Proverbs 3 God's Peace

God’s Peace Can be Your Peace

Intro: Think about all the love stories you have seen or read. If you haven’t seen any lately, it is hallmark channel’s Christmas in July which has a lot of romantic movies on. In our lives, constantly learning we are learning about ourselves and how we interact with everybody else.

As a friend you want to get along with people, so you learn about them, their likes, dislikes, favorites

But with friends, you spend your time apart but as a spouse you take this relationship further because now you live with your spouse. You have to learn so much more about the dislikes like where do they put the toothpaste or how they cook or don’t cook, what they like to eat. But it goes deeper than; you learn their moods, you can tell when they had a good or bad day, when they ares mad they could throw a book at someone, or when they need to be pushed a little bit so the real problem can come out and be remedied.

As a parent, you have hopefully given your kids advice so they can grow up with a healthy fear and love of God and so they can prosper in their life.

All of these relationships are built on love, trust, and honor and if you have these three substances i the relationship, you will succeed in the relationship. The most important relationship you can have is the one between you and God.

This is the relationship that Solomon encourages his son to grow and work on.

Read Verses: 3:1-12

MP: If You Obey God’s Teaching You can have Peace and Prosperity, and be held in high regard in your life

I. God Teaches you How to Love (1-4)

A loving Heart is the truest wisdom—Charles Dickens

The proverb opens with fatherly advice to “not forget my teaching, but instead, let your heart keep my commands.”

If you do, they, the commands or teachings will bring you many days, a full life, and a well being.

Solomon encourages his son to let your heart keep my commands because if you do then you will live longer, you will experience things to a different level, a full life and you will be healthy and joyful.

Solomon and really God wants you to write the teachings or instructions on your very heart. And also to wrap them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart.

The commands are not hung around your neck so people can see how you are obeying God or that you look like you are. Instead “the parallel between “neck” and “heart” here implies that fidelity is more than an ornament to the neck. The neck houses the throat which, in Hebrew anthropology, is the very life of the person. Love and faithfulness are to become part of the student’s heart and life. The influence of Deuteronomy here is evident.”

After you hang the words of God around your neck or write them on your heart, then they are always accessible.

When we are in love we usually hear or say statements like, you have my heart, or You are my heart or I love you with all my heart. The heart and love are linked together.

Do you know why we wear our wedding rings on our left hand? The story of why the wedding ring is worn on the left hand can be traced back to ancient times (really!). In that era, the Romans believed that the vein in the ring finger (the fourth finger) on the left hand ran directly to one's heart. Because of this belief, they called that vein the "vena amoris" or vein of love. Naturally, to solidify a union based on love, they'd place the ring on that finger that housed the vein of love to signify the romance the newly married couple shares. A pretty adorable physical representation of two hearts being connected, don't you think? Unfortunately, our modern-day understanding of biology suggests that all your fingers have vein connections to the heart.

The ring that symbolizes our love and covenant with our spouse that is linked to our heart. The Jesus death on the cross demonstrates his love for his people and that it is possible for us to love Him as well.

In , Jesus instructs us that if we love him we will keep his commandments.

But how do we do we do this? Which commandments are there?

Luckily now with Jesus’ sacrifice fulfilling the law,there are two that we have to keep.

Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, strength and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Solomon gives us the tip on how to remember God’s Words. The way to do that is to write them down so they transfer on to your heart.

Application: What Solomon is telling us, and what God has commanded is that it takes effort to put these command in your heart. It is something that you have to do. It is not something that just happens. Maintain a relationship takes work. if you go on cruise control what happens? You lose control and you lose touch with the other person.

How many of you keep a calendar that you write important dates down on?

How many of you take notes when you read and study the Bible? We have the Bible because God instructed men to write down His words.

Solomon wrote down these wise words to pass on to His son.

says Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, 'Write all the words which I have spoken to you in a book.

Moses was instructed to write down the words of God in the first five books of the Bible.

Luke tells Theophilus that he wrote down His Gospel and the Book of Acts because it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus;

Writing notes by hand takes a bit longer and forces the brain to dwell on each word a bit more, rather than the "mindless transcription" promoted by typing. The result is that handwritten notes cause the brain to fully digest information, while typing allows us to gloss over the gist of the meaning.

The results of the experiment showed that handwritten notes also improve our ability to fully understand concepts. In business, that translates to a competitive advantage over our fully digital counterparts.

When you write down your thoughts about the passage for the day you can look back on it later and maybe see how God fulfilled a prayer or what a particular passage means or how it helped you in a situation.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. When you believe someone, you place your trust in them

II. God Teaches you How to Trust (5-8)

Solomon know encourages his son to trust the Lord with all his heart. And not try to do things on your own or at least what make sense to you.

Why does he tell him this?

Solomon, and God wants us to trust God and his word.

With all your heart. Completely and totally. Not just. Little bit. Not even 99%. But 100%. When you don't trust God completely, you leave room for Mistrust. “Everything we are and all we have must be rested upon the Lord as our security.”

If you trust God completely, then you can have peace knowing that you are following the lead of the Almighty God. If not then there will always be a nagging feeling of insecurity and that will create strife, worry, and

His ways are above ours (; ), and must be chosen when they seem to contradict our earthly, human wisdom.

We can trust what God says and does because a lot of the times, initially, those things don’t make sense to us. To our own understanding, or the world’s understanding. Since it doesn’t make sense, sometimes we try to avoid the situation.

In one of his sermons, DL Moody says “God is worthy of our trust; He is always faithful. Our nearest friends may deceive us, but God never will. God will keep them in perfect peace whose minds are stayed on Him. We must be able to say with Job, ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.’”

No other person can be trusted as much as God.

Application: You can humbly place your trust in God before the Lord in order to learn His wisdom

How does God teach us to trust Him?

First he gives us faith. Trust or confidence in God may be considered, as it has a connexion with the grace of faith; faith is sometimes expressed by it; Such trust or confidence have we through Christ to God-ward,

God has given us the faith to come to him and we have to uncover it and stop hiding God’s gift under the blanket or in the closet of our heart.

Secondly, he Teaches us to trust Him by putting us through trials or suffering.

You dont learn how to fix anything unless it is broken.

David trusted God in is all about humbly trusting God. Listen to the words, He leads me, he guides me, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

Peter at least initially trusted God when he stepped out of the boat onto the water and then, he leaned on his own understanding and then fell in the water, and Jesus still. Pulled him back out of the water.

Jesus Trusted God to go peacefully when he was arrested and put on trial. Why, because he knew it was The Plan. Everything that happens is part of God’s plan water we see it or understand it or not. Many times we don’t see it until we get through the steps or out of the trial.

Peter didn’t know or understand Christs Sacrifice and what it meant until later.

In he says, Therefore, since Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same understanding—because the one who suffers in the flesh is finished with sin— 2 in order to live the remaining time in the flesh no longer for human desires, but for God’s will. 3 For there has already been enough time spent in doing what the Gentiles choose to do.

TS: When we chose to do God's will, we are honoring Him.

III. God Teaches you How to Honor (9-12)

What is Honoring someone? To Hold someone in high esteem or respect and it also means

the word used for Honor’ is a verb used occasionally—as here—in the sense of making sacrifice to the Lord. If you bring a gift to a house working party or a dinner, you are doing so to honor the host. You are essentially making a sacrifice to the person.

God is the provider of all things. We are told to honor the Lord, Yahweh, with your possessions and the first produce of your entire harvest.

Tithing is supposed to one out of the whole harvest, not what you have left over or didn’t sell.

This instructs us that the tithe comes out of the gross because it is the whole harvest. However as we grow in our trust we can increase our tithing to make it correct. Ultimately We are instructed to be cheerful givers because we are tithing because we are giving back what God has given us. We are hiring him in our actions and with our trust.

There are five ways that the Bible tells us how we Honor God because all of what we have has come from God.

Honor God with your time –How are you using the precious time you have been given to glorify God? See , , and .

Honor God with your talents – These are your God-given gifts and abilities. See .

Honor God with your temple – This means your body. See .

Honor God with your treasure – This means your finances. As Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (). See and .

Honor God with your ticker – This means your heart. There are many Bible verses that encourage us to make God number one in our heart. See , , , , and .

TS: This last one has been the point of the whole proverb today. Loving trusting and honoring God with your heart.

Conclusion:

The Bible is a love story between God and his creation. Ultimately God teaches us how to love by giving us an example to follow. God’s actions with his people in the Exodus, by providing for them, guiding them, building a home for them.

God expects us to Love Him, to trust Him and honor Him.

This week, you can show love by writing his words on your heart by taking notes when you do your Bible study.

You can demonstrate your trust by not overthinking things that happen to be from God and thinking about what God wants you to learn or know from a situation and stop trying to apply your own wisdom.

A lot of us are doing this already by honoring God with your time, talents, and money. But me importantly you are doing all of that not because you earn any favor, but because you are grateful for what God has given you.

And You can know that you are loved By God and that should give you peace in your life that in the topsy-turvy world, That God’s Love is the one constant in your life.