Do you have your Bibles? If you would join me in Proverbs chapter 3 tonight, Proverbs 3. Looking forward to jumping back in our study in the book of Proverbs.
We are going to read verse 1 down to verse 12 in our study tonight. And long life and peace shall they add to thee. Let not mercy and truth forsake thee.
Bind them about thy neck. Write them upon the table of thine heart. So shalt thou find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man. If you'd read verse 5 and 6 with me. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.
He was on to say, Be not wise in thine own eyes. Fear the Lord and depart from evil. For it shall be health to thine navel and marrow to thy bones. Honor the Lord with thy substance and with the firstfruits of all thine increase.
So shall thy barns be filled with plenty and thy presses shall burst out with new wine. My son despised not the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of his correction. And then if you'd read verse 12 as we wrap this section up. For whom the Lord loveth, he correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. And Father we pray tonight that you would grant us that wisdom that is offered to us through this glorious truth of your word. I pray that you would help us to see the areas that we need to trust you in and that we would do that Lord, that we would be a wise people, an understanding people. God we thank you for the grace that you've shown us in Christ. And I pray tonight in our kids, our teens, our adults, if anyone doesn't know you as their Lord and Savior, even joining us online, that I pray that they may come to know the truth of Jesus Christ. Lord bless now, keep those safe that are traveling.
And we ask all this in Jesus name and God's people said, man, you may be seated tonight. Tonight we're looking at a study I've entitled from chapter 3, Trust Wisdom to Direct Your Path. And when you're getting someone to direct you, you need to be able to trust their directions.
You need to be able to believe where they're going to take you. I have greatly appreciated the option that we have today to talk to our phones and they tell us how to get to a place. I remember back in the old days, way back in the day, when you had to unfold a map. Who remembers those days, right? Yeah, you would unfold it and it's like, where are we going?
It's S 49. You know, you're running over and you're like right there, you know, right? And it's 5,000 veiny squiggly lines to get there and you're like, man, you're... Anybody thankful we don't have to work that anymore?
Does anybody still utilize that? I figured there'd be some... Aha! I knew there'd be an old military girl in here that goes by 1,100 hours.
They always do the military hours and all the... Yeah, not me. But you know, early on I remember traveling different places and sometimes it would take you in a route that was not the best option. They have smart...
They have gotten smarter through the years. But early on I'm like, this can't be the best way. I'm like on a one-lane road out in the hills, man. Like, what in the world?
There's got to be a better... Sometimes they take you maybe a shorter trek, but it was just about not a lot quicker. So directions are followed when you trust the one giving them. And tonight I want to look at the directions that God gives us here in Proverbs chapter number three. If you remember chapter one, wisdom was really personified as one crying in the streets, calling people to listen to him. But the fully sinner refused, was led into destruction. Then in chapter two it gives us the blessing of receiving God's wisdom and instructions.
And then here in chapter three, the elements... And we're going to look at four of them tonight. Four elements that need to be true in our life in order for us to follow God's wisdom. One man said, a wise man learns by experience of others, an ordinary man learns by his own experience, and a fool learns from nobody's experience. It is a lot better to listen and learn than live and learn. It's better to live and learn than to never learn. So let us be those who are willing to learn, right? And so the key verse is here, really Proverbs 3, 5, and 6.
Hopefully most of us have committed those at some point to memory. It is the promise of God to direct our lives. And boy, we need direction in life.
We need direction. I am thankful for where God has allowed Lighthouse to grow to. Early on in the church we just, we had a very young church and it grew. We were a fat baby, so the church grew quick. There was a lot of people, but we didn't have a lot of mature people. And so there wasn't a lot of organic teaching going on. And some of the organic teaching that was going on was not always the best, because they didn't always have a lot of, when you have a church plan, it's a unique situation. You don't have a lot of aged wisdom in the church. And I'm so thankful now because when I look across our church, I see the wisdom of so many people gaining mentors.
I look across this room and I could literally just begin to name people and name their mentors, and I can name the people in here who are now mentoring other people. And that's what wise people do. They seek out others. They ask them, hey, what do you think about this? Let me bounce this off of you.
How do you think I should go about handling this situation? And I see it from both older people and younger people. And we just finished up a study through reengage. I know there was a lot of couples in that and I really appreciate Brian and Lauren Tecmyer and Jeff and then Wilbur who were helping oversee that and all the other couples that went through that and helping those that they were mentoring and how much that is needed. Couples need to be mentored. Right now I'm counseling, premarital counseling, five young couples.
