Please turn with me in your Bible to the book of Proverbs; Proverbs chapter 3. Last week we started a mini-series that we’ll be in, in the month of January, in the book of Proverbs. This evening we come to Proverbs chapter 3 just in a brief meditation. Proverbs chapter 3, verses 1 to 12 – “Keep Your Heart.” And before we read, something to help orient us to our text.
A few weeks ago, Lauren and I went to a Christmas concert in downtown Memphis. It was the Drew and Ellie Holcomb Christmas concert. And some of you know this, that Drew Holcomb is a son of Memphis, he is a native of Memphis, but he now lives in Nashville. And so he was, in many ways, coming home. And this was a room full of Memphis people. And towards the end of the concert, before one of the last songs, he dedicated a song to Memphis. And he talked about his love for Memphis and he got emotional as he talked about the difficult year that Memphis had in 2022 with so much violence and so much loss and so much sadness. And he sang this song and he sang the lines, “Some people say that faith is a childish game. Well play on, children, it’s Christmas Day.” And the entire room is singing with him. And as we are singing that song, you can hear through a back door at the Orpheum, you can hear an ambulance siren. And ambulance that’s heading towards trouble. I mean, we’re downtown Memphis; it’s heading towards tears, it’s heading towards loss, it’s heading towards some kind of sadness. And amazingly, Drew, he finished the song, but it was overwhelming. It was this overwhelming sad moment when you name this place of sadness, this place of brokenness, you mourn it, you lament it, and you kind of press back against it in faith and hope and love. Like you sing against it. And even as you are doing that, that sadness, that brokenness, it keeps coming at you. It doesn’t let up and it doesn’t give in.
And maybe that’s where some of you are tonight. There are places where you have been bruised and broken by the fall. And you name it and you mourn it and you lament it and you press back against it, you sing against it in faith and hope and love, and it’s like it keeps coming. The cancer keeps coming. Or the loneliness keeps coming. The tears keep coming. The anxiety and depression keep coming. The Parkinson’s keeps coming. The sickness just keeps coming. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t give in and it doesn’t go away. And I think the question is, just like that musician, how do you sing in the midst of that? How do you sing through infertility? And how do you sing through cancer? And how do you sing through tears and through loss? What do you do if you’ve lost your song? How do you find your song again and how will your song end? So Proverbs chapter 3. Before we jump in and read, let me pray and ask for the Lord’s help. Let’s pray.
Our great God and heavenly Father, we pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in Your sight, O Lord our strength and our Redeemer. Come and give Your Word success and help us tonight. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Proverbs chapter 3, beginning in verse 1. This is God’s Word:
“My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments, for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you.
Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.
Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.
My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.”
Amen. This is God’s Word.
So the writer of Proverbs here is talking about life using the imagery of a road or a path or a highway that has to be traveled. And so Proverbs is assuming that we are all on the way somewhere, that we’re all heading towards a destination, that we’re all making our way towards something. So it’s not a question of if you are traveling somewhere, but the question is – What are you traveling towards and what are you looking at? What are you looking at as you journey? What is on the horizon ahead of you that’s making your travel worth it? That’s the question. So as we see in verse 6, the writer gives us this advice for the journey. He says, “In all of your ways acknowledge Him.” So in all of your roads, wherever you are on the highway, whether it feels easy and straight or if it’s dark and it’s foggy in front of you, “in all of your ways acknowledge Him.” And that’s not just a bare recognition but to acknowledge Him in this sense means to keep your eyes on Him, to recognize Him and His sovereignty and His goodness, to cling to His Word, to believe His promises. Hebrews 12 says something similar when the writer says, “Let us run with endurance the race set before us.” Notice that same road imagery. “Let us run with endurance our race, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.” And so we need wisdom tonight for the road that we’re on.
