Proverbs 3:1-12 – Wise Up

Good morning.

Today's reading is from Proverbs chapter three, verses one to twelve.

And the question for city kids and city teens is this.

Why should we trust in the Lord?

Okay, so the question is why should we trust in the Lord?

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 round 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 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 first fruits 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 wary of his reproof.

For the Lord reproves him who he loves.

As a father, the son in whom he delights.

And so reads God's Word.

Welcome to you.

My name's Mark.

I'm one of the leaders here at the church.

It'd be good for you to have Proverbs chapter 3 open in front of you.

Proverbs 3 · chapter mention

That Young read for us.

You can pull it up on your phone if you don't have a Bible, uh, just by Google searching Proverbs 3 ESV.

That'll get you to the right translation.

Not the right translation, the one that we're using.

That's what that's what I mean.

We're not that sort of church, right?

Um, I have a uh I have a friend uh who I'll not name to preserve his blushes.

He's not here uh this morning, uh, but he's a terrible flyer.

Uh we have uh we have flown uh together at various points.

We even did a 10 hour flight from from Dublin uh to LA, and that was not a fun time uh for me uh because uh his adrenaline spikes and his pupils dilate and every noise and every bump, he's he's just terrified.

He's looking to see.

So his thing is he always looks around to see what the what the air stewards are doing, because if they're still standing and walking around, he kind of thinks, okay, that's well, that's all right, but if they're sitting down buckled up, then that's uh that's gonna be a real problem.

Uh we uh we flew uh to LA, like I said, through uh uh and three hours of turbulence at the start of the flight, because it was at the end of a hurricane that had uh that had hit Florida, and so we were getting the the backlash, and he was just so on edge.

And part of the reason part of the ways that he deals with his on-edgeness is that he tries to distract himself by talking to you really intensely, and so he'll he's like look at that, and so what did you think about that?

Um and it's just like again, like the just pupils are just huge, and honestly, that one of the air stewards, even before the the mini bar opened, kind of slipped him a little something just to kind of take the edge off because this guy was freaking out.

He knows, he knows because he's a grown adult that that how he's feeling is not rational.

But his problem is that he can't quite help it.

There's just no peace for him in flying.

The rest of us we get on a we get on a plane and we kind of trust that that planes work.

Um, we we could never well imagine maybe somebody here could explain, some engineer could probably explain what Benui's principle is and how it actually works, but the rest of us don't understand uh principles of uh of lift and drag.

And uh I was uh reading somewhere that really it shouldn't be uh the Bette Midler song shouldn't be wind beneath my wings, it should be the wind above my wings.

I was like, oh, right, okay, didn't realize that that was a thing.

If you're if you're an engineer, you're like, ah, yeah, she's right.

Um, because we just get on planes and we kind of trust that the people on the planes know what they're doing and we just go for it.

We trust them, and so we sit back and relax and we feel at peace and uh we order whatever we want as the mini bar comes back, unless of course you're flying Ryanair, in which case the piece goes out the window when the guy's coming in to land, because he kind of does like a handbrake turn on the runway.

When we were in London uh last year, last April, uh me and uh and my family uh we were explaining to the kids before we went that uh that London uh it's a very, very busy place.

We were talking about the tube system, uh the underground, uh, and say, look, you're gonna there's gonna be lots of people there, it's gonna be quite noisy.

Uh, and so you need to you need to stay close uh to us as we're going from place to place because we were visiting you know Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London and uh everywhere else, everywhere that you go in London.

And uh we walked a lot, and the whole way around, uh Owen, uh our our middle uh child uh took my hand at the start of the morning and didn't let go.

We walked for miles, and it was lovely because we just we chatted the whole way, and usually he's all about mum.

Uh, I don't know why he wouldn't like me, but some people don't.

Um and but in London, we walked hand in hand for days.

And Philip and my wife picked up on it and they're like, well, it's because he feels safe with you.

Uh he's been told that there's lots of people and there's noises and it's a bit unfamiliar.

And so he's grabbing on to you, and once he grabs onto you, he's gonna feel at peace.

Owen's not walking around thinking, okay, where are all the dangers?

Where are all where's all the traffic?

Where's all the cars?

And why is he not thinking about that?

Well, he's not thinking about that because dad's thinking about that.

That I'm trusting dad, and so I feel safe, I feel at peace.

And trust and peace are are linked together, if you think about it, aren't they?