About every two weeks I have about five different couples I'm meeting with and just being able to pour into their lives is a blessing and I thank God for that. And I thank God for a church that elevates the importance of encouraging and guiding and edifying other people. We need that. We need to be directed. We usually don't come up with the best path by ourself. We usually don't figure things out on our own.
We need lead. Psalm 37 23, the Bible says, the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. He delights in his way. Now I want my steps to be ordered by the Lord.
I don't want to figure this out and guess at it as I go through life. Now this promise of God and his wisdom leading us will never fail us if we obey these four conditions laid down in verse 1 through 12. And obedience to God brings his blessing.
And what you'll find here is really verse 1 through 12 is a is laid out in six segments and verse 1 and 2, 3 and 4 and it goes all the way down to verse 12 like that. And it's a condition, a command that he's giving us, and if you meet that condition the blessing that will come as a result of that. So he's saying this is what you should do and if you do this, this is the blessing that will come. And so do you believe God's wisdom and are you willing to follow that? And the evidence of that will be seen by the simple, clear, and practical areas of our life mentioned in verse 1 through 12. We will be directed by God's wisdom when we learn to trust him in these areas. And verse 1 through 4, the first area is by trusting his truth. Notice verse number 1 through 4, he says, my son forget not my law, but let thine heart keep my commandments. Length of days, long life, and peace shall they add. Let not mercy and truth forsake thee.
And he begins to talk about how you need to bind these even around your neck as though they were a necklace, something that would be a constant reminder to you. Now he's talking about his law, but this is not Solomon didn't make this up. This is God-inspired scripture.
That's what he's writing here, but he's owning it. It's something that is in his heart. That's why if you go back to Deuteronomy it says, let these words first be in your heart and then teach them diligently to your children. You have to own that truth for yourself before you can effectively pass that on. Now our lives are all built on something and it needs to be built upon the right foundation. And if you ever do a building project, the most important part of that building project will be the foundation.
You need to make sure you get the foundation right. And the question that we have to ask is what is truth? Because the most important thing we build on is the truth. And in John 17 verse 17, let's actually read this verse together. Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth. And so Psalms 119 160 also says thy word is true from the beginning and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth forever. So the Word of God is defined as truth. Ephesians 4 21 says the truth is in Jesus. 2 Timothy 2 15 calls us to study to show ourself approved unto God a workman that does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. So the Word of God is called the truth. Now we must trust that God's Word is truth and elevate that over our own opinions, thoughts, and feelings and what the culture says. So I would ask you, do you believe the Bible? It's a simple question, isn't it?
But it's a big question. Do you believe it? Like do you believe it in in Genesis 1? Do you believe it in Revelation 22? Do you believe the contents of the Scriptures? Is it more reliable than what man's opinions are?
What are you trusting in? Jesus at the end of the Sermon on the Mount said you can either listen to what I heard said and obey that and be wise and build on a rock or you cannot and you would build on the sand. Now this is the fourth major address from Solomon to his son.
Like the other three in chapter 1, one in chapter 10 verse through 19, chapter 1 verse 10 through 19, and in chapter 2, 1 through 22. In these 12 verses Solomon will give a command and imperative to his son calling him to obedience at some level and then the positive consequence that comes from that. Here we see a father pointing his son to God's truth, biblical truth.
And you know we cannot force our kids to turn out the right way, but we can certainly inject into their hearts the truth from God's Word from our mouth. And that's what Solomon is faithfully seeking to do. Proverbs 1a, my son, hear the instruction of thy father, forsake not the law of thy mother. Chapter 2, 1, my son, if thou wilt receive my words. Chapter 3 verse 1, my son, forget not my law. Chapter 4 verse 1. This goes on and on and on through the book of Proverbs. He is a faithful father at this point in his life, leading his son to the God-inspired truth. As parents, how can we be wise and apply these passages? If this is what we find in the book of wisdom, how can we follow this example? Would it not be to be diligent, diligent in passing that truth on?
I like what Max Anders said. He said, we need to catch Solomon's sense of urgency, whether it is our own children or our spiritual children we are ministering to, we need to work hard at passing down wisdom to this next generation. The downfall of so many youth in our world is the lack of ability to listen to their parents. It's the lack of ability to... Mark Twain, when he was a teenager, said, my dad doesn't know anything.