And in verses 9 to 12, he shows two territories, two zip codes where the path or where the highway will lead you – prosperity in verses 9 and 10, and adversity in verses 11 and 12. And so when life is going great in verses 9 and 10, and when life is really hard, verses 11 and 12. When life makes sense and when life doesn’t make any sense. Green pastures and dark valleys. When God seems very much present and when God seems very much distant. When it seems that God is for me, verses 9 and 10; when it seems that God is against me, verses 11 and 12. Both territories, both the road of prosperity and the road of adversity, we need wisdom for because both of these territories will tempt us to tell a different story, to believe a different story about how the world works, about who we are, about who God is, about how God is working or what He is doing in our life. The story that prosperity tempts you to believe in the midst of verses 9 and 10, in the midst of wealth and produce and plenty, the story that it tempts you to believe is that I don’t need God. And then in verses 11 and 12, the story that adversity tempts you to believe in the midst of discipline and weariness is that God is against me or God is absent or God is not at work in this.
And I like Johnny Cash. That’s a transition! I like Johnny Cash, and in a film about Johnny Cash’s life, Johnny Cash has this dialogue with his older brother, Jack, just before Jack dies. And right before he tragically died he told Johnny one of the last things that he said. He said, “Johnny, you can’t help nobody if you don’t tell them the right story.” “Johnny, you can’t help nobody if you don’t tell them the right story.” And so Proverbs is giving us the wisdom that we need to travel well, to run with endurance through these territories, clinging not to the stories and the promises and the voices of prosperity in verses 9 and 10, or those stories and the promises and the voices of adversity in verses 11 and 12.
And so we can’t parse out everything in this brief meditation. I want to look just with our time we have remaining at verse 3. If you’re here tonight, you are in deep darkness. As we just sang, you are bruised and broken by the fall. You are sick and sore. It is a dark night. In front of you is fog. You cannot see in front of you. Then my hope is that this is a little lantern, this is a little lantern of light for you. As one minister said, it’s like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can get home that way. That can take you all the way home. So if you look at verse 3, “Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.” So what is God really like? When you’re on the road of adversity, what is God really like? There’s a famous quote, A.W. Tozer, he said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” What is God really like? Verse 3, “Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.”
And so we’ve got, he says, to “let not steadfast love and faithfulness leave you.” Let it not forsake you. It’s interesting how he puts it – like it wants to go somewhere; like it wants to escape. And so wisdom comes in maintaining that love, in nurturing that love, in being shaped and formed by that love. It reminds me of what Jesus said to His disciples in John 15. Jesus said, “The Father has loved Me in His perfect love. I have loved you in My perfect love.” And do you remember this? He said to them, “Remain in My love. Remain in My love.” That’s familiar to this verse, verse 3 – “Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you.” So to hang onto it, to stay put there, to plant roots in it. You know, the language, if you have heard that phrase, “steadfast love and faithfulness,” it’s most famously presented to us in Exodus chapter 34 where Moses is on Mount Sinai, God comes down in a cloud, and God preaches a sermon to him. You remember this? And God says to him, “I am merciful, I am slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” And so this is what God is like. God wanted Moses in that moment to know, “No matter how many times you fail, no matter how many times you fall, no matter how many times you leave, no matter how many times you get off the path of wisdom, I will never fail you, I will never forsake you. I will never lose you. I will never leave you because I am a God of steadfast love and faithfulness.”
And then we have in verse 3, he says to have a necklace. That’s the imagery. Some of you probably have a picture of a loved one on a necklace or you have the initials of a loved one on a necklace or you have a cross on a necklace. Why? To have it close. To have it close to you. To have it close to your heart. And that’s the symbol that’s given here in Proverbs 3 verse 3 – to keep the true story of God’s steadfast love and loyalty close because you will be tempted on the road of prosperity, on the road of adversity, to cling to and to listen to those stories and those voices and those promises. And so tonight, I know and you know that all of us came in here with very real problems. And whatever you brought into the sanctuary tonight, verse 3 – Do not let steadfast love and faithfulness leave you. Don’t let it forsake you.
