Therefore I Will Trust You #1

In general, the way that God works is that God's people have a better life than his enemies do.

There is a blessing that God has for his people when they follow him and when they obey him. What does real trust in God look like? We'll show you on this edition of the Truth Pulpit. Hello, I'm Bill Wright, and Pastor Don Green will be taking us to the well-known verses, Proverbs 3, 5 through 6, for a message titled, Therefore I Will Trust You. And Don, saying you trust God is one thing.

Proving it is another. Well, you've got that right, Bill. You know, my friend, it is a clear biblical principle that we are to trust the Lord in everything that we do. And the question is, what does that look like? Scripture says to trust the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

Well, it has the sense of knowing who God is through what he has revealed in his word and then drawing implications going forward in your life. That's what we're going to consider in the message just ahead here on the Truth Pulpit. Thanks, Don. And friend, have your Bible handy as we join our teacher now in the Truth Pulpit. I'm going to give you four points. We'll go through them all too quickly. Ha, that's a joke.

I never go through anything quickly, but it's nice to dream. Point number one here, I just want to take a look at the context, and the context is this, God blesses obedience. This is a very important way to frame this text to look at the greater setting in which it sets. And Proverbs 3 unfolds the blessing of God that comes from trusting God. God blesses obedience, and at the core of what he calls us to is to have a trusting disposition toward him. And so obedience cannot be separated from trust, and trust cannot be separated from obedience. Look at the first four verses with me. Proverbs chapter 3 verses 1 through 4 says, 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. Do not let kindness and truth leave you.

Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart, so you will find favor and good repute in the sight of God and man. Now, simply stated, far too oversimplified, the core command in those four verses, you could say, is God commanding you to set your heart on his word. To let his word, to let the scriptures, now in our day, the 66 books of the Bible, to be a preeminent affection in your heart. And in the context Solomon tells his son, be a kind and truthful man, and it comes with a promise. The promise is that you will have a productive and a peaceful life that brings you honor from God and from man. And so there's just this setting that says God blesses obedience and so be obedient to him.

Why would you not do that? Why would you not want the blessing that God promises for a heart that is oriented toward his word and toward his character? Look on...we'll jump over verses 5 and 6 for a moment and go to verse 7 here.

Again, just setting the context for you. And the context is God blesses obedience. Look at verse 7. It says, Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil.

It will be healing to your body and refreshment to your bones. Honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of all your produce so that your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine. The command, the context, live a humble life that is set on holiness. The promise is God will refresh you and give you prosperity.

True Christianity is a humble life that is devoted to the word of God that seeks to subordinate our life and our priorities and our affections to the God who has revealed himself in his word, written and incarnate. This is just Christianity that we're talking about here. And in Proverbs what you have here is this. It's important to remember this about the book of Proverbs. Proverbs are not guarantees about absolute cause and effect in every situation without exception. Proverbs simply give us a sense of truth from a long-term perspective.

Over the course of life, over the course of cultures, over the course of many, many people, over the course of time, this principle is marked out as true. God blesses his people. God is faithful to those who devote themselves to him. God is no debtor to those who seek him. And we realize, and Scripture teaches us, that there are sometimes odd exceptions there in the midst of that.

Job suffered, though he was a righteous man. In Psalm 73, we see the psalmist greatly troubled because the wicked are prospering in front of his eyes. And so Proverbs is not a denial of those kinds of things. In general, the way that God works is that God's people have a better life than his enemies do.

You know, it's not Christians that they find dead in the gutter, having fallen over from excessive intoxication or heroin overdoses or anything like that. It's not people who are living obedient lives to Christ that find their lives cut off by sin or find themselves in the misery of another failed marriage again and again and again, is it? That's what this passage is teaching us, is that there is a blessing that God has for his people when they follow him and when they obey him. That's the basic context of this passage.

God blesses obedience to his people. And so that's the context in which we find verses 5 and 6. Just a simple contrast, simple context, I should say.

And all of that is necessary to get to the meat of what we want to talk about here. We've talked about the context, God blesses obedience. I want to show you the contrast now that is in the text, verses 5 through 6. And this is where we're going to spend most of our time.

We'll blow through the rest of it pretty quickly at the end. But point number two is where this passage comes and addresses your heart with power and addresses it with authority and addresses you with a sense of both, a sense of convicting power where you realize I have really strayed off the mark here and also with a beckoning, with a promise to come and do what this text tells you to do so that you would experience the blessing that God gives to his people. Right at the core of the obedience that God blesses is trusting him. And so what we're going to see in this second point here is the contrast. I'm going to state the contrast by way of a question that you need to answer for your own life. The question is this, who will you trust?

Who will you trust? That is the question that this text imposes upon our hearts and minds and souls. Look at verse 5 with me now as we finally get into the text that we really want to consider here today. It says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. Look at that, beloved.

Teaching by way of a contrast. Teaching and setting trust in our Lord versus trust in yourself. Look at it again with me.

There's no reason to hurry here. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. Here's the thing, beloved.

This is where you really need to wire in and focus on. We're not here today to talk about complexities of Hebrew grammar or to talk about different aspects of Old Testament theology. What we're here to do today is to talk about the kind of life that you are living in the presence of God. What kind of heart response are you offering back to Him in light of the salvation that He has brought you to in the Lord Jesus Christ? I speak today as to Christians. I speak today as addressing brothers and sisters in Christ. That's the perspective from which I am speaking here today. So I'm talking to you like a brother or sister in Christ. And so the question is, as we come to this text, is what kind of person are you on the inside? Not just what you think, but how do you think, how do you frame your perspective? What is your view of life in view of the way that God has saved you and the fact that God is who He is?

What does that do to you? That's the question. Who will you trust? You see, an obedient life, the life that God blesses, an obedient life, a faithful life starts with always trusting God no matter what.

Always having a sense of confidence in Christ no matter what. And this word trust, I know we toss around these words trust and faith like, you know, we say those things pretty easily. And every one of you knows enough to say, you know, you're supposed to say, I trust God.

I have faith in God. And you look at this text and you say, well, that's just affirming what I already know. And so what's the point of looking at this? Well, beloved, I think there's more to it than that. Let's look at it this way. And look, this just comes to us in life.

This comes to us where we live. And I have no doubt that I'm preaching an irrelevant sermon to you today. I have no doubt that this text is not going to matter to the way that life goes for you. There's no question about that.

That's the least of my concerns here today. What is trust, beloved? Think about it this way. I don't want to give you a technical lexical definition today.

I want it to be accurate and yet where we live. Trust, when you think about it, trust relates to the basic way that you look to the future. Trust relates to the basic way that you look to the future. When you contemplate what lies ahead in your life, either as an older man, a young seminary student just looking out on the front steps of ministry, whatever the case may be, how do you look to the future? What is your disposition? What is your attitude toward what lies ahead in your life? Do you live life with a general basic sense of serenity? Or do you live life with a basic disposition of anxiety? Are you marked by hope and confidence and expectation of the blessing of God?

Or fear and doubt and wondering if God's going to pull the rug out from you at some point in time as if God were actually like that? That's what we need to consider. This is what we're framing. You see, that's what we're talking about because look at the text with me again here, verse 5, in the unlikely event that you think I'm overstating the case of what this verse is saying, look at verse 5 again.

It says, trust in the Lord with all your heart, with an undivided disposition of confidence in the future because you know who the Lord is and you trust Him and you believe Him to be faithful to His promises, to bless obedience, to bless faith in Him. That's what we want to talk about here. So we're going to teach it by way of a contrast. The contrast is this, and it's so simple, it's so basic. You're going to say, you went to seminary all those years and this is how complex you can make it? Well, what can I say? The contrast is this, you trust God and you do not trust yourself.

You trust God and you do not trust yourself. We're going to unpack this. Now, truism alert here. Life is difficult, I get that. Life is often sad and disappointing, I get that. I realize that for many of you the present day is one of great difficulty and challenge. I get that. And honestly, I feel for you.

That matters to me. That's part of the reason why we're talking about this text is because I know that this text can help you in that. But having acknowledged that, beloved, here's what you and I cannot do.

We cannot do this. We cannot marginalize this text with the fact that life is difficult. When the text says, trust in the Lord with all your heart, you have no prerogative to say, but you don't understand how hard life is for me right now. Beloved, that has nothing to do with it.

And we just need to be real honest and real candid with each other as we talk this way. You see, trust means that you have confidence that God will bless you because you are one of His children. That's a simple way to define trust. And that means that you trust God as you walk with Him and you trust Him that He is going to bless you, that He is going to do good to you, and that that is your expectation as you look forward in life, not because of any merit in yourself, not because of any wise or clever way that you can structure your life. Remember I said I'm speaking as to brothers and sisters in Christ here, so I'm making a really big presumption as I speak. You say that you belong to Christ. I believe you.

There are consequences to that. Do you know your God? Do you know who He is?

Do you know who He has revealed Himself to be? You trust God to bless you as you walk with Him and, that's the positive side, negative side, you refuse doubt when adversity comes your way. You refuse to give yourself over to those nagging fears and those expectations that something else is going to go wrong here and what's going to happen to me?

You reject that. There's a positive dimension and a negative dimension that we're going to address here. But how is it, beloved, how is it that you can live that way? How is it that a believer should be marked by this absolute certainty as they look forward to absolute uncertainty because we don't know what our lives are going to be like tomorrow, James 4 says, doesn't it? I don't know what my life is going to be like tomorrow, so how can I know what to expect?

How do I know how to deal with that? Well here is why you look to the future with confidence. This is so basic. This is so basic. This is so fundamental what we're about to look at. It is essential to let this sink deeply into your heart.

Let's just run through a string of things that you know to be true. Why can you look to the future with confidence? Isn't God loving and righteous? Doesn't God know what you need before you ask Him, Matthew 6? Doesn't God know the number of hairs on your head?

Doesn't Scripture say that nothing is too difficult for Him? Scripture says that, right? You believe that, right? When I tell you that God is loving and righteous, you believe that, right? See that's just the way it is.

Let's go further. Didn't your heavenly Father send the Lord Jesus Christ into this world with the specific purpose that He would give His life as a propitiation for your sins in order to save you from the just wrath of God on you for your rebellion against Him? Didn't God in love send Christ in order to save you? He did that, didn't He? Christ willingly laid His life down in order to fulfill that, didn't He? And at some point in your life, the Holy Spirit worked in your heart and opened your heart to believe the things about the gospel and you believed in Christ and He saved you and forgave you all of your sins and washed away all of your sins and put you on a path that leads certainly to heaven.

He did that, didn't He? My brother and sister in Christ, He did that, didn't He? Now, hasn't He reserved a place in heaven for you that can never be taken away? Isn't there, I'm speaking metaphorically here, isn't there a graven nameplate just waiting at the banquet table of Christ for you to take your seat at?

He did that for you. Soon enough, we'll sit down at that banquet with Him, at that place reserved for us, and we'll leave all of this life behind and we'll be with our Lord forever and we will look into His blessed face. We will see the blessed face of the One who loved us enough to lay down His life for us. And we'll have the blessed privilege of bowing at His feet and somehow saying, Lord, thank you.

And that little moment is going to be greater than anything multiplied lifetimes could have brought to you in this life. Didn't God give you the holy Scriptures where He could be known, the place where you can find your help and comfort? And as you go through life as a Christian and this word just becomes more and more precious and you kiss it because you love it so much. Didn't God send the indwelling Holy Spirit as a seal, as a down payment that there was lots more to come in your salvation?

Didn't God do that to you? We're talking fundamental basic Bible truth, aren't we? These are the fundamentals of salvation we're talking about here.

All of those things are true. Well, beloved, haven't you entrusted your soul to Christ based on those realities? The most precious thing that you have, the most valuable asset, the most important thing is what happens to your soul eternally?

What is going to happen to you when you die? That's the only thing that ultimately matters. And because you're a Christian, you're telling me, I've given all of that over to Christ and I'm secure in Christ and I trust Him and I know that He will keep me and no one will pluck me from His hand and He will deliver what He's promised and I'll be with Him in heaven forever. You believe that, don't you? Well, in the language of the argument of Romans chapter 8, those are the great things, beloved. Those are the crucial things.

That's what really matters. In the midst of that then, don't you know that if God was good enough and loving enough and gracious enough to do that, that He will do the lesser things, that He will care for the lesser things that are associated with your earthly life? Having done the greater thing at the cost of the blood of His own Son, won't He most certainly do the lesser things that are associated with the details of this temporary and passing life?

Won't He do that? Those of you that are parents or those of you that have had parents, think about that. You'll think later and say, wow, that covered everybody. Those of you that are parents, you'll understand this even if it hasn't been your happy personal experience like it has been for me and Nancy. You give your life to caring for your kids. You love them. You're faithful to them.

You feed them day after day. You correct them. You give whatever they need. You try to provide them with some measure of wisdom in your own failing, frail way. And you give yourself over to them.

Well, isn't it right? Isn't that why Scripture says that children should honor their fathers and mothers, obey your parents and the Lord for this is right? You see, when a parent demonstrates consistent daily faithfulness and always has taken care of the needs of the child, there is something that is perverse where if a child would say, I don't trust you, or for a child to reject parents like that and say, I want nothing to do with you, you understand on a human level that faithful parents should get faithful trust in response, don't you? You understand that. Do you understand that I'm not talking about earthly parents here?

I'm not talking about earthly families at all. Talking about you in relationship to your heavenly Father. If your heavenly Father has done all of the things that we have talked about here and 10,000 more beside the time forbids us to plumb the wonderful depths of, isn't it the only right and proper thing for you to do to look up with grateful eyes, to look up, to lift up a grateful heart to this God and say, God, thank you. And God, I trust you for whatever else may come. How could you withhold that kind of trust from Him?

Why would you even want to? And beloved, here's the thing, and here's where I think that a lot of us have misunderstood this passage maybe, treated it superficially might be the better way to go. You see, we think about trust in the sense of just a blind trust.

And I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm just going to trust that everything works out okay. That's not biblical trust. There is nothing glorifying to God thinking that way, nothing at all. No, what trust is biblically speaking, as you can see from what we have said, is that trust is the righteous confidence that we render toward God in response to revealed certainties. It is a revealed certainty that God is loving, gracious, holy, true, infinite, self-existent, and that He is good and faithful to His people. The name for Him used here, Lord in all caps in your English text, Yahweh, the covenant keeping promise keeping God to His people. That's who God is.

He keeps His promises to His people. You say you believe that, Christian. Well, that should affect the way that you think about the future of life, even in the most severe of circumstances, and some of them I know are really severe. I get that. We're not talking about our circumstances here that shift and change with the waves of the ocean. We're talking about who God is and who God has revealed Himself to be. And this is certain.

This is true. This is more certain than your next breath, beloved. God blesses obedience, so will you trust Him or your circumstances as you understand them? Pastor Don Green will show you what an intimate walk with God should look like next time as we bring you the conclusion of the message, Therefore I Will Trust You. Come now to be with us here on the Truth Pulpit. But right now, here's Don with some exciting ministry news. Well, my friend, today I have an opportunity to offer you something for free that goes beyond what we've done on our radio broadcast. It's a ten-message CD album titled The Bible and Roman Catholicism.

It's a series I recently completed at Truth Community Church, taking Scripture and evaluating what Catholics teach and believe about the pope, about Mary, about the mass, and about the whole nature of salvation. It's a resource that you really need to have in your hands, either for yourself or for your friends and loved ones, to know how to interact with them. And it's available for free at the place that Bill's going to point you to right now. Just visit us at thetruthpulpit.com and click on Radio Offers to learn more. I'm Bill Wright. See you next time on the Truth Pulpit.