He said, he's not even worth listening to. And then by the time he became a young man, he said, my dad has a lot he can teach me. The problem wasn't that his dad changed, it was that he changed, right?
He grew up and realized that his dad knew a lot more than he thought. And so we need to make sure that our children need to remember they don't always know everything and to produce some humility in their hearts in that way. One way that works is when parents allow their kids to fail. If you protect them from failing, they'll never listen.
Anybody ever feel that way in your life? It was the failures of life that made your ears grow? Right? I didn't need to listen when I had all the answers. But when I realized, hey, there might be a... pain is a good teacher. It'll slow us down and cause us to ask good questions. I always knew when a kid began to grow up and mature is when they started asking questions.
Really, two things. One was they began to serve other people at some level. Like we'd have a youth event.
I was a youth pastor for five years. We'd have a youth event, have a bunch of kids out. And when I saw some teen like straightening up the chairs, that may seem little, I would be like, there's a leader right there.
We need to really pour into that kid. That kid's growing up right there. When I would see kids walking around and like, hey, you want me to take your trash? And they just started thinking about somebody else.
When they asked people how they're doing, when they would go up to a kid and say, you know, anybody sitting with you, and make a guest feel welcome. And I think that's true of adults. They care about other people. That's a sign of maturity.
Selfishness is a sign of youthfulness. But they also ask questions. Wise people ask questions. Some of the smartest, most wisest people I know are filled with questions all the time. It's not because they don't know the answers.
It's because that they are wise enough to know they don't have all the answers. That's why you should read the Bible. And that's why you should ask questions when you read the Bible. Do you think a wise person would ask questions when they're reading the Bible?
What do you think an unwise person would do? I read that chapter. I really didn't get anything out of it.
Oh, you thought the gold was laying on the surface, right? You didn't think you needed to bring a shovel for prayer? You didn't think you needed to read that more than once?
Dig in. It's always interesting to me when people say, yeah, I read that. I really didn't get anything out of that chapter. And I'm thinking, preach 15 sermons off of that thing. I mean, what do you mean? There's so much there, right? It's slowing down enough to elevate the truth and to listen to it. And so, our lives, for us to be able to pour into our children, have to be receiving truth.
We have to be filled with the truth. And I can tell you, parents that love Christ will infuse that organically into those that are in their home. Their kids will feel that.
They will see that. I think there was a generation of people in America years ago that were extremely disciplined in going to church as a culture, dressing nice, being a part of that system, but they didn't really bring it home and read their Bibles and teach their children the Word of God as effectively as they could. And they'll say, well, I raised my children in church, but they just never really talked about it like they could have at home. It wasn't like organically just loving Christ, living it out. Now, sometimes it does and kids have their own heart and they can go straight. But when it's external, when it's just a process of going through the motions and punching a time clock at church, that's not going to cause a heart change.
Kids know if it's real or not. And notice what he says, my son, forget not my law, let thine heart keep my commandments. Keep my commandments is his quest there. It's, I want this to be in your heart and I want you to keep them.
It's not enough to hear the truth. He's calling his son to obedience. James 1 22 says, be doers of the word not hearers only. He says, let thine heart. The Father is in wisdom recognizing obedience has to be sought first from his child on the inside.
I want to ask this question. The key to true lasting change and spiritual growth in children, where would that start? Where would it start for children to have true lasting change?
And let me ask this a couple different ways. Should parents focus more on the actions of their children or the attitudes of their children? Should parents focus more on disciplining actions or attitude? What is more important, obedience or honor? Because the Bible calls children to both, right? Ephesians 6, children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment with promise that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long upon the earth.
Ephesians 6 1 through 3. Obedience is commanded, but also honor is commanded. But I would ask, is it possible that we could have our children's obedience and not their honor? And it, but if we have their, if they honor the parent, do you think then you'll have their obedience?
Yeah. So it's not a victory if your kids room's a mess and you say go clean your room. Fine, I'll do it mom! Dad, you know, and they storm off and with attitude. Through the years, if my kids did that, I'm like, nah, come on back, come on back, it ain't gonna roll like that, nah, nah, nah, not in my house. The room being cleaned is secondary to that, that ain't gonna roll.
Come on back. They get irritated, they get frustrated, it don't matter, like we're gonna sit down, we're gonna talk, because that kind of spirit doesn't fly. My wife isn't, won't put up with it, I won't put up with it, and because if you, if a parent allows that, and we live in a culture today that parents think it's a victory if they get their kids to do something right. It's not a victory if they do something right, if their attitude is terrible. So we have to really focus on the importance of honor. Is that true of our faith in Christ? We can go through the motions and have obedience, but does He have our honor? Does He have our reverence? Because I can tell you, if He has our reverence, guess what else He has? Our obedience.
When I elevate Him to the place of right honor, I will have the right obedience. And then wisdom blesses those who receive and obey it. He says in verse number two, for length of days and a long life in peace shall they add to thee. Warren Wiersbe said, obedience to the word can add years to your life and add life to your years. Sin is a killer, isn't it?
Ecclesiastes 7 17 says, be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish. Why should thou die before thy time? So there is a time we're gonna die. I mean it's on God's plan for our lives to come to an end.
But we can die before that day arrives. By hastening it, shortening our life, by implementing foolish sins into our life. James 1 15, lust when it is conceived brings sin, and sin when it is finished it brings death. The Bible talks about in Proverbs 13 that the way of the transgressor is hard. You ever seen somebody who's 30 and they look like they're 50? Sin can age us.
It can wear us out. And generally speaking, those who obey God's truths will live a longer life because sin is a killer. Sometimes people say, well, I knew a good Christian that died young. Well, Jesus died at 33. But Jesus died because of sin, not in his sin. He died for our sin. And that great Christian that you say died didn't die. He is more alive today than he ever has and he had the length of days and eternal life.
He is... You know, sometimes people... I heard somebody say this a few years ago from our church, and I don't remember who said it. And they had a loved one. It could have even been a spouse. It was a very close family member. And they said, you know, I'm praying for their healing, but I know either way they're going to be healed. And I said, I said, I said, what did you say? And they said, well, I know they're going to be healed. Either God's going to heal them here or he's going to heal them there. I was like, that's really good. I mean, what a, what a... And that's true.
All right? And so we have that wonderful joy. I think about Psalms 21, 4. I love this verse. It says, he has life of thee and thou gaveth to him even length of days forever and ever.
Isn't that great? So you come to God and say, God, will you be gracious? Would you give life to me? And he gives it to you forever. Like, how do I have eternal life?
Ask him. I had a man, I had a couple different guys over the last week. I got down on my knees with these different men in different settings. And I said, why don't you ask God what you want him to do for you? And both with tears in their eyes called out to Christ, repenting of their sin, confessing Jesus is Lord, and asking him to forgive them, to save them.
Isn't it great? You know, Romans 10 says, Say not in thy heart, where shall we basically find salvation? Will we bring Jesus Christ down from above or ascend up into heaven? Where do we find salvation? He's asking the question in verse 6 and 7, Romans 10. And he said this, he said in verse 8, he says, it's even in your mouth. That is the word of faith which we preach, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, believe in thy heart God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. Salvation is in your mouth. It's not in your hands. It's not in your works. It's in your heart, and the evidence of that is a proclamation of your faith in Christ.
Ask life of him. And it says, and not only length of days, and it says, but he'll add peace to you. Verse 2, length of days and a long life and peace shall he add unto thee.
I think about Psalm 119, 165. Great peace have they that love thy law. Nothing shall offend them. Nothing shall offend them. People with Christ's law in their heart, they follow the Word of God.
They are hard to be offended. Sin removes peace. It's vexing.
Sin is a vexing thing. If you follow your life and ask yourself, what were the worst days that I had, just mentally, internally, just the days? It wasn't because problems came. It was just because I just mentally was off. I just felt edgy. And ask yourself, did I get up that morning and make time for God? Did I spend valuable time before the Lord and let his word rest upon good soil in my heart?
Or did I just get up and race into the day? And I can tell you, friends, one of the things that people tell me over and over is when they give their life to Christ, they're like, I just have so much more peace now. I have so much more peace than I used to have. Anybody find that to be true? And you know why that's the case?
It's because it's a lordship thing. You go from being a driver to being a passenger. It's like, oh, I like this seat better. It's a lot better to have the Lord drive this car, right? My daughter's going through her permit process right now, getting really close to passing her test and getting her license. I feel a lot more comfortable with my wife driving than my 16-year-old sweet daughter, right? She's a good little driver, but I can tell you, the Lord drives a lot better than we do. And when he sits on the throne, it's a peaceful journey. He says, let not mercy and truth forsake thee, in verse 3.