You see, a trial is a crossroad. A trial is always a crossroad. It’s a crossroad. It will either drive you away from God or it will drive you like a nail into the heart of God. It will either numb you and move you towards apathy and cynicism and coldness, or it will drive you more to God’s heart to where you see His grip more, you see His smile more, you see His joy more, you see verse 12, His delight in you more. And so tonight, how many of us are inwardly, silently crying out and afraid? Some, like Billy said in the announcements, in 2022, lost someone precious. Some of you have never been lonelier. Some of you feel like your life, the things most precious to you – your family, your marriage, your children – you feel like it’s hanging by a thread. Sickness has made its way, suffering has made its way to your front door. You know, whatever disappointment you brought into the room tonight, whatever your places of desperation, whatever defeats, whatever you’re facing, whatever your need, whatever it is you never saw coming, that you never expected, that you never wanted, that you never chose, that you never thought it would happen to you – your failures, your regrets, your suffering – it’s a crossroads. It is a transforming moment for your heart. And so this is where you are at tonight. You will not stay the same. You are at a crossroads.
And so the question is – Who are you becoming on the highway that’s before you tonight? And what story are you believing? Are you believing the story of prosperity – that I don’t need God. Are you believing the story of adversity – that God is absent, that God is against me, that God is not at work. Or are you holding close, are you maintaining the true story of God’s steadfast love and loyalty to you tonight? How many of us are on the road of adversity and we are now resigned or apathetic or cynical or asleep to God’s good and true promises. You see, there will be at times where you will feel like giving up. And often that doesn’t look extravagant. That often doesn’t look like leaving the faith. That often looks like a quiet cynicism or a quiet, simmering anger, especially when those trials stretch out in length or in intensity. “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever, O Lord?” And so maybe that’s you tonight. Maybe you think, “How did I get here? How did I get so far? How did I drift? How did I fall asleep to God’s steadfast love and loyalty in my life?”
Let me begin to close with this. Some of you have heard this story of a young man from Chicago who moved to Kentucky where he met and dated and eventually married a young woman. And he brought her home to Chicago where they had three relatively blissful years of marriage. But then one day, his wife fell mysteriously ill. She was in a seizure of pain – pain so bad that sometimes the neighbors would complain as she screamed. And so he moved her out of the city into the suburbs, hoping that that might help, that he might nurse his wife into health again, but that didn’t help. A physician recommended he take her home to Kentucky, that maybe something in that familiar home would increase her health. And so they packed their bags; they went to Kentucky. But that didn’t work either. Nothing happened. And so weeks later, defeated and disappointed, this man put his wife back in the car as they made their way back to Chicago. And as they were almost home, he looked over and she was asleep. And he sensed that it was her first deep, restful sleep in some time. And so as they pulled into their driveway, he picked her up and he let her continue to sleep and he put her in her bed and he just sat with her in the darkness. And then eventually the sun rose and his wife awoke and the story goes that she said to him, “I seem to have been on a long journey. Where have you been?” to which the husband replied, “Sweetheart, I have been right beside you. I have been right beside you, waiting for you all this time.”
And so tonight on our path, on our travels, on our long journeys, and in our battles, we ask the question, “God, what are You like?” And in all of the tension of the stories of our lives, in all of the tangled threads and the detours and in the darkness, in all of the questions that we bring, He has been there the whole time. Your God of steadfast love and loyalty to you. And maybe you say, “How will I come to believe that?” Well Jesus says, “Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” And maybe you say, “Well I believe, help my unbelief.” And let your heart take courage tonight because it takes a lot of courage in the midst of suffering, in the midst of sadness, in the midst of defeats and disappointment and darkness for you to believe that God is benevolent, that God is good even to you. And it’s always been this way. Moses met the Lord in a cave. Think about a certain Friday afternoon when God made His way up on a hill and we saw all of His goodness, we saw all of His glory. Jesus Christ, the Friend for sinners. And so it is in the valley, it is in the darkness, “Yea, I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” so that our hearts might know that here and even here God is with us, that He speaks over us, “I am with you. I have been with you the whole time and My heart is filled with steadfast love and faithfulness for you.”
And so, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding. In all of your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths.” Let me pray for us. Let’s pray.
Our great God and heavenly Father, we are prone to believe different stories of what is true. We need the grace that You give in abundance tonight and that You promise to supply us with – the grace to hold onto You even as You hold onto us. So give that to us tonight we pray, in new and fresh ways. In Jesus’ name, amen.