That if you trust something like the Ryanair pilot or me, if you and I are walking hand in hand through the streets of London, you can trust me and you will feel peace.

You do that.

Trust and peace are linked in our world.

We certainly know uh that the opposite is true because we know that when trust is broken, well, do we feel much peace in our life?

Well, no, we feel it's quite a destabilizing thing.

Trust and peace are linked.

Trust and peace are linked because God's linked them together.

Trust and peace are linked because it is part of the objective shape of reality.

This is something that we've been talking about all the way through the Proverbs study so far, is that what the book of Proverbs is helping us to do is to discern something of the shape of the world that God has ordered.

How do things actually work in the world?

That we don't we don't create our own objective reality, we don't create our own meaning, we don't create the way the world works.

We discover how it is that God has ordered it.

And one of the ways that God has ordered it is he's linked trust and peace together.

And we certainly know as well that uh that placing, misplacing your trust doesn't deliver peace.

You you can trust, you can trust yourself, one of the things that will come on to, and that can actually leave you feeling anxious.

Trusting others can lead you to being hurt, and that can be quite a destabilizing, difficult, and uh uh unpeaceful thing.

But the father in Proverbs 3, where we're looking, and again, I encourage you to have it open in front of you, is encouraging his child, his son or his daughter, to find peace that will last him or her through all of their days, through what we will see, every season of life.

That's why he begins the way he does.

My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments.

Why?

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

Not forgetting my teaching, listening to my wise counsel will bring peace to you.

I remember uh we're tempted perhaps maybe to read things like length of days and years of life, and think of them in terms of uh in terms of promises, that this is something that is that is guaranteed for every believer in Jesus.

But as we've already noted through the book of Proverbs, Proverbs is giving us principles, not necessarily promises.

Remember the words of Jesus in in John's Gospel where he says, In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.

And so the father is not offering the son the false promises of something like the prosperity gospel.

They are principles for living in God's world that often have this sort of result, but because of sin and the brokenness of this world, they do not always come to pass.

And again, the the father is actually going to help us think through sin and suffering and hardship and trial at the very end of this passage.

But he wants us to establish a kind of trust that brings us peace.

Peace through all our days and through every season of life.

And so the question then is, well, what does that what's that trust look like?

I'm going to pull out four things from this passage this morning for us.

And the first one is this, that the heart that trusts is seen by others.

The heart that trusts is seen by others.

So he begins by saying, Let your heart keep my commandments.

A life of wisdom, of flourishing.

Well, it begins not with just thinking, well, I'm just going to do the right things.

No, it's actually having your heart reshaped.

It begins with what your heart desires, with what your heart is captivated by.

And that's a question that's worth reflecting on.

You think, well, what is what do I daydream about?

What is my what are other things that I long for?

The things that I long for are the things that my heart is captivated by.

That's what my heart is pointing towards.

And those things that captivate our heart, that occupy our thought time, well, those are actually going to influence our actions, aren't they?

Because the things that captivate our heart influence the decisions that we make in the real world.

And the Father was saying, Let my words, let my commandments, let your heart be captivated by them.

It's only then will you have length of days and years and peace through every season of life.

The word commandments here is slightly different to the word uh that normally means law, like the Old Testament law.

It's more the wise counsel.

It's the wise counsel of the Father.

And he begins to kind of give something of that wise counsel in verse 3.

He says, Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you.

It's the first part of his counsel that you're to take to heart.

Let not steadfast love and wise, uh, sorry, steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you.

Bind them around your neck.

Write them on the tablet of your heart.

Steadfast love is a is a particular uh term in uh in the Old Testament.

It's a single word.

Chesed, you gotta get the kind of phlegm up at the back there, because it's got a rough breathe on it.

Chesed, right?

And it means it means covenant faithfulness, kind of a binding promise, a commitment uh to from one to another.

It means gracious, other person-centered love.

Faithful, uh, faithfulness is is loyalty.

And the father is saying, You you want to be at you want to be at peace.

Well, what do you take to yourself?

Well, you you gotta you gotta take into your heart the desire to be loving, uh, not just or even primarily to yourself, but to others.

And prize and prioritize fidelity, loyalty, commitment to others.

Yeah, people are all often so terrified of commitment, particularly when I uh when I do marriage prep uh with with with people, you normally get uh normally grooms, right?

Um who are who are slightly terrified uh about about commitment.

