknowledgement is the ONLY thing that God doesn’t have that we can freely give to Him.
Given money isn’t important in our relationship with Him because we are told in Psalm 50 that he owns the cattle on a thousand hills. But He DOES ask that we tithe as a way of recognizing that we TRUST HIM with our finances and to meet our needs.
But He DOES say that as we Trust in Him with EVERY PART of us, as we relinquish our own thoughts and give way to HIS WAY and to not try to fall own our own terms, not putting our hands out to catch ourselves, as we acknowledge and TRUST Him, it says that He will direct our paths.
I don’t know if you’ve been on 301 in Sarasota but it is full of potholes. It is nasty. I’ll be driving along and I will hit one of those potholes and like lose the alignment of my steering. It’s like boom boom…bump, pothole. If I was still driving my GEO Metro, I would have lost most of my car in those things. DO you guys know what I am talking about?
In the Hebrew what this part of the passage says is that he literally goes before us and fills in the holes. It says that he paves the way before us and makes it a smoother path.
It’s the word: yä·shar יָשַׁר
It’s made up of two characters in the Greek:
