Trust In The Lord
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1 My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments,
2 for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you.
3 Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.
4 So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
What does it mean to trust? We can define trust as a reliance on and confidence in something or someone. So, who or what do we put our trust in? Our family? Our job? Our bank? Our vehicle? Our doctor? Our friends? Our sports team?
How is it that we grow in our trust? We build relationships based on their reliability, commitment, and dependability. It takes time, sometimes it is short, others takes a long time. There is an old saying “Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair.” We, as humans, are by nature un-trusting individuals. Why? Because we know that we can’t trust ourselves!
Now, think back to that list of things we trust...how many times have they let us down?
Now, if we can continue to have faith in things or people that let us down, why does it seem to be so hard to trust and have faith in someone who has NEVER let us down? Someone who has always been faithful, true, and trustworthy? You see, Christian faith is, essentially, trust in the person and character of God. Now, think hard - how many times has God ever let you down?
Here, we find King Solomon giving sage advice to his son. He is reminding him that he is obligated to live a life worthy of the covenant relationship with the Lord. But it does not come without guidance. Solomon shows his son how to obey the commands of God, and then describes the reward that comes as a result of being faithful to fully trust God.
Remember God’s Commands
Remember God’s Commands
1 My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments,
2 for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you.
Notice the start of these verses - my son. Here we will see Fatherly advice, instruction being given from Solomon to his son, the crown prince. When we look at these instructions, we find a pattern. A “command”, “guidance”, and a “promise” or “reward”.
The Command - do not forget my teaching. The word used here for teaching is ‘torah’ - the word of the father to his son. For us, we know that the LAW of God was revealed to Moses and recorded in the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures (the Pentateuch).
Guidance - BUT let your heart (with all understanding/mind) keep my commandments. In biblical times, the heart was considered to be the center of a person’s thoughts, emotions, and conscience. IN essence, what is being said here is with the core of your being (your understanding) - you should continually think about and desire God’s commandments (law, ordinances). This word for command is used for the instruction of a father to a son, or a king to his servants. It was intended to come as direction from a leader to a subordinate.
Reward - for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you. By being obedient to the heavenly Father, we find a lengthening of our life (in days and years). Interesting that it ties back into the Torah (law) and a promise given if we honor our earthly father and mother.
12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
Not only do we find lengthening of life, but also peace (complete, fulfilled) - Shalom. The general meaning describes a state of wholeness and unity, a restored relationship. This peace is ONLY derived from God.
It is not enough to only know the law (head knowledge), but we are to allow it to change us - written on our heart - and allow an inward transformation to take place. You see, even though the 10 commandments were written in stone, the Israelites still did not follow them, and there was correction that had to take place. Now, we see where Solomon tells his son that IF he is consistent in following God in all that he does, that he will have a long and peaceful life. Does this mean there would not be rough days? Days where things would seem to be falling apart? NO, but it does mean that we know who directs our life and we can have peace knowing His will be done. Ultimately, it will lead to eternal and abundant life.
We are reminded that we have to put effort into studying, learning, and practicing the law God has given to us as believers. If not, we run the risk of forgetting. By staying in scripture, by praying, by seeking out God and all His righteousness then He both blesses us and we gain wisdom. That wisdom is what builds our faith and trust in Him, and can give us the peace we so need during good times…and bad.
Don’t Abandon the Faith
Don’t Abandon the Faith
3 Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.
4 So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.
Again, we see a pattern.
Command - Let not steadfast love and faithfulness. Steadfast love is an unfailing love, often used of God’s love that is related to faithfulness to His law/covenant. Faithfulness equates here to certainty, or dependability. Solomon is telling his son to never forget those who are loyal and kind to you. For us, it directly relates to a characteristic of God’s nature - one that has never and will never fail us.
forsake you - abandoned, neglected.
In other words, we cannot allow ourselves to abandon or neglect God’s unfailing love and dependability for us. Because God will never abandon / forsake those who are His.
Guidance - Bind them around your neck;
Binding points us towards physical or mental tying or wrapping of God’s Word around our neck. We see a similar picture in
8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.
God’s Word should be in ALL our thoughts and our actions. How can this be accomplished?
By writing them on the tablet of your heart - Think back to the ten commandments, how did God present them to the nation of Israel? On stone tablets. It was permanently etched into (virtually) indestructible rock slabs. It is meant to be permanently etched into our inner being. We are to know and understand God’s love for us, along with His Word.
7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
Reward - So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God an man.
We are to experience the goodness of God. Another word for favor is grace - we see a picture of receiving something from God that we didn’t even know we needed. Not only are we to receive grace, but we also receive success - in both the eyes of man AND God. By being obedient to God, keeping His laws and commands, being faithful to Him, we are provided for to the point that we can only look to God as the source and stand in awe.
Solomon gives wise counsel to his son by reminding him that God’s word must be on the heart of the king for him to be successful and for the kingdom to thrive. You see, there is a reward (success) for following God fully, faithfully, and completely. You will be seen as acceptable by God and the people we are closest to.
Not only do we have to have cerebral knowledge of God, but we have outward signs also. We learn of God’s love and faithfulness, and we apply it be being obedient. We gain wisdom, and then apply it by seeking and serving Him. In these simple actions, we gain success and the trust of both God and those we are in contact with daily.
Trust With All Your Heart
Trust With All Your Heart
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
The same pattern repeats here also:
Command - Trust in the Lord with all your heart. We see a repeating of patterns, but also of context. Faith. Do not forget (vs 1), NOT forsake (vs 3), and now trust (vs 5). God wants us to be confident in His provision for us. What does God provide? Better question, what does He NOT provide?
God requires us to be confident in Him for all our needs deep into our inner being. Again we see the use of heart, indicating with all of our faculties.
30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
This trust is an inner understanding of who God is, and what He has done for us.
Guidance - Do not lean on your own understanding.
And yet God gives this warning - to not depend on our own knowledge or wisdom.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
We are limited in our ability to understand or know the true depths of God’s love and devotion to His creation. God understands that, and He wants us to also. He only asks us to trust Him.
In all your ways acknowledge Him.
Throughout our journey on this earth, we are to accept God for who He is! The root word is to “know”. To know someone means we have to have some relationship or at least an understanding of the person we have a relationship with. The reward for knowing God personally is:
Reward - He will make straight your paths. Literally every step in the walk of our life is one foot in front of the other.
The whole theme of these verses are simple. “Trust God, not yourself”. William Shakespeare made this comment “A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” Paul brings this up in 1 Corinthians 3:18
18 Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.
You see, obedience to God comes through complete trust in Him. And complete trust in Him means we cannot have room to deceive ourselves into thinking we “know” anything. Wisdom starts when we realize we don’t have it and looking to God to get it.
We must trust God fully, wholly, and completely - with our whole heart. If we do not, we run the risk of deceiving ourselves. We can set up idols in our hearts. And, whatever worldly thing we have in our hearts, it crowds out the room for God and His righteousness. We have to focus our life completely on Him. How do we allow things to enter our heart that is not pleasing to God? By deceiving ourselves - leaning on our own understanding. How many times have we convinced ourselves that what we think was 100% true and correct - only to fail? We can’t lean on our own understanding. Instead, we continue to remind ourselves daily that God is in control of this world, of our life, and every circumstance we find ourselves in. As we acknowledge who God is in our daily lives, then we will grow to serve Him in everything we do. If we follow this example, then regardless of the good or the bad in our lives, we can confidently know that God will lead us down the best path.
Closing
Closing
In these six short verses, we find God giving commands, following with guidance, and finishing with reward. God wants us to follow Him by trusting in Him through faith. That is His simple command, and there comes a blessing or a reward as a result of being faithful and trusting in Him fully, completely, and wholly.
But the true question this morning is, have we fully, completely, and wholly turned our life over to Him? Or, have we allowed our lives to become so busy that we have allowed the business of “life” to infiltrate our heart and occupy space that God wants, He desires, and He even commands?