One of the things that uh that is true uh of marriage in that dynamic and of many things is that freedom exists on the other side of commitment.

It's not one of the things that we kind of realize.

We think that we're giving up freedom, whereas actually we're we're we're maximizing uh freedom and joy by uh by making this commitment.

And it's something similar there.

You saying prioritize these sorts of things, prioritize other person-centered love, faithfulness, and if you know your Bible, you know that both of these terms are used to describe God Himself.

The Father's saying, You will emulate those, trust them, and in doing so, you will live a life that is fruitful, peace-filled.

He says, bind them around your neck.

That's both a kind of an adornment, something that's seen.

That's what's saying.

So what you're trusting in your heart is seen by others.

So it's seen, it's a necklace, it's something that adorns your life, that life of loyalty, faithfulness, commitment, other person-centered love.

But something bound around your neck is also something that can guide you, something that can take you in a particular direction.

He's saying, let that happen to you.

Let the thing that your heart is captivated by drive your decision making, because it always will, it always does.

And so take good things that are going to lead to peace into your heart, steadfast love, faithfulness, let them be a necklace around you, let them guide you.

It's no wonder when you think about it in those sorts of terms that he says in verse 4 that such a person will find good favor and success in the sight of both God and man.

That is, good repute, thought well of by both God and man.

And if you think about it, you know the opposite to be true.

Think of somebody who you know to be quite self-involved, quite ungenerous, selfish in lots of ways.

Every story that uh that you share, they can share a better story about themselves.

Um, you get that when you talk when you talk about I just had dental surgery a couple of weeks ago.

Uh you you get that with um uh with dentist stories.

There's a dentist one up and ship, isn't there?

Uh oh, I had to go get my wisdom, I had to go get a wisdom tooth out uh a couple of weeks ago.

You always get that one friend who's like, oh, I had to go get all four of mine out at once, right?

There's a little bit of self-absorption.

If you're like, I don't know anybody like that.

Welcome.

Uh it's good that you're here.

And we know that such a person is not well regarded, not well thought of.

They're kind of difficult to be around.

Now, the issue that we face is that sadly uh we're we're pretty mixed up people, aren't we?

We'd love to be those who could say, uh, you know, hand on heart, I've only ever let my heart be captivated by steadfast love, graciousness, other person-centered love, and and faithfulness, loyalty, and commitment.

I've never betrayed anyone.

We'd love to be able to say that, wouldn't we?

But sadly that's not true.

And so we can read this and kind of think, well, gosh, is the is the father calling his son or daughter to a to a faithfulness that he cannot achieve, that she cannot achieve.

But this is the this is the beauty of the gospel.

This is why we need to read the book of Proverbs in the light of what Jesus has done through his life, death, and resurrection.

Because if you don't bring Jesus into the book of Proverbs, you know what you'll do to the book of Proverbs?

You'll make it a book of moralism, of things that you need to uh to work harder by your own strength and more willpower in order to try and achieve.

And you'll make it a book that just weighs you down because you think, oh, like my heart is not captivated by steadfast love and faithfulness.

I am I am a treacherous person at heart and quite selfish.

So you need to read the book of Proverbs in the light of the gospel.

Because who's the perfect son of the Father?

Who's the Son who took the words of the Father to his heart perfectly?

The person who adorned his whole life with perfect love, graciousness, fidelity, commitment.

And people saw the life of Jesus.

Many people saw the life of Jesus and were utterly captivated by him, utterly besotted with him, particularly sinners, particularly people who knew that their hearts were a bit messed up.

They looked at Jesus and went, I want, I want some of that.

Like he looks great.

I want his life to be my life.

And Jesus says, Yeah, okay.

Sure.

Let's do that.

And that's what the cross is all about.

But it is by his death the perfect life, and a death in the place of those sinners who just look and go, I can't do this on my own.

He said, Well, I'm gonna die for you, and by my death, you know what I'm gonna do?

I'm gonna transform your heart.

You might have uh hadn't heard a little echo of uh of somewhere else in the Old Testament where the Father says to write steadfast love on the tablet of your heart.

It's actually one of the promises that that comes up later on in the Old Testament, in the book of Jeremiah, is what God says.

Well, actually, I'm going to write my commandments, my law, my ways on their heart.

I'm gonna remove their hearts of stone, I'm gonna give them hearts of flesh.

That's what Jesus' death does.

He takes your your cold, selfish heart and gives you a heart that's alive, gives you a heart that actually can take wisdom into it, gives you a heart that actually can respond in grace and in love and in favor to to others.

And so the the the first step to growing in this this wisdom that brings us peace is by trusting in Jesus, the one who perfectly embodies what the Father is calling us all to.

And trusting Him means an objective peace with God now, and it and it beautifies our life.

It will mean peace with many people, though, of course, there will be those who despise us.

But eternally, it will mean peace with men forever.

So a heart that trusts is seen by others, a heart that is captivated by steadfast love, it adorns our life, and that's only possible by beginning to trust in Jesus and to journey with him.

Secondly, trust brings a peace that self-reliance cannot.

Trust brings a peace that self reliance cannot.

Let's pick it up in verse five.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

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.

Turn away from evil.

There'll be healing to your f flesh and refreshment to your bones.

Imagine many of us uh who have been around Christian circles for any length of time know Proverbs 3, verse 5 and 6, don't we?

Proverbs 3:5

We've kind of uh we have the calendar uh of the of the beautiful waterfall or the nice deer in a pasture.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, right?

It's good to see it in the context, isn't it?

It's a warning.

It's a warning and an invitation.

It's a warning against self-reliance, it's an invitation to uh to trusting in another.

And if you think about it, that can be quite counterintuitive.

Especially if the promise is peace.

Because we tend to think that if we're going to be at peace in our life, if we're going to kind of have everything in right and good order in our life, then that's something that actually we need to work towards ourselves.

That's that's something that we need to cultivate and secure.

And so we we study hard and we work hard and we build our career in order to achieve a certain level of security and lifestyle that that makes us feel at peace in the world.

And yet, so often actually that sort of journey is filled both with a kind of discontentment that nothing is ever quite enough, nothing is ever quite right, or leads us to an anxiety of, well, what will happen if I lose it?

What if it's taken away from me?

What if somebody else does it better?

The wise father here is saying that peace is found when we turn away from self-reliance and we trust in another.

When we place our trust not in ourselves, but in God.

And we do this by acknowledging that our understanding is often flawed, that we haven't got everything figured out, and neither is the world around us.

See, our thinking needs to be more and more, our understanding needs to be more and more conformed to God's thoughts.

That is what it means to lean not on our own understanding or on the understanding of the world around us.

When was the last time you actually step back and question the wisdom, the received wisdom of the world, the culture that you're not in, or the culture that you've come from?

There are things in every culture that are idolatrous in nature.

And everybody accepts them and everybody does it.

And yet it's actually leaning on the understanding of the world.

It's leaning on our own understanding, not on what God says.

The world encourages us to think that the difference between delight and despair is whoever lives in the White House.

It's the world's understanding.

You can either be delighted or utterly destroyed, depending on who wins the election that you are particularly invested in.

That's the world's understanding.

That's not leaning on the understanding of God, trusting in him and thinking, well, actually, he's the sovereign creator of all things, and every leader is just going to be a footnote anyway.

The world says that what matters is how you express yourself as an individual, that that will deliver greater freedom for you.

But so often that actually doesn't make your paths straight.

That leads you down darker paths of despair and fear, anxiety, shame.

The world says, follow your heart.

Whatever feels right, do that.

It promises so much life and yet delivers so much death.

Ask yourself this when was the last time you let God correct your thinking?

Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Do not lean on your own understanding.

Okay.

How can I not lean on my own understanding?

Well, have you ever approached a situation or circumstance in your life that even you want, that your heart is captivated by it?

And you come to what God says, and you do everything you can to try and explain it away.

When was the last time God corrected your thinking?

If the God that you worship never disagrees with you, you're actually just worshiping an elevated, perfected sense of your own self.

If God's God, then he should probably have some things where he's like, yeah, I don't agree with you on that.

And that needs to be okay.

When was the last time you let God correct your thinking?

Lean not on your own understanding, but trust in the Lord.

Or think of it this way have you ever taken a risk for Jesus?

Here's what I know I should do.

I know that I should kind of risk the social awkwardness of sharing the gospel with this person, but I should but then what we think about they'd never want to become a Christian.

Oh, they're so far away.

They'd never ever turn to Jesus.

What are you doing there?

You're leaning on your own understanding.

Jesus can you God can bring you sons and daughters from the rocks, as Jesus told the religious leaders.