And how do you keep that from happening? He says, bind them about your neck. You know, many in our culture wear jewelry around their neck, nothing wrong with that. But we need to bind the Word of God. We're making up some of those bracelets that have become very kind of an in thing. And one thing we're doing is taking the phrase, know Christ, make him known.
And we're going to be getting those out in the next couple of weeks. And just some of the focus of what we're doing, to where we can remind ourselves, have something on that reminds you that, hey, I need to not only grow in Christ knowing him, but I need to make him known. I need to be passing on my faith.
And so bind those things around your heart and by doing that physically as well. This statement's also, if you remember, in Deuteronomy 6, he says, after he says, teach them diligently to your children, Deuteronomy 6, 8 says thou shall bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. Like have the Word of God constantly on you.
And they would do that. They had their little boxes that they would put upon their phylacteries, and they would put the mezuzah, is that what that's called, on the doors of the Jewish homes. And when they walk in, they have little texts of Scripture, usually Deuteronomy 6, the Shema they would have in there. And they would rub that as they go in the door as a way of reminding themselves.
They took this very literally is what I'm trying to say. Even when you go there, if you were to go to Israel today, even in places that are not your home, like you just go to a hotel, they can even have those very, very fundamental to their faith. And so, and then I like what he says here in verse number 3, he says, Let not mercy and truth forsake thee, bind them upon thine neck. And then he says, write them upon the table of thine heart. Here we see the hearts being viewed like a table where something can be written on. And I would ask you tonight, what are you writing on your heart?
What are you allowing to be written there? To have God's Word written on our hearts speaks of a meditation of God's Word. Again, if we obey the commands and the positive consequence follows in verse 4, So shall thou find favor and good understanding.
That find favor means like a good reputation. You'll have a good name and good understanding or good competence in the sight of God and man. Others will see you and recognize the competence and intelligence of such a wise individual that would listen to God's truth. So trust God with truth. Secondly, trust God with your heart in verse 5. These again are very famous texts of Scripture, trust in the Lord with all thine heart. Here there is a trust and a lean not. If you notice, trust in the Lord with all thine heart, lean not. So there's something positive you do and then there's something negative you don't want to do. So you must learn to trust and you must learn to distrust.
They go hand in hand. The problem is people will trust in God but then they don't stop and pull away from trusting in their own heart. They can often lead them astray. You know, I know the Bible says this, but I think that.
Don't put a but where the Bible puts a period, right? So being led by God in life is an issue of, again, trust and distrust. We are by default sinners.
We are born going in the wrong direction. The heart is not a trustworthy entity as Jeremiah 17, 9 tells us. And Proverbs 28, 26 puts it clearly, he that trusts in his own heart is a fool.
We don't want to do that. Ecclesiastes 9, 3 says the heart of the sons of men is full of evil. Jesus in Matthew 7, 11, he said, If you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall the Father in heaven give good gifts? I mean, he's like, by default, you're just all evil.
Isn't that interesting? I mean, he's talking to all the people that are following him, all the Jewish people there at the time. The assumption is we always go in the wrong direction. Trusting in God and distrust in self are inseparable. They're two sides of the same coin. To trust fully in God means to remove the full trust in self. It's a lean to and a not lean. To recognize God as a leader and give your heart over to God for leading means to remove yourself from leading.
When I was a younger father, my children were small. We would go hiking down at the Narrows. Anybody go hiking down here to Narrows like three miles away?
Nobody goes hiking down there? Oh, you guys just didn't want to respond. Is that how this is going to work?
Work a lot better if you talk back like this, right? So we'd go down the Narrows. My daughter at the time, I think she was in kindergarten or first grade, and she's super competitive. So I have four daughters, and my youngest and my oldest are super competitive. My middle two, I don't know, because my wife is as sinful as me. We both don't like losing.
I think I'm more sinful, obviously, with competition probably. But my middle two, we would play a game or something, and I'm like, yes, I won! And they're like, great, Daddy, I'm so glad for you. I'm like, what do you mean you're glad for me? You should be in turmoil right now.
I just smoked your shorts, you know, at some game. But my oldest and youngest, man, they are like, we would go out hiking, and if my oldest daughter is running up a hill, my youngest is trying to catch up to her and keep up with her, and she'd get so upset. And so we would do this thing, and when she was in school, it must have been in kindergarten or something, they would have a line leader. The teacher would say, who's the line leader? And then the line leader would come, and everybody had to get directly behind them. So we'd go hiking, I'm like, I'm the line leader. My daughter, she couldn't handle it, so she'd always try to run past me.
And I used to be able to outrun her before I had the skinny leg problem. And so, but whoever the line leader was, everybody else had to fall in line behind them. Somebody had to be the leader, and the others were the followers. And really, that's what we are called to do. We are to let God be the line leader in our life, to trust Him, and we are to fall in line with Him.
It's an interesting word here, the word trust. In verse 5, trust in the Lord. It literally can be translated to lie helpless and face down.
It's batah, to throw one down upon his face, lie extended on the ground. It's a picture of a servant waiting for the master's command and readiness to obey. It also spoke of a defeated soldier yielding himself to the conquering general. You are surrendering your will to the heart of God.
You take orders from a new commander and general. This is the idea, you trust Him, you are a servant to Him, you come underneath Him, you throw yourself down before Him. It's a total commitment. Romans 12.1 is a picture of that, as we are called to be living sacrifices. Weresby said, this warning doesn't suggest that God's children turn off their brains and ignore their intelligence and common sense. It simply cautions us not to depend on our own wisdom and experience the wisdom and experience of others. So it doesn't mean that you follow Him without thought, but it means that you fully commit your way unto the Lord and depend on Him. And then he says in verse 7, be not wise in your own eyes. Be not wise in your own eyes. This is so reflective of Romans 1.22 when they rejected the idea of God, they began to profess themselves to be wise. The Bible says they become fools.
He says in verse 7, fear the Lord and depart from evil. We think about fear oftentimes in a negative sense, like fearing is something bad and there is a sense of a fear that can be bad. But fear is also necessary.
It's very beneficial. I want my kids, when they were little, to fear running on the street. I wanted them to be afraid of that.
I didn't want them to be afraid of the dark, but I wanted them to be afraid of being crippled by some kind of a vehicle. A lack of fear and reverence has crippled many in society. A lack of fear of parents leads to rebellious kids. A lack of fear for teachers leads to rebellious students. A lack of fear for authority leads to rebellious civilians. By the way, students, wouldn't it be nice if the taking care of schools went back to the states and not the federal government?
I'm all for that. A lack of fear in society leads to civil rebellion. We see that in California right now, right? Anybody see the people protesting on the streets because they don't like some of the things going on with ICE? But the same people waving flags for Mexico don't want to go back to Mexico. Right?
Is that interesting? But what happened was the police came out there in a great show of force and then they just left. So instead of addressing the situation, and all that does is when you don't address the situation, you empower them to get even more emboldened. I would not feel safe driving down that road. Would anybody want your kids, your 16-year-old daughter, your wife with her kids driving down that road?
I wouldn't. In El Salvador, raise your hand if you're not familiar with what's happened in El Salvador over the last three, four years. Okay, it's okay. El Salvador was the most dangerous nation that I know of on the planet. It is today the safest country, it is the safest nation in the Western hemisphere, the lowest number of murders. It went from the top number of murders to the lowest.
Why? Because a 37-year-old guy came into power and he took his military and he went after MS-13 and another group, the Barras I think they're called, 18, and it's two massive gangs, some of the most wicked gangs in the world that just slaughter people and do just as evil as you could imagine. And they rounded them all up and they put them in a prison that holds about, I think it's 40,000 inmates in Secot prison, and they put these guys in a prison where they're in a holding cell for 23 and a half hours a day. They have 80 people to a holding cell, and they just have shelves of beds.
They have no pillow, no blanket. They lay on that steel, and that's their life. One toilet for 80 guys, a washbasin, they can use some water, a tub where they can get some drinking water, and that's their prison. And America is working with them right now to send some of the worst illegal immigrants to that prison. And I can tell you, people think, well, that just seems so unkind to put those guys in there.
If you think that's unkind, talk to the parents whose children were brutalized and their wives were brutalized and the people were brutalized and kids couldn't even go to school and schools were shut down because of that, and now you go to El Salvador and children are playing in the streets. What happens is when you don't punish evildoers, the righteous suffer. But if you punish the evildoers, the righteous are blessed. And what I mean by righteous is those who are not out to do criminal activity.
So I'm always for strong law and bring... And by the way, they get out for 30 minutes, they bring them out in the hallway where they preach the Word of God to them, and they sing hymns. Isn't that amazing? And it only took about two to three years for him to change the entire country.
Two to three years. I believe America could be transformed in the next few years in a lot of ways, and I thank God personally for the things that are going on right now. And it's okay to be thankful for our country, right? So he says, fear the Lord and depart from evil. Fear is a good thing.
If criminals don't have a sense of fear, you have a society that can be chaotic. And the same thing is if people don't fear God, it leads to incredible rebellion, and there needs to be a sense of fear. When you go back to the diatribe of Paul in Romans 3, and he begins to lay down that there's none righteous, none not one, none does good, he goes into all the things, their throat is an open sepulchre, with their tongues they've used to see, the poison of asps under their lips, their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery in their way, the way of peace that they had not known. Verse 18, it says, the root cause of this, there is no fear of God before their eyes. You have no fear of God, and I don't care what I do. And in Romans 1, 32 says, they know the judgment of God, that they that do such things should be punished, but they rejoice in it instead.
They celebrate it, and it needs to be feared. Now in all thy ways it says, so fear the Lord, and then in all thy ways acknowledge Him. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, in all your ways. Verse 37, verse 5 says, commit thy way unto the Lord, trust in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. And so we are to acknowledge Him, we are not to be wise in our own eyes, we are to depart from evil. And verse 8 goes on and says, it will be health to thy navel, and marrow or fatness to thy bones. It will bless you, it will prosper you, and if you trust the Lord with your heart.
So when you acknowledge Him again, it is you bring Him in, you recognize Him, you acknowledge Him in all your ways, He's ever presently with you. And then a third way we need to trust God is not only His truths, not only with our heart, but we need to also trust God with our resources. This is an interesting couple verses. Notice verse 5 and 6, trust in the Lord with all thine heart. Notice what it also includes in verse 9, honor the Lord with thy substance. That word substance there is hone in the Hebrew, it means wealth, riches, or substance. So honor the Lord with thy substance, thy riches, your money, and with the first fruits of all thine increase.
So can I effectively trust God if I don't honor Him with my resources? It is a way of honoring Him and is a way of trusting Him. Honor the Lord with thy substance. And then with the first fruits, and why does He say that? Honor the Lord with thy substance and with the first fruits. What is the first fruits? Well, the idea of first fruits speaks about what is the best. It is the chief, it is the top, it is the best portion, it is the filet mignon.
You're a state guy. Bring me out that fat cut, medium, not medium well, don't want to ruin it. And so it is the best portion. I think it's important for people to understand that God calls us to give Him of our best.
I think it should be in all aspects of our life. That's why I love getting up in the morning, giving God my early day, giving Him my... I love that Sunday morning is the first day of the week.
You think that's by accident? First day of the week, first hour of the week, we come and worship. What's that do? That sets the pace, doesn't it, for the week? I give Him the first cut. I give Him the best portion. I give Him my first.
I want to lay that before Him. And I think it's a way of honoring, I think it's a way of recognizing. If you ever want to read a passage of Scripture that's very disheartening about this, it's the book of Malachi, where they were like, Lord, it is so wearisome for us to continue doing these sacrifices and honoring you in these ways. And they dishonored God because they kept giving God their leftovers, what they could afford, what they didn't really want anyway. And I think about with God, it's, you know, He gave us His first. You know the Bible calls Jesus the firstfruits? The Bible says in Romans 8 23 that He gave us the firstfruits of His Holy Spirit.
So if He gave us the first cut, the best portion, He sacrificed fully the best for us. Are we going to honor Him by giving Him the leftover? How many days will it be that we say, I just couldn't find time to read? How long will it be that I just couldn't make time in my day to get up and pray? You know, the memory verse is just a little too taxing. Every Sunday, it's just, you know, it's cutting into my day.
And it's just heartbreaking, I think. You know, we need to honor God with our best, and I just want to thank you for being here tonight to honor Him with your time. What a blessing. What a blessing that is. And so ask yourself tonight, do you give God the first part of your finances?
Did you get the first portion? What does your giving say about your trust in the Lord? And He says here in verse 10, blessings come, so shall thy barns be filled with plenty, thy presses shall burst out with new wine. This was an agricultural society where the blessing was really in the product that would come from the ground, the crops. It's not so much a promise of great physical wealth, but a provision. But it would be a bountiful provision.
Like, so if you honor the Lord, put Him first. And I can tell you, when you're in those kind of societies where you're basing on crops and agrarian economies, you are so much believing in God, like you got to trust in Him. My grandfather was a farmer. We got some farmers at our church. The sun's got to be, you got to have so many, you know, it's got to be sunny at times. It's got to be rainy at other times.
The weather is very dependent, and you can't control any of that. And so it's a big faith thing to be a farmer. So for these guys, it was a very big step of trust in God. And when you do that, He's going to provide for you.
He's going to take care of you. Now, this is also repeated in the New Testament by Jesus in Luke 6, 38. He says, Give, and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over shall men give unto your bosom, for with the same measure that you meet it shall be measured to you again. And every time I think about that verse, I think about getting that bag of chips that is not pressed down, that is not shaken together, but that is filled with air. It's like a politician, right? They've just got a bunch of air in it.
It's like, come on, give me some substance here. I've been deceived. I got the big bag.
There's eight chips at the bottom. And let me give you one last point, and we'll finish. Trust God with truth. Trust God with your heart.
Trust God with your resources. And finally, if you want to be wise and be led by wisdom, trust God to discipline you. And we all love to be disciplined. Verse 11, he says this, My son despised not the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of his correction. Hebrews 12, 11 says, Now no chastening for the present seems to be joyous, but grievous.
Nobody likes to be disciplined. Nobody's like, yes, I was hoping I would go through some difficulty. I was hoping I would be chastened for the wrongs that I've done. But it says, Nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteous unto them that are exercised or disciplined by it. I think about Job 5, 17, he says, Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects. I can tell you the reason most of us are here tonight is because God brought some level of pain in our life that corrected us.
Coarse correction. God's attitude toward disciplining us is threefold. Number one, God disciplines out of love. Verse 12, For whom the Lord loves, he corrects, even as a father of the son in whom he delights. So God's discipline is out of love. He doesn't do it because he hates us. He does it because he loves us.
Proverbs 13, 24 says, He that loves his child, it says, will discipline him often. My dad liked that verse. It's like, Son, I love you. I was like, Well, can I love you back?
Come on, let's share in this love. God is gracious to us in our discipline. Psalm 103, 10, one of my favorite chapters in the Bible says, He hath not dealt with us after our sins. He's not rewarded us according to our transgression.
You know that's true. God hasn't dealt with us what we deserve. Sometimes people say, God's not fair. And I'm like, Praise God, he's not.
We're not looking for fair. We are looking for grace. And then secondly, God disciplines us as a father. Verse 12, Even as a father of the son in whom he delights. Even as a father, as far as the east is from the west, it says, so far as he removed our transgressions from us. As a father disciplines his children, he is like a father disciplining us. Psalms 103, 13 goes on and talks about. And so Hebrews 12, 7 goes on and says, If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons.
For what son is he whom the father chastens or disciplines not? This is an act of grace upon our life. Why is it an act of grace? Because he disciplines us which is a lesser pain to keep us from the sin that would be the greater pain. The consequence is much worse because there is no grace when sin gets finished with us.
Sin will destroy our life. And chastening also has a purifying effect. He disciplines us as a father. And thirdly, he disciplines us to purify us.
Hebrews 12, 9 and 10 says, Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the father of spirits and live? For they verily for a few days chastened or disciplined us after their own pleasure, but he for our profit that we might be partakers of his holiness.
Isn't that great, knowing that when God disciplines us, it's always for a benefit. So I would rather listen to God than to be disciplined by God. And so that's why we need to trust him with all of our heart, not to lean on our own understanding. We need to come before him. So I would ask tonight, do you want God's wisdom to direct you? Then you need to trust in God's truth. Let your heart keep his commandments. Let not mercy and truth forsake you. Bind them around your heart.
Write them upon your heart. Trust God with all of your heart as well, not on our own understanding. There is, again, a trust and a corresponding distrust. And prayer is an act of trust. It's an act of dependence, and that's why prayer is so important. Thirdly, trust God with your resources.
Give him the first and the best. Trust him and he will take care of you. And then lastly, trust God to discipline you. Have the right attitude toward chastening.
Realize God is disciplining you because he loves you, because he wants to produce something better in you that would not be there if he did not discipline you. And so tonight, wherever you're at, I pray that the Word of God would be heeded, that we would perhaps this week, if you've not memorized, then you would memorize Proverbs 3, verse 5 and 6, to trust in the Lord with all of our heart, not to lean on our own understanding, but in all our ways acknowledge him. And friends, he will direct our path. Isn't it good to know there is a God that loves us and wants to direct us through this life? Amen. We're not alone. We have a guide that is more reliable than our phone and Google Maps. We have a God that will always take us down the right road, and so let's lean into him tonight. Let's all stand this evening.
