Odd and Even

The first few verses of Proverbs 3—the first 12 verses—are a set of six couplets; 6 sets of two verses, following a pattern (A, B. A, B. A, B. etc).

So we’re going to focus on the odd verses, and then the even verses. Proverbs 3 teaches us about being in relationship with God—our obligations and His.

If you have your Bibles (and I hope you do), please turn with me to Proverbs 3. If you are able and willing, please stand for the reading of God’s Holy Word:

Proverbs 3:1–12 NIV

1 My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart, 2 for they will prolong your life many years and bring you peace and prosperity. 3 Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. 4 Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man. 5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. 7 Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil. 8 This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. 9 Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; 10 then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine. 11 My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, 12 because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.

May God add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!

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The way the first part of this proverb is structured is a little different than normal, so we aren’t going to look at it as a whole, one verse after the other.

We’re going to start by looking at the odd verses (vv. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9):

Our Covenant Obligations

In verse 1, Solomon is speaking to his son, exhorting him to obey the law, his teaching and commands. Don’t forget my teaching, keep my commands.

There’s a connection between the law and wisdom. The book of Deuteronomy, for one, is replete with this teaching.

Keeping the law is the wisdom of Israel.

Deut 4:6 “Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.”

Parents are to teach the law to their children, so they will be wise.

Deut 6:7-8 “Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.”

The king was to be a man of the law, in order that he would be wise.

Deut 17:18-20 “When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.”

Solomon is obeying all of this in Proverbs by showing how wisdom is obeying the law in daily life. He’s training his son in this.

However, the law has to be internalized in order to be obeyed. There has to be inward transformation where the law is written on the heart.

This is called “regeneration.” We see this in verse 1 and verse 3. Verse 1: “keep my commands in your heart.” Verse 3 “write them on the tablet of your heart.”

This is covenant language. Verse 3 include the covenant words love and faithfulness (hesed and emet). And it’s covenant practice to write the words of the law down.

The Ten Commandments were written on stone tablets, and the people didn’t obey them.

But the Bible promises a day is coming when the covenant will be written on the tablet of the heart so that one can obey. The LORD will do this.

He says so. Through the prophet Jeremiah, the LORD says,

Jeremiah 31:33 NIV

33 “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

Proverbs recognizes the need for inward-out transformation, not simply behavior modification. Regeneration comes before behavior.

You cannot do what God requires apart from His work in your life. Ya’ll need Jesus. I certainly do.

Verse 5 and verse 7 say you should trust the LORD instead of trusting yourself.

This is pretty much the central truth of Proverbs: obedience starts with faith.

This is the key to wisdom: the fear of the LORD, trusting the LORD.

Trust Him with your whole heart and don’t lean on your own understanding.

Trust God, not yourself. Foolishness is trusting your own mind and heart.

Meghann has this poem from a local poet displayed in her office:

Don’t follow your heart. Follow the LORD. Cause anything you do in life is something He has had in store, Whereas your heart will try to trick you; It’s deceitful and unkind. So “follow your heart” Is a phrase I’d leave behind.

Wisdom starts with recognizing you don’t have it and looking to God in humility for it.

The way that seems right to us ends in death. We think what is best for us is autonomy (freedom) and the power to choose what to do with our own lives.

Proverbs says that’s deadly and dangerous. What seems right to us usually ends up wrecking us.

Don’t be wise (or think you’re wise) in your own eyes. That’s the root of foolishness going all the way back to the garden of Eden.

There’s advice for when we decide to be wise in our own eyes. It’s there in verse 7. Proverbs 3:5-6 get all publicity; they’re cross-stitched on pillows and printed on T-shirts. Verses 5-6 are the fan favorites.

But verse 7 is so good:

Proverbs 3:7 NIV

7 Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil.

When we decide in our own eyes that we are wise, the Bible tells us to 1). fear the LORD instead, and 2). REPENT, turn away from evil (recognize your sin and evil, turn from it, run to God).

That’s wisdom.

In the final of the odd-numbered verses, we read about being obedient to LORD with our wealth.

To give back to the LORD out of what He has provided for us, to give the first, the best, not the leftovers, this is our covenant obligation.

Giving should be set out at the top of your budget, not whatever is left after everything else is covered.

The odd verses give us a lot to do—a lot of obligations.

The even verses (vv. 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10) discuss:

God’s Covenant Blessings

Verse 2 begins with the word for, which shows what blessing comes from the obligation when kept.

The LORD is our reward, and gives blessings besides.

Following the law will add days, years, and peace to your life. Ultimately, what’s being taught here is eternal life and abundant life; a return to Eden, to the way things are supposed to be.

There will be, eventually, complete harmony with God, other people, and the world around us.

There’s the reward, the blessing of a good rapport with God and man.

Wisdom—God’s wisdom—is found in relationship with Him and will result, ultimately, in a right relationship with Him and others.

For our trusting in the LORD (v. 5), the LORD will make our paths straight.

That is, the LORD will keep on the right path those who put their faith and trust in Him—this is protection in our day-to-day lives.

When we fear the LORD and shun evil, verse 8 tells us a well-ordered life leads to health.

The picture of all these verses is that wisdom reverses the curse of sin, death, and sickness.

Finally, in verse 10, Solomon writes that when we honor the LORD with our wealth, our barns and vats will overflow and brim over.

This has its basis in the covenant. In Deuteronomy 7, we read covenant faithfulness for Israel will lead God to blessing the fruit of the ground and taking away disease.

If Israel obeys God, things will go well: rain will fall, crops will grow. When Israel disobeys, the reverse will happen. It’s the basic deuteronomic “blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience.”

So, here we are at the end of Proverbs 3:10 and the teaching thus far seems to be this: Obey God by doing the odd verses and in return you will get the rewards of the even verses. Easy-peasy.

But…is this really true?

What about all the instances when things don’t work this way?

I know you know what I’m talking about; you’re listening to this or reading through these verses and you’re thinking, “Yeah, but, what about…?”

This is Generally True NOW and Will Always be True LATER

At first blush, these verses might appear to be teaching a prosperity gospel. You know, just trust in the LORD and He will give you health and wealth and happiness; a nice, toothy grin and a stadium full of other immensely blessed individuals.

What we read in verses 1-10 (obligation leading to blessing) doesn’t always work out immediately in a fallen world.

Sometimes you can believe and obey, and things go badly for you.

You get cancer instead of health.

You lose your job instead of getting a raise.

You get evicted from your house instead of getting to remodel your house.

Sometimes, we suffer now and receive the reward only in the next life. Sorry to tell you, it’s not your best life now. In Christ, it will be your best life later, and forever!

The proverbs are generally true now, but they are always ultimately true.

Mark Dever says, “Individual proverbs are always ultimately true; individual proverbs are normally true now.”

In the new creation, we will experience every spiritual and physical blessing promised to us.

This is where verses 11-12 help us.

Solomon is writing to his son, telling him to accept the LORD’s discipline and not to reject it. Don’t get mad at the LORD when He allows discipline in your life; He does this for your good.

In order to be truly wise, you must have correction and discipline. Left without discipline, we will go down the wrong path. We will, on our own, in our sin nature, head toward destruction.

The LORD God loves us enough to discipline us, just like parents and their children. God loves us and wants to make us more and more like Jesus, so that means discipline.

The author of Hebrews quotes these verses—Proverbs 3:11-12) in Hebrews 12:

Hebrews 12:5–11 NIV

5 And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says, “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, 6 because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.” 7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? 8 If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! 10 They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

God will reward us—that’s a promise, a guarantee, take that to the bank—God WILL reward us, but God doesn’t always give us what we want when we want it.

Do you know people who expect to get what they want right when they want it? I’ve known children and adults alike to behave this way. Do you know what that produces? Spoiled, rotten brats who will have no patience for God who DOES NOT give us what we want the instant we want it.

Instead, God gives us exactly what we need. The LORD is my shepherd, I have all I need.

God will conform you to the image of Jesus, so that you are the kind of person who can rightly experience the blessings He has for you, when and where He has them for you.

The prosperity gospel is false and unhelpful in every way. One major problem with the prosperity gospel is that it makes Christianity a transaction (if you do this and God will do this); it’s businesslike.

Another issue is that the prosperity gospel assumes godly people will never suffer in this life. That, my friends, is entirely unbiblical. Here are just two Bible passages to the contrary:

John 16:33 NIV

33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

2 Timothy 3:12 NIV

12 In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,

Godliness is no guarantee that things will always go well for you in this life; in fact, the opposite is true. Godliness = trouble and persecution in this life.

The teaching of the Bible is this: even if things go badly for you now (and they likely will by every earthly metric), they will go well for you in the next age. It will be far better there than it is here.

I don’t want “my best life now.” I’ll wait for what God has planned for me in the next life.

All this talk about covenant keeping and covenant blessing/reward begs the question: “Who keeps the covenant?”

Jesus Fulfills All Covenant Obligations for His People

The false gospel of the prosperity preachers misunderstands that none of us are faithful, covenant-keepers.

None of us have been or ever will be perfectly obedient to the LORD. None of us have perfectly trusted God instead of ourselves. None of us have perfectly turned from evil or have been completely generous as we should be.

The covenant relationship was broken by every human member of the covenant—Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon—all of them failed to hold up their covenant obligations (which is kind of the point, instructive for us).

Jesus is the Son who finally keeps it.

The good news is that Jesus represents us before the Father in the covenant relationship.

Jesus lived up to our covenant obligations for us, and perfectly. Jesus took the curses of our covenant breaking in our place, completely.

Jesus’ righteous record of keeping the covenant is credited to the account of all who are united to Him by faith, and as a result they will experience the blessings of covenant faithfulness by HIS MERIT and not their own.

Christianity has never been about keeping the rules so that God will save you.

Christianity is about how God saves you THROUGH JESUS and then molds you into His image so you can live the life God meant for you to live.

It’s not about what you can do. It’s not about what I can do. It’s about what Jesus has done on our behalf.

The gospel—the Good News—is right here in Proverbs. We can’t meet these obligations; but Jesus has. Jesus has done it—for us, for all who believe in and belong to Him.

Don’t trust yourself. Don’t follow your heart. Trust Him. Look to Him.

Long life, peace, prosperity, favor, direction, health, overflowing bounty will be yours. Someday. In Him and through Him.