When have you ever taken that risk?

Because that's what trust is, right?

It's a reliance that he's got you in this.

Or do you just keep on falling back on your own understanding?

The opposite of being wise in your own eyes is to fear the Lord.

Verse 7.

Fear the Lord and turn away from evil.

Again, the fear of the Lord in the Old Testament, fear of the Lord in the Bible, it's not a fear that is driven by terror, but it's a humble acknowledgement that He is God and we are not.

Is that something that you've been prepared to do?

Are you prepared to humbly acknowledge that you're not the boss?

That you're not the center of the universe, that you're not God, and that he is.

It is to stand in in reverent, eager expectation of his guidance, to listen to his voice, to want to receive his wise counsel rather than just going, No, I got this, thank you.

The result, the promise that the Father gives is one of refreshment and healing in your bones.

What does that mean?

Well, it means actually that the more you fear God, the more you'll be at peace.

How can that be true?

Think of it this way.

The more you fear God, the less you'll fear other people.

The more you fear God, the less concerned you will be with what other people think of you, what other people are saying about you, what other people will do to you.

When we're captivated by those things, when we're when we're consumed by those things, that actually leaves us not at peace, that leaves us quite anxious or bitter or resentful or angry or fearful.

Or if we're comparing ourselves to other people, we can think of ourselves as superior to them.

But we're still comparing ourselves, only instead of despair, it's leading us to pride.

And pride, goodness me, that's a rot in your bones, isn't it?

It's something that consumes you from the inside out.

But fearing the Lord, if we're looking to him for our for our value and validation that's readily given because of the cross of Jesus, then we'll never be put to shame.

Because Jesus has forgiven everyone who trusts in him.

He's made us sons and daughters forever.

The more we live into that, the freer we will realize that we are, the freer you will become, the less controlled and consumed by others you will be.

It will be healing and refreshing to your bones.

I'm sure that there are people here sitting this morning who would love to be set free from fear of man and from being consumed by what other people are saying, have said, do say, think, even if it's just your own perception.

It's miserable, isn't it?

Come and join me in the lifelong journey of seeking to turn aside from that.

The first 70 years of that road will be the hardest, and then it will get way better.

It will be refreshing in our bones.

Trust brings a peace that self-reliance cannot.

Third, trust God with your wealth.

Nothing will rob you of peace more than a poor relationship with money.

When money captivates our hearts, when it controls our emotions, it influences every conversation, it will breed fear.

It will strain relationships.

The wise father knows this.

The wise father throughout this passage uses uses words like trust, fear, honor.

They're all circling around the same sort of idea.

That peace is found when you decentralize yourself, no longer wise in your own eyes, and when you decentralize your stuff, honor the Lord with your will.

That's the thing our hearts can be captivated by ourselves, by our own self sense of self-importance.

It can be consumed by what other people think of us, but it can also be consumed by our stuff.

And finding our security in the things that we have.

And so the wise father says, well, actually, if you hold those things with a loose hand, it will bring you peace.

Honor the Lord with your wealth.

To honor someone is to enhance their prestige, to make them look important, to point to their importance to both ourselves and to others.

When we use our money, when we use our wealth for our own priorities, what that does is that that makes us look more important.

And again, you know those people, it looks kind of ostentatious.

It can look a little pretentious.

We begin to look silly.

That sense of self-importance.

And there could be a cultural pressure, can't there, to look successful?

And the Father says, be careful of that.

Be careful of what that does to your heart.

Instead, honor the Lord with your wealth.

Make him look great.

The more that we use our money to honor God, the more that we show the importance of his priorities, of his ways, of the kingdom that he is building.

That will make us not only look less pretentious, but it will also make us more eternally relevant, because it would mean that we are participating with him in the things that he is doing eternally.

The Lord is to be honored by our giving.

To be given first place, that priority of importance rather than slighted and dismissed.

He's to be considered first in our monthly budget rather than an afterthought.

That's what he says.

It's in the book.

Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of what?

Of all of your produce.

We honor God with all that he has given us.

We give back to him from all of our produce.

Or put it in a way that we understand, you give out of your gross, not out of your net.

You give out of your gross, not out of your net.

The first fruits of all the projects.

That your giving is not a proportion of the total left over of your disposable income, but given off the top before every bill is paid.

Wise people are not tight-fisted people.

Wise people know that all that they have comes from God and that it has been given to them for his service.

Wise people know that the master is watching how we use our money, how we invest in kingdom purposes.

And what does Jesus say?

Well, he he gives more to those who steward well than to those who steward less well.

You can think of this in in just purely investment terms.

And you could think about the think about the tithe.

Now we're not a church that necessarily emphasizes the tithe, but just go with me on this.

Imagine that you're God's investment banker.

And he says, I'm going to give this to you.

I want you to invest 10% of it, and you can have a 90% commission.

Would you take that deal?

That's essentially what God is saying.

I own everything, right?

I'm giving some of it to you.

I want you to invest 10% of it in kingdom terms, and you can keep the rest.

Honor the Lord with your wealth.

And what's the result?

The result is that we find that we are blessed, abundantly blessed.

Yet God's capacity to give to us far outstrips our ability to receive.

Honoring him creates in us a generosity of spirit, a generous heart that God continues to use for the overflow and blessing to others.

And again, folks, this is not the prosperity gospel.

The prosperity gospel says, uh, I give so that I can get, and it's a closed loop.

I give and God gives back to me more.

And that's it.

But no, it's actually a it's actually a flowing system.

It's not a circle, it's a line that God sees, okay, your good stewardship, your honoring of me with your wealth.

Okay, so he's he or she or they they've honored me with a little.

Great.

Well, actually, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna I'm gonna increase their ability to honor more and bless more.

And so it continues to flow out.

That's not the prosperity gospel.

The prosperity gospel is simply I'll give so that you can give me back, and then and then we're done.

Trade, trade over.

But that's not what Proverbs is saying here.

Wisdom is that all I have God has given me, and He's given it to me to be a blessing to others, and I honor, as I honor God by blessing others, he will enable me more and more to be a blessing.

And most of that is not so much about what's in your bank balance, but it's about your heart.

It's about your heart.

All of this increases our peace.

Because when our hearts are weaned off a dependence on material wealth, then our hearts begin to feel more at peace.

We begin to hold the things that we have with looser hands and think, actually, God could take that away, and I would still have the most precious thing in the world.

I'd still have him.

It also brings us joy.

You know, he talks about barns being filled with plenty, vats bursting with wine.

What a joyous picture.

I want to, I want to go and I've never seen a vat.

I want to go and see a vat that's bursting with wine.

That sounds like a great day.

Uh a day filled with joy and delight.

And I think it's supposed to be a joyful thing.

You think of it this way.

Say you give uh you give regularly to City.

What I want you to do after the sermon, when we're standing, singing, I want you to just take a moment to look around at people singing, worshiping, praising God, and say to yourself, God gave me what I own.

And I gave a proportion of it back to him.

And that person who I've never spoken to or I've never wet met has been enabled to worship God because of that.

And let that give you joy.

I hope it gives you joy.

I've enabled, helped to enable that person who I don't know where they are with God.

Maybe, maybe they wouldn't even call themselves a Christian, but I've enabled City Church to pay the Odeon their rent, and I've enabled them to meet here, and and that person, that person is is sitting under the word of God.

Maybe they're struggling, and and it's going to be a comfort to them.

Maybe they're far from Jesus, and Jesus is going to draw them closer to him.

And and I actually participated a little bit in that.

Wouldn't that bring you joy?

To say nothing of the the other ministries and churches that we support.

You could from time to time, I know some of you do, you go from time to time uh to the south side to to Redeemer, one of our first ever church plant.

You ever go and visit Redeemer down in uh uh down in church town, and you can look around and go, oh, our giving as a church has enabled a whole other Bible-teaching, Jesus loving people caring for church to exist.

And let that give you joy.

Do you see?

Giving is not a question of duty, it's a it's a matter of honor.

Are you honoring God with your income?

You say, well, yeah, but but but but you know how how much?

It's not really the question.

Well, you can ask yourself, am I giving an honorable amount?

Or am I giving an amount that actually I'm embarrassed about?

You can say in good conscience, I'm honoring the Lord with my wealth.

I'm really grateful for what he has done, and I'm seeking to honor him by giving back to him.

Then God bless you whatever the precise amount is.

The fool is miserable as he hoards his wealth, but the wise man is at peace as he blesses others with it.

Finally, trust God with your sorrow.

My son, verse eleven, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof.

The Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father, the son, in whom he delights.

Perhaps the sweetest consequence of trusting God is that we can have peace even when everything else seems that it's crumbling.

How Is this possible?

Well, because trusting God transforms our suffering.

We think primarily tend to think of suffering as punishment.

I'm suffering because I've done something wrong.

Suffering is punishment for sin.

That's what Job's friends thought when they came alongside everything, Job had lost everything.

And they sit in silence for a while.

That was the best thing that they ever did in the book of Job.

Things begin to go downhill once they begin to speak.

Because the things that they say, they think the way the world thinks, doesn't it?

Well, obviously, no smoke without fire.

This must have gone wrong because you've done something wrong.

Who have you wounded, O noble Job?

We think that suffering's punishment.

That God is smiting us for some particular reason, or maybe just because he's mean.

But in a relationship with God, trusting in him, then your suffering, your heartache, isn't a punishment.

Because Jesus has taken that.

God's just God doesn't punish sin twice.

If you're a believer in Jesus, if you're trusting him, that means that Jesus has taken your punishment.

And so whatever the suffering that you're feeling or have felt means, it doesn't mean that God's punishing you.

It can't mean that.

Jesus has taken that.

It is not punishment, it's discipline.

Every loving parent disciplines their child.

Discipline is the way that a loving parent helps their child to know how to live wisely in the world so that they don't go off into the world and get completely mugged by reality.

Loving discipline corrects.

Loving discipline molds character.

I was helped this week in thinking this through by a quote that I read from C.S.

Lewis.

C.S.

Lewis wrote two books on suffering.

One is called The Problem of Pain, and the other is a grief observed.

Let me quote to you from The Problem of Pain.

He says, Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble.

He may be content to let it go, even though it's not exactly as it's meant to be.

But over a great picture, but over the great picture of his life, the world, the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man might love a woman or a mother or a child, he will take endless trouble over it, and would doubtless thereby give endless trouble to the picture if that picture were sentient.

One could imagine a sentient picture after being rubbed and scraped and all recommenced for the tenth time, wishing that they were only a thumbnail sketch, whose making was but a minute.

In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny.

But then we would be wishing, not for more love, but for less.

Let me explain what C.S.

Lewis is saying there.

C.S.

Lewis is saying, well, you could just you could just do a stick man line drawing and you would throw it away.

You'd hand it off to somebody and it would end up as a scrap on the floor or in the recycling bin before too long because you didn't take any time or any care over it.

But if you were making the masterpiece of your life, that great oil canvas, well, what are you gonna do?

There's gonna be things that aren't quite right that you're going to scrape off.

There are days in which you're gonna feel like you're gonna start again, the whole section.

The reason why you keep on going back to the reason why you're taking that care to scrape off those bits and rub out those bits and correct those bits is because you love it.

It matters to you.

And so when we go, I wish God hadn't given me so much suffering.

Be careful that we're not saying, I wish God just treated me like a disposable sketch.

No, no, no.

God sees your life as that masterpiece.

And as the great artist, he is going to scrape away bits, he's gonna correct bits, he's gonna feel like he's starting over.

Have you ever felt that?

Felt like he's rubbed out such a section of your life.

You think, why have you done that?

And the answer is because I'm making something beautiful in you.

My scraping and my attention to detail and my going deep through the layers of dried-on paint.

You know, those days when it feels like God is doing heart surgery with a spoon on you.

Why?

It's because he loves you.

It's because he cares for you enough to pay this sort of attention to you.

And so the wise father tells the son, Don't despise such discipline.

That's not to say that we must not enjoy it.

Of course we don't.

But it does not mean that we cannot accept it both as something temporary and as something purposeful.

It is the wise who see our pain not as punishment, but as something purposeful, and that's what gives us peace in it.

Even though all life seems to shake and sleepless nights visit us, anger and bitterness bubble over.

The reminder of the loving purposes of God, our Father, in those moments are applied to us like a bam to soothe our soul and to bring us peace.

And so we can trust God with our sorrow because it's not punishment, it's purposeful.

We can trust God with our sorrow because Jesus Himself is the man of sorrows.

He did not despise his father when faced with suffering, but went willingly so that we might be forgiven.

And as a result, and with this I finish, the the writer to the Hebrews offers us an invitation.

He says these words, he says, Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we might receive mercy and find grace in our time of need.

Come to him in your sorrow in your sleeplessness in your need and find grace and find mercy.

Trust him with your sorrow.

Thank you for listening to this week's sermon.

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